by Nichole Van
I was leaning against his chest by this point, trying to see and touch as much of him as possible. I pressed my hands into his shoulders and then his face, searching for gouges in his skin or the tell-tale pink tinge of blood in the water.
“B-Branwell, love, you h-have to talk to me,” I bawled. “Where are you hurt?”
Still coughing, he raised his head and met my gaze. His eyes so wide. Stunned.
I was hugging him, crying, clutching the back of his head with both hands. Our faces only inches apart.
“W-what did you just say?” His voice barely a whisper of sound against my lips.
Twenty Four
Branwell
The entire universe came to a screeching halt.
Molecules. Atoms. Time itself.
“What”—cough—”did you”—hack—“say?”
Surely I had heard her wrong.
The surge of terror and adoration coming from her couldn’t be directed at me, right?
I coughed and coughed, wheezing, trying to get the pool water out of my throat and nose. Lucy continued to sob, ducking her head and burying her face in my neck.
Ignoring my words.
I gave my head a tiny shake through another coughing fit. Surely I was just hearing things. Lucy hadn’t called me ‘love.’
Or, if she had, she hadn’t meant it like that.
But still . . .
I was fully clothed in a swimming pool with Lucy clinging to me, emotionally distraught.
Lucy. The woman who never fell apart.
Addicted-me longed to wrap her in a vice-like hug and bury my lips in hers.
Thinking-me patted her shoulder and opted for less confessional comfort.
“I’ll be okay, Lucy.” I hacked again. “Just need to breathe.”
“B-but are you hurt?” Lucy pulled back, hiccupping. The emotion in her blue eyes threatening to swamp me under again.
“Aside from swallowing half the water in the pool and choking on the other half?” I gave one final cough, clearing my throat. “I’m fine. No scratches this time. Something about the water changed how Chucky came at me—”
“Thank g-goodness. What happened?”
I replayed the events in my head, using them as a distraction from the fact that Lucy still had her arms around my neck. My feet were planted solidly on the pool bottom, so she was probably simply using me to prop herself up, right?
As for Chucky, this attack had been different. Muted in the sense that Chucky hadn’t broken skin but more fierce in that the entity had been larger, more fully here.
As I was fighting off Chucky, I had noted the glint of Lucy’s Saint Christopher medal. Several things had clicked in my head—the shiny surface of the metal touching the glittering water, the fact that the medal had come from Roberto who had possible ties to the occult.
The second the medal had launched out of the pool, Chucky had vanished. Coincidence? Or causation?
I wasn’t quite ready to grab the medal to test the theory a second time. But . . . if Chucky had infected the medal too, then perhaps something in the water had unleashed him? Given that water muted my gift, perhaps it had muted Chucky as well? Or, at the very least, prevented him from shredding me?
Crazier things had happened, I supposed.
Logic said I should probably get out of the pool, but given how Lucy was clinging to me, I wasn’t in any big hurry.
She clutched my head again, her nose pressed to my ear. “You have to stop these attacks.”
Her body hugged mine in the water. All sound muted, letting me hear just her. Her soft sniffles. Breath in and out of her lungs.
The racing adrenaline bled from my system, mutating into something more warm-blooded. If I turned my head even a fraction of an inch, my lips would meet hers.
This was the definition of insanity. She was killing me.
“So . . . what exactly did you say earlier?” I asked again. I should have let it go, pretended I hadn’t heard anything. But I was hardly mature enough to do that. Not when it came to this and Lucy.
She sniffled. Silence.
I jostled her with my shoulder. Talk to me, Lucy.
She responded, not with words, but by rubbing her cheek against mine. Chilled but soft. So soft.
My entire brain short-circuited.
Ah Lucy.
Mia carissima Lucia.
“I-I thought I could deal with this,” she finally whispered. “I mean, it has been over two years since I last saw you. You’d think I would grow up and move on. Get over you already.”
My sluggish mind struggled to process her words.
Wait—?! Had she just said—
“Lucy?” My voice holding a thousand question marks. All of me impossibly still.
She snuffled. Hugged me tighter.
“I’m sorry, Branwell. I tried so hard. Really I did. But now you said you are feeling emotions more, and I love you so much that I’m sure you feel it all the time and must already know it, but you’re too kind to say anything . . .”
Lucy was babbling. Her lips whispering into my ear, hands clutching my head.
It washed over me through the sound of her voice.
Wave after blissful wave.
Love. Adoration. Longing. Yearning.
All Lucy.
All directed at me.
Madonna.
Shock blazed through me with stunning force. Like a fist to the gut. Not a drop of air in my lungs.
Lucy.
Loved.
Me.
Me!!
How?
Since when?
And . . . why?!
Never. And I mean never had I thought Lucy cared for me like this.
I hoped. I dreamed. I longed . . . but to know—
My knees buckled and my arms tightened around her, sagging my weight into the side of the pool. Convulsively. Helpless to anything else.
I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t get my sluggish tongue to form words.
My brain had been sucker punched.
And still Lucy clung to me, arms around my shoulders, fingers in my hair. Nose pressed into that space between my ear and throat.
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” she sobbed, over and over. “Sorry.”
Crying.
Not for Grace. Not for anyone else.
For me.
Crying because she loved me.
If I turned my head even a fraction of an inch toward her . . . she would kiss me.
Her lips would be wet and chilled.
She would taste like sweet sunshine. Happiness. Hope.
And she would return my kiss with fervent enthusiasm. I could sense it in her body. In the possessive way she dug her fingers into my hair.
My heart hammered in my throat.
Addicted-me nearly did it. It would be so easy to give in.
Turn my head. Find her mouth.
Lose myself.
But at what cost?
Tennyson swimming in a bathtub of his own blood—the image punched through my fuddled brain.
Finally, I found my vocal chords.
“H-how long . . .” My voice trailed off.
She sniffed. Guilt thrummed through me.
Hers? Mine?
She pulled her head back, resting a cheek on my shoulder, nose still turned toward my throat.
“From the b-beginning,” she sniffed. “The very beginning.”
A beat. More surprise.
“The beginning?”
She nodded, rubbing her cheek against me.
This woman.
“You probably don’t even remember,” she said. “We met at a coffee shop before I knew you were Tennyson’s brother. You let me photograph your scone cause it looked like a heart. You were this big, sweet, adorable guy and I suddenly felt . . . home.”
“Home.” I was mindlessly repeating her words at this point.
“Yeah.” She sniffled again. “I thought I was just being fanciful. I really did like Tennyson and he was .
. . flattering with his attentions. But you were always there—”
“I was.”
“I had to grow up a bit more, I think. But I eventually realized that what I felt for Tennyson paled beside what I felt for you. And I couldn’t live a lie anymore . . .”
Silence.
“Lucy—”
“Shh.” She hushed me. Hiccupped. “P-please don’t say anything. I know you don’t care about me in that way. I know you are loyal to Tennyson.”
Tennyson.
I clenched my jaw. I was loyal to my brother . . . no matter what.
Focus on your brother, you idiot. Not how crazy right it feels to hold his ex-girlfriend in your arms.
She gave a gasping breath. “I don’t need to hear the ‘Lucy, you know I think you’re a great person but—’ speech.”
A pause.
“I do think you’re a great person.” My brief humorless laugh echoed in the room.
She sniffed. “My emotions are not your problem, Branwell. You’ve always made the boundary between us very clear. It’s okay. We’ll find Grace, and I’ll leave and you’ll never have to see me again.”
My heart gave a painful thump. Her words ringing over and over.
I’ll leave and you’ll never have to see me again.
Twenty Five
Cannon Beach, Oregon
Five years earlier
Branwell
I am so in love, my brother.” Tennyson collapsed on the sand next to me. “How is it possible for one woman to make me so happy?”
Because that one woman is Lucy, I wanted to say.
I wisely kept my mouth shut and instead imagined the walls around my mind tightening, hoping for the millionth time, I was somehow blocking him from sensing my emotions.
It had to have worked because Tennyson’s grin stretched wide, lighting up his eyes . . . eyes the color of the ocean on a sunny summer day.
Like today.
Haystack Rock glistened in the surf, slowly being surrounded by water as the tide came in. Gulls called to each other and a gentle breeze tugged at my jacket. Even on a summer day, the Oregon coast rarely drifted into warm territory.
Closer to the surf, Lucy crouched arranging shells in the sand, photographing them from various angles. Her hair swirled in the wind, a flame halo.
Feeling our combined gazes, she swiveled her head, holding up a hand to block out the sun, waving at us with her opposite fingers. Smile broad and endearingly lop-sided.
Tennyson laughed and leaned back on his elbows.
I glanced at my brother. Happiness spilled out of him, molten sunshine pouring over the rest of us.
Lucy had done this.
“She’s so positive and bubbly, her mood always up. It’s effortless to be around her.”
Tennyson said this line a lot. As if justifying something to himself. He gestured toward the other people strolling down the beach. People with emotions Tennyson could feel.
In the past, being in crowds had overwhelmed him. We had all worried that Tennyson would become a hermit someday, living out in the wild on his own.
And then Lucy arrived.
“She soothes me, saves me from myself,” Tennyson continued. “Lucy is my secret weapon. When I’m with her, everything else is easier.”
But is that really love? True love? I wanted to ask him. What about Lucy? Love should be focused on your partner, not just yourself.
Tennyson threaded his fingers together behind his head and winked up at me.
“Lucy’s the One,” he said. “I can’t imagine a life without her. I’m totally going to ask her to marry me.”
Twenty Six
Tuscany, Italy
2016
Branwell
I made my apologies to Lucy and scrambled out of the pool, her eyes burning a hole in my retreating shoulders.
Somehow, somehow I resisted. I focused on Tennyson and managed to not lay my heart at her feet. The words stuck tight in my throat.
What good would they do anyway? Her feelings for me changed nothing in the end. Tennyson and his tenuous emotional state remained an unassailable wall between us.
I slammed into my bedroom and changed out of my wet clothes and re-bandaged my arms.
And then proceeded to pace for a solid thirty minutes, my brain a hive buzzing.
Whattodowhattodo . . .
My bedroom wasn’t quite far enough away, turns out.
I could feel Lucy moving through the palazzo. The tired tread of her feet on the stairs. Her heavy heart. Maybe I was just being fanciful. Or maybe my GUT was granting my own wish to be tuned in to her. Who knew.
But if I stayed another moment here . . . I would say things, do things. Things I would hate myself forever for.
I pulled on gloves, grabbed a few items and hit the stairs, running to my car and escape.
Absurdly cheerful sunlight washed the windshield as I drove, the sun dipping lower to the horizon.
Lucy loved me.
Loved. Me.
The phrase thrummed over and over.
A mantra. A hallelujah. A death knell.
Until the moment those words escaped her mouth, I had never realized that my entire life was based on one simple assumption: Lucy Snow didn’t love me.
I could be around her and hang out with her because I was only torturing myself.
I could help her and console her because I was only hurting myself.
Every ounce of my behavior hinged on the fact that she did not return my adoration.
But knowing she loved me too . . .
Loved me like I loved her.
Loved me like Tennyson loved her.
Tennyson and Lucy. Two halves of my heart.
The worst part?
There was no way I could avoid hurting one of them now.
I was forty minutes south of Florence before I understood where I was instinctively heading. Towering, narrow cypress trees lined the road, pointing the way.
The family villa outside Volterra—Tennyson’s current residence of choice.
I pulled my emotions inward, imagining a tight wall around them.
Chiara called in the middle of my drive. I put her straight to speaker phone.
“A quick call to the local FUP chapter confirmed that Roberto and his mother are devoted members—”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Don’t be snarky.” Chiara never missed a beat. “Apparently, the police have been questioning other FUP members about their activities based on information they got from Barbara Bruno. As for Barbara herself, she’s cooperating with the police, but she doesn’t know much. Just that colleagues were asking pointed questions about Roberto’s involvement with the occult and FUP. Maria-Teresa—”
“Cat Lady?”
Chiara snorted. “Right. Cat Lady. Anyway, word is she’s been cooperating with police, too. She might be an avid member of FUP, but she doesn’t know what Roberto is researching. She insists something bad happened to John Knight-Snow in her palazzo, and she and Roberto attend the FUP meetings in order to better protect themselves from the evil.”
“Should we follow-up with Cat Lady?”
“Meh. I don’t think she has more information beyond what we already know, honestly. For their part, FUP is none-too-happy about being dragged into this whole mess. They insist nothing in their esoteric practices would ever threaten a child but . . .”
“Who knows how Roberto has interpreted their belief in the occult, or why he was so interested in attending FUP’s meetings?”
“Yeah, unlike his mother, he doesn’t strike me as being particularly spiritual.”
“Agreed and based on what I heard from objects at the museum earlier today, Roberto obviously thinks something supernatural happened to Gruncle Jack. That conclusion could just be a natural outgrowth of an inherent fascination with the occult—”
“Or the opposite . . . Roberto investigating supernatural phenomena to better understand what he thinks Jack is rumored have found.”<
br />
“True. It’s hard to say.”
“Not to mention Grace. I’m still trying to see how she factors into this.”
“I’ve considered it.” I heaved a deep sigh. “Roberto going AWOL is a huge concern. I can’t believe it’s just coincidence. He clearly knows something and is either an accomplice to Grace’s disappearance—”
“Or perhaps another victim of our abductor?”
“Exactly. Too many questions and not enough answers.”
“I’m going to keep digging for dirt on Roberto. I’ll be in touch.”
Chiara hung up, leaving my mind spinning.
What was Roberto up to? Was all of this tied to something Jack had found so many years ago? And, again, was Chucky showing up because I was spreading him somehow? Or did his presence have a connection to Sofia D’Angelo and the events surrounding Gruncle Jack two centuries ago?
Countryside whizzed past me for another thirty minutes before the towers of Volterra rose from a hilltop in the distance. I turned off the highway before reaching the steep climb to the town proper and headed down a worn lane. I rolled the car to a stop in front of the family estate.
The D’Angelo villa was more of a compound than a single house. Once a fortified medieval castle complete with a crenelated tower, the keep walls had been absorbed by a larger, columned Renaissance palace, each generation adding their little stamp.
That said, the old castle walls still ran around two sides of a large courtyard with a small, ancient family chapel snuggled into one corner. Enormous double-doors guarded the entrance. I slipped through a smaller gate inset into them, crossed the courtyard and through the heavy main door, walking into the villa proper.
Why was I here, in the end? Entreating Tennyson for permission? Pleading for absolution? Or simply reaffirming my connection and commitment to my brother?
A soft woof and the slow shuffle of padded feet greeted me as I closed the front door. I smiled as an overweight, sad-eyed hound dog ambled over, tail wagging.
“Hey, Elvis.” I knelt down, scratching behind his ears. “How’s my favorite rock star?”
Elvis woofed again and nudged my hand higher, insisting I get the angle just right.
Figured.
He had always been something of a diva.