Tressa's Treasures (The King's Jewel Book 1)

by Gordon, Belinda M

  When I had regained my ability to move, I pulled him into my embrace. At last—I’d found someone to whom my presence alone was a tonic. A sense of peace coursed through me as his body relaxed against mine; he was my tonic as well.

  Relief turned into burning tension as I felt his desire. I flamed with hunger for him, but the time wasn't right. With great effort I stepped away, holding onto his hand in the hope that it would make my movement less offensive.

  I wanted him, but not like this. He didn't know who or what I was, and I still held lingering doubts—not about him, but about the consequences if he were to enter into a relationship with me.

  He coughed to cover his discomfort.

  "I came by to ask if you wanted to go to the funeral with me tomorrow."

  "Yes, I would like that," I said, smiling sadly.

  "It starts at ten. I'll come get you at 9:30?"

  "Okay."

  He hesitated before he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. He gave my hand a soft squeeze before letting it go.

  "Goodnight."

  "Goodnight." My strangled voice was just above a whisper.

  I decided on a simple black dress for the funeral. Not wanting to look over embellished, I wore a single strand of pearls around my neck and another around my wrist. Pearls weren't the best stone to hide behind, so I smoothed my hair over my ears to cover their points and wound it into a knot at the nape of my neck to minimize its metallic sheen.

  I also wore a black pillbox hat with black netting that fell over my eyes. It was perhaps a bit too circa 1950's, but better to look eccentric than to have my faceted eyes shine for everyone to see.

  I held the bracelet I had worked on over the weekend wrapped in tissue paper. I fidgeted with it, wondering how Alexander would react to the gift. His mother's ring was the only piece of jewelry I had ever seen him wear. I would have to get him to wear this piece without telling him why. I hoped he wouldn't resist the idea.

  I stepped outside when I heard his footsteps on the path between our homes. His lips turned up into a small smile when he saw me.

  "Stunning," he said before kissing me lightly.

  He walked me to his truck. Before I got in, I pushed the tissue paper package at him. He looked puzzled, but he took it willingly enough.

  "What's this?" he asked.

  "A gift."

  He crinkled his brow. "What's the occasion?"

  "No occasion. You inspired this new design, and I wanted you to have it." I smiled and motioned with my hand for him to open the package.

  He tore the paper away to reveal a cuff bracelet carved from an agate crystal I had taken from my grandfather's collection. It was a luscious stone with blue marbling. On its surface I had etched an intricate geographic design.

  He held it gingerly, examining the artistry.

  "Tressa, you made this? It's magnificent."

  "Will you wear it?" I asked.

  Alexander slipped it on, using his good left hand to slide it over his right wrist, just as I had imagined.

  Eileen had been a popular girl, and she had lived her entire life within a thirty-mile radius of Saint Francis Church. Naturally, a large crowd attended her funeral. People packed the pews and lined the walls of the church. Alexander and I found a spot to stand along the back wall.

  Looking out over the congregation, I was able to pick out everyone who had attended that fateful birthday celebration. Rachel and Ricky were on the far left, their daughter sitting between them. Kendra and Matt sat near the front, just three rows behind Holly and her parents.

  In fact, the whole town seemed to be there.

  An unmistakable sadness permeated the congregation. Quiet sobs and sniffles punctuated the sound of the mourners' hushed conversations.

  I trembled with anger when I saw that Fred was one of the pallbearers. Eileen would have hated just having him in attendance, and her parents had given him this honor?

  A red-eyed Tom Lynch took the spot behind him. His relationship with Eileen had been more complicated; they had been sweethearts before Tom's loyalty to Fred ripped them apart. I believed his grief was genuine.

  The service was a conventional funeral mass. While in the church, Alexander and I took part in the service but didn't speak to each other. We went wordlessly to the car when it was over to join the funeral procession to the cemetery. It was a companionable, if sad, silence.

  The cemetery was on a steep and rocky hill. Eileen's freshly dug grave, canopied with a tent, was near the peak. Alexander looked with concern at my high-heeled sandals.

  "Are you going to be alright?" he asked.

  "Sure and I'll be fine," I assured him.

  He took my hand and steadied me as we climbed the ten yards to the gravesite. We stood on the fringe of the crowd, which seemed appropriate, as we weren't her closest friends or family.

  A warm breeze kicked up as the priest finished his service, carrying the final words of his prayers to heaven. Goosebumps covered my arms as I felt the grace in his words brush past me. Alexander put his arm around me, pulling me close.

  The priest had just invited everyone to come forward to say our final good-byes when Holly called out to me.

  "Tressa, will you sing?" Her request came out choked with tears.

  "What are you doing?" her mother mumbled under her breath, unaware that I could hear her.

  "Eileen loved Tressa’s singing. She would want her to sing now," Holly hissed back. It was the first bit of feistiness I had seen in her since the accident.

  Alexander helped me over to the head of the casket where the priest had stood. I looked over at Holly for confirmation. Her eyes were dull and lifeless, but she met my gaze and nodded.

  I began my lament as the mourners passed by the gravesite, offering their condolences to the family. Several people stopped at the casket to say a quick prayer or to pull a flower from one of the arrangements to take with them.

  By the time my song was finished, most of the mourners had left or were walking to their cars. Only Holly, her parents, Fred and a few stragglers remained. Alexander, of course, still stood beside me.

  I took a moment to allow my own feelings to open, mourning the young woman being laid to rest. Unconsciously, I closed my eyes and murmured a traditional Sidhe funeral invocation.

  Midway through the prayer, Alexander startled me by pushing me aside. He had moved in front of me to block Fred, who advanced at me swiftly.

  "Stop that. Stop it now, you witch," he shouted at me, finger raised and pointing.

  "Fred, stop. What are you doing?" Holly called, dissolving into sobs that wracked her entire body. Her anguish broke my resolve, and my own tears overflowed at last.

  "Back off, man," Alexander ordered, raising his hands to thwart Fred's progression.

  Fred continued his rant, addressing Alexander this time. He was still trying to come at me.

  "That woman is a witch. She bewitched me, and she probably has you under her spell too."

  A chill ran through me as the breeze picked up again. This time it rustled past Fred, catching his words and taking them with it as it moved. I willed them back, but it was too late.

  "Damn it, I said you better back off." Alexander strengthened his stance, squaring off with the other man.

  Fred appraised him as if seeing him for the first time. He snickered when his gaze rested on his damaged hand.

  "Yeah? What's the cripple going to do, hit me?"

  "I know you prefer to hit girls. Cripple or not, believe me, I'll teach you the difference," Alexander said, as his hands balled into fists.

  Tom rushed over and stepped between them.

  "Alright guys, knock it off," he ordered. He turned his back to Alexander, speaking to Fred in an undertone.

  "You just convinced Holly to come home. Do you really want to spoil things now, after you've worked so hard?"

  His words filled me with dismay. I looked over the cemetery and saw her parents putting the still sobbing Holly into the limousine.


  Fred started down the hill after his wife, but turned to make a parting shot.

  "She's with me now. You’d better stay out of my way or I'll see you burn in hell, witch."

  Alexander took a menacing step toward him, but Tom put out a hand to stop him.

  "Enough."

  Tom looked more composed than he had during the service. His body language proclaimed that he was in cop mode and was more comfortable there.

  "Mannus, I've got a few questions for you. I can ask you now, or you can drop Tressa off and come to the station. Which will it be?"

  Alexander looked over at me.

  "Ask whatever you want. I've got nothing to hide."

  "I understand you were at JR's with Eileen on Friday night?"

  "Yeah, I was there. I wasn't 'with' her, if that's what you're asking. I was with Tressa."

  "Is that right?" He made it more of a sarcastic statement than a question.

  "Yes, that's correct," I spoke up, choosing to act as though it were a question.

  "Did you leave the restaurant at any point during the evening?"

  "No."

  "Not even to have a smoke or make a call?"

  "Tom, he was with me all night."

  "You were up on stage for a while," Tom pointed out.

  "Yes, and I saw him at the table the entire time."

  "I understand you got into an argument that night."

  "Not me, that's on your boy there. I just tried to back him down. But you know that already. You were there." Alexander lost his patience. "Listen, why don't you tell me what this is about?"

  "Someone tampered with Eileen's brakes while she was in the restaurant. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

  "I read it in the paper like everyone else, so yeah, I knew. What exactly are you implying?"

  "Witnesses at the restaurant said you were upset when you found out Eileen had left the restaurant. They said you tried to stop her." He stepped closer to Alexander, eyes narrowed and glaring. "Why would you do that unless you knew something was wrong with her car? You were somehow involved in this."

  My stomach tightened when I remembered Alexander's desperation to stop Eileen. Surely his premonitions were a form of Darna Shealladh, but most people didn't believe in Second Sight so he couldn't tell Tom the real reason for his panic that night.

  "Don't be ridiculous. She forgot her cell phone and I was trying to get it to her is all," Alexander told the officer.

  "Your wife was killed in a car accident, wasn't she?" Tom threw the words at him like a punch.

  Alexander, shocked, stepped back as if the words had physically hit him.

  "Yeah. So what?"

  "Isn't it true that she died because someone tampered with her brakes?" And there it was: Tom's knockout blow.

  "No, you son of a bitch, that's not true."

  If Tom had hoped to provoke Alexander into a physical reaction, he had failed. The more enraged Alexander grew the more still he became, like an animal preparing to attack. I took his hand to calm him. He took a deep breath.

  "She dropped a bottle of water while she was driving and it got lodged under the brake pedal. Nothing was wrong with the car. It was a senseless accident."

  "There was an investigation."

  "Isn't that routine with you law enforcement types?" Alexander shook his head. "Listen, if you're looking for a suspect, you should look at your boy Fred. If you have nothing more constructive to ask, we're leaving." We started toward the car, not bothering to wait for Tom’s acknowledgment.

  "Don't leave town without my okay, Mannus," he called after us.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I dreamt I was in the ballroom at Uncle Lomán's castle in Faery. The crystal chandeliers shimmered like jewelry. An orchestra played a heavenly waltz as smiling couples spun round the dance floor.

  At first, I danced with my father. His eyes shone as he told me how proud he and my mother were of me. Seeing him quenched a thirst I hadn't known I had. I drank in the details of his face—the lines at the corners of his eyes, the way his cheeks dimpled when he smiled—knowing I would not see it again in this life.

  Then another lost face, my grandfather, swept me across the dance floor, looking as he had the last time I saw him: tall, straight-backed and proud with his silver hair and glittering purple eyes.

  "You are the Treasure, my darling girl," he said, looking at me adoringly.

  "You mean a treasure, Móraí, not the Treasure." I corrected him more assertively than I ever had in life. I no longer wanted the expectations of that title hanging over me. Had I ever wanted it?

  He smiled at me indulgently.

  "No, my darling girl, I spoke correctly. You are the Treasure. Your Mamó says it is so."

  The old king faded, replaced by the current king. My Uncle Lomán whirled me around faster than the music called for. Faster than comfortable.

  "You are the Treasure," he said.

  Next, my brother Gilleagán spun me so fast that my head began to spin as well.

  "You know what they do to the Treasure, don't you?" He hammered the words at me in a nasty stinging tone, just as he had in our youth. "Deaglan Mór will hunt you down and burn you alive, like his grandfathers burned the King's Treasures before you."

  He laughed maniacally, his face morphing until it was Deaglan Mór himself whirling me around, still laughing. His eyes were a blazing, crackling fire-red.

  Suddenly, everything and everyone around me burst into an inferno of flames.

  I woke with a start. My sheets were damp, and I glistened with sweat. Darkness surrounded me. Only the moonlight coming through the window disrupted the pitch black of my room.

  It took a couple of panicked breaths before I realized that the electricity was out. The digital clock on my bedside table, which usually illuminated the room, was dark.

  My breathing gradually returned to normal, but the hot, stuffy room kept me sweating. I slid out of bed and padded carefully down the hall to the bathroom.

  Feeling my way around the windowless room, I turned on the cold tap and splashed the refreshing water onto my face. I took a few deep breaths to rein in my emotions, splashing my face once more before toweling dry.

  Our electricity often failed at Pine Ridge. I kept a flashlight in the drawer of my nightstand for these occasions. However, on that night, my flashlight refused to turn on—apparently the batteries were dead. I didn't keep candles, matches, or lighters of any kind in the house, so the room remained dark.

  I opened the window and found that the air outside was as hot and humid as inside: more like a midsummer's evening instead of mid-spring.

  The gibbous moon and a galaxy of stars gave a silvery glow and a sense of vastness to the night sky. My room began to feel even darker and more claustrophobic when compared to the view from my window.

  The lake in the distance called to me with its open air and clear, cold water. It promised to relax and refresh me.

  I went as I was, holding tightly to the banister as I made my way down the steep old staircase. When I reached the outdoors and I could see properly, I ran barefoot with my nightgown flowing behind me.

  I pulled the nightgown over my head, tossed it onto the glider, and ran naked into the water. With long, forceful strokes, I swam toward the middle of the lake.

  My hot room had summoned the nightmare of fire and Deaglan Mór, the Unseelie prince. I let the soothing sensation of water flowing over my body and cooling my skin dispel it.

  About a hundred yards into the lake, I flipped onto my back and relaxed into a float. I lazily picked out constellations from the starlit sky.

  Once the water had done its work, I began to grow cold. I started back to shore at a slower pace, in no hurry to return to the darkness of the farmhouse. Halfway back, I saw him. Alexander stood at the edge of the lake. He wore jeans and nothing else; even his feet were bare. His tousled hair and unkempt look made it clear that he had recently abandoned his bed as well.

  He stood looki
ng at me with his hands on his hips, the bracelet I made for him still wrapped around his wrist. We stared at each other across the water for a heartbeat or two.

  I watched, unable to turn away, as he peeled off his jeans and joined me in the water.

  My nightmare had been a blatant reminder of the danger I brought with me into this relationship. Yet I was about to be tested, and I knew I would fall short of the challenge.

  There was no avoiding this. I swam closer to where he stood, now up to his waist in the water.

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "I woke up and just knew," he said.

  I swam around him, keeping far enough away so he couldn't see me clearly with his human eyesight.

  "You're a Fáidh?" I said, part question, part statement. He looked quizzical. "You have Second Sight. Visions of the future," I explained.

  "No. I'm just a normal guy who gets a gut feeling once in a while." He stepped toward me, closing the distance between us, but I splashed away from him. "The better question is: who are you?"

  "Wha—What do you mean?" I halfheartedly tried to keep up my ruse.

  He held up the wrist that wore the bracelet.

  "I've been working on this hand for years. You put a bracelet on it, and in less than twenty-four hours, it's completely healed." He shook his head. "What are you?"

  His hand had healed. He could see me. Oh no, no, no. I had done something terribly wrong with the talisman; it had healed him too quickly. I splashed backward again, this time in a real panic.

  "Tressa, please don't be afraid of me." He started toward me again.

  "I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid for you."

  His eyes, those deep, penetrating eyes, told me there could be no more pretending. He had to know everything. Afterwards, it would be safer for him if I left. Silent tears wet my cheeks when I thought of parting from him.

  "I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you," I said, a vision of Deaglan Mór appearing in my mind. My pain-laden voice echoed my thoughts. "Evil hunts for me. I must leave so that it doesn't come after you."

  He lunged, grasping my wrist and pulling me to him.

  "You can't leave. I won't have it."