by Tracy Clark
What I couldn’t find at all was a cure.
On the nightstand, my phone buzzed with a text. Mother, informing me I should clean up and ready myself for dinner. Our Arrazi guests would be arriving soon. As much as I rebelled at the thought of raising a glass with a bunch of other energy vampires, my mother’s comment that they were sticky with the Society was enough to get me moving. If I was to help Cora at all, I needed to find out everything I could about the mysterious club and why they wanted the Scintilla stamped out.
Nineteen
Cora
“It’s silver.”
“Right!”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“It’s rad, you know it is.”
“My aura is pure silver. It’s a freaking neon sign, pointing right at me!”
Mari pursed her lips. “Not to the ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of people who can’t see auras, stupid.”
“This doesn’t look so bad, though,” I said, holding up the very sparkly dress. It shimmered with infinitesimally tiny silver beads. She couldn’t help herself. I sighed in relief at the cut of the dress. It was short, yes, but not too short. Long sleeves. A neckline that actually lived up to its name. I was surprised at the modesty of Mari’s choice. I spun the dress around on the hanger that was looped over my finger to see the back. “Um, Mari, where’s the back? This dress completely lacks a back.” As in swoosh and swoop, bare skin—right down to my ass.
“That’s the best part, aye? I’m taking to saying ‘aye’ now. Totally sexy. The dress, I mean. Nothing is hotter than a modest front and then BAM! The rear view, baby!”
“I can’t wear this. You realize my entire back is going to show. The knife…just…no.”
“Has anyone seen that marking?”
“No. No one but you.”
“So you can’t be identified by the knife tattoo. And I don’t know about you, but I’d seriously think twice about messing with some masked chick with a freaking knife on her back, even if she was hot.”
“I’m not going there to be hot. I’m going there to find out more about who in the hell these people are. I have to blend in.”
“Well, I’m guessing that in a swanky masked ball, hot will blend in. Want to see the mask? I’ve got to make a few alterations to it.” Her dynamic orange aura pulsed as she rambled on, pulling out feathers, little crystals, and a bottle of glue.
I headed for the door. “I’m walking away before you start gluing sparkles on me.”
Whether the cottage owner liked it or not, my mother was outside pulling weeds from the little patch of scrawny flowers by the front door. The door was open, letting in a warm breeze and the sound of my mother’s humming. Dun crashed on a couch that was half the length of him. His legs hung off the end, one shoelace untied.
Giovanni read in a chair positioned in front of the window. His head bent forward, curls springing more wildly on top of his head than at the nape of his neck. I tiptoed toward the chair, intent on surprising him, but the closer I neared, the more erratic his silver aura became until he said, “Hello, Miss Cora.”
Damn. “I’m never going to be able to sneak up on you, am I?” I said, leaning over the back of the chair to see the book on his lap. A used bookstore had a worn red hard copy of The Divine Comedy. He’d been intently reading ever since we returned.
“Never. You still have no idea how potent your aura is. It’s going to make that party very dangerous for you if any Arrazi are there.”
I chewed my lip. “I know.”
He reached for my hand, which had been resting on his shoulder as I stood behind him. “Please let me go with you, or maybe Dun?”
“We’ve already talked about this. No.” I slipped my hand from his—the zinging energy of his agitation was like tiny needles. “You’re out of the question, and Dun is way too conspicuous to blend in. My goal is to stay as far away from everyone as possible. I’ll watch and listen. Fade into the shadows.”
“Do you think Finn’s uncle will be there?”
Finn’s name was a hammer, splintering me like a block of ice. It took me a moment to trust myself to speak without crying. “I hope not.” I gestured to the book on his lap. “Anything interesting?”
“You believe three to be a significant number. I find it fascinating,” he said, his accent tipping and swaying with the words, “that the last line of Paradiso is the thirty-third.” His blue eyes flashed up to see my reaction. “It was written in what’s called in Italian tiri gondi, or third rhyme. There are nine circles of hell. Three times three equals nine. And the whole damn thing, The Divine Comedy, he wrote in three books! And, I see that each section, in each book, is thirty-three stanzas. Three was very important to this work.”
My breaths came faster. It was uncanny. “Obviously that’s all intentional. But why?”
Giovanni flashed a brilliant smile. “There’s always a why, isn’t there?” He dipped his head back down to continue reading.
I used Mari’s phone to call Mami Tulke again. I’d have little peace in my heart until I spoke to her about my dad. Also, I wanted to ask her about the key.
She still wasn’t home, but to my utter surprise, they had heard from her. She had called to let everyone know she was in mourning and would be out of reach. The same girl I spoke with before said Mami Tulke had sounded dismayed that Mari and Dun had left for Ireland. She wanted to know if they had heard from me, where I was, and if I was okay. She said that if we should call to tell us…be safe.
I hung up, unsatisfied and slightly irritated. I knew my grandmother was eccentric, and of course she was in mourning. My mom, Janelle, and I were, too. But to be so out of touch when we needed her was frustrating.
I went outside and sat on the bottom step where there was thick green grass edging the path up to the door. It was lush and cool on the pads of my feet and pushed up through the cracks between my toes. A tingling surge of energy seemed to rise up through the earth into my soles. I wiggled my toes, wondering if I was imagining it. I always loved walking barefoot. It settled me. That got me to thinking; I still had so much to learn, and I had two Scintilla who might be able to teach me how best use my abilities. The party was coming very fast. I needed to know more.
“If there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves,” I said, stabbing my toe into the ground, “are we helpless?”
My mother yanked hard on a thick weed and flung it aside, wiping her brow with her forearm. The weed lay on the grass with its roots curled like a claw. She kept digging. It was like she could think better with her hands in the dirt. “Helpless…” The word drifted past us like a cloud. “We were made for one thing.” I waited for more and it seemed more might not come. But then she started talking again, her brow furrowed like it took extreme concentration to think straight. “Keep yourself strong, so that when they do take from you, you can survive it.”
“How?”
“Keep your thoughts on positive things. Don’t think thoughts that weaken you or make you sick. You must raise the vibration of your entire being and keep it high. It’ll make you stronger because, darlin’, you’re never safe. Unless an Arrazi has just killed, their auras will look normal. You won’t know who is the enemy and who is not until you learn to feel the difference. Be ready to be taken from again.”
I recoiled. That was something I never intended to let happen. And if it did, it might be the last time. I’d die fighting them. “That’s not exactly a positive thought.”
“I said to try to be positive to strengthen your energy, not be unrealistic. He’ll find us. He will. Be ready.”
I shivered, disbelieving that she could say that to me. Way to raise my vibration, I thought bitterly. With Gráinne, though, it was senseless to condemn her for the things she said. I was still finding it hard to negotiate her mental swings. She seemed more consistent since we had escaped. Though sifting through her mind was like panning for gold. Every once in a while a nugget of truth would filter out. “So how do I raise m
y vibration?”
She gave a chin-lift to indicate my feet. “You’re grounding yourself, there. You might not know it, but that’s what you’re doing, instinctively tapping into the energy of the earth and drawing it up into yourself. Do it every day.”
“That’s what you’re doing, too.”
Her eyes crinkled into a smile as she dug. “Aye.”
“And you’re saying I can make myself stronger with my thoughts? Really? Thoughts are just…thoughts.”
“We are energetic beings and everything about us is energy. Thoughts have energy. They are the wands we wave to create our reality. Your body aligns with your thoughts. The world would certainly be different if people knew how much power their thoughts have.”
“There’s a famous essay,” Giovanni called out to us from his chair inside. “‘As a Man Thinketh.’”
I smiled. Giovanni had a breadth to him, like he’d skimmed so many surfaces in his life as a wandering orphan, he couldn’t help but pick up on a wide array of interesting information. It was a worldliness I didn’t possess. My father had seen to that.
Dun had awoken sometime during the conversation and stood in the doorway, listening and stretching his long arms over his head. His aura was a bit more extended than it had been, like the nap had rejuvenated him. “My grandmother,” Dun said after a roar of a yawn, “said people walk over to a wall and flick a switch with the intention of turning on the light. Not even thinking about it. Autopilot. We take for granted that we’ll get the result we intend. She said we don’t give half as much thought to what switches we’re flicking in ourselves.”
“Okay, back up,” I said. “Positive thinking? This is our grand plan for protecting ourselves?”
My mom sat back on her heels and sighed. “It’s not as simple as thinking positively. It’s about your thoughts and your vibration being in harmony so your spirit will be stronger.”
“So, after everything that’s happened, I’m supposed to waltz around feeling happy and it will make me strong enough to fight an army of Arrazi who want to kill me? You wanna know how I’m vibrating? I’m vibrating with pure terror! I’m supposed to rein in my negative emotions after Finn’s uncle killed my father? After he said that Finn is likely dead by now?” Though I didn’t quite feel the noose of sadness I’d felt the previous night when I’d thought of Finn. I wondered why. “How am I supposed to raise my vibration when all I feel is sadness and hate and grief?” I took a shallow breath, trying to calm myself. It didn’t work. “If our safety depends on me being happy, we’re freakin’ screwed.”
Giovanni mirrored my thoughts. “We can’t fight this darkness with wishful thinking. The darkness will disappear when we eliminate it. The tables must be turned on them.”
“All I could do to make myself stronger when I was taken underground was to center my thoughts on love,” my mother said. “Otherwise, I’d not have been strong enough to withstand the repeated attacks. When I failed to do this for myself, it was much worse. Those times, I rode death like a black horse into the darkness.”
My blood ran hot with anger, then cold with fear at the thought of how she’d been hurt for so many years. Fear was my magnetic north right now. How could she center herself around love while going through that torture?
“Love is the strongest binding in this world. Love is the key.” Her simple statement seemed to answer my question, even if it was impossible for me to believe.
Love didn’t save my father. Love wouldn’t save Finn.
Twenty
Finn
Mother always liked formal occasions, but I could see her disdain as she inspected the table Mary had laid out so carefully with the china and crystal normally reserved for holidays. Mother also inspected me, but I raised my eyebrows, daring her to mention my casual dress. Dark jeans and a clean shirt would do. She was lucky the shirt had buttons.
I acted aloof about dining with this Arrazi woman who Clancy had indicated was his connection to the Society, but I wanted nothing more than to nick information from her. Now that I’d decided my path, I wouldn’t be satisfied unless my feet were moving in that direction.
I’d pursued Cora that way. I was completely besotted. She was all I’d wanted.
I wished it had been that pure. I envied those for whom love was.
The Society wanted something else entirely—all Scintilla dead. If Ultana wanted three, as Clancy had said, why would she insist the Arrazi kill any Scintilla they find? Clancy wanted them alive. I assumed it was to use them, live off them, as he’d done with Cora’s mother. Christ. The hunt was on and Cora was in their crosshairs.
Jittery anxiety surged up in me at the thought of how close Clancy came to getting his hands on Cora again. If he’d found them once already, Cora and the others wouldn’t have much time.
I wondered how he’d found them and if it had anything to do with me. Likely, Cora would have thought the same thing. Her cousin runs into me on the street and then Clancy almost gets them? I sighed. Let her think that. Maybe then she’d never get near enough for me to be a danger to her.
“Finn, would you get that?” my mother asked in a weary voice after the doorbell chimed. “They’ve come to gawk at you, in actual fact. Might as well get it over with.”
“Why me?”
“The newest Arrazi, of course. That, and she sees you as a perfect prospect for her daughter. It’s an antiquated thing among the old families.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” I said, barging out of the dining room.
“Finn, please.”
I entered the foyer and took a deep breath—this was bloody critical. I swung open the door. Three people waited expectantly, though I could only barely see the two young people behind the imposing woman who greeted me. Blimey, I thought my mother was commanding. This woman had presence. Not in a beautiful way, though she may have been beautiful once upon a time, long ago, in a land far, far away. She was round with age and excess, but there was something strange about her, too, something off about her clothes, her manner; it was like she couldn’t settle on a decade or had stepped into this time from another.
“Hello. I’m Ultana Lennon.” She shook my hand, holding both it and eye contact unnaturally long. It was everything I could do not to snatch my hand away from her hungry reach. Sensing energy was an ability I’d supposedly refine over time. Even through her red leather glove, I knew I’d just felt what it was to be fully and completely Arrazi. I inwardly recoiled. Would I become this?
She gave me the creeps.
“You must be Finnegan Doyle,” she said, scanning me with satisfaction evident on her face.
“I am,” I said, straightening taller. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Lennon.”
Ultana nodded perfunctorily and stepped aside. Her full-length, gothic-looking black coat swished about her ankles. “These are my children.”
How different from each other these two looked! “How’ya,” I greeted them more casually, burying my surprise beneath a blank mask. The young man I instantly recognized. Lorcan was his name. He frequented Mulcarr’s Pub. He didn’t sit right with me—an aggressive drinker with an aggressive temper. We had a rousing tussle some months back when I was managing my uncle’s pub one night and had to throw him out. He was a great deal bigger than me, both in height and weight, and had a mouth that grew exponentially depending upon how many pints and how many friends he had. I never understood why Clancy tolerated him in the pub. Until now.
His sister, in contrast to her brother’s towering bulk and dark coloring, was a pixie of a girl. Everything about her was wispy. Her tiny face peered at me shyly from beneath a hood, her ginger hair glowing like a light against the black fabric. Pulling the hood back, she introduced herself. “Saoirse,” she said with a nervous smile. The “sare-shuh” pronunciation was a breathy, feminine whisper of a word. Even her voice was wispy. She had startlingly light eyes, blue…or…green? They flickered up to her mother as if seeking approval.
The ladies stepped past me, through
the door.
“You’re not as big as I remember,” Lorcan mumbled. The faint smell of whiskey wafted from him.
“Big enough to toss your rowdy arse out if I need to. Like before.”
He chuckled and knocked my shoulder as he passed. My parents greeted everyone in the foyer, and we stood for an awkward beat until Clancy appeared, booming a hearty greeting, though I could swear there was a hint of an uneasy shake in his deep voice. I listened to voices the way I listened to my guitar. They could reveal a great deal.
“May I take your coats?” my father asked. He slung them over his arm and waited for Ultana to remove her gloves, which she slapped into his hand. It was then I realized there was only one glove. Only one hand.
“Thank you, Fergus,” she said to my father in an accent I couldn’t quite place. Irish, certainly. But something else. “It’s been a long time. You don’t look quite well.”
“It’s been a trying few days, Ultana.”
Her gaze landed on me. “Yes. But this one came to his senses, obviously. We need more strong, young Arrazi men among us.”
I bristled. Both at being talked about like I wasn’t there and at the accusation of being weak. “I’d rather die with morality than live with depravity.”
Ultana’s eyes glinted. “You’ll get over it, boy.”
My mother led the group into the dining room. The chandelier cast shimmering light upon us, and I saw something I hadn’t seen in the dim light of the foyer. It looked as though Ultana had a remarkable letter-shaped scar on the left side of her face. I tried to get a better look without staring, but each time I caught a glimpse, she’d turn to say something to Clancy or my parents.
“It’s a birthmark,” whispered Saoirse.
Heat rushed up my neck. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have been staring. It looked like—”