“At the time of the quake cluster, a Rift that no one seemed to know about, except Ronan’s father, opened up at Washington Park in Seattle,” Adam explained. “Ley lines exploded all over Earth and caused the Rift to fracture and spew out magic. That’s about the time we were all conceived. This Rift’s far from the last original Rift in Ireland.”
“Whoa.” My mouth hung open. “How does Ronan’s father know it’s an actual Rift?”
“Everything about the Rifts is in the Illuminaria. He has gadgets that detect paranormal activity, and the park has the highest concentration of any place in the world. It all added up to what’s in the book.”
I didn’t care for the rippling in my stomach, stemming more from rolling turns on a stuffed stomach than their word bombs. The implications of Riley Senior’s bounty hunters tailing me had yet to reach a Category 10 Crapstorm. The seatbelt law didn’t stop me from settling in a more comfortable position facing the back seat. However, I did need to keep my balance as Adam slung us around hairpin turns on the woodsy, tree-shrouded highway that separated San Jose and the Santa Cruz beaches.
“How many bounty hunters did your dad sic on me?” I asked. Ronan shrugged. “You don’t know? I thought you knew everything.” My sneer didn’t quite reach my voice.
Ronan whipped out my phone and hit redial. A few non-responsive seconds later, he slammed the phone on the seat.
Adam took another sharp curve, and I grabbed the console. I dug into my purse for my tin of mints, popping a couple in my mouth.
He cranked up the air conditioner. “Settle back and face forward. You’ll feel better.”
So perceptive, Adam really might make a great prince to a nice fairy princess. After a season in the tanning booth and a bottle of Miss Clairol, though.
“Zoe!” I bolted upright, smacking my knee on the bottom of the dash. A river of pain coursed down my leg bones. Another dot to connect. “She’s a telepath. I don’t want him testing her. He’ll want to keep her for his nefarious shits and grins.” I massaged my knee. “Give me the phone.” I practically knotted into a pretzel to apprehend my cell from the backseat thief.
“Dad won’t kill her, or want to keep her.” Ronan switched the phone to his left hand, farther from my reach. “At least not until he snags you.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.” Tears leaked from my eyes. Damn, not the tears. Until last night, I’d only ever cried when Mom and Granny had died. Oh, yeah, and when my rat snake father slithered out of my life. I yanked down the visor. My eyes had more lines in them than a fault line map of California.
Adam popped the glove box open to reveal a cache of napkins. I snatched a handful and blotted my face dry, wadding them in my fist. The drone of the beefy engine choked out the expansive silence. Breathing slowly, I counted to ten. I needed to get a grip, and fast. Traffic slowed to a crawl as we neared downtown San Jose, granting my emotions a reprieve.
Facing forward, I leaned my head on the headrest. “Isn’t your father hunting Adam too? Aren’t you twins, brothers, or cousins that the magic affected differently?”
“Not brothers. No relation.” The skin of Adam’s knuckles stretched white. If he paled any further, he’d be three days dead. “Only you two know I exist in this sickly form. Until six months ago I was a normal guy. No magic, no fairy look, just a regular human male.”
My heart dived into my unwelcoming stomach. Not twins? “Then…” Aria Elle Walker was at a loss for words. Stop the world from revolving. Oh, holy hell. “You’re doppelgängers. Like the beings sorcerers created from the fae back in the day.”
Adam nodded. “We don’t know how it’s possible. We took blood tests and our DNA doesn’t match. You’ve heard the theory that everyone has a double somewhere? Some were created by magic and alchemy by the sorcerers. Our bloodlines have carried the magic down through the ages.”
“Sure,” I replied, never believing in that old myth. Until that moment.
“They’re few and far between,” Adam continued. “They aren’t always lookalikes, sometimes having similar physical or physiological characteristics. They may have complimentary attributes, or opposite attributes.”
“Like what?” Moisture formed on my flushed face.
Ronan gripped the back of my seat. “One might be cruel, the other kind.”
“Or one might possess magic ruled by his psyche, his innate telekinesis,” Adam added, “and the other, magic pulled from earth energies. But there’s a bond between them.”
“But the sorcerer-created doppelgängers were eradicated and booted through the Rift,” I nearly accused, their story getting weirder and weirder by the minute.
As the vehicle flew down the freeway off-ramp, I grabbed the door handle to keep from sliding off the leather seat. Slowing, he merged into the late afternoon downtown traffic.
Adam gave Ronan one of their boys’ club peeps in the rearview mirror.
“So we thought,” Ronan interjected in his grumpy voice. “There’s nothing about them in the Illuminaria. At least not in the part my father has. It only talks about the banished ones. We kinda believe the original Thirteen just didn’t stop their alchemy when everyone was abolished. Or fae-doppelgänger magic is spewing out of the crumbling Rift.”
“Or I’m an anomaly.” Adam chuckled wryly.
My head ached. “What would Ronan’s father do if he knew about Adam?”
“We’d all be in cages locked up tighter than Hannibal Lecter.” Adam’s low voice spread horror through my system.
A terrible sense of his bitterness hit me. Traffic snarled ahead. Adam braked hard and we screeched to a standstill. I braced my hands against the dash, preventing further bodily damage. The heat of his ailing body seared my skin. As fast as Adam’s bitterness erupted, a barbed thread of suspicion worked its way inside my gut. I drew a deep breath, forbade myself to get sick. Like my stomach ever obeyed my brain.
“Are you sure Richie Riley doesn’t know?” I raised my eyebrows at Adam, refusing to look at the source of mistrust behind me. “Maybe Ronan’s drawing you out into the open and they’re hunting you and me?” Hopefully it wasn’t true, because I needed someone to believe in besides an extinct fairy-sorcerer doppelgänger.
In a flurry of motion, Ronan lunged forward and flicked the latch on my door. The door flew open and my scream followed it. I scooted halfway on top of the center console, shaking with a mix of fear and disgust. My uncontrollable energy stabbed at Ronan, but it flared blind and shattered against his defective aura. Fire ants seemed to chomp on me as he lashed a barrage of tainted energy at me that did nothing but scrape my skin.
“Hey! Did you snort stupid dust?” I punched his arm.
“Get out. You’re on your own.” A dangerous cruelty laced his words.
Adam swerved to the curb amid the blare of a piercing horn behind us. The impact of him hitting the brakes swung the door closed with a bang that vibrated in my eardrums. Ronan hopped out and opened the front door, steam practically spiraling from his blotchy red neck.
“Knock it off, man.” Adam thrust the gearshift in park.
I jumped out on wobbly legs. Ronan’s fury drizzled over my skin in an eruption of molten nails. I prepared to go hillbilly apeshit on him.
“I’m done with you. Go back to the zoo,” I snarled, triggering raised heads from the group of people waiting at a bullet train transport stop. My hand quaked as I thrust it toward him. “Give me my phone. I’ll rescue Zoe on my own.”
“Get in the car.” Exasperation dripped from Adam’s voice. He skirted the front of the SUV, held out his hand to me.
Ronan crammed into the front seat, closing us out of his teensy world. The assault on every pore of my skin downshifted to a tolerable level.
Drained physically, emotionally, and mentally, too much had happened in the last day to upset my boring, secure world. Ronan’s attitude and magic problems were collateral damage I could live without. The man robbed me of my wits. At least I hadn’t spent half my life napping
in front of an ion shield the way he had. I could get my wits back. Him, not so much.
I shuffled my boots through faded mulch in the planter between the street and sidewalk, kicking the smirking yellow head off an early dandelion. Not knowing what to do, I grabbed Adam’s outstretched hand. He tugged me into his arms, and his warm hands stroked my back. I laid my cheek against his chest. Heaven help me, but that damn aural connection placed Adam squarely into über-friendly territory. His chest hitched beneath my cheek, and the tightness in his hard body pressed against mine, sharing Ronan’s sinfully muscular body. Two doppel-peas in a pod.
“Ronan has one nice personality, but not for a human.” I sniffed.
Adam swept a strand of hair off my eyelashes. “His father killed his mother a year ago,” he said somberly. “Murph from your casino altercation executed Riley’s orders. Ronan recently found out. He’s dead serious when he says he wants his father destroyed.”
My spine stiffened. I craned my neck to look up at Adam’s downturned face. His baseball cap shadowed his unnatural complexion, granting him a semblance of color. “Seriously?”
“Riley will destroy yours and Ronan’s life if he captures you, or any of us.”
Ronan glowered at us. I eased out of Adam’s arms, unsure why I felt the need to separate, but a naked vulnerability in Ronan’s eyes gave me a cracked mirror into his soul. At that moment, his soul called to me even though he’d thrust me away.
“Hey.” Adam thumbed up my chin. “We need you. I need you. I think you can help me return to normal or figure out what my new normal is.”
I smiled wanly. “Did you guys think I fell for that protecting the damsel in distress act?”
Adam chuckled. “Not really.”
Silent, we climbed into the vehicle. Ronan ignored us, his arms crossed defiantly over his chest, dark gaze fixated out the passenger door window. Thankfully, his aura had returned to the grid. Adam maneuvered back into traffic, avoiding a near miss with a traffic cop behind us.
Timidly, I placed my hand on Ronan’s shoulder. He tensed. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve my smackdown.” I squeezed his shoulder, dropped my hand. “I need answers. I think both of you need me.” I snorted. “Well, you get my drift.”
Ronan cleared his throat. “I have no clue why my power’s attacking you. It’s pissing me off that I’m hurting you.”
My cell rang, and I nearly peed my pants. I retrieved it off the backseat floor where it’d dropped during Ronan’s conniption. I held the phone out to him. He hesitated to take it, but I nudged it onto his palm, my way of acceptance.
He jabbed it on. “Riley,” he barked, listened for a moment. “Ian, what gives?”
Adam sailed into the parking garage at the Stargazer and headed for the public lot behind the residential tower. San Jose was littered with entertainment centers and most included residential towers due to overpopulation. It was a normal way of life. Was, being the operative word.
A long pause ensued. “Whatever.” Ronan clicked off, pocketed my phone. “Ian’s taking Zoe to the old Santa Clara University chapel for the exchange.” Ronan and Adam traded another one of their doppelgänger-knows-all looks. “We have three hours,” he added.
I massaged my temples. I’d like to buy a clue or two hundred.
Rebuilt on the original site of Mission Santa Clara, the chapel was one of the Franciscans-built California missions. A public place open for self-guided tours to anyone. What kind of moron move was that?
“Why there and why so long?” I asked as Adam parked in the first empty slot he found in the back.
“You said Zoe’s a telepath? What exactly can she do?” Ronan not so subtly deflected my question.
The dashboard clock flashed thirteen after the hour. I dampened my tangible wave of irritation. The clock reset to twelve and stopped.
“Can we agree on one thing?” I didn’t wait for a rhetorical answer to my rhetorical question. “You need to stop putting me on ignore. You have a boatload of information I need.”
Adam sniggered. “She’s got your number. I want her around, if for nothing other than to help me figure out why I’m stuck in this half-human, half-dead fae body.”
I decided to move things along the path of full disclosure. “Zoe can read most unblocked minds.” She was going to trade me in for a new BFF if she found out I spilled her secret. “What happened six months ago to change Adam?”
Grooves creased Adam’s pasty forehead. “Six months ago, Ronan’s dad tried to get him to open the Rift with a ritual from the book using Ronan’s telekinesis and his blood. Instead, Ronan screwed up the spell and now tainted magic is leaking into our world, which started my decline. At first, I began gaining abilities. A cloaking spell, mesmerism, powers the ancient fae wielded. The more I gained, the more it began to affect how I looked and felt, and then my fae powers started to decline.”
“Now Dad thinks he needs at least two sorcerers to open the Rift, set it right, and stop the taint from spilling out.” Ronan gave me a pointed look. “Apparently, those pages are missing from the book.”
I drummed my fingers on my purse, trying to contain my excitement. My mind lingered on Adam rather than the implicit idea that I may have access to the other parts of the book. Yeah, right. I swallowed hard, pushing down my encroaching unease. “Do I have a doppelgänger too?”
“No one knows.” Adam grinned at me.
“Hell help us if there’s another you,” Ronan muttered. Fin jumped onto the front seat with Ronan, snuggling into his side.
I shot him a scathing look. Hiding a grin, Ronan scratched Fin behind her ears. She licked his hand as if he were a fat, juicy steak. Guess I was a skinny, dry hamburger.
A warm jolt of jealousy rose up. I ignored the fluttering in my stomach. For some stupid reason, I wanted to be snuggled up to Ronan, licking his hand while he kissed and fondled my ears…or some other body part. I gulped. “Then Adam’s part fairy and part sorcerer, one of the final dominant Forbidden?”
Adam sifted his fingers through his flowing hair. “If I was fae or a sorcerer, I didn’t know it. After Ronan screwed with the Rift, I started changing.” He waved his hand over himself. “We have a link, but Ronan’s got all the magic. I got nothing now except what I pull from him. He’s the sorcerer and I appear to be fae, whatever that means.”
“And you’re doppelgängers just like the beings the Thirteen devised back in the evil dark ages. Ronan’s a descendant of a Forbidden sorcerer and Adam’s a descendant of a fae-based doppelgänger, created by sorcerers and from fae who didn’t go through the Rift.” As I said the words, I knew they didn’t make sense, but my head accepted them. What else could it be? It made sense if our ancestors were so über evil and industrious. Hail to the original Forbidden Thirteen. Sneaky bastards.
Holy convoluted hell in a handbasket. My right eye twitched up the dust. “But the magic link is a good thing. You found each other, however that occurred.” I lifted an eyebrow indicating the time was right for further sharing on that score.
“If you can call that a good thing.” That errant muscle throbbed in Ronan’s left jaw. “We aren’t sure how the doppelgänger bond works. It’s screwing with us both. We don’t know what magic leaked from the Rift, whether good or bad, and who else it affected. The history of the Forbidden Thirteen is documented in the Illuminaria, but it was written deliberately vague about the secret doppelgängers or any fae-sorcerer doppelgänger bonds. My dad’s been researching the Forbidden, sorcery, and Rifts for over thirty years and he still doesn’t have half a clue.”
“Why do you think we’re descendants of sorcerers?” I turned to look at Ronan. “ESP is not sorcery. It’s not magic based.”
“It was a closely guarded secret among the Forbidden Thirteen. They had sorcery type powers and psychic abilities.” Ronan cursed under his breath, seeming to hate his lot in life. “The Thirteen closed the Rift, went into hiding, and supposedly their magic winked out throughout the ages of their descendants.”<
br />
Until the Earthquake Cluster-Muck—the year we were all conceived. Chocolate-charged adrenaline streamed through my veins.
“If we open” —I did air quotes— “the Rift all the way, if that’s even possible, will the magical population explode?” I held my breath.
Adam blanched paler than pale. “Probably. Energy will explode on Earth and those with a seed of magic or ESP, whether they know it or not, will flourish.”
“Or more residual tainted magic will leak out. Like now.” Ronan scratched a throbbing muscle in his jaw. “It’s not exactly written in blood.”
“Can a doppelgänger coexist with his sorcerer counterpart?” Unease expanded like a wet sponge in my gut.
“We don’t know the full gist of the bond,” Ronan said.
“It’s all new to us,” Adam reiterated.
I dared not think of the implications. Should we try to close the Seattle Rift even if we could? Traveling through a vacuum sucking up a clue every hundred miles scared me.
The windshield had fogged and Adam cracked the windows. Sweat beaded his flushed face, and he untangled locks of hair wrapping around his wrist like sinuous seaweed. Our auras tangled and I forced a calming vine toward him. “Why did humans back then chase off the fae and sorcerers?”
“Chase off?” Ronan’s hand froze on Fin’s head. “Our human ancestors murdered them.”
“To rid Earth of everything humans feared and couldn’t control.” Adam rolled up his sleeves, exposing his faintly shimmering forearms. “Magic upset the balance humans wanted to maintain. They worried sorcery would eventually annihilate humans. Humans of that era were afraid of otherworldly beings and thought there was a regular door to the Realm of the Void and that more and more magic would smother the earth.” A lock of his livewire hair shifted, slid down his arm, and fell onto the steering column.
Ronan grunted. “The idiots back then hadn’t comprehended that the Rift gateway might not outlast time, or crumble and unleash twisted magic.” He fixed me with a pointed look. “Twenty-two years is a long time to leak tainted magic and who knows what into the world.” Ronan’s parting shot served up a side order of lunacy. “According to ancient and modern laws, all three of us are walking felons.”
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