Miranda smiled. “I’ve always thought there needs to be something between mother and crone. Maybe bad-ass woman?”
“That sounds like a poem you could write,” Adalbert said, taking in a draft of smoke and then blowing a forked plume out through his nostrils. “But to the ancients, Moyenne and Croyant alike, a woman moved through these stages, bleeding, giving life, dying so new life could begin. Moyenne beliefs moved away from recognizing this pattern, turning to gods and then one god, the One. However, the ancient Croyant respected that cycle, worshipped the rhythms in the earth and in humans, and made the plaques, forging them with power, to represent the cycle as well as the elements of earth, water, and sky. Each plaque is a part of the three.”
“Les Croyant de Trois,” Miranda said, as if repeating the words by rote. “The believers of three.”
“Yes,” Adalbert said.
“The three cycles. Not three gods.”
“Quite correct. And if Quain had been able to put them together, he would have been able to create. Creation is not specific. It’s not good or bad. It just is, but he would have been in control of it. And as you saw, what Quain wanted was control, power, and most importantly, revenge. He wanted all of us to pay because he’d lost his best friend, his love, his connection to life.”
Leaning back on her pillow, Miranda realized she could still feel Quain, taste his despair at the memories she’d flooded him with. For thirty years, he’d held his vision of Hadrian tightly, blaming the loss of him on Zosime or the children or the job. Quain’s mind had been bitter and hateful and full of sharp spikes of rage, but under it all was loss and grief, nothing more sinister but sinister it became.
“So where was the third plaque? Why did we end up at your house?”
Adalbert laughed. “It was on my dining room table. Quain couldn’t see it there because it looked so ordinary amongst the plates and cups and half-eaten pudding.”
Miranda closed her eyes, laughing in her throat, too tired to move the sound into her mouth. Because she knew he could hear her, she thought, If the plaque is so important, why did you have it on your dining room table?
“It seemed the safest place for the moment. This house,” he paused, and Miranda opened her eyes, watching his hands move in a circle, “is well protected. It withstood the shock of Quain’s assault, and I know its secrets.”
Miranda moved slightly, tweaking her neck in the process. She closed her eyes at the pain. She was so tired. How long had she been sleeping?
Adalbert waved his hand. “You’ve been sleeping for two days, Sariel with you most of the time.” . “Where is he now?” she said.
“He had,” Adalbert said, “a little errand to run and asked me to stay here with you for a while.”
Two days. Two days with Sariel that she forgot. Now they were even.
“Yes, the memories. You’ll be glad to know,” Adalbert said, “that Sariel is in full possession of his time with you.”
Miranda smiled and then flushed, wondering what Adalbert must think of her, falling into bed with Sariel when she thought he wasn’t real.
Adalbert pulled gently on his beard. “Love is an amazing thing. I try to not judge it, whatever its form.”
They were silent for a while, Miranda closing her eyes and letting this information sink in. Sariel remembered. They could put the past and the present together and start right. Now, she knew who and what he was and could live in his world. The question was, could he live in hers, with June and Viv and her poetry and her past that she knew and the past that she didn’t? Miranda slipped back into sleep, into her dream, the light, the buoyant air, the woman holding her, kissing her forehead.
She opened her eyes and turned slowly to Adalbert. “Who was she?” And then, before he could answer, she asked, “Who am I?”
For a moment, Adalbert didn’t say anything. The antique wooden clock on the bureau ticked out seconds and then minutes. She felt Adalbert searching her mind, finding her memory of the woman in the white world. Resting back on the pillow, she let him see the dream time she’d floated through, the moments after she let loose the last of Sariel’s memories.
Clearing his throat, Adalbert nodded. “When I heard from Nala and Phaedrus about you, I realized that something that had happened long ago was coming back to haunt me. Because the world works in circles, I wasn’t surprised to find you with us, but I felt responsible that you’d had no training. That you’d had to face Kallisto without knowing your true powers.”
Outside, the light was beginning to fade, starlings whooeeing in the branches of the birch tree just outside the bedroom window. Miranda waited, stayed outside of Adalbert’s thoughts, wanting her story the old-fashioned way.
“The woman who came to you was named Laelia Barton—”
“Yes,” Miranda said, remembering now where she’d heard the name before. “Hadrian’s friend. The one who gave Sariel the memories of the train.”
Adalbert nodded, pulling on his beard. “Correct. Laelia worked occasionally with Hadrian and Quain, doing the same work Sariel does now. She was with Hadrian when he died, and the experience of his death, the manner of Quain’s betrayal, destroyed her. What we didn’t know then was that she was pregnant. She was distraught, upset, and stopped working and stayed at home. Rather than intervene, the Council and I decided to let her have her time to herself to heal herself. For months, we didn’t hear from her and then one day, we learned that she’d walked onto the train tracks and was killed. Like Hadrian.”
Suddenly, Miranda’s stomach started to ache, tears pricking her eyes. Here it was. Finally, she’d found the love of her life, and in just one second, Adalbert was going to tell her Sariel was her half-brother. It was too Greek tragedy, too ironic, too awful, and she looked at the ceiling, shaking her head, wishing she could disappear right now.
“Oh, no. No!” Adalbert interrupted her thoughts. “No, my dear. She didn’t love Hadrian that way. Certainly, she loved him, but as a friend, a colleague, and partner. His death destroyed her, but so did love. And she wasn’t in love with Hadrian. She was in love with your father.”
Breath left Miranda’s body, and Viv’s weepy words came back to her. Dad was gone again on one of his trips and then he came home. A trip somewhere. Far away. And then he walked into our room and put you in the crib.
“Yes,” Adalbert said. “Your father loved Laelia, but because of your mother and sister and because he could not be a part of the Croyant world, he chose his life in the U.S. over her. Laelia took her life when he was here on business, and he brought you back with him.”
Miranda tried to say something, but she had no words. Her entire life was clicking into place. June’s distance and periodic disappointment and disapproval, Miranda’s flight in the backyard, her red hair in a family of blondes, her inability to fit in. Click, click, click. All her strangeness and awkward moments and feelings of being just on the outside of what was real for everyone else slid into a pattern she could understand. Nothing had ever made as much sense as what Adalbert was telling her.
Adalbert continued. “It wasn’t until much later that we found out about you, and by then, you were in your life in San Francisco. We thought it best to let you live in ignorance, never thinking that you’d find yourself in a room full of Croyant. Never imagining that you’d fall in love with Sariel. Never thinking you’d be as talented as you are.” Adalbert patted her knee again. “I’ve tired you out. I should have waited until you were stronger.”
“What was she like?” Miranda asked, bringing her hand out from under the blankets and putting it on Adalbert’s. “My mother. Am I like her?”
“She…” Adalbert thought and then nodded. “She was intuitive and gifted and fragile. She could identify a person in a crowded city by a single sigh. She was beautiful and sensitive, too sensitive, I fear, and she was a poet. That you were able to finish what she could not would have given her so much happiness. It must have, actually, if she appeared to you.”
Stunned,
Miranda imagined Laelia’s face over hers. Go into life, she’d said, even though she’d ended her own. She must have figured it out somewhere in that brightness, learned that life was worth it despite pain.
“Love,” Adalbert continued, “is the magic we can’t always understand, regardless of skill or gifts or powers. Here I sit, the armiger of the Croyant Council, and yet”—he waved his hand—”alone in this large house. Childless. Look how love twisted Quain and Kallisto. Even Laelia couldn’t bear its weight. If you have found love with Sariel, regardless of how quickly it appeared or how startling your initial meeting was, you owe it to yourself to feel it. To stay with it, to try it out even if there’s hurt at times. Both of you chose each other over death, using your feelings to reunite. It would have been so much easier to stay in that dream world, Miranda, to float with no burden. Life is much harder than death. But you heard his voice and came back. Don’t forget his call.”
For a moment, Miranda felt the future like a gaping hole. She felt like her brain was full of those atoms Sariel told her about in one of his discussions about matter—free radicals— the kind that ricochet wildly and damage other cells as they bound hopelessly. There were too many things to worry about: Quain, Laelia, June, Sariel.
“Will we be okay?” she asked. “What will happen?”
Adalbert took another suck on his pipe and then blew a smoke ring. Both of them watched as it moved in the air, sagged, and drifted apart. “My dear girl, because we can’t measure now, later is impossible to determine.”
He leaned over her. He smelled of wood smoke and tobacco, his blue eyes filled with the light she’d seen in her dream. As he touched her shoulder, her body filled with warmth that swirled into her soreness, her aches, her longing for Sariel. His touch lifted the pain away, and Miranda breathed in, feeling lighter.
“Sleep now,” Adalbert said.
Miranda tried to smile, to nod, but she was already asleep, hearing in her deepest mind Sariel’s voice say Come back to me.
Chapter Seventeen
It was late when Sariel returned to Adalbert’s house, the sky black and starless, the house cleared of dinner dishes. Sariel stood outside the door of Miranda’s bedroom, carrying the things he’d brought back from his place and hers. Before going upstairs, he’d checked in on Felix, who had a concussion, and Rufus, who’d managed to break three fingers when he’d fallen to the floor at the fortress. Both were healed, but resting, watching football on Adalbert’s television, Fabia sitting between them on the couch.
“Why doesn’t he just make a forward pass?” Felix was saying. “Rugby is a completely ridiculous game.”
Rufus laughed. “Don’t say that outside this house. Or else you’ll be thrown into the middle of a scrum.”
“Both of you need to turn the bloody telly off and go to bed,” Fabia said. “Or the scrum you’ll face will be me.”
Sariel smiled at Fabia’s firm tone and adjusted the packages under his arm. As he was about to knock on the door, he heard Sayblee’s voice and Miranda’s laughter. He thought about seeping into both their minds, but didn’t, liking this woman-talk, the girl sounds he was never privy to as a child and still found mysterious.
“Oh, he’s hot,” Sayblee said, her voice clear through the door. “I could have told you that. When we were at school—”
“School? You went to school with Sariel?”
“A lot of us did. We’ve known each other for ages,” Sayblee said. “But anyway, he was the guy all the girls wanted. Except he was shy.”
“Shy?”
There was a pause, some laughter, a whisper, the sound of the creaking bedsprings.
“Oh, my. Well, maybe he’s changed,” Sayblee said. “But Felix. Now there was one confident boy.”
“He’s single,” Miranda said. “An absolute doll. Lives in Hilo. You could do a lot worse.”
“Too much of a flirt. A real ladies’ man. I could tell you a few stories I’ve heard about Felix. I wouldn’t go near him with a ten-foot pole,” Sayblee said, and then there was a gasp and some loud giggles. Sariel shook his head and knocked on the door, opened it, and looked in.
Miranda turned toward him, her eyes liquid with laughter and surprise, and he almost dropped all of his packages and bags, her face was so open to him. Without even meaning to, he was in her thoughts and body, feeling her heart rate increase, seeing the words in her mind. Finally! You’re back. Where in the hell were you?
Sayblee sat up off the bed and kissed Miranda on the forehead. “I’ll come by and see you tomorrow before I leave.” She walked past Sariel, thinking, You’re one lucky guy. Don’t screw it up this time, and left, closing the door behind her.
Sariel stood in front of the bed, watching Miranda, feeling her creep into his thoughts. Are you going to stand there all night? Don’t you want to check up on your patient? Give her a physical?
He put down his things on the bureau and walked over to the bed, taking up Sayblee’s warmed place. Miranda leaned into him, her head on his chest.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“There was a sale at Nordstrom I couldn’t miss,” he said. “Lingerie.”
Miranda looked up at him, her eyes so blue, her face pale, her freckles a swirl of stars. “No, really.”
Lying down next to her, he pulled her tight. “I needed some things from home. And I knew you did, too. I don’t want you to travel for a day or two. I also checked your messages.”
Miranda pulled free and sat up. “My God! I should have called home hours ago. I bet they all think—”
“They do,” Sariel said, pulling her back, wrapping his arms around her. “Kidnapped, murdered, trussed, and tossed into the bay. The prime suspect was Jack. They’ve had the police out in force, detectives, the works.”
She gasped and then laughed. “Don’t kid. He’ll think I did it all to show him up at the Holitzer ceremony.”
Sariel kissed her head. “For the first couple of days, Dan called every half hour. He even picked up some of your dry cleaning and watered your plants. Your machine was lit up like Times Square. So I called Viv, told them we were in London, a quick getaway. I think she believed me. Did you tell her about me? I mean, the magic?”
“When I thought you were a dream, she went all Jungian on me. You were my repressed anima,” Miranda said. “But I should call.”
“Later.”
He bent his face to her hair, breathing in her clean smell, the shampoo and soap and lavender lotion Sayblee had brought her. She kissed his chin, moving her lips slowly until she pressed her mouth hard and warm on the dent at the bottom of his neck.
“Suprasternal notch,” she whispered.
“What?” He closed his eyes, letting her warmth flow into him.
“Here.” She licked him, her tongue running along his collarbone. “I learned the name of it from a movie. A very romantic movie.”
Sariel felt himself grow hard, wanting that warm tongue everywhere on his skin. He needed to take them both back to the memories Adalbert had returned two days ago. That first time! The way she’d opened herself to him, even though she thought she was delusional. He wanted her taste, her smell, the way he felt inside her.
“It was amazing,” she said, her mouth on his shoulder. “I still thought you were a fantasy.”
Sariel pulled himself over her, kissing her mouth, pushing away the blankets. He found his way under her nightgown and ran his hand along her side, curving over her hip, dipping along her waist, moving up to her breasts.
“You seem all better. How do you feel?” he asked her.
“How do I feel?” she said, sitting up and pulling off her nightgown. He swallowed, not wanting to ever stop seeing her body, her smooth, pale flesh. She’d lost weight in the past week, and the rub of her ribs under her skin made him want to kiss her just under her breasts, tracing his lips down the flight of her bones.
Miranda reached out a hand and tugged on his shirt.
“Well?”
Sar
iel stood up, took off his clothes, watching her watch him, seeing her eyes rest on his erection. He looked down and shuffled off his jeans, imagining that even her glance could make him come.
“You’re not getting off that easy,” she said, lifting the blankets as he got into the bed and pressing him to her. “I need to feel you inside me.”
He took her face in his palms, kissed her lips lightly, and then harder, wanting to taste everything he remembered. She opened up to him, her tongue on his, her hands in his hair, behind his neck, running along the muscles in his back. Slipping his hands under her, he raised her hips to him and slid inside her, gasping at how warm and wet she was.
Oh, my God, he thought, leaning down to her neck, biting her lightly.
Not God, she thought, us. Us, us, us.
They moved together, long, slow movements, and Sariel felt their minds meet in the same warm way their bodies were.
Yes, she thought. Always.
Yes, Sariel agreed. And now. And later.
Then their thoughts became images, skin and heat and fire and breath. Slick wetness, sound, blood, bone. He felt her muscles underneath her skin, her legs wrapped around his body, her breath in his ear.
Miranda pulled his lips to hers, kissing him hard, and then took his shoulders in her hands and turned him, pushing him to the mattress, keeping him inside her as they rolled. She brought his hands to her breasts and closed her eyes, riding him.
Sariel didn’t close his eyes. He watched as her breathing changed, her face grew slack, her mouth opened slightly. He watched, feeling himself swell and pulse, all of him wanting to be inside her. He watched until he couldn’t watch any more, closing his eyes until there was nothing but her tight flesh around him contracting, his own release inside her, their cries in the dark room.
“The woman in the white was my mother,” she said later, the house silent around them, nothing but the soft shif shif‘ of blankets and their own breaths in the darkness. “Her name was Laelia Barton.”
When You Believe Page 28