Soulmated

by Shaila Patel

  “I did too,” I said between gasps of air. “Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, but … ”

  “Is that so?” He stepped closer, smiling. All he had to do was stare at me with those amazing eyes, and my heart rate would go haywire. He flashed me those heart-stopping dimples like he knew what I was thinking.

  “Why do you always do that?” I asked.

  “What is it I’m doing?”

  What was I supposed to say? Your smile does funny things to my insides? I met his gaze straight on. He was probably waiting for me to embarrass myself.

  I lifted my chin. “You’re using your powers for evil.” There. That was vague enough.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “If you only knew, Lucky. If you only knew.”

  Before I did something stupid like grab his hand, lean up to kiss him, or beg him to walk with me tomorrow, I stepped away, walking backward. “I should get going. See you tomorrow.”

  “How’s seven thirty?” he asked.

  “Huh?” I stopped.

  “In the morning?” He tilted his head for emphasis.

  “Oh. Yeah, duh.” Smooth, Laxshmi. “Well, if that’s your question, then yes, seven thirty.” I squealed in my head.

  He held up his fingers to say bye, and I did the same. With a turn, he jogged toward his house.

  In that moment, I didn’t want to think about how silly I looked, grinning like some giddy first-grader. I didn’t want to think about not getting my hopes up, or how I couldn’t remember a single thing we talked about. Or even that I should be keeping my distance.

  In that moment, I was blissfully happy. I felt whole with him.

  I shook the silly thought away.

  What if Shiney was right? What if he liked me? I looked at the hand he’d held. Would I always be plagued with doubts, or would I have the courage to ask him what was happening between us?

  Behind me, as if to remind me where I lived, a breeze rustled our hanging sweet potato vines and philodendrons, creaking the chains holding the baskets to the eaves.

  CHAPTER 13

  Liam

  Aunt Finola’s sharp, tinny voice floated up to my room from the dining room downstairs, broadcasting through a speakerphone. I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork what with Aunt Finola’s shrill tone piercing the air like a banshee, so I joined them.

  At supper earlier, Da had mentioned his sister had sneaked out photos of certain pages of an ancient text from the Elders’ restricted library—a text said to discuss soulmated empaths and their joining, something no one seemed to know anything about.

  Da had rushed through his meal, eager to see the pages she’d emailed him. Once we’d cleared the table, he’d spread out ten photos of stained, yellowed parchment so he and Mum could study and translate them with Aunt Finola’s help. Other papers, binders, and books covered the rest of the surface. Da had moved two of the chairs to one corner so he could maneuver left to right unhindered.

  “No, no, no, Patrick.” Aunt Finola’s voice squeaked over the speaker on Da’s mobile. “What you’re seeing is one page bleeding through from the page behind it. Cuff the back of his head for me, will you, Moira?”

  “So, Aunt Finola, what’s this book I’ll be breaking you out of prison for?” I grinned at Mum’s scowling face.

  “Liam, love, are you ever anything but cheeky?”

  “And why would I be anything but?”

  She snorted. “It’s a diary you’re looking at, written by an Irish monk in the sixteenth century about all things unholy—demons, witches, and the like. And if the Council comes after me, I’ll show them unholy—”

  “Finnie, don’t you be taking risks,” Da said, his face hovering inches from one of the photos.

  He and Aunt Finola began arguing over her safety, so I sat near the window, snatching up a photo and scanning the lines of the page to see if I could make sense of the scribbling. Definitely Gaelic. But only every third or fourth word looked familiar. I’d never seen spellings the likes of what this monk had used, not that they’d had much in the way of dictionaries back then. Some Latin and Greek even peppered the margins.

  Da and the others went back to debating the meanings of certain words and making guesses when a line faded away into the page. The entire exercise seemed a reason for Da and his sister to be competing for who might be the bigger nerd.

  I slouched back and wondered why I’d bothered to come down at all. Several lines reiterated only what we already knew well enough—legend or not, soulmated empaths were powerful, enough so to be noticed and demonized by non-empaths. If Mum were to be believed, the threat didn’t end there. Even empaths, the likes of Gagliardi, could be a threat. Jealousy and greed affected us all, I supposed.

  Mum grabbed Da’s arm, showing him the page she’d been working on. “Even with the double meanings, this part looks as if it should read, ‘a light had marked the pair.’ Page four, Finola. Three lines from the top. The rest … I–I cannot make out.”

  I sat up. “Could that be about the joining then?”

  “It’s possible, love,” Aunt Finola said. “Patrick, you and Moira, didn’t you once come across a Catholic priest’s account of light emanating from an embracing couple?”

  “Hmm. I’ll have a look at my notes later. That was nearly a year ago now. From the library at Georgetown.”

  “Could light have another meaning here?” Mum asked.

  That alone took another fifteen minutes to discuss and tear apart, but they drew no conclusions. As usual. I sagged against the chair again, the wooden ribs digging into my back. Da soon became quiet, working on a section that had his graying, bushy eyebrows pulled together.

  “What is it, Da?”

  “The monk used the phrase ‘heart seer.’ Would you be remembering that from your history lessons?”

  No empath child would’ve been able to avoid it, especially not me—a prince of the House of O’Connor.

  Before Christianity came to the shores of Erin, they called us empaths Seers of the Heart, or truth-sayers. It was easy for the Irish to believe in psychics and empaths with a history rich in tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or faeries, and their magic. A few of my distant relations would still not bother a fairy ring, even if they’d been paid. And now I’m their leader. Christ.

  Back then, the empath monarchy coexisted with non-empath royalty, until religious fear and bigotry ran us underground during the late fifth century. The first Group of Elders were monarchs from each of the five royal empath houses, kings of Erin, all of them, and they peacefully ushered in a new era of secrecy. An international Council of Ministers formed nearly a thousand years later to ensure a more democratic governance for our race. Now they were no more than self-important wankers as far as I could tell.

  I looked at the family pictures along the opposite wall. Even Uncle Nigel could be a bloody tool.

  Despite the lack of a monarchy now, no one had a mind to let go of the useless titles and traditions. We kept the feudal system to a degree, bringing empaths into communities where the royal heir became lord or lady of the demesne, offering protection and preserving our way of life. The system was modernized, of course. Our clan alone boasted over 600 members, with several thousand more spread over the globe.

  “And why is being called a Heart-Seer relevant?” I asked.

  “Means the monk’s a sympathizer,” Da said. “He’s not calling them demons now, is he?”

  Aunt Finola gasped. “Look at page six, halfway down, Patrick. The monk, he’s talking about a dark man of God who shows himself in saffron robes.”

  “Hmm. Called a Hindu two lines down. Did you see that part?” Da asked.

  “But what of the next line? He wants … needs?”

  “Seeks,” Mum said. Her face paled. She stared at the page, but her eyes seemed unfocused.

  “Mum? What’s wro—?”

  “Ah, yes, Moira, you’re in the right of it,” Aunt Finola said. A bit of static echo
ed her words. “The first part reads, ‘the Hindu seeks,’ but the next is faded.”

  “After that, looks like, ‘marked by the light,’” Da added. “So the Indian was searching for the soulmated couple?”

  “Now why would he travel all that way to seek them out?” Aunt Finola asked.

  Mum shifted in her seat, gripping the edge of the table with her free hand. The paper fluttered as she laid it on the table. I sent her my concern, and she met my gaze for a quick moment before lowering her eyes. A surprising need to protect Lucky flared. It pushed me out of my chair and toward the window facing the trellis on Mrs. Robertson’s house. I braced my hands on either side of the window frame, staring at the weeds strangling a climbing vine and its deep purple blooms.

  It was past nine when the tingling in my hand woke me. I’d dozed off with my third set of estate status reports up on my laptop. It was the second time I’d dreamt of Lucky. Her smile faded from my mind as I blinked my eyes open. I studied the shadow of my hand in the dark and wondered what the tingling meant. While it was pleasant and comforting at first, the longer we’d held hands, the more intense the sensation had become. Hard to ignore, it was. I’d never felt any tingling with the other targets. Did it mean she was my soul mate? Or was it a sign to stay the hell away? The jolt we’d got in the stairwell surely screamed the latter.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to believe that. If it did, was I planning on paying any heed? I let out a laugh in the dark silence around me. Not bleedin’ likely. But it wasn’t something I could explain to Lucky either. I’d have to act like I didn’t feel it.

  I scrubbed my face. More secrets. I sat up, set aside my laptop, and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, stretching my arms out.

  I wondered if Mum and Da had made any progress in the translating of those pages.

  Why had the mention of an Indian man bothered Mum so much? She’d played off her earlier reaction as nothing important and avoided my questions. After Aunt Finola rang off, Mum and Da continued translating, comparing the word usage to other documents they’d collected over the years.

  A ripping noise came from downstairs, like tape being removed from a box.

  Mum.

  I flew down the stairs to see her in the front room, kneeling on her favorite Persian rug by two open boxes of books. A third sat off to the side and held my yearbooks, old class novels, and other rubbish I’d not ever be needing again. The entire room was lined with the built-in bookshelves my parents had fallen in love with when they’d seen pictures of the house. The shelves were nearly filled now.

  Mum flipped through her older notebooks one after another, like she was searching for something.

  “What was it you wouldn’t mention earlier?” I asked.

  “Don’t forget to take your yearbooks upstairs, darling.”

  I leaned against the wall. “Well?”

  She pulled out an old leather journal with a Celtic love knot burned into the cover and smoothed her hand over the book. It must have been what she was after. I recognized it from when I’d sneaked into her private study and peeked through its pages years ago. Along with random notes, the pages held different renditions of Celtic triskeles, bordered in Sanskrit. Other pagan symbols had been mixed with Indian motifs as well.

  “Does that have something to do with the fellow mentioned in the monk’s book?”

  She sighed, fanning the pages. “Quite possibly. There’s more about Drago’s family I haven’t mentioned.” She stood with my help and made her way to a leather wing chair. “I always suspected his grandfather belonged to a group called the Soul Seekers. From what I’ve quietly gathered in my research, the symbols in this book show the evolution of their emblems over the centuries. They believe soulmated empaths pose a threat and seek to destroy them. I am quite certain the monk’s use of that word—seek—was no accident. As a sympathizer, he would have known the threat the Indian traveler posed. It’s my belief the first Soul Seekers originated in India. I still have not discovered why there’s such a deep-rooted connection between India and the Isles.”

  “This Drago—did you know his grandfather, then?”

  “Yes, I met him once. They said he died in his sleep of old age. He was 142, after all, but Drago believed he was murdered. I’ve always assumed Drago followed in his grandfather’s footsteps. I could never ask directly, of course. The Seekers silence outsiders, and I never could bring myself to risk my research being discovered. Not when it meant it could protect you one day.”

  I was frowning now. Was someone murdering Soul Seekers to save soulmated empaths? Who was protecting us? I looked up the stairs. Da had turned in early. “Does he know about them?”

  She sighed. “Yes, but he stubbornly insists I leave it alone and focus on finding your soul mate. I sense there’s … there’s something he’s holding back from me though.”

  I’d felt it too. He’d become more testy and insistent about our search as this past year wore on—as if he were worried something bad would happen. Christ. “This just keeps getting better now doesn’t it?”

  By the sound of it, not only did Gagliardi want to keep me out of the Council to protect his precious spot in the Line of Ascension, but he might try something more nefarious because he belonged to a narrow-minded group of arsewipes who feared change. I didn’t give a shite about the Council or the Elders, but I did care what happened to Lucky. A dizzying rage flooded through me, and I balled my hands into fists. I sat on the sofa to keep from face-planting onto the floor.

  If that wanker Gagliardi dared touch Lucky, I’d show him what a soulmated empath could do.

  You have no bleedin’ proof she’s The One, Liam.

  But I wanted her to be. Bloody hell, did I ever. So much for keeping my head about me.

  A few deep breaths later, I looked up into Mum’s narrowed eyes, which were, no doubt, reading my body language.

  “I have to ask, darling. Do you think Laxshmi’s your soul mate?”

  Wanting her to be and knowing were two different things. “I dunno. Are angels meant to be whispering something in my ear?” I stood and threw my arms out. “How is it I’d ever be knowing the truth of it?”

  “She seems to have all—”

  “And what difference has that made so far in any of the others?”

  The last target, Sejal, had had all the traits, for the most part, and she didn’t turn out to be The One. I’d waited almost a year on her for nothing. Nearing the end of that year, I thought if she’d break through to become an empath, it’d trigger the soulmating process and finally make me feel something for her. Weeks before Da had the vision that eventually brought us to Cary, I’d begun pushing Sejal emotionally, thinking the stress would cause a breakthrough for her. It was brutal, stringing her along, hoping to get an answer one way or another while knowing the truth deep in my heart. Thankfully, it hadn’t worked. If it had, if she’d become an empath, we’d have been honor-bound to stay and mentor her until another empath could take over her training. She was already well in love with me by then, and it would’ve been a diabolical mess and utterly unfair to Sejal. Breaking it off was hard enough on her, and I’d felt like a right pile o’shite.

  Lucky already had more empath potential, and she was more receptive emotionally—could that be the key?

  “This time seems different, darling. You seem different.”

  I plunked down on the sofa and leaned over my knees, holding my head in my hands. It did feel different this time. I liked Lucky, but what if I had to wait a year before finding out? I found myself smiling. A year snogging with her wouldn’t be murder at all.

  The sooner she became an empath the better. What if I told her about our world? Would the shock and stress push her closer to breaking through? The Elders forbade that sort of talk, of course. If they ever found out, my punishment would amount to an empath lobotomy. But the thought of what they could do to Lucky chilled my blood even more. They could inflict an empath psychosis
, making her mental and taking away her credibility. No, I couldn’t risk putting Lucky through that.

  Mum raised an eyebrow. “When will you tell your father about Laxshmi?”

  I pushed off the sofa and took some flattened boxes out for recycling. “Throw the yearbooks in the rubbish, yeah?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. Not yet.

  CHAPTER 14

  Lucky

  Mom dished out a steaming pile of basmati rice and ladled a reddish-brown lentil dal over it. The scent of ginger and other spices floated up with the steam, filling my nostrils and flushing my face.

  I blew on a spoonful and watched Mom serve herself. She slammed down the pot of rice on the dining room table and dropped the ladle back in the dal. She’d been talking to Harshna Mami earlier and hadn’t finished making dinner till late.

  Sujata had finally called to tell me about what happened the weekend she’d told her parents about Michael. After her parents drove to D.C. from Illinois—ambushing her Saturday morning and spending all day lecturing her—Michael showed up by late afternoon and asked my uncle, Dinesh Mama, for Sujata’s hand in marriage. He finally agreed.

  Ha! She’s marrying a white boy.

  Mama and Mami had waited until today to share the news to give them time to meet Michael’s parents.

  I closed my lips around a warm mouthful and smiled. After Sujata had filled me in on her news, I told her about Liam. She agreed with Shiney. He definitely seemed interested. She got all motherly on me afterward though, warning me to be careful.

  Aside from Mom’s slurping and smacking as she ate with her fingers, it was blissfully silent. Her eyebrows moved around as she ate, reflecting whatever turmoil was going on in her head. I sighed, knowing the peace wouldn’t last.

  It didn’t.

  She began with the topic of boys—evidently, Liam had been weighing on her mind all day—and moved on to accelerated med school programs.