by Tracy Clark
The night breeze blew my hair against my neck. I shivered. Mari cleared her throat and snipped the hold of my tormented thoughts. “Dun’s stopped a cab.” She gestured over by the street where Dun bent to speak with the driver, then motioned for us all to climb in.
“Jolly” would have been a good word to describe the cab driver, though I’d be the last person to trust how people physically appeared. Auras were harder to see in the dimming light, but it was his rippling aura that set me at ease. A cool green, almost minty color, rolled off the man, who introduced himself as Patrick. He clasped the wheel with sturdy-looking hands, the kind that could plow a field all day, then just as easily pat the head of his dog at the end of it. He spoke in an Irish accent that was different from the people in Dublin. It took a bit of concentration to understand what basically sounded like a series of run-on sentences with his words skipping happily across the surface of his deep voice.
“We need a place with a bit of privacy,” I said. “A hotel isn’t exactly our first choice.”
“You’re local,” Dun said. “If you had family coming into town who wanted to be near the action but far enough away from it to have some privacy, too, where would you take them?”
“Home,” Patrick said with a laugh. “Though I’m not sure what me wife would say to showing up with five strangers right at suppertime. Skin me like a rabbit, I reckon. Come to think of it now, I have a neighbor with a cottage that he sometime lets out. I can give him a call, see if it’s vacant.”
Dun patted him on the shoulder jovially. “That’d be awesome, dude. Thanks.”
“You’re not dodgy types, are ya?” Patrick asked, eyeing the rest of us in the backseat through his rearview mirror. “We don’t want any sort of trouble in our neck of the woods.”
“Trouble is the very thing we’re trying to avoid,” Mari said. I nudged her.
My mother said something to him in Irish as we flashed him our sweetest smiles. He told her with regret that he didn’t speak Irish, but he seemed placated by the fact that she did and got on the phone to arrange for us to stay in a private cottage on the outskirts of Dublin.
No one spoke much as we stumbled by the light of a flashlight up an uneven path to the cottage behind the owner’s house. I kept my mom close to me, afraid the big world was making her nervous. She’d begun biting her nails in the cab. As everyone filed into the house ahead of me, I stared up into the dark sky dotted with stars. For some reason, they made me think of Finn, and they made me incredibly sad.
Fifteen
Finn
Flying from darkness into a swirling vortex of light.
I felt like a comet racing from the blackness of space toward the only target that mattered—Life.
Life was warm. Life was light. Life was shafts of sun in a redwood forest. Life was the glint of green eyes, love-infused kisses. Everything in me hurtled toward the beauty of being.
I snapped violently back into my body, gasping.
Hot, fast breaths hit my face from above. Someone was leaning over top of me; their weight was heavy as a steel block on my chest. I tried to see, but everything around me was a smudged charcoal shadow of movement and confusion. My hands reached and clasped hairy wrists. Fingers gripped the front of my leather jacket as I clung to them like a life preserver. Was I drowning? I scraped for breath, or what felt like breath. Drawing life into my body was like sucking a tornado through a straw.
I didn’t realize until my blood pumped hot with life and adrenaline that I was subconsciously fighting for my own survival. My body had taken over where my will left off, coming alive without consent. The steel block abruptly lifted from my chest. I rolled to my feet, balancing like a surfer in the rocking boat, the ocean slapping a rhythm, like slow applause, on the hull.
I looked down. A man lay at my feet, his arms crossed protectively over his chest. I bent to feel for a pulse, but something in my body knew his life was mine now. Inside of me, the flicker of his gentle soul burned like a star. His boat floated next to my own. He must have seen mine and stopped to check on me. He’d only wanted to help. My heart broke with realization; my life came at the cost of someone else’s death. Cora’s face flew to the front of my mind.
I dropped to my knees next to him.
God, forgive me.
Sixteen
Cora
“Amighty flame follows a tiny spark.”
“Excusi?” Giovanni whispered into the dark night. Nearby, the quiet purr of breathing rose from the others, who were already sleeping. I envied them. My mind cranked out questions one after the other so that I couldn’t sleep through the noise.
“They’re the first words Griffin ever said to me.”
“The Arrazi I killed? I know those words. It’s a line from the greatest poet in Italian history.” Pride filled his voice. I could tell by how his Italian accent became more pronounced. “The line is Dante’s, from The Divine Comedy. It’s from the third cantica, Paradiso.”
I sat up in bed. “Paradiso? Finn had a painting from Paradiso in his house.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Two Arrazi that I know of have a connection to the work. We don’t have a whole lot to go on, so it’s worth looking into. Tomorrow, in addition to investigating the symbol from these Society people, I need to get my hands on a copy of Paradiso.”
I was the last to sleep and the first to wake. Though I think I might have slept more if it weren’t for my mother’s restlessness. After one tormented whimper of my father’s name, I was up for good.
Mari woke up and saw me looking in the empty cupboards. “Gives us an excuse to go get us some real breakfast. We need fortification for the shopping,” she said through a yawn.
“I’m going to have to trust you to get something for me to wear. Size ten-ish, or whatever the euro equivalent is here,” I told her. “I’ve got some research to do. If you and Dun can take care of the party, the rest of us can start looking into this symbol.” I flashed the ring at her. “And we have to find out why Clancy wants three Scintilla.”
“If this is the same Society, it’s totally oddball that a bunch of killers would have a swanky party at a church, don’t you think?” Mari asked.
“You’ll need a mask for the party,” grumbled Giovanni, appearing suddenly in nothing but boxer shorts.
“A mask?” Mari and I both said in unison.
“On the paper, it said Bal Masqué. Did you not see it?”
“I was kinda focused on the day and time,” I said defensively.
“I’m kinda focused on the fact that he’s pantsless,” Mari said.
“I didn’t know what it meant.” Nor did I understand why the party was being held in the most famous church in Ireland.
Giovanni interrupted my thoughts. “It means masked ball.”
“Savage,” Mari said with a grin.
“Dante,” Giovanni said to me. “Don’t forget we must look into that, also.”
Mari tilted her head. “Dante? As in books-my-teachers-want-to-torture-me-with Dante?”
“That’s the one.”
“Why?”
“Just something I’m wondering about. Could be a long shot. But when all you’ve got are long shots, you take them all.”
Finally Dun and Gráinne were up, everyone was showered, and we headed into the quaint little town for a huge breakfast.
“I think Gráinne here ate us all under the table,” Dun joked. She sat back against the booth with her hands on her belly, a look of pure satisfaction across her dainty features.
“Mari, in the name of all that’s holy, please don’t get me something skanky, freaky, slutty, tight, or too noticeable. I need to blend in. Think boring. Think head-to-toe camo so they won’t recognize me.”
She gave me an offended look. “This is a masked ball, not a freaking hunter’s convention. Camo has its own rugged beauty, yes, but this calls for something more festive.”
I groaned. “Ugh. There’s gonna be sequins involved,
I know it.”
“I still don’t understand how I got nominated to go dress shopping,” Dun said. “I’d rather be on the investigative side of this operation.”
Mari rolled her eyes. “I’ll model all the slinky dresses for you.”
He jumped up. “Let’s do this.”
“No slink!” I yelled as they exited the restaurant, a hint of bubbly happiness rising up in me. It was good to have them around, even if being around me was the last place they should be. I sighed. “I have to get them away from all of this,” I said, watching their retreating colors head down the street. “I can’t have anyone else’s death on my hands.”
My mother’s hand landed lightly over my own. I knew what the touch meant. Don’t blame yourself for your father’s death. The very thought of his death filled me with such sorrow that I could hardly breathe.
“Cora?” Giovanni asked.
“I’m okay,” I said, waving them off. “I need a bit of air, that’s all.”
“I could perhaps make the pain better.”
“Not this pain,” I snapped. Hurt flashed in his eyes, and it softened my anger. “I know you want to make me feel better. But some pain is meant to be felt. That which doesn’t kill you, right?” But inside, I didn’t feel stronger. I felt like grief was a ravenous monster eating away at me.
Giovanni insisted on paying the breakfast tab, even though my mother had a bit of money of her own. “We can’t keep spending like this,” I warned.
“Let me worry about that,” Giovanni answered in a clipped tone. Back was the high-handedness that had shown itself when we first met. Fine. If he had secret reservoirs of cash, that was his business. We asked for directions to the only internet café in town and walked there in silence. My mother’s head swiveled, taking in the countryside, the window displays, the smiling faces of passersby. She smiled at me, but her hand grasping the hem of my hoodie betrayed her anxiety.
The internet café also doubled as a Turkish market, with the savory smell of roasting lamb and various spices like oregano, allspice, cumin, and mint mixing with coffee. I settled my mom into a seat with a screen in front of her, a pen, and some paper we’d brought from the cottage. I figured that the best way to reach her was to engage the researcher within, that part of her that quested for answers so many years ago. If I could bring that woman to the surface, maybe the damaged woman would retreat behind the curtain. I logged her on to the computer. She gazed up at me with questions in her green eyes.
“I may have lost your journal,” I said to her, “but I found you. You can help now. Can you start looking into this symbol? I drew the triangles on the paper. We need to know more about who is allied with the Arrazi. Are you up for it?” She nodded shyly. A good start.
To Giovanni, I said, “Who better to tackle the great poet of Italy than our resident Italian?”
“You wish for me to read Paradiso?” He shrugged. “Not such a bad assignment.”
“You might detect nuances that I wouldn’t. It could be a dead end. Who knows?”
“What will you research?” he asked.
“Why does Clancy want three of us? We know there’s a rumor that taking one Scintilla to the death means they’ll never have to kill again. So, what does he think three will do? The number three keeps popping up over and over, especially in the images I saw from my key. What is the significance of three?”
We worked quietly for a while, sipping Turkish coffee and tapping away on the keyboards. It took discipline on my part not to be distracted by the auras of the people coming and going. I still found it fascinating to observe and assess the colors I was seeing. I caught Giovanni watching me with a bemused expression. He wasn’t one to quickly avert his eyes when caught staring. I had to do the looking away. It was like playing chicken—with eyes.
“Interessante,” he said in Italian. He often spoke Italian when he was absently thinking to himself. “Listen,” he said a moment later, pointing to some lines on the screen, which, unhelpfully, were in Italian. “This is from canto twenty-seven in Paradiso. Dante has just witnessed Saint Peter change color.” Giovanni gave me a pointed look. “Saint Peter has something to say about changing color and it basically translates as, If I now change my color, do not be surprised, for as I speak, you shall see all these souls change color, too. After that, Saint Peter goes on a rant about the church. He’s angry that the keys entrusted to his keeping should be put upon a banner used to wage war against the baptized. He calls some popes out for being ‘rapacious wolves disguised in shepherds’ clothing’. He later urges Dante to tell the truth in his writing.”
“The truth?”
“It doesn’t clearly specify, but doesn’t it sound like he was writing about auras?”
“I suppose, yes,” I admitted. “If Dante sees souls’ colors change, it seems to mean that he can see auras like we can.”
“What have you found?” he asked.
I sat back down and rubbed my eyes. “My mom wasn’t kidding when she said that three was a magic number in the world. It’s everywhere. In nature, in science, in nearly every religion or creation story in the history of man—”
“Examples?”
“Okay, so, three is the first prime number. There are three parts to the atom: proton, neutron, electron. Birth, life, death. Unconscious, conscious, superconscious. Beginning, middle, and end. Id, ego, superego.”
“Triangles,” my mom said, like it was a game.
I nodded. “The Christian trinity is one example, but almost every major religion seems to have a prominent triune concept.” My brain hurt. “The oldest recorded creation stories came from a civilization called Sumer, and guess the significant number,” I said. “There are the triple deities in nearly every civilization throughout history—Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Middle Eastern, Norse, and even here, in Celtic mythology. In the Torah, three is the number of ‘truth.’ Triple gods and goddesses are everywhere. Like the vision from the key,” I said. “When I touched it, many of the images had to do with this number.”
“So, the key and three are connected?” Giovanni asked.
My mom rolled her chair closer to us. “Don’t forget the triple spiral,” she added.
“Yes. An important three to us, I’m guessing.”
We lapsed into silence, lost in our own research, when Giovanni called out. “Dante actually uses the words ‘scintillation’ and ‘scintillating’ in Paradiso!” He swung toward us with a pen tucked into the curls behind his ear and a look of amazed disbelief on his face.
“That’s incredible. Coincidence?”
“If it is, I think it’s an uncanny one in light of writing about the colors of souls.”
“I found nothing on the ring’s symbol, Cora,” Gráinne said.
Giovanni waved his pen at her. “Why would you? Secret societies aren’t secret for nothing.”
“Ever notice how everyone seems to think they know about them, though? There was an episode on Edmund Nustber’s show once, about these famous secret societies, and how people believe they’re in control of all the governments all over the world. I remember asking my dad about it. I said, ‘If they control the governments, then who is the one person at the very peak of it all? Wouldn’t that person control the world?’”
My mom’s forehead creased into little lines. “I’m going to follow the spirals like a labyrinth. See where they lead. Years ago, they led me to your da.”
I patted her arm. “Okay. Good idea,” I said, trying to ignore the feeling that we were just throwing darts into a tornado, hoping to hit something.
“Good God!” Giovanni said moments later, leaning forward with both hands on the sides of the computer monitor. “In canto thirty-three, Dante writes of empyrean…heaven.” He began to read aloud. “Of the deep Light appeared to me three circles, of one dimension and three different colors. One seemed to be reflected by the other, rainbow by rainbow, while the third seemed fire breathed equally from one and from the other.”
Giovanni look
ed intensely thrilled, both physically and in his aura, which flared and buzzed with excitement. “Dante’s version of heaven is three circles. All I can think of is the triple spiral. I don’t want to read more into this than, perhaps, Dante meant. But there are surely verses in Paradiso that could be interpreted in a way as to suggest that Dante knew about us, or at least very much believed in auras and the power of three.”
In keeping with “the power of three” I suddenly wondered if there was a third breed of human besides regular humans with traces of Arrazi or Scintilla blood. Incredulity pressed to shut the door of my mind. I fought to keep the door open. The Arrazi and Scintilla were breeds of humans that had been around for who knew how long…maybe as long as humanity. Certainly, people knew of us. I’d never considered that famous people might have.
What a colossal secret to keep hidden.
Who had power enough to hide something so huge?
“This is older and bigger than the three of us,” I said, to my mother’s emphatic nods. I was impressed that Giovanni picked out these nuggets when my eyes were glazing over from all the online searching. Considering that he raised himself and schooled himself from an early age, his intelligence was impressive. I liked the way his brain worked. “The way Dante writes about ‘seeing colors’ makes me wonder…” I bit my thumbnail, and then pressed on. “I feel like a colossal wack job for suggesting this but…do you think Dante could have been one of us?”
Seventeen
Finn
First, his legs. Then, his upper body. Dead weight. He was a big man, this stranger I’d killed. I reckoned it wouldn’t matter to him or his family that I cried over him as I hefted his body back onto his own boat, which he’d tied to mine when he, presumably, had stopped to check on me. I could have offered up his body to the sea, but then I imagined his loved ones forever wondering in anguish what had happened to him.
Not knowing had to be worse. In matters of death, answers trumped questions.