I nodded for him to go on, intrigued.
“The higher ups have decided they want someone to hold a management position, if you will, at the Temple. Someone to be responsible for it’s safe keeping above and beyond just sitting on it each day. Someone with a strong sense of loyalty and a good mind. Do you understand where I’m going with this?”
“You want to promote me?” I asked with a wry grin.
He nodded sagely. “See? Good mind. Let’s talk responsibilities.”
Chapter 25
“Congrats, gorgeous,” Brett’s comforting voice said happily into my ear, almost drowned out by the sound of live Latin music in the background. “You deserve it.”
“Hey, I got a cell phone,” I told him, and waited while he grabbed a pen and took down the number I rattled off.
“It’s about time you joined the new world, Aunt Mildred.”
“When are you coming home?” I asked quietly, wrapping the phone cord around my finger and watching Addie lick between her dainty toes.
“Soon. I’ll call you.”
It was raining outside, pouring buckets of gray water from ominous clouds. Addie was sitting in the front window staring out into the street where passing cars were kicking up puddles of water over my little blue Coop. I stared across at Brett’s half-hidden apartment complex, wondering where he was and who he was with, driving myself crazy. When my hand became a little too heavy handed on her head, Addie nipped at me and took off up the stairs. Hunter sent one sharp, disciplinary bark after her.
A familiar car pulled in to the parking lot and sidled up next to mine, yellow globes cutting off before blinding me. I watched as a small form in a big yellow rain coat stepped out, matching yellow rain boots, and hustled to my door.
I opened it before she could knock. Pushing back the hood, Megan Brinkman gave me a wan smile.
She looked good. Her hair had been dyed to a soft, grey blonde and was swept back into a sleek ponytail. She was wearing make-up, just enough to be noticed but not so much to be gaudy. The bags beneath her eyes were gone.
“May I come in?”
Nodding, I opened the door wider and stepped back, allowing her to come through on my brown entry rug. I closed the door behind her as she stepped out of her boots, leaving them on the carpet. I hung her coat on the rack at the bottom of the stairs, and gestured for her to follow me to the kitchen.
“Tea or coffee?” I asked her quietly.
“Coffee, please.”
I measured some grounds and got the pot brewing before I slid a chair around the counter so we could sit across from each other. She was in a pretty black suit, a silky pink collared shirt showing beneath it. I almost didn’t recognize her as the same woman.
She nervously smoothed both hands over her hair, smiling down at Hunter, who was checking her out with his nose. He sat and his tail thumped on the floor, signaling she was alright. With a little giggle, she reached down and scratched his ears. “I’ve always wanted a dog,” she said wistfully, as Hunter scooted his butt closer and laid his snout on her lap.
“Hunter, no,” I told him, thinking about her nice suit.
“Oh, no, it’s wonderful,” she shook her head, both hands rubbing at his ears. “I guess now that Jordan’s gone, I could adopt one of my own.”
“You look good.”
She smiled again, but this time, it was a beam of light. “I feel good, Vale. I’m back at work.” Gesturing to the suit, she struck a pose, and laughed. “I’m just a secretary, but it’s productive. I get to work with people on a daily basis. Is it sad that I enjoy that?”
“No, it’s not,” I said honestly, getting up to pour us a couple mugs. “Would you like cream and sugar?”
“Yes, lots of it, please.” While I assembled ingredients, she went on, “I actually came to thank you. I know Melissa is,” she paused, fumbling for words.
“In a coma,” I supplied, sliding a mug in front of her. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
Megan gave a succinct nod. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s because of Jordan, and I wish I could make it up to you.”
Cradling my mug with one hand, I reached across to touch her arm. When she took my hand instead, I didn’t cringe or pull back. I squeezed tightly. “What he did is not your fault, Megan. You know that. I don’t blame you, and you sure as shit shouldn’t blame yourself. I’m just happy you’re doing better.”
She was quiet for a moment, staring into her mug, a slightly worn out cream colored concoction Macy had made me in art class eons ago. I gingerly sipped my coffee, waiting for her to compose herself.
“Vale, I was wondering. Could I buy you dinner?” She blushed. “Since I’ve been married to that bastard, I’ve not had any friends.” Clearing her throat, she shifted uncomfortably. “I was hoping maybe we could, you know, be friends. And Melissa, too, when she wakes up. I know I’m a bit older than you—”
I cut her off, squeezing her hand once more before I released it. “How about tonight? There’s a really great Italian place just right outside of town.”
We exchanged smiles, hers relieved and mine just a little bit brighter.
*********
The Wild Hunt was even crazier than normal that night. I sat between Cerridwen’s feet and felt very different from the girl who had done it for the first time not even a month back. I absently trailed a hand down the smooth stone of her leg, letting the age of her fade into my hands. It was so old, older than I could comprehend—as if it were older than time itself.
A flute-like voice called my name. Jerking upright, my fingers gripping stone, I looked around the temple. My first thought was a ghost of some kind, although I knew Anya had moved on. Dropping to the floor, I clicked across the stones to peer behind the statues, looking for any movement. The silence felt heavy.
“Silence?” I whispered aloud, my eyes widening until I felt my pupils go dry. The Hunt was silent. Lifting my wrist, I confirmed that it was only two, and therefore the Hunt should still be doing its nonsense.
“Vale.” A whisper this time, and I could swear it was coming from the soundproof front door. My heart pounded deep in my chest. I made my way to the thick, locked door slowly, the whisper continuing, fading in and out of the silence.
I pressed my ear to the cool surface beside the row of locks, both palms flat on either side of my face, and was greeted by silence. “Vale, come outside,” a warm voice urged through the wood. “It’s safe.”
My body warmed. It sounded like my mother. I knew it couldn’t be Theresa, part of me wanted to fight the urge, but I threw the first lock anyway.
A sharp trill from my new cell phone startled me and I jerked away from the door as if it were on fire. Fumbling in my pockets I found it and answered with a breathless “Hello?”
“Don’t do it!” Bella yelled frantically, desperation turning her voice more Eastern than usual. “Do not open that door, Vale!”
“What?”
“I saw you doing it. If you went out there, they will get you. Please, Vale, do not open the door. That is not your mom’s voice, they are trying to lure you out.”
Pressing my back to the wall, I slid to the ground and put my head to my knees. Thank goddess for psychic friends. “Thanks.”
“Why don’t you stay on the phone with me?” Bella said softly, her tone a little more normal. I realized the sounds of the Hunt were even louder, angrier behind me now that I’d denied them my soul. It sent chills down my spine.
“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
*********
Hunter woke me up attacking some monster of his own imagining on the floor. I sat up in enough time to catch him pounce a balled up pair of socks with a vicious growl. Grabbing my pillow, I tossed it at him with a primal yell even I didn’t understand.
Addie, having been thrown from her position on my head, glared at me.
I was going stir crazy. I didn’t want to sit at home another evening and wonder what the hell Brett was doing and where the hell
he was, or when my best friend would come out of the coma I should have kept from happening. Picking up my new cell phone from the nightstand, I scrolled to Christina’s phone and listened to it ring.
“Yeah?”
“I answer the phone like that too, and my mom yells.”
“Mine knows better than to bother,” Christina laughed. “What’s going on?”
“Need to get out of the house before I murder my pets and hang myself from the bathroom ceiling.”
“The bathroom, huh? Is that really what you want your last sight to be? What if you had forgotten to flush the toilet?” We shared a laugh before she said, “There’s a crap hole called The King’s Ransom halfway to Newfield. Meet you there in an hour?”
Nifty thing about the new phone, I had the internet. I looked up the pub and asked for the map, watching with something akin to toddler like fascination as it showed me a map, directions, and estimated travel time. “Good investment,” I told Hunter, waving the phone at him. He didn’t even look at me, still chewing on the socks.
Brett’s car was in the lot across the street, but he hadn’t called to tell me he was back. A wave of rejection slid over me, and I pushed on the accelerator of my replacement Mini Cooper, all the more thirsting for a stiff drink and a loud pub.
The King’s Ransom looked like it’d lived through a century of drunken debauchery, the red brick facade covered in a layer of grime. Two windows flanked a black double door, and one black shutter clung for dear life to one window, the other shutters mysteriously absent. I loved the stereotypical torches on either side of the entrance, and when I gripped the brass knob, I laughed when I realized they weren’t real flames.
Loud, Irish music hit me the minute I opened the door, and I let the sound of drunken men singing along slide down my back like a soothing tonic. I could already taste that cold whiskey and Coke. I slid onto a bar stool, its red leather battered, and pressed my hands to the cool, wooden bar. It was rough enough to give a splinter. The bartender was a balding man somewhere in his fifties with a pot belly and a patch over one eye. He gave me a surprisingly congenial smile, drying a pint glass with a white cloth in one hand. “What’ll it be, pet?”
“Jameson and Coke, please,” in true form to go with the music. I recognized the song now, Whiskey in the Jar, one of my favorite Irish jigs. While Patchy was pouring my drink, I laughed at an overweight guy with bright red hair doing an awkward version of Irish dancing. The sight of his silliness helped take my mind off Brett, as did my first sip of honeyed sweetness. Nobody makes whiskey like the Irish.
I was nursing my third Jameson, heavier on the whiskey than the first few, and watching playbacks of the day’s football games when I felt a presence beside me, and looked up with a smile to find Christina dropping onto the stool next to me. Slipping her knee length sweater coat off, she draped it over another stool and waved at the bartender. “George! Pour me a pint, mate!”
“Nice touch on the really bad accent,” I laughed, trying to focus on her. Maybe I should have gone easier on the alcohol. Waited for her to get in. Ha.
“Alright, you lush, could you let me catch up?” She winked at me and downed half her beer before George even attempted to move away. She clunked the half empty mug down and swiped at her mouth with her sleeve. “George, two shots of Jameson, my friend.”
“Excellent choice, I commend your taste,” I told her, and we butted knuckles like fifteen year old boys.
“So. Trouble?”
“Brett’s back and he didn’t call.”
“Maybe he just got in,” she answered, pulling both shot glasses towards her the minute George tossed them down.
“I thought one of those was for me!”
“Ha, ha! You wish! I told you I have some catching up to do.” She knocked back both, one after the other, and slammed the glasses to the bar. “Goes down smooth,” she said, face pinched up.
“Liar,” I laughed. I twirled my glass between my hands. “What does he do when he leaves?”
“That’s a good question,” Christina agreed with a nod, finishing off her beer and motioning to George for another. “Why don’t you just ask him?”
“What if it’s none of my business?”
“What if it needs to be? Like, an illicit love affair? Or illegitimate children in France?”
I smacked her open-handed on the shoulder. “Don’t put ideas like that in my head, I’m drunk.”
“I’m only saying that if you’re going to be his girlfriend, you have every right to be privy to his every move.” She gave George a winning smile when he handed her a new beer and put a fresh Jameson and Coke in front of me. The man was psychic. Hell, in Quicksilver, he very well could be.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” We sat in silence for a minute. “You know something I still don’t understand?”
“What?”
“The ghost I told you about, Anya? She says Jordan and Katherine didn’t kill her. So, then who did?”
Christina gazed thoughtfully down into her glass. “Well, what could you make from anything she ever told you?”
I scoffed. “Nothing. She spoke pure gibberish half the ti—” I stopped, radar buzzing. “Oh my god.”
“What?” She turned curious green eyes to me.
“Gibberish. Amelia Brewer.”
Christina cocked an eyebrow. “Who?”
Excitement flooded my body, and I turned to face her on my bar stool, sloshing my Jameson on the counter. “Amelia Brewer. She is supposedly the only person to have survived seeing the Wild Hunt, but she only talks in gibberish. Christina, what if something went wrong the night Jordan and Katherine took Anya, and she saw the Hunt? The Hunt took her!”
“I don’t know, Vale, I’m still a little leery of this whole ’Hunt’ thing,” Christina said carefully.
“I was too,” I replied, grabbing her arm. “We have to go see Amelia. You have to heal her mind so we can talk to her!”
“Vale, you’re drunk, there’s no way I could ’heal her mind’.”
I took a drink of my liquor and sat it back on the bar determinedly. “It’s worth a try.”
Chapter 26
Bright and early the next day, I pulled up in front of Christina’s and watched her skip down the sidewalk in a heavy black overcoat and blue jeans. The sky was spitting snow, even though the ground was too warm to take to it.
She climbed in, sighing at the heat going full tilt. “Ahhh.”
"According to Hilda Manning, Amelia is being housed at a home about an hour away,” I told her, plugging the address in to Lucy before propping her back up in the windshield.
“I can’t believe we're going to do this,” Christina groaned, letting her head, covered in a neat wool toboggan, fall against the window. “I’ve never messed with someone’s brain before, how do we know it’s not going to make it worse?”
“It’s not going to make it worse,” I said, both hands gripping the steering wheel as I maneuvered us on to the highway. “I don’t think she can be any worse.”
*********
“How nice that someone has come to visit Amelia!” the Nurse said happily, coming out from behind the reception desk to shake our hands. “Poor dear never has any visitors. Other than Hilda, of course.” She beamed. “Lovely woman, that one.”
Amelia’s “home” was a forbidding hulk of gray brick that reminded me just a little of the Brinkman Victorian, only with dirtier stones and gargoyles leering down from the roof. We’d had to be buzzed in through the front door, and then buzzed through a second set of doors. Heavy security for a looney bin.
“What about her parents?” I asked, yanking my mittens off and shoving them in my coat pocket. The reception lobby had dark wood-paneled walls and floors, with Oriental rugs covering the most trafficked areas. Other than a nice waiting room off to the left, all other openings were barred by heavy doors.
The nurse shook her head sadly, wrapping her arms around her torso. “Unfortunately, Mrs. Brewer took her own life n
ot too long after the incident,” she whispered this last word as if it were cursed. “Mr. Brewer then remarried and moved to the States. He sends letters and pays the bills, but it’s been a good year or two since his last visit.”
“How sad,” Christina murmured, shifting closer to me. I gave her a quizzical look as we followed the nurse through a door that had to be opened by her card.
“Are you okay?”
“These places creep me out,” she whispered back, glancing uneasily over her shoulder before turning wide eyes to me.
I patted her arm. “It’ll be okay.”
“Now, I’m sure Hilda warned you about Amelia’s problem,” the nurse said gently as we paused outside an imposing white door. She flipped open the window and waved inside, before turning back to us. “She seems as normal as can be until she speaks.”
“I heard,” I answered, giving her a brief smile.
“Just page me with the button just inside the door when you’re through and I’ll come let you out.”
“We’re going to be locked in there?” Christina squeaked, gripping my arm surprisingly hard for a girl without any super-strength.
The nurse gave her a consoling smile. “It’s okay, dear, Amelia is not violent. She no longer needs to be here, but this is the only home she’s ever known. As long as her father keeps paying, she’ll remain. If it weren’t for the speech, you’d think she was normal.”
And she was right. Amelia Brewer, sixteen when her sister died, was almost sixty now. Her white hair was still long, thick, and lush, and her face was pleasant, if a little gaunt. She wore loose cotton pants and a long white tank top, too cold for the outside, but just right for her warm room.
“Hi, Amelia, my name’s Vale, and this is Christina,” I gestured with my head, and offered my hand to the woman. She stood from the desk, where a notebook and several charcoal pencils lay, and took it. Her grip was firm. She nodded at me, then at Christina, who visibly eased just a bit.
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