Illuminate

by Tracy Clark

  I sighed. “Not very many. Maybe just three of us now.” Dun and I met eyes, and I knew we were both thinking of the loss of my mother. I fingered the scrap of tartan tied around my wrist that Finn gave me from Mom’s grave and my heart gave a lurch—both for my mother and for Finn. “Guess I should start at the beginning…”

  Edmund drove on as I recounted my story. He’d been one of the resources I’d consulted to learn about energy, and my father obviously watched his show for more than entertainment value. Edmund might have knowledge that could help me. I kept scanning the roads and skies while I talked, and he listened intently, occasionally jerking his face toward me with a look of incredulity. “For a guy who believes in aliens and crop circles, you’re looking mighty shocked by some of this.”

  “I think this is the biggest conspiracy ever perpetrated in our world, particularly the part about Jesus. I’m over the moon that you thought to snap a picture of the hidden painting. From what you’re telling me, though, this goes further back than Jesus. Some of the ancient carvings are thousands of years before his time. I’ve covered some of those mysteries on my show. If you can finally answer questions that have been posed for millennia, you could wake up the whole of civilization to a new truth.”

  We pulled over at a roadside petrol station and convenience store, and Edmund ran in while we waited in the car. We were parked right in front and watched him closely through the windows for any sign that he was texting or calling someone. How could I truly know he’d not sell me out? I did believe he wanted my story for himself, but his words were ringing in my ears. I didn’t want to be some kind of New Age prophet. It was hard to believe the truth would end the carnage. I had the sinking feeling it would be a starting gun for more.

  “Think we can trust him?” Dun asked, breaking the silence.

  “I’m not sure we have a choice,” I said, reaching over the seat for the reassurance of his hand. He gave mine a squeeze. “My allies keep dying on me, and within hours the whole world will be talking about what happened, stalking the girl who brought children back from the dead.” I hung my head in my hands and massaged my aching temples. “I can’t hide.”

  “Even if they’re not behind the conspiracy as a whole, the church has a lot of reasons to be terrified of you,” Edmund said, sliding back into the car and into the conversation. He had three bags of food and drinks and set them in the backseat. Dun rifled through and handed me a sandwich. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were happy to see you dead,” Edmund added.

  “Why do you say that?” “Why” had been the elusive cog in the mystery. With the key and the clues I’d pieced together, I felt sure I was closing in on my “who,” but the cardinal’s reasons were unknown.

  “Think about it. The church would never want the public to know that Jesus was a Scintilla, but worse, that he wasn’t the only one. You said you think his mother was one, too. They wouldn’t want that truth out because that would mean there are many saviors among us. And if there are, why go to religious organizations at all?”

  “They could lose everything—influence, power, money. Lots of money,” Dun astutely stated.

  Edmund seemed lost in thought, but then he said, “‘These things I do, you can do also.’”

  “I always wondered about that line,” Dun said. “I wonder how many dumbasses in history have tried to walk on water because of it.”

  Dun got a small grin out of me. “But they’re not trying to kill the Arrazi, and the Arrazi also have powers if they’ve taken from a Scintilla. They’re seemingly working hand in hand with each other. Why? Why aren’t they threatened by the Arrazi? Seems to me the Arrazi don’t need to take threats from anybody.”

  “Maybe it’s not what’s being held over the Arrazi’s head,” Edmund said. “Maybe it’s what’s being dangled in front of them. Maybe it’s what’s being promised.”

  Dun tapped my shoulder and handed me a bag of candy like a proper best friend. “Seems to me they got them some supernatural henchmen,” he said.

  I nodded. “Of course. Use the Arrazi to exterminate us and then,” I bit my lip. “God, the awful things someone could do with an Arrazi army.” Horrific acts, worse than the ones I’d seen in the visions from the key, that’s what awaited humanity if Arrazi had free reign.

  “If this goes back as far and as deep as you say,” Edmund said, “then those who control the masses have always been threatened by the Scintilla.”

  “The images I got from the key were gruesome: people burned at the stake or hung, mothers with babies in their arms, shot and left on the ground. Whole villages destroyed.” The car was quiet as the images floated around us. “I met a man today in St. Peter’s Basilica—Cardinal Báthory. He is connected somehow with Xepa. Whether he’s just a member of the secret society or in charge of it, I don’t know. But interestingly, he works for an office that used to be known as The Inquisition.”

  I’d wanted to look it up when Professor Salamone had first said it, so I used Edmund’s phone to search the Inquisition. I read aloud what Wikipedia had to say:

  “… many persons of both sexes, heedless of their own salvation and forsaking the Catholic faith, give themselves over to devils male and female, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurings, and by other abominable superstitions and sortileges…”

  “Sortileges. That’s what we call our abilities. It’s unreal to think they might have been hunting for us plain as day back then.”

  “And calling you witches,” Dun said. “Nice spin.”

  Edmund became very animated, waving one hand while he spoke, like I’d seen him do on TV when my father watched his show. It was weird to see it in person. “It’s how they discredit. Slap a label on what’s different. Call anyone with an extraordinary ability a witch, a heretic, a nutcase. Except, oddly enough, one man in history who clearly had extraordinary abilities. Perhaps Jesus’s fame outgrew their capacity to contain it. Even in my arena, the New Age community has been discredited, ridiculed, and shamed because we dare to investigate the extraordinary in the universe. Make it wrong or crazy or a sin to ask questions so people won’t believe something other than their dogma. The Inquisition even had their mitts on Galileo at one point for doing that very thing: questioning their layout of the universe. And he was right!”

  “Galileo’s tomb is with Dante’s and Michelangelo’s,” I said. “Makes sense that he’d be on their list if he knew about the Scintilla and Arrazi. Galileo gave them the finger, though. Well, three fingers to be exact. The number three has been a huge part of this saga, I just don’t know exactly what its meaning is.”

  “Three is the mystery come from the Great One, hear and light on thee will dawn.”

  My jaw dropped. “My mother said that once.”

  He nodded. “From the Emerald Tablets written between the sixth and eight centuries. Alchemists, including Newton, revered it. Three is a very mystical number, and not just in the Emerald Tablets. Some say it’s the perfect number as it gives rise to all others. The number three is supposed to represent the soul, and is thought to symbolize overcoming or transcending duality.”

  “Duality?”

  “Yeah. I think we’re walking now in the garden of good and evil. Eve didn’t fall because of knowledge. She fell because she bought into the duality. She fell because she believed in our separateness. The knowledge of good and evil are an example of dualism. We’ve forgotten our oneness.”

  Edmund had been driving on the twisted highways of Italy, though I had no idea what direction we were headed as the sun had already set when we were leaving Rome. He seemed to be looking for something out the windows as we drove and soon pulled the car over when he spotted a gothic church.

  “Why?” I asked, anxiety riding up my spine. “I don’t think this is the safest—”

  “I want to go in and get a bible. Be right back,” Edmund said.

  Dun opened the back door. “Oh no you don’t. How do we know you’re not contacting the Vatican?” he asked him.


  Edmund leaned forward with an irritated sigh. “If you watched my show at all, or read any of my many books, you’d know that organized religion and I—particularly the Vatican—don’t exactly see eye to eye. Come with me if you like, but your mug was filmed at that scene, too, and you’re not the most inconspicuous guy around. Look at you, all Dances with Wolves. Neither of you should be seen.” He cocked his head and smiled. “That’s just my opinion. Here, keep the keys if you’re worried,” he said, tossing the keys to me through the window. “Be right back.”

  We watched him spring up the stairs and enter the church. Both Dun and I stared at the large double doors, waiting for Edmund to come out. He did, just moments later, carrying a red bible with gold-leaf pages. He handed it to me and buckled up. “There’re some passages niggling at me. I wanted to take a look since cell coverage has been so spotty. There are things I want to look up in the noncanonical gospels as well.”

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked, remembering the moment in Christ Church when Giovanni showed me a bible passage saying there “was a natural body and a spiritual body.” “My friend Giovanni showed me a passage from Ezekiel,” I said, suddenly feeling a fresh wave of wishing he were with us. “It spoke of light over the living, shining like awe-inspiring crystal, spread out above their heads.”

  Edmund had recited the last part with me. “I’m familiar with it. Quoted it in one of my books about auras. Sometimes the truth is hiding in plain sight. The more I think about it, the more I believe there are passages, particularly about Jesus Christ, that support what you’ve told me.”

  “You’ve already got your worldwide exclusive special spinning in your head, don’t you?” Dun said with a smile. “Complete with bible quotes and everything.”

  “Help me get safely to my grandmother’s house in Chile,” I said, venturing to trust him further. “And then we’ll talk. I’ll do your interview. It’s high time for the world to hear my truth. Even if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to make that happen. Hope you have some thick skin,” Edmund said, patting my arm. “The world loves to exalt people before they shoot them down.”

  “Or nail them to a cross,” Dun said, oh so helpfully.

  “They may take me down. In fact, I think it’s likely. My being alive right now is a freaking miracle.” Steely resolve hardened my core. “But they won’t take me down without a fight. First, I will sling some arrows of my own. I have a right to exist. I have a right to be who I am without fear. They should be afraid of me. Truth can be a sharp spear.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Finn

  My da greeted me when I arrived. “Whose car is that?” he asked, holding the door open and peering past me at Saoirse’s wheels. “Saoirse Lennon’s,” I answered with a glance at the sopping clouds that looked soon to bust open all over her gleaming Mercedes.

  “I heard about her mother,” he said, one brow rising in a way that suggested relief, like hearing that the rabid neighborhood dog had been dutifully put down. “Do they suspect you were there when she died?”

  We walked inside, and I followed my nose to the dining room. “I think Lorcan does, and now he’s planted that seed in his sister’s mind. I hope I’ve deflected their suspicion.”

  “You know about Rome, I reckon. I’ve been watching the news since.”

  “Aye.” I collapsed in a chair at the dining room table. My father poured two halfers of whiskey and handed me one. “Sláinte,” he said, raising the glass to his lips and downing it in one gulp. It was good to see him and felt good to be treated like an adult, an equal.

  “Damn glad to have you back, Da.”

  “Uisce beatha,” he said as a toast.

  Water of Life.

  “Suppose that phrase actually meant water originally?” I asked, lifting the amber liquid to my lips.

  “Why not?” he asked. “The world is wholly made up of it, as are our bodies.”

  I tapped my fingers on the table in a familiar guitar series. “For us, it’s not water. It’s souls.”

  He looked down and pursed his lips together. “I see your point.”

  Time wore on, smoothed out in the way it often did when I sat with my father. He excelled at warm silence. It allowed me to voice what could only bubble up if given enough space. “I’m scared for her.” Just saying that made my throat swell uncomfortably.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “It changes everything. It won’t do to question why she did it. Speaks to the kind of person she is.”

  I nodded. “Aye, it does.”

  “But that lass is in more peril now than she ever was. The world is fit to tear shreds of her for keepsakes.”

  A groan pushed from me. Mary entered with plates. The smell of her delectable beef stew wafted around us, and I was hit with the remembrance of the night I spotted Cora in Ireland after I thought I might never see her again. We had enjoyed beef stew with Clancy. My chest tightened with the memory. The bastard had known who and what she was all along.

  No longer able to eat, I pushed my plate away. “Sorry, Mary…I…”

  Their gazes pressed on my back as I left supper and went to bed.

  Before sunup, I was back in the hidden room. Since I could hardly sleep, I began a fresh round on the flow chart I’d drawn and had left lying on the table before Saoirse had arrived yesterday. What she’d whispered in the car ate at me. Halfway home, I was convinced she was right. It was time for us to ally and do things differently. Wasn’t this what I’d been after? She was playing right into my plans.

  But the farther away from Saoirse I got, the less convinced I became. I was sure I was right about the Two of Cups, and when my father mentioned “water of life” I couldn’t deny the surety settling on my bones. That card dropped for me because it truly meant the “reconciliation of opposites,” and when I connected the dots I felt certain that the “water of life” was a metaphor and that, in every historical sense, meant something much more vital than water. I was developing a crude theory that likely couldn’t be proved, but it was more than I’d had at the start.

  Our soul’s energy was the water of life.

  By midday, I was neck deep in family records. The history of my family was interesting, to be sure, but there was no history that would quench my need if it didn’t have to do with what we were. I came across a captivating diary from an ancestor named Gillian Mulcarr in the 1880s titled: A True and Faithful Account, by Gillian Mulcarr. My throat constricted as I read her anguished story of turning, of the horror of what she was, and how God would never forgive her. At the back of the book were odd tally marks I could only assume were her kills.

  I carefully put the papers and Gillian’s diary back in the drawer and shut it with a force born of frustration, my fists clenching on top of the wooden cabinet. Cora’s face shone in my mind. Helping her was my only redemption. She was all I could think about.

  My phone rang with an unfamiliar number. “Hello?”

  “Finn, it’s Cora.”

  “Jaysus, luv! Are you all right?” My heart went from zero to warp speed in one second. “I saw the news. Where the devil are—”

  “I can’t tell you where I am, only that I’m trying to…to get to…”

  “I know.” I understood why she didn’t want to say it aloud. Even now, she wanted to protect others. God, it was good to hear her voice, to know she was safe. “I’ll come to you, if you need me.” The words tumbled out unsolicited. True.

  “Dun is with me.”

  So, he’d found her. I was glad. When he came to me with the notion of secretly following her, I was 100 percent on board, funded it in fact. “Grand,” I said. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

  “I just wanted you to know I’m okay. And I have a favor to ask… Get ahold of them for me, if you can. I left the number and address in the top drawer in the tower. Please, tell them I’m all right.”

  “I will. Listen, I have something really important to show y
ou.”

  “I don’t see how that’s gonna happen.”

  The sarcastic point to her voice sent shockwaves of longing through me. I missed everything about her, including her edges. “This is big, Cora. Fookin’ major.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I have something you need to—to get your hands on.”

  “How major?” Before I answered, she said, “You know it’s unlikely I’ll ever step foot on Irish soil again.”

  I closed my eyes and willed myself to take a breath and then another. What she was saying was more than she might never come back to Ireland, might never have a reason; she was saying she might not live to return. “I’ll—I’ll find you. I’ll bring it to you.” Even as I said it, I had no earthly clue how I’d be able to conceal the cover of the Book of Kells and smuggle it out of Ireland to Chile. Plus, I’d not want to lead anyone to her if—if she made it safely there. Dear Lord, let her make it safely there.

  “We both know you shouldn’t do that.”

  As we hung in the space between heartbeats, I noticed the triangle I’d drawn in the dust atop the bureau when my mom first brought me in the room. A radical notion overtook me and I drew a hexagram next to that, and the Xepa symbol—two triangles joined at their tips—next to that. A realization so potent struck the air from me. “Of course!” I whispered and opened my mouth to explain.

  “Finn, I have to go.”

  “Push the Xepa triangles together, luv.” I was certain I was absolutely right. An inner joint snapped into place, the cogs slid together. But before I could explain my idea, she was gone, and miles of dead air stood between us.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Giovanni

  I’d had all afternoon and night to catch my breath from meeting the Italian clairvoyant. I’d learned his name, Raimondo, and intended to speak further with him about what he foresaw with the Arrazi but more specifically why he’d looked upon my daughter with such troubled eyes.

  My heart clenched with anxiety. Would I ever leave all of these people to protect her? There was enough fairness in me to understand by asking that one question of myself, that I had no idea the choices my parents faced. I couldn’t condemn them, though the questions kept me up the entire night. He said he’d foreseen the death of my entire family, including me. Yet, I survived. Destiny must be a fluid thing, if it existed at all. I wondered who’d made the one choice that changed mine.