by Cate Tiernan
“It always hurts at first, but then you get used to it.” He shot me a laughing glance, and I rolled my eyes. “Let me know if you need me to rub you down.” His voice was light, but the look in his deep golden eyes was hot and full of thrilling promise. I quickly turned away, double-checking my stirrup strap so I wouldn’t drop to the ground and beg him to take me. That kind of thing makes a girl seem easy. Especially the begging part.
When I could finally control my face, Reyn was pulling a sword from a sheath.
“Again with the sword,” I groaned.
“Yes,” he said. “Again with the sword. And look what I brought, just for you.” Reaching into his saddle pack, he pulled out a finer, thinner sword, maybe half the weight of the one I’d used last time. A girl sword. He presented it to me with a pleased look.
I took it. It was an épée, beautiful, inlaid with gold filigree. It looked quite old but had been so finely made that age hadn’t touched it. Much like myself. It fit my hand as if I’d commissioned it, instantly becoming a seamless extension of my arm. I gave it an experimental swish.
“Some guys just give flowers,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, and when whapping your bouquet against some enemy’s head doesn’t strike him down, don’t come running to me,” Reyn said. He swung his own sword into position. “En garde.”
After an hour, I was practically weak with hunger—it was well past lunch—my arms were floppy foam approximations of their former selves, and my legs would never forgive me. The next day was going to be such a bummer. The palms of my hands were already blistered, I was tired and dirty, and my lungs burned from exercise. I felt so… alive. For the first time in—I couldn’t remember when. I thought of my amulet, whole and complete, in my hidey-hole in my room, and thought, My life is not too bad right now.
And that unfamiliar feeling lasted several more minutes, until we arrived back at River’s Edge and found total pandemonium: All the windows on the first floor had been blown out.
CHAPTER 9
It was one of those situations where you’re glad you weren’t on the Titanic, because look what happened. I was glad I’d been far away in the woods, so there was no way this could be pinned on me. Unless it had been aimed at me. In which case that was bad.
Reyn took the horses while I rushed to the house. Every single window on the first floor was shattered, their tall frames gaping. Glass and wood shards littered the yard. Rachel and Daisuke were wrapping large pieces in newspaper; Charles and Anne were raking up everything around the house, the four inches of leaves making that chore so much worse. After thinking a second, I ran and got our big rolly garbage bin. It was almost as big as me, but the wheels made it easier to push across the yard. My palms still burned from sword practice—as soon as I had a minute I would go in and slap Band-Aids all over them.
“Thanks—good thinking,” Rachel said, and started filling it.
“What in the world happened?” I asked.
“It was during the circle,” Anne said tensely, dumping a cardboard box of leaves and glass into the trash bin. She took the empty box and began to refill it. At this rate, we should have the area around the house spick and span by, like, August.
River came around the corner of the house. She looked harried and concerned but seemed relieved to see me.
“Nastasya!” She gave me a hug. “Are you all right? This whole thing happened, and no one could find you. I was worried this was part of something worse, and that you’d been hurt.”
“Oh no, I’m fine,” I stammered.
“Then we realized Reyn was gone, too,” Brynne said, trying not to smirk. She wiped sweat off her forehead with one gloved hand. I shot her a look behind River’s back, and she stifled a hint of a smile behind her worried expression.
“Reyn made me go for a ride,” I said, throwing him under the bus.
“I’m glad you’re both all right,” said River. “Get yourself a pair of the leather work gloves so you don’t cut yourself. God’s wounds, what a mess.” She hurried off toward Reyn, who had reappeared with a snow shovel and a tarp to pile leaves on.
“God’s what?” Brynne asked.
I remembered that Brynne was only around 230 years old. “God’s wounds,” I said. “I haven’t heard that in centuries. People said it in the fifteen hundreds. All the swears were God’s teeth, God’s wounds, God’s eyes, God’s blood. God’s wounds became zounds. You’ve heard that one, right?”
“Yeah.” Brynne straightened and looked around the yard. “This is going to take forever.”
“Yeah,” I echoed. “Maybe someone could put a spell on the glass pieces and, like, make them levitate or something?”
Brynne rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”
“There’s that word again,” I muttered, and she laughed.
The trash bin was almost full now. Charles came and took it, saying, “I’ll dump this down the well and bring it back.” River had an old well that had gone dry. We often dumped trash down it, then set the trash on fire. It was about half-filled.
River came back toward us, looking pretty dispirited. “We’ve got some plywood in the barn to board up some of the windows, but Daniel and Reyn are going to the hardware store to get more. I guess I need to call a window company to get all of these replaced. How am I going to explain it?” She brushed a lock of silver hair off her forehead, leaving a faint streak of dirt.
“Science experiment gone wrong?” Brynne suggested. “Or frat party?”
“Seriously, though, what happened?” I asked.
River sighed. “We were having a circle in the front parlor. We wanted to try to find some bigger picture, see some sort of pattern of magick out in the world. It was all going fine—we were very strong, very powerful. And just as something was starting to take shape”—she frowned, as if trying to remember—“it all suddenly went weirdly, awfully awry. I couldn’t even say what it was, but we looked at one another, each of us filled with dread and confusion. I was about to suggest dismantling the circle—and then all the windows blew out, not just the parlor ones. But everything inside is fine.”
“That’s really weird.” I felt self-conscious, still feeling like I’d brought all this here.
“To put it mildly,” River said.
“Okay, do you need anything besides a ton of plywood?” Daniel asked, walking up and jingling the truck keys. Reyn was with him—he looked serious and distant, a big contrast to how he’d been on our ride and during my sword lesson.
“Who’s that?” Brynne shaded her eyes and gazed toward the driveway leading to the gravel parking area.
I looked where she pointed and saw a tall, raggedy-looking character heading toward the house, a bag slung over his shoulder, like an old-fashioned hobo.
“Why…” River’s voice trailed off. Astonishment widened her eyes, and her mouth dropped open.
“Whoa,” said Daniel.
The tall man saw us in the side yard and headed toward us. River murmured, “What’s his name now?”
Daniel shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said quietly. “It’s been fifteen years or more since I saw him.”
Behind me, I heard Reyn’s quickly indrawn breath. His face was set in stone, his eyes narrowed. His chest rose and fell quickly as he stared at the stranger. What was that about?
River shoved her gloves at me and rushed at the man. “Tesoro!” she said, throwing her arms around him.
Darling? Okay, so maybe he was another one of her lost souls, come back for a refresher. This close I could see he appeared in sore need of rehab: His clothes were tattered; he looked hungry and in need of a shower. His face was hard and tough, his eyes bleak, as if he’d seen awful things and hadn’t gotten over them. Had maybe been the cause of them. I shivered, glad that I was standing in a group of people and not meeting this guy in a dark alley at night.
The man returned her hug, but tentatively, as if his ribs hurt. Pulling back, he gave her a crooked grin, but even from twenty feet away I saw
that it didn’t reach his eyes.
He held River away from him, looking at her as if to memorize her face.
“Joshua,” he told her.
“Joshua,” River repeated. “My dear. I’m so glad to see you.” She hugged him again and he put up with it, biding his time until she stopped.
“Come, caro,” River said, leading him toward us. He followed slowly, his eyes running over us, but then he stopped so suddenly that River jolted, his hand clasped in hers.
I followed his gaze; it ran straight to Reyn. Glancing at them, I saw they looked eerily similar, with anger flushing their cheeks, their eyes narrowed and mean, hands clenched into fists at their sides.
“So,” River said, letting out her breath in a sigh, “I take it you two know each other?”
As it turned out, Joshua was the third grumpy bear in the River’s Brothers Collection. Was she the only one who had inherited a pleasant disposition?
Our dinner table was filling up with people and yet not exactly a gathering of light and lively conversation. Talk so far had been quiet and brief: pass the salt, how’s your cut?, and so on. At this time of year, dinnertime was always dark, but today it seemed claustrophobic because the windows were boarded up; the large, ugly plywood panels screwed into place, chill wind seeping around their edges. Solis had lit fires in all the fireplaces downstairs because the radiators couldn’t keep up.
River, Daniel, and Ott were happy to see Joshua but also clearly shocked. Whether it was his appearance or just the fact that he was here, I didn’t know. Also, they seemed to treat him tenderly, as if he were damaged in some way. Joshua himself looked tense and uncomfortable. He reminded me a lot of Reyn; a wild thing at heart, better suited to being outside and unconfined in any way. Sounds like a recipe for the perfect boyfriend, right? Someone who can’t settle down? God help me.
Speaking of Reyn, he and Josh hadn’t looked at each other since that first furious glance outside. They sat as far away from each other at the table as possible, and acted as if the other didn’t exist. Veerrrry interesting.
Also very interesting was watching how Brynne watched Joshua, speculation in her brown eyes. Had Daniel fallen from favor so quickly? Was Brynne that self-destructive? Even clueless me could see that Joshua was an even worse romantic prospect than Reyn was.
Halfway through the meal, River sat up straighter and said: “Reyn, you and Joshua obviously recognized each other outside. What’s the past history between you two?”
There was a tightening awareness all along the table as eyes focused on them and people quit chewing to pay attention.
Joshua said nothing, just looked at his plate and cut his meat into ever smaller pieces, like it was the liver of his enemy.
Reyn shot him a quick glance, and that alone was enough to make his face darken ominously. But all he did was shrug, mumbling something that no one could understand. He wasn’t going to tell us anything. Gosh, guys are so fascinating and mysterious! It was such fun. I made a note to myself not to stand in between them—it seemed likely that they would suddenly try to kill each other for no reason. Or no reason that we knew, anyway.
“Joshua, what brings you to River’s Edge?” Brynne’s voice was calm and clear, her eyes expectant.
Joshua, startled, actually glanced at her. Of the four siblings, he looked the most different: His hair was medium brown and streaked by the sun, his face tanned and a bit weathered, where Daniel and Ottavio were both more groomed. Ottavio’s eyes were black. Daniel’s and River’s were a lighter, clear brown, like tobacco juice, but Joshua’s were tortoiseshell, marbled brown and green and blue.
Brynne waited, her gaze fixed on him.
Joshua looked around the table until he saw me. He nodded in my direction, then returned to his meal, eating deliberately as if forcing himself not to wolf it down.
Me again. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” I muttered, putting my fork down.
“Not really, no,” Reyn said with a cold cynicism. “Not quite.”
Joshua’s eyes lit with quick fury, and I held my breath because it seemed like something awful was about to happen.
River put her wineglass down hard. “There’s dried-apple pie for dessert,” she said, but she made it sound like a threat.
“I’ll help you,” said Daisuke, starting to gather plates. The weird mood was broken, or at least tamped down. But we were all left wondering what the hell was going on.
“Nastasya, wait.” I paused at the top of the stairs as River caught up with me. Her face was drawn, and she looked tired. Tired of having grouchy siblings, I bet. “Slipping upstairs? What, you don’t feel like having a fireside chat with my family?” she asked, humor lightening her lines of tension.
“Gosh, no thank you,” I said. She chuckled, then grew more serious as she reached out and smoothed my hair off my shoulder, touching the fine wool scarf looped around my neck. She nodded down the hall. “Let’s go to your room.”
In my room I sat on my bed, but it was difficult—I itched to circle restlessly, trying to outpace the jumble of thoughts careening inside my head. The arrival of yet another brother, here because of how deeply dangerous I supposedly was, had shaken me. Ottavio was bad enough, then Daniel, now Joshua.
River hadn’t said anything, and I looked up. She sat next to me, wearing her patient face.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that the idea had continued to slowly build inside me, even before Daniel offered to pay me to leave. But yes, in one bright insight I saw that it would be far better for me to leave here, to quit drawing negative attention to this place of healing and respite. I should leave; I should take my amulet and—
Then I realized what she had done: read my face. This time before the thought was even on my face.
“Goddamn it,” I said, and she laughed. “You’re just creepy now.”
“I keep telling you: Your face is a map,” she said, holding up her hands. “Ooh, we should have poker night, and with high stakes.”
“Oh, ha ha,” I said. I leaned over and turned the knob on my radiator to take the chill off the room. I did want to leave and knew she would talk me out of it. Time to change the subject. “So. You have to have all the windows replaced.”
River nodded, looking serious again. “It was truly strange. It was… scary. We had raised so much good power, and I’d really hoped to get some answers. I want to know who the master is that Innocencio mentioned. I want to know who was controlling him.”
I fiddled with the ends of my scarf. “It’s because of me. If I weren’t here, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“I don’t know that,” River insisted. “I have no idea why our circle went wrong—we have to figure that out. But one thing I do know is that… you’re not really strong enough to be out in the world on your own.” Her voice was gentle.
I wanted to disagree with her, so wanted to be a strong, together person who wouldn’t be a liability, who could be trusted to set off into the world with only good things ahead. But with humbling honesty I had to admit that River was right—I wasn’t strong enough to be out in the world by myself. I wasn’t solid enough to be able to fight darkness and resist temptation.
“Whatever,” I muttered, and she patted my knee, satisfied.
“I do have a suggestion,” she said.
If it was another meditation circle, I was going to scream.
“I suggest that you find a larger project to occupy yourself with,” she said. “I know you’re studying, and that’s good. But I’ve found it’s also good to have a larger focus, to work toward something outside yourself.”
I frowned. “Like what? Macramé?”
“No. Bigger. Something like…” River looked thoughtful. “Training a new horse? We could get one that’s just for you. Or… the horse barn needs painting. We have ladders and everything. You’d need to scrape it first. Or we could give you your own plot of land, for whatever
kind of garden you wanted.” She seemed to warm up to this idea. “Like an old-fashioned herb garden, with knots made of boxwood! We could put a fountain in the middle. By the time it’s ready for planting, it’ll be warm enough. That could be really fun.”
I was trying not to stick my fingers down my throat at these suggestions. River was only trying to help.
“Okay, well, think about it,” she said, standing up. “But in summary: leaving, no; project, yes. Right?”
“Could you write that down for me?”
Smiling, she leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll tattoo it on your butt while you sleep.”
“I wouldn’t be able to see that!” I called as she slipped out my door. I heard one final chuckle as the door closed, and then I was left alone with my thoughts.
And I’d forgotten to get her to speculate about what was going on between Reyn and Joshua.
CHAPTER 10
There are books written about the known history of immortals. Every once in a while one makes it into some rare book auction, where it’s treated as a fascinating work of fiction. It’s common knowledge that quite a few books are in hidden libraries in some of the oldest monasteries around the world. The scuttlebutt is that the monks know it’s all true, but are keeping mum until they figure out how we fit in with God and the hereafter and salvation and whatnot. We’re, like, keep us posted.
Over the centuries, I’d seen books written by immortals. I mean, of course, there are many immortals who are writing current bestsellers and cookbooks and children’s books, etc. (No, I’m not giving up names.) (Though you would no doubt recognize them.) But I mean books about immortals. I myself have never actually read one written by an immortal. Part of the whole keep-my-head-in-the-sand plan that I’ve clung to for so long.
But no more! New Alert Nastasya was hunkered down in the workroom this morning, poring over a weighty tome called The Hause of Morcroft. It was from 1679, badly typeset, and beautifully bound in embossed leather once accented with gold leaf. I’d been wading through the text, wishing that the quaint custom of standardized spelling had caught on hundreds of years before it did.