Her dark, wide eyes reflected the window’s scant light. “I know. It’s just…”
She stared at his necklace, two lines appearing between her slim eyebrows. Good thing he kept the Campbell seal turned toward his throat.
“They’ll bring him back, right?” Tears welled in her eyes.
Anger against Lewis simmered under Thane’s sternum. Lewis had done this to Aini, put her in this position. Her and Thane. The traitor. How could he not have realized the nature of the man? He’d been so wrong, so, so wrong. His teeth ground together.
“I don’t know, hen.”
He ran a hand over her forearm, and a feeling like electric shock danced up his fingers. Swallowing, he stepped back, giving her what he hoped was a noncommittal, friendly smile. His thoughts and emotions knocked around his body and brain like thrown rocks. He looked out the window. He felt so heavy, so tired of…everything.
The place his mother used to take him washed through his mind.
“You ever been to the Highlands?” he asked her quietly. “Green and gold grasses. Puddles of water so still… Mountains like great castles. A man could hear no sound but his own voice, if he wished it.” He was daft. What was he even talking about? His thoughts slipped around like he’d had a boat-load of whisky.
“I went there once.” Aini’s voice was light as star shine. It was surprising she didn’t think him completely cracked. “With Father, on holiday.”
He turned to see her shudder and wrap her arms around herself.
Thane’s watch said it was near midnight. “It’s late. Can we talk over everything tomorrow?” What he’d say, he had no clue. Smart as she was, she was blind as hell. Not that he could talk. He didn’t have a clear view of anything.
Nodding, she started toward the door, then paused. “What happened to your shirt?” Her gaze slid over his bare shoulder.
“Caught it on the doorframe.” His jaw muscles tensed painfully. Lying came far too easy these days.
She looked him over a bit. He tugged his ripped shirt up best he could as heat crept into his cheeks. Running a hand through his hair, he silently berated himself for blushing.
Brushing past her, he snatched his jacket from the doorknob. They traded an awkward, “Good night then,” before he sped off to his room.
Pacing his bedroom, Thane stewed. Lewis had pretended such innocence. Acting as though he cared for the king’s law. Saying that was the reason he wouldn’t do as Thane’s clan asked. Stopping at the wall, Thane clenched his fists. Lewis had probably been crafting weaponized sweets for the Dionadair. Thane rammed a fist into the wall, welcoming the pain that matched the hurt inside him. Was there no one he could trust in the world?
Myles’s bed creaked. “Hey, Lord of the Tattoos, keep it down, okay? I need beauty sleep if I’m going to battle your handsome tail for the ladies.”
“Aye. Sorry.” Flexing his now bloodied hand, Thane lowered himself into his own bed.
He was too. Sorry he couldn’t leave now and forget about Lewis and Aini and the lab. He had to stay and work on what Lewis refused to. Had to give his clan the terrible things he created. For his mother. And because it was his duty. Campbells who didn’t do as ordered didn’t enjoy long lives.
Thane fought the droop of his eyelids.
At the edge of his mind, his recurring dream lurked, waiting for him—the one of his fingerprint turning black as a corpse’s. It was hours before exhaustion finally washed through Thane’s boiling brain and drowned him in a troubled sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
SECRET
AINI SAT ON A kitchen chair, fully dressed in tapered trousers and a green silk striped shirt, but she’d no idea how she’d ended up there. Coconut pancakes steamed on a plate in front of her. She folded and creased the napkin someone had thrown beside the fork. Then she aligned the fork with the napkin and plate, making it picture-perfect.
Myles padded barefoot across the room. He smiled kindly, his usual swagger replaced with concern. “You’re supposed to eat it, sweetheart. Not organize it.”
If anyone else had called her sweetheart, she’d have set them down for a good one, maybe two hour lecture, but Myles actually meant the word as an endearment. There wasn’t any condescension in his tone.
“I made these pancakes, didn’t I?” she whispered.
He paused, the coffee pot suspended over his blue mug. “You did.” Taking a seat, he put his free hand on hers, a brotherly gesture.
She frowned as the black spot in her memory cleared.
Now she remembered wiggling the turner under their crisp edges to flip the pancakes. The cane syrup had come out too quickly when she poured it, and the liquid had pooled against the plate’s lip.
“Hey. We’re going to figure this out,” Myles said. “After all, you’re organizing again.” Pointing to the folded napkin and aligned fork, he grinned encouragingly. “It’s an Aini MacGregor sign of survival and fortitude.”
A tentative smile crept over her lips.
Neve scurried into the kitchen, only one of her eyes ringed in brown liner. “I meant to get up before you.” She knelt and patted Aini’s leg. “Anything I can get you? Seems you already made your own breakfast.”
Aini squeezed Neve’s hand, closing her eyes and hoping the comfort of her friend’s touch would drive out the buzzing under her skin. She took a deep breath, feeling like insects crawled under her flesh. “The Campbells have my dad. Right? It couldn’t be anyone else, right?” She needed to make a list of possibilities and potential actions to take. “Does anyone know where my phone is?”
Neve and Myles stood, their heads turning and their faces blank. Neve’s mouth tucked up at one side. “You’re usually the one who tells us where everything is.”
Swallowing, Aini pushed away from the table to look in her bedroom as Thane walked in. He held her phone out to her.
Gratitude warmed her. “Thanks.” Before she opened a fresh list on the screen, she met Thane’s gaze. Red lines crossed the whites of his eyes, and his normally pink, full lips were pale. Swallowing, she put a hand on his sleeve. The rolled edge of the expensive colonial cotton was worn and soft. “Myles made coffee.” She didn’t know what else to say.
Thane rubbed his face roughly, his tattoos dark against his fair skin. His hair was a beautiful disaster of gold and honey. She wondered if he’d slept last night.
His eyes flicked open, the irises gray as storms. “You…I…thank you.” He pushed past, jerked the coffee pot up, and poured some into a mug, spilling a little over the edge.
Nodding, Aini went to the table and started a list. Her fingers shook and made it tough to type. “First thing.” She looked at Myles and Neve. “Who took him and why exactly?”
The two sat side by side, Neve with her fingers laced and a pinched mouth, Myles biting his thumbnail.
“Idea One. The Campbells.” With each word typed onto the screen, it became easier to breathe. “They took him because he refused to do what they wanted. He shouted at them over the phone, disregarding their status, and so they acted. Idea Two. A competitor abducted him. They want his recipes. Idea Three—”
“You know it’s the Campbells, Aini. It’s why the authorities were as useful as teets on a goose.” Myles slowly peeled paint off his thumbnail, not meeting her eyes.
With a quick swipe, she deleted ideas two and three. She blinked away tears to see the screen. “Okay. Then what actions to take?”
Neve slid her untouched plate closer, glancing once at Thane, who drank his coffee in silence in the corner of the room. “If they see his behavior as treasonous, they’ll question him at the Court of Empire Crimes.”
Aini slammed her phone down. “That’s ridiculous.” Standing, she braced her hands on the table. “He’s only obeying the king’s laws. He’s a loyal subject. More loyal than any other man in Scotland. The Campbells are out of control.”
Thane muttered something sharp.
“What?”
“I said,” he put his
cup down too carefully on the counter and glared. “Maybe your father is not who you think he is.”
“Excuse me?”
His eyes narrowed. He took a step. “You ever seen anything to tie him to the Dionadair?”
“The rebels?” Her brash colonial accent was leaking out. “Of course not,” she said, careful to soften her consonants.
He looked at her mouth, then shook his head. “You’d never check up on your own father. Would you? It’s against your precious rules. It wouldn’t help you fit in.”
He turned away, but she grabbed the sleeve of his wrinkled button-down. “Why are you saying this?” she asked.
“People lie, Aini.” Bending at the waist, he put his face near hers. “They hide things. Especially from those they love.”
Heat flared across her chest. “Don’t be an…an ass.” Blushing, she leaned closer, her nose almost touching his. “If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
Straightening, he spoke quietly like he struggled to get a hold on himself. “Before this week, did you ever think your father would shout at a kingsman like he did on the phone?”
Aini looked down, her chest hurting.
He pulled something from his back pocket, his face sad and furious at the same time, and thrust it under her nose. “I didn’t think he was a rebel either until I found this.”
It was a picture. She took it, heart shaking.
It showed Lewis and another man having a drink together. No shock in that. But as her gaze dragged over Father’s smile and into the background, she saw it. The banned flag.
Her hand went to her mouth. “The Saltire.”
“Aye. It was taken at a club where Dionadair used to meet.”
The floor seemed to move under Aini’s shoes.
Leaning over her shoulders, Neve and Myles looked at the picture. Neve deflated and dropped into Aini’s chair. Myles turned and raked hands through his bright hair.
But it didn’t have to mean Father was a rebel. “It’s just a picture. An old one. It doesn’t mean—”
“Forget it.” Thane cut her off and ripped the picture away, his bright gray eyes outlined by black lashes. “If you’re determined to live in your pretend world of perfectly organized right and wrong and lists and rules and everyone being exactly who you think they are, nothing I’m going to say will snap you out of it.”
Her legs jerked and trembled, threatening to crumble. Like it belonged to another person, her hand drew back, then slapped across Thane’s cheek.
Neve gasped.
Thane’s nostrils flared. He shut his eyes as his chest heaved. “Aini—”
Twisting, she shoved Myles out of her way and flew up the spiral stairs to the tower lab.
At the shelving above the countertop, she began alphabetizing the spices and dried herbs, taking simple pleasure in the clean, white labels and their dark green lettering. Agrimony. Allspice. Angelica. Anise. Arnica. Father didn’t like them this way, but he hardly had to measure flavors out anymore so it didn’t matter. Bay Leaf. Bergamot. Bilberry. And he wasn’t here anyway, so it really didn’t matter.
A hysterical laugh erupted from her throat, and she paused, a jar of cayenne gripped in her sweating hand.
Thane was right.
People did lie to those they loved. She had.
Her own father didn’t know about her sixth sense. She’d been lying for a long time now.
She set the cayenne down and walked across the lab, stopping between Father’s neatly arranged work area and Myles’s desk, which overflowed with pastel chalk adverts and filthy electronics.
The jars of blue and green sugar sparkled on the far wall. Why were they over there? They really should be stored with the rest of the decorative sugars. She’d take them down. A project would clear her head. On tiptoe, she squinted at the antique bronze hardware that kept the blue sugar jar on the wall. It was a hinge. Hmm. Maybe if she could get to the screw hiding in the hinge’s fold, she could undo it. Reaching high, she grabbed the container and pulled it forward. The glittering contents shifted with a hushing sound as the jar tipped toward her.
A jagged rectangle covered in the same uneven stone as the rest of the wall swung open.
A hidden door. Mind spinning, she walked inside.
Secrets and more secrets.
The bare bulb above didn’t provide much light, but a layer of dust was visible on the tall filing cabinet and the trunk. The cabinet’s tracks squeaked as she slid the first drawer out and peered inside. A brown envelope, worn at the edges and ready to burst, held a huge stack of papers.
She pursed her lips and breathed through her nose. Her world was pulling apart, thread by thread. Slipping a finger under the envelope’s flap, she opened it. Drawings. Pictures. Cards. All from her. There was the unicorn she’d made for him in primary school. Her first school picture. Every Christmas card she’d ever bought for him. She hugged the package to her chest and looked up to keep the moisture from leaking out of her eyes. Tucking everything back into place, she returned the envelope and shut the drawer. The middle drawer held all her essay papers from upper school, all the way through last year, when she’d graduated early. In the bottom drawer, large rubber bands held together ticket stubs from her parents’ honeymoon trip and anniversary cards from before the divorce.
So far, no terrible surprises.
She eyed the trunk on the dusty floor. Brass grommets stood like sentries along its lid. She pushed on the lobster claw latch. Rust flaked from the metal, but it wouldn’t budge. With a fist, she hit the clasp. Pinching the little lever, the latch slid out of the brass loop with a grating sound. She threw the lid open, and the scent of aged paper curled into her nose. The mildewed trunk held an invitation to the king’s thirtieth birthday party. Someone—Father?—had scrawled the word Remember in black over the front. Next to the invitation was a picture of Aini as a child with chubby cheeks and an armful of half-wilted flowers. She remembered picking them out of Grandmother’s garden in the colonies. Aini had sorted the bouquet into colors and presented them to Father for Easter. Next, carefully moving a first edition of Father’s favorite novel, she uncovered a tuxedo jacket, maybe the one he’d worn at his wedding. She lifted it and something fell from its folds, thudding to the hidden room’s oak plank floor.
It was a tiny square of linen sewn like a pocket. Something weighty hid inside. The lightbulb above flickered, highlighting the tiny bumps and ridges in the rough fabric. Stitched words, red as blood, ran across the front.
For the Seer.
A chill spilled down Aini’s back.
She’d done everything possible to hide her ability for two years. Feigning a stomachache when she touched a coin that someone had kept for a while before dying. Wearing gloves the moment the weather was anything less than hot. Telling Father the secondhand jewelry stores he liked to peruse weren’t her sort of thing.
But this trunk had been shut for a long time, judging from the dust layer. And the yellow and brown of age had crept into the fabric. She lifted the small pouch’s flap and peered inside. It was a gold brooch, similar to the decorative pin Granny MacGregor had worn on her cardigan. But hers had the MacGregor family crest. This one was different.
She studied this brooch as best she could without touching it, sweat dampening her palms and the back of her neck. Inside the brooch’s circle, a golden otter bared jagged teeth. An inscription decorated its edges, but the words were tiny. She squinted.
If she took it out of its wrapping and ran a finger over it, she’d break her number one rule. But her father had some sort of rebellious past, and she had to know if he had any more secrets, and how far this went. She tilted the linen pouch and the brooch slipped into her palm, cool and heavy.
The world dropped away. A vision took hold.
Face partially covered in shadow, a man shoved the brooch into Father’s hands. Fear rose from him, green and black, and he shook his head. Both men turned, something surprising them. The other man ran off. Father sti
ll held the brooch. Behind him, a tattered blue flag with a diagonal, white cross hung on the wall. The Saltire.
The memory disappeared—she’d never see it again—and a new one bled into its place as Aini curled her fingers tightly around the pin, lost in the vision.
A handsome young man with a wide mouth gripped the brooch. Wearing old-fashioned clothes, he shut his eyes and envisioned a large room with rough brick and stone walls.
Was this man leaving an emotional imprint on the brooch on purpose? Impossible.
Water dripped from the ceiling. There was a large knife—a dirk—with a hilt black as coal. He thought of a number. Eighty-five.
Seer, his mind said. Find the knife, first in the clah-na-cinneamhain trail.
An oddly shaped rock came into view. Very large. Sloping upward toward the back, hollowed in the middle like a seat. Circles. Swirls.
Make certain the time is right, his thoughts shouted.
His dark eyes grew larger and larger, shining, wild, closer, closer. Seer! See me! Find the knife!
The vision disintegrated, and Aini sucked the air of Father’s hidden room as the brick and cement walls bubbled into view. The brooch fell from her fingers and thunked to the floor.
She still wasn’t used to her sixth sense, though the process was fairly straightforward. The first time she touched an object with strong sentimental value to someone, a moment of imprinted emotion played out in her head like a movie. At least it only occurred the first time her skin made contact.
She’d seen Mother in a pearly veil when she’d touched Father’s watch. That had been a nice one. Unfortunately, they weren’t all so pleasant. When she’d touched the chain Myles wore around his wrist, she’d seen a vision of Myles’s mother turn her back on him before his trip here to be an apprentice.
And this vision, the first one in the brooch, it showed Father with a stranger, standing in front of the banned flag. She looked at the ceiling, her fingers going cold.
The Edinburgh Seer: Edinburgh Seer Book One Page 5