Illuminate

by Tracy Clark

  I swelled with a surge of beauty, appreciation, gratitude, pure love, and light and directed it at the little boy whose head was cradled in my hand. My energy felt like a bottomless well of pure spirit, and I’d gladly have dredged up every drop for this one boy, for all of them.

  I knew without a doubt…I’d die for them.

  When I most wanted to scream in anguish, Caleb’s eyes closed, then fluttered open again, deep blue and bright. He smiled up at me. I gasped and turned to the girl whose hand Caleb still gripped. She was a field of strawberries, this one…all reddish-blond hair, plump lips, and creamed skin. Her name was Thea.

  “Please,” I whispered a prayer of my own as I wrapped her in silver light. Let me have enough light to give. Then I tried what I’d seen my enemy do, but in reverse. I gave to all of them at once. I cocooned all of us in silver light and watched it thread around them, into them. I was a conduit of pure, divine, loving energy, the focus of which was only one thing. Save them. Do not let them die.

  Don’t let the light go out. Not on my watch.

  One by one, their eyes opened. Some began to cry and reach for teachers. Some just lay and stared up at the sunset, their eyes calm, brimming with feeling.

  “Miracolo!”

  “She brought them back to life!”

  Dun was suddenly at my side, pulling me up from the children. I was mildly aware of resisting him at first. My mind had such tunnel vision in that moment that the rest of the world had fallen away. Protectiveness for these kids flared fresh as Dun tugged on me. Would they be okay? Did I do enough?

  “Cora, look,” Dun hissed in my ear.

  Bewildered, I glanced around me and saw that a vast crowd of people surrounded us, some staring, some holding their cell phones up at me like this was some kind of spectacle. “Why—why are they filming me?”

  “Are you effing kidding me?” Dun said. “What’s your next trick? Walking on water?”

  Whistles blew and a thunderous footfall approached. Through the crowd, I saw the uniformed security of Vatican City running toward us. With them, Cardinal Báthory, his red robe flying behind him. His eyes were intent and entirely focused on me. Not the children, not the turbulent crowd of onlookers…me.

  Dun grabbed my hand and yanked me away. Would we be able to outrun them? I should feel weak, right? I should be depleted to my core. But my legs had the strength of a hundred horses as we ran toward the gates and through them as fast as we could, heading in who knew what direction.

  “Where the hell can we go?” I asked, just starting to register the magnitude of what had happened. Cold fear replaced the euphoria I’d felt when giving to those children. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever done, but for a girl on the run and trying to stay out of sight, the most stupid. I groaned. “And I thought the airport video was a nightmare.”

  A middle-aged man ran up alongside us. “Hey. Hey, excuse me,” he panted. “I want to help you. Hey!” When the man reached for me, Dun shoved me behind him, ready to fight. “My car is right over there,” the guy said, motioning toward a parking lot. “I saw what happened. Man! You need wheels. I’ll get you away from here, I swear it. I just want to talk to you.”

  “Dude. Thanks, but no. You don’t want any part of this crazy.”

  “I do, actually. I excel at crazy,” he insisted with a tilted grin. “Some would say I’m an expert on crazy.” I peered around Dun’s arm at the man whose voice registered a ping of recollection in me. I immediately recognized the wild-haired guy with his suit and his trademark alien tie. He had an enormous camera dangling from his arm. I’d seen him enough times to know him anywhere.

  The prolific New Age author and television personality, Edmund Nustber.

  “It’s okay,” I said to Dun. “I know who he is.” Just when I thought my world couldn’t get more surreal. “My dad used to watch his show on TV,” I said stupidly, as if that was the criteria for trustworthiness. There was commotion down the street. Sirens blared, broadcasting their approach, people ran in our direction, their eyes fixed on me. I snapped to attention. “Yes. Fine. Let’s go.”

  We piled into Edmund Nustber’s small car and screeched out of the parking lot, jumped the curb with a thud that threw us forward, and fishtailed our way up the street until Edmund gained control of the wheel and sped away.

  “Thank God the Italians are a bunch of lunatic drivers. We’ll blend right in,” Dun said.

  “I can’t believe what I just saw back there.” Edmund raked his hand through the front of his hair, pushing it into even higher crazy-peaks. “Incredible. A bona fide miracle.”

  I looked out the window behind us to see if anyone was following. “It was a miracle to me, too, believe me.”

  “Amazing. I got it on film. All of it.” He was breathless, his lemon yellow aura—indicative of his logical, exploratory inquisitiveness—jumping with excitement.

  “You can’t show that film. I don’t want it shown,” I insisted, acutely aware that for the Arrazi who were looking for me, it would point right to my location.

  Edmund Nustber gave me the biggest are you freaking kidding me eyes and said, “Honey, hundreds of people just saw you bring children back from the dead in the middle of St. Peter’s Square, the doorstep of the Vatican. You’ll be all over the world in hours. It’s probably on YouTube already.” He laughed in an adrenaline-coated way and slapped the steering wheel. “Awww, man! I can’t believe this!” His tone abruptly changed from delight to analytical. “Watch the church try to take credit for it,” he said. He shot a glance at me and his face turned serious, studying me. “There’s obviously something very special about you.”

  A laugh came out of me, unbidden. “You have no idea.”

  “Tell me. Tell me how you did it. It looked like you went into some sort of trance or something. Have you always been a healer?”

  “Look, I could tell you the whole story, but I doubt you’d believe me. I’m just trying to fully understand what I am. Honestly, it would blow your mind to know what I am.”

  “Angel? Alien? Higher being from another realm?” Edmund rattled these things off like an everyday grocery list.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Well,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror. “You just healed the dead. No matter what you are, right now, I’d say you’re a target.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Finn

  Despite my secret knowledge about her mother, I had empathy for Saoirse’s loss. She dissolved into tears after news of her mother’s death. The strength of my compassion for her surprised me, but even as I doubted it, I pulled her to me and wrapped my arms around her trembling body. It felt criminal to comfort her, wrong to deceive her when I knew more about what happened to her mother than she ever would. It was an accident of fate that I was present when it happened. We were after Clancy, after saving Cora. How could I know that Ultana would show up?

  The overriding feeling, though, was that I needed to stand by Saoirse and see her through the death of her mother. If I stood by her when it counted, would she stand by me?

  “What are we going to do, Finn?”

  “We” was she and Lorcan, but from what I’d seen, Saoirse and her brother weren’t tight. He was a couple of years older. Would he immediately step in and try to rule over Ultana’s deviant kingdom? I rubbed Saoirse’s back, feeling both the weight of her head on my shoulder and the weight of my two-faced agenda. “I’m here for you. You’re not alone.”

  “Lorcan is with her—her body.” She sniffed. “He wants to know if I will come to the crematorium and sign papers and meet with our family lawyer. I don’t understand how this could happen. I thought my mother would never die.”

  What an odd thing to say, unless she knew what I did; that her mother believed herself to be someone called the White Queen and immortal. “You said ‘never.’ Was that just disbelief, or—?”

  “Or did I mean it literally? I don’t suppose it matters to tell you this now… Secrets of the dead ar
e less guarded. My mother dying was impossible, or so I was led to believe. I thought her sortilege was immortality.” I jerked my head back like what she was saying was pure bollocks. “Or so she told me,” she continued. “But who knows? My mother will forever be a mystery to me.” She began to cry in earnest.

  Cold dread spread down my limbs as I asked, “How did she die?” That damn dagger was my nemesis. If Lorcan had never seen me with it, I’d have nothing to worry about. So deep were my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed that Saoirse had lifted her head and was staring at me quizzically through teary eyes. I kept my voice steady, my eyes concerned rather than fearful. “What happened to her? Did he say?”

  Her answer was just a whisper. “No. You’ll come with me, Finn?”

  Shite. Of all the things she could ask… “Aye. If that’s what you need, of course. We’ll go now.”

  My mom burst into the library, creased her brows at me in an embrace with Saoirse, and swiping tears from her cheeks. The alarm on Mum’s face, the way her fingers twirled the cross on her neck, made me immediately think something bad had happened to my father. “Darling,” she said, crossing the room to the television. “There’s something incredible on the news.”

  “Can’t it wait?” I said. “Saoirse just got news of her own.” An enormous beat of quiet passed between us as I tried to convey the seriousness with my eyes, but hers were just as grim and meaningful. “Her mother’s passed on.”

  For another heavy moment, my mother looked at me as if I were daft, but she already knew the truth. Had she missed what I’d said? She flicked on the television despite my announcement, leaving me to puzzle what in the hell was wrong with her. She let the TV blare behind her as she approached us, put her hands on Saoirse’s upper arms, and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Saoirse blinked, thanked her, then looked away.

  Commercials trilled in the background as I wondered what secret my mother might unearth from Saoirse’s eyes, if any. But then the sensationalized voice of the newscaster filled the room, and like sound tunneling right into my brain, I heard the words: “MIRACLE AT VATICAN CITY!”

  One after the other, different shots filled the screen. First, of little children dropping dead on the stones of St. Peter’s Square. Then, of Cora…my sweet Cora, sliding into view as she ran to the children and dropped to her knees with an expression that could only be described as utter anguish. Bowing over a black-haired little boy in a blue school uniform, her entire body was a prayer, and though no one could see it onscreen, or even in real life, I knew what they’d see if they had the ability—her luminous silver aura, her light, pouring through that wee lad. She pulled them back from the clutch of death.

  “Finn?” Saoirse’s voice questioned from behind me, but I was busy switching channels, seeing if there were more or different versions of the story, desperately trying to find out information as to where Cora was now.

  Hoax… Miracle on hallowed ground… Sign from God… Devil… Savior…

  News crews poured into St. Peter’s Square, competing for space with the masses of people, well and sick, who’d quickly streamed into Vatican City. People were kissing the ground where she’d knelt. Others were chanting about devil’s work.

  Inwardly, I groaned. Cora needed anonymity to stay hidden, to stay safe. She needed to remain out of the Arrazi’s vast scope and suddenly she was the most famous and sought-after mystery-girl miracle-worker on the planet.

  “Jaysus Fecking Christ.”

  “That’s incredible,” Saoirse said, standing next to me. “If it’s real, how do you think she did—” Her mouth hung open. “Is that her? Is that your Scintilla?”

  “We’d better go,” I said, taking Saoirse’s hand and leading her to her car in the drive. I mumbled apologies and something about her being upset about her mother. “I think I should drive,” I said, “under the circumstances.”

  She handed me the keys. “All right. Though, I’d say you look as though you’ve lost someone as well.”

  My teeth ground. “Of course I have.”

  We drove in silence to the crematorium. I assumed it was the same one the Lennon family used to dispose of their victims. The building was thoroughly modern, though a very old brick smokestack pointed like a finger into the sky. Pointing the way for the souls, I mused. I thought of Teruko and Mari and lifted a silent prayer up for their souls as we walked into the building.

  Glossy white marble was used for the floors and the walls except for a large wall of windows with a lovely reflection pond outside. At the far end of the main lobby was a wall of ebony, and in front of it sat a hollowed-out stone basin very similar to the stone basins used to burn bodies in the tomb at Newgrange. How fitting. “Your family doesn’t by any chance own this crematorium, does it?”

  Saoirse looked surprised. “Yes, in actual fact.”

  How that woman acquired the things she did was a mystery to me. I guess when you’ve been a thief for hundreds of years you can amass quite a treasury. Saoirse led me from the naturally lit lobby toward a door with a large circular carving over it with the three hares, their ears forming a triangle. Within that triangle was the Xepa symbol.

  We entered an adjacent room with a desk and plush wingback chairs, where I presumed the business of death was conducted. Lights were dimmed in the room, as if brightness was an insult to the dead. Maybe it was meant to be soothing to the deceased’s loved ones, but it seemed to me it was a reminder of death, that someone’s light had gone out. It was impossible to imagine Ultana as a soul with light. Her unnaturally long life meant she’d snuffed out countless others.

  It had been just a couple of days since I took that man’s life at Newgrange. Sitting in that place made me nauseated, because all I could imagine was the families of my victims coming into places like this to say good-bye forever.

  Saoirse sent a text to Lorcan that we’d arrived. Moments later, he stepped through the door looking slack and drawn, like air had gone out of him. He hugged his sister, which surprised me. I didn’t have siblings, so really, what did I know of the complexities of their taut banter? Maybe the complicated love between siblings was an inhospitable country I’d never be able to visit or understand. I was thinking that it was nice to see softness from him toward his little sister when he cut his dark eyes to me and nudged her away from him.

  “Let’s talk a moment,” he said to me.

  “Lorcan, really. Not now. Can I see her?” Saoirse asked, perturbed.

  What other reason did he have to want to talk to me if not his mother’s weapon? I wanted to back out the door, be free of the soot of this family that made me feel grimier than I already felt just being an Arrazi.

  I wanted to find Cora and suddenly had the desperate inkling that my prospects for helping her in Ireland were doomed. How was I going to convince potentially dozens, if not more, Arrazi in Ireland to abandon the exaltation and power they’d been promised and to ignore threats of death if they didn’t comply?

  I stuffed my hands into my pockets and kept my eyes steady on Lorcan’s when I replied, “I came to support your sister. We can talk later.”

  Lorcan’s jaw shifted back and forth like he was gnawing on his thoughts. He seemed to reach some kind of frustrated determination as he cocked his head. “Im’a be straight with you, Doyle. Our mother was found dead in a tomb on private land near Newgrange. She had a wound in her stomach from a sizeable blade.” Saoirse gasped. “Clean through,” he added.

  My hands shot up in a gesture of supplication. “I know where you’re going with this. You saw me at Newgrange with your mother’s blade. Are you actually asking if I killed her?”

  Saoirse was staring hard at me; I could see that without meeting her eyes. I could feel the heat of her aura. “I am asking, aye,” Lorcan answered.

  “I did not kill your mother.” It was true. I hadn’t. And I could state this without reservation. She killed herself! I wanted to yell, but I held my tongue.

  “
Do you know what happened? Was there more to the story than you told me?” Saoirse asked.

  Of course. So much more, but how could I tell her what I knew without exposing myself or fostering hatred against Cora? I’d divulged everything about the fight at Newgrange, including killing my uncle. Pretending not to know anything about her mother while she fretted about it would cost me everything I was fighting to achieve. I simply shook my head, yet a new question was forming for me. How did Ultana know to go to the tomb in the first place? I suspected that git human, the driver. He was the only one who seemed connected to both Clancy and Ultana.

  “Had to ask, you know,” Lorcan said, with unsaid thoughts swimming in his eyes.

  “Are police involved?” I asked. “They have their fill of unsolved deaths right now, don’t they?”

  “Of course not,” Lorcan snapped. “We don’t involve them in the deaths we cause. We certainly don’t involve them in our own if we can help it. Papers will say she died at home under natural causes and was cremated. Her lawyer is already on her way here.”

  Saoirse bowed her head behind thin and shaking hands. “I can’t believe this is happening. Can I see her before she’s cremated?”

  “It’s already done,” Lorcan said to her, cold, matter-of-fact.

  The shocked incredulity that passed over Saoirse’s face was understandable. “How could you?” she gasped.

  “We were lucky it was an Arrazi who found her and not someone else or her body’d have been kept in a morgue for just anyone to gawk at and paw over. It had to be done quickly. You know that.”

  “You want me to take you home?” I asked her, but Lorcan refused me, saying that this was a private family matter and they had further business to attend to. His tone irked me, but I half smiled supportively to Saoirse before they disappeared through a door. I sat in the wingback chair in the dim room and waited.

  Moments later, a woman who looked every part the crisp lawyer strode in with a briefcase. I reached out with my energy to feel her aura, detecting her doing the same to me like two strangers brushing against each other on the street. We both nodded, silently acknowledging our shared lineage. She strode through the door where Lorcan and Saoirse had gone, no doubt to stamp the paperwork, making official the demise of her very rich, very powerful, and very dead client.