by Tracy Clark
Scintilla were being hunted.
I was being hunted.
Nausea crawled up my stomach, into my throat. My legs burned as I sprinted across a bridge. My lungs threatened to implode from lack of oxygen. I had to stop. I had to catch my breath. I dared a glance behind me. Giovanni was gone! Throngs of businessmen strolled the sidewalks. I scanned the crowds manically, first for silver, then for the blaze of a red tie, for the flash of a white aura. I had to get off these streets.
Around another corner I saw the most welcome sight in my life: a sign that said Mulcarr’s Pub. I slammed through the doors, and as soon as I saw the sweet face of Uncle Clancy I burst into tears. I fell into his open arms, sobbing incoherently about how some man was after me.
Clancy rubbed my back and clucked, “There, there,” while I sniffled and snorted about being followed. He looked at me with kind, sympathetic eyes and gave my chin a little chuck. “You’re all right now, girl. No one is comin’ after you. Where’s your friend?”
“I-I don’t know. We… I ran, got separated. I don’t know if he’s okay.”
He sat me down in the snug, which was perfect, hidden and insulated from the outside world. “Just you sit there a wee bit. I’ll get Finn from the storeroom to come and gather you up, take you back to the manor.”
I scooted into the corner of the snug, hugged my knees, and tried to calm myself. What was that man doing in Ireland? Did he follow me here? And if he wanted to kill me so badly, what was stopping him? And, would I always be so lucky?
My phone screamed at me from my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number or the name on the screen: M.G.R.I.
I answered in a shaky voice. “Hello?”
For a moment, I heard only breathing on the other end. Then, finally, “Cora. It’s G.”
“Oh my God. Giovanni, are you okay? I thought you were behind me. I lost you. How did you know my full number? I never gave you the last digit.”
“Well, there were only ten options,” he panted. “I’m okay. The man was too close behind us. I deliberately split in another direction from you so he’d follow me, instead. Then I lost him. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“It was him. The killer I saw back home.”
Silence. Then, “I wondered why you seemed to recognize each other.”
“I’d know his face anywhere.”
“Do you know what this means?”
My heart beat out the seconds before he answered his own question. My gut already knew the answer.
“It means he’s after you. He’s following you, too, Cora.”
“Yes. He’s after both of us. He and his…army.”
“Do you think he wants to kill us?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I do. He could easily kill us. I’ve witnessed how easily. And I think he wants to very badly. But he said it’s not what he wants that matters. There’s something stopping him.”
Giovanni and I sat with that, silently sharing the fear. His sigh was full of weight. Then he said, “I don’t like the way he feels.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m paying for the last digit, Cora.”
The door of the snug burst open. Finn dropped to his knees in front of me. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back,” I said and hung up.
Finn held my face in his hands. He placed tiny kisses all over my cheeks, chin, lips, forehead. “You’re okay,” he whispered, though I didn’t know if he was reassuring me or himself. “I should never have let you go with that guy. I’ll find him. I’ll kill him.” His aura flashed with large orbs of deep, bloody red and a darkness bordering on black.
“No, no,” I said. “It wasn’t Giovanni.”
He pulled back and looked at me. “Who then?”
I wanted to tell him everything, to curl myself under the protective umbrella of his love. But this knowledge put people in danger. What if he disappeared like my mother? What if that man killed him? I’d never forgive myself. “It was a strange man, following me. I—I thought I had seen him before.”
Finn searched my face. He held my hands and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I won’t let any harm come to you, Cora. I promise.” I nestled my face into the crook of his neck. He had no idea how little power he had to protect me from this kind of harm, the kind that comes at you out of nowhere, reaches inside, and pulls your soul from its bindings.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said into my hair.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go for cupcakes right now.”
He chuckled and fished a paper from his wallet. “I reckoned if I could help, maybe you wouldn’t need that tall Italian tosser.” He grinned at me. “I wanted to show you that I understand how important finding information on your mum is to you, so I went to the General Register Office. This,” he said, handing me the paper, “is your parents’ marriage license.”
I peered at the paper. There hadn’t been a copy of this in the treasure box. There was my father’s full name, Benito Raul Sandoval. And my mother’s name in Irish, which I couldn’t pronounce, but it did say “Grace” in parentheses. “Oh, Finn, thank you! I can’t believe you did this.”
“Look right here.” He tapped the paper with his tapered finger. “It shows their address at the time of filing.”
I gasped. “Can we—?”
“Way ahead of you. It’s not far from here.”
I pressed the paper to my chest. “Our house. I get to see our house.” I bit my lip but couldn’t hold back my tears. “Thank you, Finn. This means the world to me.”
“Aye, críona. I know it does.”
“What does that word mean?”
He smiled before answering. I thought I saw a blush warm his aura. “My heart.”
Thirty-Eight
T
he drive took on more significance because of where we were headed. Every thatched-roof farmhouse, every rock wall dripping with history, every corner pub and crumbling stone remnant of a building was something my parents and I would have traveled past years ago. These were the roads my parents would have taken to go to work or to the store for bread. These were roads my mother took to come home to us.
Before she didn’t.
Despite the sun, I blew warm air into my cold hands and rubbed them together. The fear hadn’t left me since my encounter on the street, but thinking of what might have happened to my mother only made it worse. Had she also been stalked, taunted, and threatened by a killer? Had someone like him found her but not held back?
The car slowed. Finn turned off the main road onto a narrow lane lined with trees and hedges. He parked in front of a tiny house ringed by a thicket. I grazed my hand over a leaf as we walked. “There are the best blackberry bushes in front of the house down there.” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Finn peered at me curiously. I knew these bushes would soon be dripping with dark, plump berries. But there was no fruit now, only delicate white flowers with a secret inside.
“How did you know?”
“I have no idea. A memory, I guess.” I saw a picture in my mind of a pudgy little hand stained with summer.
We reached a small stone cottage with an eave over a bright red door. “There’s your house,” Finn said, though I knew it already. Whenever I dreamed about a house, even the one I lived in now, it always had a red door. I’d never understood why, until now.
Do houses have memories, too? Can they recall the squeal of a little girl chasing after a grasshopper in the grass? Or the way young lovers gaze at each other over their sleeping newborn? Would this house be able to bring forth the smell of sugar caramelizing on fresh cinnamon rolls? Or the wail of a child sobbing, “I want mommy”?
We approached the stone half-wall surrounding the yard. I stood in front of the red wooden gate, ran my fingers over the weathered iron handle in the shape of a…daisy.
“You want to go to the door and ask if we can look around?”
“Do you think they’d let us?” I asked, taking Finn’s warm
hand in mine.
He gave the door a couple of hearty knocks, and then we waited. We heard only the quiet hum of a late spring day—the rustling of leaves, a dog barking in the distance, an occasional car passing, the zip of an insect on the fly.
“S’pose nobody’s home.”
“Maybe I’ll have a quick peek in the windows.” I walked around the side of the house, trailing my hand along the stone. It wasn’t enough to see the house, I needed to touch it. Around the corner, I found a gleaming window trimmed in white. I cupped my hands around my eyes and, with my forehead pressed to the glass, peeked inside. A bedroom, perhaps a guest room because there were a few boxes, a vacuum, and odds and ends next to the bed that one would throw into a rarely used room. A layer of dust blanketed the items. Did no one live here now? I began to turn away when another image came into view like a holograph overlaid on the scene before me. A crib. A toddler with bright green eyes and black ringlets cascading around her face. Refracted light shimmered in my eye. An orange crystal hanging above the bed, casting rainbows on the walls.
The image vanished. Finn’s hand was at my back. “You okay, luv? You look like you’re seeing ghosts.”
“I am,” I said. “My own.”
“That’s a right eerie thing to say.”
“Wasn’t it you, telling me about the ghosts in Ireland?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood despite the disquiet on my skin.
“Aye. I did say that. Thank you for making it oh-so-real for me. Look at my arms!” Goose bumps sprinkled over his skin, and I smoothed my hand down his arm.
We walked around the back of the house into a lovely cottage garden. Along the entire length of the back wall spread row upon row of daisies, thousands of them. Another flash of a picture in my mind. My mother on her knees, planting, a long black braid down her back.
Pieces of my family lingered here. I had no idea why I could see the memories, but I was glad not to feel the awful sting and burn of a mark forming on my body. I had no idea why it happened at some times and not others.
Maybe, I thought, what marks us are our peak emotional moments—either scarring us or setting us free. Either way, none of us get out unmarked. My marks were just more literal.
“Was it good to have brought you?” he asked, concerned. “You look affected.”
Unnerved, I looked around with a strong impression of being exposed, like there were eyes on us. “I am affected. I feel tender here. Ireland is a—a thin place.”
Finn nodded, seeming to know what I meant. “Aye. The veil between worlds is thinner here.”
“Exactly.” I turned to him. “I will love you my whole life for doing this for me.”
We held hands and listened to John Lee Hooker as we drove. “Did you ever get in trouble for breaking your mom’s bracelet?” I asked, running my fingers over his wrist and recalling the intensity of that afternoon together and the powerful desire between us when we kissed in my room. I’d never felt emotions so all-consuming. It had felt like both the beginning and the end. Finn had said good-bye the very next day.
He smiled with a nonchalant shrug. “It’s not like I broke the bracelet on purpose. Mom’s odd. She was superstitious about them. Thought the crystals would keep me from being vulnerable to the negative energy of other people.”
“I’ve heard of crystals doing that. I’d like to know more about it. She’s tight-lipped about her interest, though. I’m guessing she’s more into New Age stuff than she lets on.”
His quick look made me wonder if I’d crossed the line. This time I didn’t care. She’d taken my aura. If that wasn’t crossing a line, I didn’t know what was.
“Hey, I need to check in with Mari and Dun. I promised I’d call. Maybe they’ll know if my father is on his way here yet.”
“You think he can find you?” Finn asked.
“He won’t stop until he does. And he’ll obviously think I’m with you.” Uncertainty crept in. “Truth is, I know I have to face him sometime. I’d just rather it be after I find out the secrets he’ll never tell me himself.”
“I dunno. Maybe it’s better for the heavy secrets to ride on the shoulders of those who are strong enough to carry them.” Finn grew quiet after that. We both did.
A short time later, he bypassed the turn into Dublin.
“I don’t want to go to your house.”
My body slammed into the seat as Finn stepped hard on the gas. “You had a strange man following you today.” He peered hard into the rearview mirror and cursed to himself. “Maybe that and the stories of your mum have made me paranoid, but I think the black van behind us has been following since we left the cottage.”
My hands squeezed the armrests. In the side mirror, I saw a van trailing close behind, even as Finn sped up. “Are you sure it’s been there the whole time?”
“No,” he said, making a sharp left turn. “But I’m not about to let them follow us to the manor, and I’m not going to let you out of my sight.”
The tires screeched as we made a few abrupt turns and pulled onto a quiet, tree-lined road. The van was no longer behind us. He eased up on the gas, and we both sighed with relief, though I realized I was still biting my lip.
“Now tell me why you don’t want to come to my house.”
I fidgeted with my scarf. “Your parents make me uncomfortable.” There. I said it. Well, part of it anyway. I kept my eyes fixed on the mirror.
“My da said they’ll be going out tonight. It will be just us. I promise to steer them away from you as much as possible. One more night? I can’t bear to end things the way we did.”
I nodded my agreement and dared a look at him. “I know. I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again and that would be your last memory of me. Of us.”
“I was jealous. I’m not going to say I like your peculiar attachment to that chap, but it was wrong of me to doubt you.”
At the manor, he showed me to a small sitting room on the first floor where I could use the phone in private. He backed toward the door and shut it behind him.
Mari: Dun wants to know, “How’s my girl?”
Me: Tell him I said peachy.
Dun from afar: Excellent.
Mari: How’s the sleuthing going?
Me: I saw my childhood home today, and the church where my parents were married. And I’ve got my mother’s journal.
Mari: Anything on your mom?
Me: Some. Kinda. I’m going to try to find a doctor she mentioned in her notes, and I met someone who’s been helping me. I wish I had more to tell you.
Mari: I don’t know what you expected. It’s not like there’d be signs pointing the way to her grave.
Me: Can you maybe try to filter yourself once in a while?
Mari: Sorry. So here’s the scoop. Mami Tulke said your father is on his way to Ireland. I don’t know exactly when his plane arrives, so prepare yourself. You probably only have a few hours before he gets there.
Me, with a pounding heart: Okay. Thanks. Love you guys.
Hearing their voices made me miss them even more. I wanted to call Giovanni as well since I had cut him off when Finn came into the snug. I started to dial, but Fergus knocked quietly on the door and peeked in.
My fingers poised above the keypad. I thought they were gone for the evening. “Hi,” I said cheerfully. Maybe too cheerfully. My neck heated. Finn’s dad had talked about me like I was a bottle of rare wine he wanted to sample. I stood behind a chair and grasped the edges. I swear, I’d bash it over his head before I let him take from me.
He tripped on thin air as he walked in the room. He still seemed so sketchy around me, and his nervousness was infectious. Why would he be scared of me?
“Touching base back home?” he asked.
“Yes. The required check-in.”
He smiled. “Wish we’d had more of those when Finn was in America. But I’m glad he met you.”
“Why?” Fergus looked surprised at my question. I was as surprised I had asked it. “I mean—I know you didn’t
want him to date yet.”
“Perhaps we were waiting for him to meet someone like you,” he said.
“Your wife doesn’t seem to agree.”
“Like all mothers, she’s protective.”
“Am I really a threat?”
’Cause I seriously couldn’t be the dangerous one. I wasn’t hovering over their bodies while they slept, siphoning off them for a hit of bliss. My fists clenched and I found myself throwing out the question I most wanted answered. “Mr. Doyle, how can I be the dangerous one when Ina took energy from me? Please, tell me what you know about me. It’s why I came to Ireland: to find out everything I can about…about Scintilla.” There, I’d said it, and it became even more real.
He cocked his head, his surprise evident. “Your parents never told you?”
“No. Nothing. I knew I was…different. I didn’t know why until I came here.”
“Does Finn know?”
Guilt again. “No.”
One finger pointed at the ceiling, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Finn came in the room. “I’m afraid I’ll have to steal the pleasure of Cora’s company from you, Da.” He gave his father a funny little bow. “If you’ll excuse us,” he said, winking and kissing my hand in a formal, gentlemanly way. “Don’t you have a date to go on?”
Fergus nodded, mumbled something incoherent, and watched me in this confounded way as Finn steered me from the room, honoring his promise to keep us apart when I most wanted to hear what his dad was about to say.
Thirty-Nine
A
hundred candles.
There had to be at least a hundred candles in the library, shimmering against the windows, reflecting in the mirrors, scattered among the shelves and tables.
I gasped. “It’s beautiful, Finn.”
The full moon shone through the large picture window in the library like a polished alabaster plate. Finn and I gazed at it while leaning arm against arm at the open window. The back of his fingers brushed mine.
“I once read that the author Karen Blixen would curtsy to every full moon,” I told him.