Thirty-Seven

W

e walked from the calm of the great cathedral into the noisy hum of Dublin’s city streets. “How can I get hold of you if I need to?” Giovanni asked, pulling out a very high-tech phone.

“For a wandering orphan with no family, you do pretty well,” I said, motioning to his phone.

He shrugged. “Yes, well, I did say some people would give almost anything in exchange for what I can offer.”

“I’ll give you my cell number, but please try not to use it. I’m afraid my dad will figure out how to find me by the cell phone records. I’ll give you a digit for every question you answer.”

“I’ve already answered a kilo of questions.”

I conceded that he had and gave him all but the last digit.

“I appear to missing one,” he said, frowning at his phone.

I crossed my arms. “Why did you say I wasn’t safe with Finn?”

Giovanni cocked his head to the side. “That’s what I have to answer to get the last digit?” He looked down the street, apparently deciding. I didn’t like the look in his eyes, but after the overheard conversation with Finn’s parents, I needed to know.

“I felt from him a—” He squinted at something. “There is a man coming. I’ve seen him before.” Giovanni grabbed my elbow.

“Are you trying to get out of answering my question?” I asked as he tugged me away from the church. I didn’t know what he felt around Finn, but I knew what I felt. Still, I wanted an answer.

He looked over his shoulder. “Either this world is decidedly smaller than people think, or this man really is following me. This might be our chance. I wonder if we can turn the tables,” he said. “His aura, it is white.”

My heart thumped at that word. “White? I’m—I’m not ready for white. We have no plan!” Panic hammered at my heart.

Before I could think what to do, Giovanni abruptly turned a corner, hauled us into a recessed doorway, pressed me against the glass, and said, “Look over my shoulder. Is he still there? He’s in a suit. Red tie. Do you see him?”

I tried to ignore the startling intimacy of our bodies pressed together, the charge of our energies colliding, the spice of him so close, and looked around his arm. The man who stared back at me from across the street let his mouth spread into a slow, sick smirk.

The hospital.

The grocery store.

It was the same smirk he gave me in the park after he drained the life from that woman. Terror hit me full force.

Something else hit me, too. Pure rage.

I was tired of this game. He’d had plenty of times to kill me and never had. Though I wanted nothing more than to be as far away from him as possible, I tried a different tactic. I grabbed Giovanni’s hand. “Come with me.”

We stepped off the curb and started into the street. Confrontation was a stronger, more potent brew in my blood than cowardice.

“What were those World War Two pilots called?” Giovanni asked, squeezing my hand. “The Japanese ones who—” He still had his phone in his hand and suddenly held it up, pushing record on the camera.

“Kamikazes,” I answered, staring straight ahead at the man who had not moved. “And not a helpful image right now.” I didn’t know what kind of mix fear, desperation, a thirst for answers, and a dash of stupidity made, but it kept my feet moving toward him.

The man looked surprised at our approach, yes, but amused, too. I didn’t like amused. Screw this guy. I wanted answers. If this man was what Giovanni had called an Arrazi, he was another piece in the puzzle. If we could get him to talk, maybe we’d be closer to having a full picture.

We crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk where he waited. His arms were folded over his red tie, his dark eyes no longer amused. They were ravenous. Predatory.

“Two of you,” he sneered. “And you,” he said, cocking his head at me. “Hello again.”

“Yes, two of us, one of you,” Giovanni said.

The man with the white aura laughed. “Oh, you think there’s but one of me?” He stepped even closer and bent forward, almost conspiratorially, to say, “There’s an army of us.”

Giovanni glanced around us nervously. I clasped his forearm. This was not someone to take your eyes off. The man sarcastically waved to the camera, mocking us.

An explosion of aggression fired from me, propelling me forward. I shoved him in the chest. “Why are you following us? What the hell do you want?”

He stumbled back, caught his balance, and fixed me with a deadly gaze that stopped my heart. “It’s not what I want that matters.” He smoothed the lapels of his suit jacket down calmly and spoke with mock civility. “But since you asked so very politely, I will tell you. I want nothing more than to devour every…last…drop of your precious life and leave you dead on this sidewalk.”

I shook with fear and adrenaline but pressed on. If I could just get more information from him… “I’ve seen you do that. I’ve seen you murder,” I seethed. “But you won’t kill me. If that’s what you really wanted, I’d be dead already.”

His fingers gripped my chin, lifting it up. “Are you actually eager to die, young lady?”

I slapped his hand away.

“Don’t touch her! We know what you are, Arrazi,” spat Giovanni, literally, on the man’s shiny black shoes.

Whips of white energy stretched toward Giovanni like tentacles. His body lurched forward violently as the man pulled his glorious sparks from his chest. I leaped onto the man’s back, throwing punches as fast as they would come, though my arms felt leaden and ineffectual. The man reached back and tossed me to the ground. My teeth clattered with the impact.

The distraction I offered was enough to stop the ravaging of Giovanni’s aura. He punched the man in the mouth but was apparently too weak to do any real damage. Pulling on Giovanni’s arm, I spun him away. “Run!”

We tore down the sidewalk, skidding around corners, swerving around pedestrians, weaving in and out of traffic. I was in a panic. Running for my life from a taker. A murderer. How stupid to think we could confront him. I’d almost gotten us killed.

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.”