Embry insisted I go upstairs and wash the blood off of my hands and arms, so I took a long shower, trying to let the stream of hot water melt the chill in my bones. I nearly scalded myself the whole time, but I was still cold when I got out. I twisted my hair up into a bun, put on some leggings and a big cream-colored sweater before going back downstairs, ready to sit and wait.
Embry kissed the top of my head before going outside, most likely to take care of the bodies and leave the other men far away from us. I was more concerned with the body in my drawing room.
The wound had stopped bleeding, leaving sticky, red goop in place of the warm, flowing liquid I still felt on my hands, though I had scrubbed them clean. Gabriel’s eyes were closed, and his skin was already taking on that sickly, bluish white color of corpses. I could see the veins sticking out of his pale skin when I sat on the floor beside him and held his lifeless hand in mine.
I understood that Embry and Gabriel were special, that he would most likely come back, but I had never seen anyone go through it. Gabriel’s story from the other day implied it took days to wake up, although I couldn’t imagine Embry wanted us to travel with him like this, and it wasn’t like we could leave him behind.
It was nearly an hour later when Embry came back and found me still sitting on the floor, still holding Gabriel’s hand, still far from being okay.
“It won’t happen instantaneously,” he shared. “You should go back to sleep.”
“Would you be able to sleep now?” I shot back at him. Even with him telling me Gabriel would come back, even though I knew it should be true. Looking at his dead body, I couldn’t imagine leaving him alone, or going on with my life as if he hadn’t died on us.
“Then why don’t you go make us something to eat while I get washed up?” Embry suggested. I knew it was mostly to distract me from Gabriel’s corpse, but he had been travelling and must be starving, so I nodded before going to reheat the leftover spaghetti and put the kettle on.
By the time his food and my tea were ready, Embry was back in the drawing room. He didn’t waste time standing under the water for ages like I did.
He grabbed his plate and I followed him over to the other, unoccupied couch in the room. I didn’t drink the tea, but held it for warmth while watching Gabriel, waiting for him to wake up.
“You still have a few hours,” Embry told me, shovelling the noodles into his mouth.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“It has been taking less and less time as we go along, and last time he died on me it took him about eight hours to come back,” he said with his mouth full, swallowing when he finished.
“And how are we sure this time won’t be permanent?” I voiced my fear and tried not to think about how many other times they had died on me, without my ever knowing it.
“We’re never absolutely sure,” he conceded. “But our job isn’t done yet.”
“How did you figure this out?” I asked, cuddling closer to him, keeping my eyes on Gabriel just in case.
“Didn’t Gabriel explain it all to you?” he asked.
“We’re talking about Gabriel,” I reminded him.
Embry sighed, putting the plate down, and wrapped his arm around me. “We lived normal lives, with the usual attempts at happiness, until Annabelle was accused of witchcraft.”
I debated calling him out on how he breezed over the love triangle that made them both so invested in my ancestry, but his last words shocked me. “Annabelle was a witch?”
“No. She was accused and found guilty of witchcraft, but she was innocent,” he said with conviction, as if that made it better. “She was sentenced to burn at the stake for her supposed crimes. Once someone spoke up against you, guilt didn’t matter so much. She knew that and accepted her fate to ensure they wouldn’t come after Margaret.”
“She sacrificed herself for her daughter,” I understood.
“She made the most of a horrible situation she saw no way out of,” he specified.
“And she left her daughter with you when they took her?” I asked.
“No. When the inquisition started, before anyone even suspected her, she and Gabriel went to New York, but came back without Margaret. They told everyone she died on the journey and was buried in New York.”
“She wanted her to be safe from any accusations of witchcraft,” I understood, suspecting that I knew who watched Margaret until Gabriel and Embry got her back.
“She was convincing,” he agreed, mostly hiding it, but I could hear a hint of bitterness that Gabriel had been in on it while he had believed Margaret died.
“But she told you the truth,” I ventured, convinced they would never do that to him. I knew Annabelle chose Gabriel in the end, but I couldn’t imagine anyone not turning to Embry if they were in trouble.
“Not at first, but when she realized she would be named, she came to Gabriel and I under the cover of darkness and confessed.”
“To the witchcraft?” I asked. Magic was the next logical step in their fantasy world of people with powers.
“She confessed to hiding Maggie, but she also knew she would be accused and found guilty of witchcraft. We offered to prove her innocence, but she believed the outcome was inevitable. She told us she was going to die, and made each of us promise we would do everything in our power to keep her daughter safe. She suggested having my sister raise Maggie, as she was married and already had children of her own. She knew it was a big commitment, but she needed to make sure Margaret would be taken care of.”
“And the promise bound your fate?” I asked, thinking of Gabriel’s confession.
“I promised that her blood would be mine, and I would protect her child as if she were my own,” he agreed, which explained why he would still be here, protecting me.
“What about Gabriel?” I asked, knowing he had already died and come back years before this promise.
“Gabriel was upset that she was accepting her fate instead of fighting so she wouldn’t die in the first place. When she said that even if he didn’t understand it, he had to accept it, for her, he reluctantly made the promise, and added that he would find her. Always.”
“That sounds like a goodbye. Why is Gabriel convinced she’s coming back?”
“She promised us she would. That night we made the promises, she said death was only temporary, and she would be back someday. That she would find us, and we would have the happily ever afters we all deserved.”
“I know you loved her, but you didn’t think she was crazy when she said that? Or you didn’t suspect that maybe she really was a witch?”
“I would have, but you didn’t see her. It wasn’t the ranting of a mad woman, she wasn’t trying to soften the blow of losing her by promising we would see each other in the afterlife. She looked us in the eyes, completely sane, and believed it when she told us she would be back. She promised, and if you knew Annabelle, you would know that she…a promise was a promise.”
“You were going to say she would rather die than break a promise,” I called him on it.
“And you would have thought that made it less powerful than it was. We both believed her without the shadow of a doubt.”
“You were there when it happened?” I asked, not saying it, but he knew I meant when she burned. He got this faraway look, like he was seeing it, and made me regret asking.
“She didn’t scream. The others all did, but she got this determined look on her face, and for a second I was convinced she truly was a witch and the flames weren’t burning her, that she was going to wait for the ropes to burn, then she was going to walk over to us and we would run off, leaving the town stunned.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No. She just didn’t let them win. She bore the flames without making a sound, she closed her eyes and let them take her.”
“Then you went to Sleepy Hollow, got Margaret from Katherine and gave her to your sister?” I asked without thinking.
“How do you know about Sleepy Hollow?” he asked instead of answering.
“I did manage to get one story out of him,” I admitted, looking over to Gabriel and remembering when my biggest problem was him not talking to me.
“That was the plan,” he agreed, still shocked that I got Gabriel to say anything about Sleepy Hollow. It definitely wasn’t the kind of story Gabriel had ever shared with me before.
“What part didn’t work out?” I asked.
“We didn’t realize we were being followed. We didn’t know what the men wanted from us, or if it even had anything to do with Annabelle, but it made us uneasy. We took detour after detour, finally losing them when we got to the hallowed ground of the cemetery where Patrick was buried.”
“Gabriel’s brother,” I nodded to let him know I knew who Patrick was, which he had expected when I knew about Sleepy Hollow.
“You would think it would make us feel safe, finding out they couldn’t follow us into the church, but what men can’t walk on hallowed ground?”
“They were possessed?” I guessed.
“All but one. The man leading them was the same man we stay alive to protect you from.”
“The Big Bad.” I expected as much. “Did you know he wanted Margaret, or did you think he was after you?”
“We were convinced he was after us, so Gabriel sent word to Katherine through a priest, and she brought Margaret to my sister while we kept sanctuary.”
“But he killed you, right? He killed both of you and that’s how you found out the promise made you not able to stay dead?” I struggled for a word to describe what they were. They weren’t immortal, and could be killed just as easily as anyone else. They simply didn’t stay that way.
“A woman was a few feet beyond the gate, crying for help, so I went to her. I was unaware that she was possessed and put there solely to lure me out. Once I was far enough from the church, the man came and asked me where Margaret was. I told him I’d rather die than tell him, so he laughed and pushed his dagger into my heart. The pain didn’t register so much as the fear when I saw Gabriel running towards me, knowing the man would kill him too. The next thing I knew I was waking up in Katherine’s cabin with Gabriel.”
“You had both been killed and come back.”
“Katherine wasn’t surprised, she said it was nothing she hadn’t seen before. Although she confessed that the woman who had lured me out had given her bread and some honey for Margaret as they were setting off the week before. She worried the man got what he wanted and left.”
“Did he?” I asked. No one had ever gone into what happened next, although I was under the impression that Embry and Gabriel raised Margaret together.
“He found my sister.” Embry had that look on his face again, like he was seeing something terribly painful. “My niece, my nephews, my brother in law…”
“Is this why you never mentioned you had a sister, like Gabriel never mentioned his brother?” I asked, putting my hand on his arm.
“Time numbs and dulls pain, but it doesn’t erase it. I have lived for centuries and can tell you that the pain of loss, it never goes away,” he confided, then took a deep breath before continuing, stating the rest of the story like it was nothing but a bunch of facts. “Gabriel’s mother had taken Maggie for the day. She was extremely devout, and happened to be in church when the man arrived in town. I don’t know if he didn’t go himself, or if he couldn’t sense her because she was in the lord’s house, but my niece was the same age as Maggie and looked quite similar, so they did their business and left town. We were long gone with the real Maggie by the time he realized his mistake and came back.”
“Do you even know what he wants with me?” I kept asking this question, but never got a satisfying answer. “End of the world, apocalyptic things?” I volunteered when he stayed quiet.
“Which we won’t let happen.” He looked at me imperatively, like convincing me was the first step to making it be true.
“You know, when I think about everyone Gabriel told me is like you, the only conclusion I can reach is that you are good. It’s like God put an insurance policy on some people who were supposed to do incredible things, to make sure they couldn’t die for good before curing some disease or inventing something or painting the Sistine Chapel or winning a war…Even if they used terrible means to achieve their purpose. Everyone he mentioned has made incredible contributions to the world. Why him?”
“I don’t know Tesoro. Maybe it’s the balance of good and evil, maybe he’s a fluke, maybe he isn’t dying because there was something good he was supposed to do, and the evil is getting in the way of him doing it. I don’t have all the answers.”
“What if you can never kill him? And he keeps coming after me and everyone I love until we’re all dead?” I asked, walking back over to Gabriel, not-so-living proof that my fear was rational.
“Luce…”
He was saved from answering when Gabriel woke with a start, like when you fall in a dream and it wakes you up.
“Morning sleepyhead,” I said, the relief bringing back the tears as I smiled, unable to contain how relieved I was. “You’re okay now. You’re back,” I said, getting him to calm down.