Forty-Nine

I

t was a strange, vulnerable sensation to exit through the final locked gate of Clancy Mulcarr’s secret underground prison. The walls of the garden were so camouflaged by trees, you could barely see it if you didn’t know it was there.

“Where does Clancy live? I don’t see a house.”

“On the opposite side of these woods. We looked there first and found nothing. But then Ina said she’d seen a forest in her vision. This is the only patch of forest on our land,” Fergus explained. “It was hard to find this place, though, with it being underground. We had to look for worn paths in the trees.”

With Fergus’s help, we found our way through a knotted cluster of trees out of Clancy’s compound. Thick fog curled and slithered around the bottoms of the trees along the path, moving like a living thing. Moisture clung to my skin. The world felt more expansive than before. Or maybe I felt smaller, more defenseless. Like evil suddenly had talons and at any moment could snap me up and plop me back into a cage.

Every footfall crunching into the gravel sounded like an army of horses in my head. I expected Clancy to pop out from behind every tree. Ahead, through the foliage, the lighthouse tower in the distance rose over the fog like a finger pointing at the moon. I couldn’t believe it. “All this time, we were only a couple miles from your house?”

“Right under our noses. Bloody bastard,” Fergus said with a grunt.

“How much time do we have before his drugs wear off?” my father asked, always the scientist. He had both my mother and me by the hand. He grasped a little too tightly, but I didn’t mind.

“I’d guess an hour or so. It was pretty heavy stuff, but it took us a while to find you.”

“It won’t matter,” my mother muttered. “He’ll find us.” She proceeded to chew nervously on the tip of her thumb. “He’s a ghost. Soul on a string.”

Fergus led us through another grove of trees and thick ferns. As we exited into a clearing, I saw an old shed on the edge of a dirt road. He sat Giovanni down on a large rock and fished a ring of keys from his trouser pocket. Fergus opened wide double doors to a tack shed. We followed him inside. It smelled of horsehair and dirt, and the tang of green grass crushed under a boot heel.

“We’ve got to find a safe place to go,” I said, unable to control my restless pacing. We were standing in a shed on the same property as Clancy’s house. And I wouldn’t go to the manor. Drugged or not, he was there. Not nearly far enough away. Nowhere would be far enough. He’d had three Scintilla. Three. The magic number that kept cropping up. The number he said would make him unstoppable. And now he’d lost his prize. Would he ever stop looking for us?

“We have to call the police,” my father said. “He kept a woman imprisoned for nearly thirteen years! He needs to feel what it’s like to be behind bars. I don’t care about any of this aura crap anymore. He can’t keep another human prisoner and get away with it.”

I’d never heard my father’s voice so desperate or so full of bitterness.

“Aye, you can call the police. Press charges. He deserves it. But it won’t make you any safer. He’s but one of many Arrazi who would seize these three.” Fergus clasped his hand to my father’s shoulder. “Or worse. Much worse. The Scintilla had almost been relegated to myth. It’s been so long since word of one had come ’round. But now…” He looked at Giovanni, Gráinne, and me with unconcealed wonder. “When people find out about you three, it will be open season.” He leaned in close to my father. “If it were my family, you can bet your arse I’d hide them away. Go off the grid, my friend. Find a mountain home far away from people, and live there forever.”

“That’s not a life. That’s another prison.” My voice ricocheted off the walls. We all looked around us for a moment, but the only sound was the screech of crickets in the night and the distant static of the ocean far below.

My father put both hands on my shoulders. I knew he was about to tell me what was and what was not going to happen. “I’m not that girl anymore,” I informed him. “We need to decide together.”

I turned to Giovanni. His matted blond curls were the brightest thing in the room besides our silver. His face wore the bruises of his beating and his lip was still swollen. A Nordic angel after battle. He’d been staring gloomily at me since he sat down on a bale of hay underneath a row of horse halters.

“Can we go to your hotel until we figure out what we’re doing?” I asked.

“We cannot go there,” Giovanni said. “That is where they found me. There is one place we can go. I know a man in Dublin, a doctor. I told you about him. He would help us. I know he would.”

“I’d rather contact the embassy,” my father said. “They can keep us safe until we leave the country.”

“And what are you going to say to them, Dad? Excuse me, but can you give us safe harbor because a bunch of soul-sucking lunatics are after us?” I threw my hands in the air. “They’ll think we’re insane.” I looked at my mother curled up like a pill bug, her lips moving frantically but without any sound.

“We’re not staying in this country, Cora. We’ve got to leave Ireland.”

“We’ve got to find a way to end this for good. There has to be an answer. You heard Fergus, Dad. They’re after people like us. They found us, found me, in Santa Cruz, California, of all places! Nowhere is safe.”

That girl’s not safe anywhere.

“Of all the unsafe places in the entire world, this is the most unsafe! You’ve flown right into the heart of the hornet’s nest. Your mother believed this is where it all started: that the origins of Arrazi and Scintilla started here, at Newgrange. Well, I’m not having it. I’m not losing either of you again.”

“I can’t leave.” My mother’s little voice startled us all.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t have any identification. No passport. Nothing. I don’t exist. I don’t exist. They erased me. They erased me, Benito.”

I kneeled down and hugged her. She was so broken. I wondered if she’d ever be normal again.

“Damn. My passport. Those bastards took everything from me, too.” Giovanni cursed in Italian, patting down his pants pockets. “My wallet, my cell phone. But I have a copy of all of my identification hidden in a locker at the airport. You don’t travel as much as I have without learning how to protect yourself.”

“I have no idea where my stuff is.”

“We gave Clancy your things when he left with you,” Fergus said as he went to the door.

My heart constricted painfully. “The journal.” I needed a passport, yes, and cash, and clothes. But the journal was the biggest loss. The thought of that evil man with my mother’s writing sent fresh hate through me.

“I’m sorry,” Fergus said, seeing my distress. “We thought he would get you to the airport. Try to get comfortable in here for a bit. Rest if you can. I will hurry up to the house and get the car. When I come back, I will tap three times, like this. Then pause. And once again.” He knocked the code softly on the wood.

“Why are you helping us?” Giovanni asked him, not trying at all to conceal his distrust.

“I suppose it’s the drops of humanity in my blood,” Fergus answered with a smirk. “Like any Arrazi, I’ve always been curious as hell about what my sortilege would be if I—” He looked at his feet. “But Ina feels like hers is a curse, so maybe I can live the rest of my life not knowing.”

“We appreciate your help,” I told him sincerely, even though his presence scared me. I could tell he didn’t much like being under the weight of our suspicion, and Giovanni wasn’t exactly diplomatic about it.

Fergus looked at us, one by one. “You’re welcome. But don’t go thinking too highly of me. It’s not as though I’m not tempted. I may be human, but I’m still Arrazi.”

And with that, he left.

My dad paced. A few steps, then around for a few more. “It could take weeks to get passports. Even fake ones. We need to get to Chile,” he said with conviction, mostly to himself.

“You think we can hide away at Mami Tulke’s?” I asked, and then suddenly remembered. “That conversation with Mami Tulke,” I blurted, ignoring his startled look. “I tried to ask you about it the night we fought. You said she needed to help me again, Dad. How could she help me if I’ve never met her?”

A resigned sigh puffed out of him. “Until recently, she’d been able to block it.”

“It? You mean stop me from seeing auras?”

My dad nodded. “That. But more importantly, to block others from sensing yours.” He rubbed his hands through his graying hair. “Until you got sick.”

The air rushed out of me. “You knew what I was. You knew all this time. How does Mami Tulke know about all of this?”

“Because, sweetheart, she’s one of you. Scintilla. We were trying to keep you safe. Protect you. Look what happened to your mother.”

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t squabble anymore about his protecting me. “So that’s why you were suddenly willing for me to go to Chile?” I asked, daring to hope there was a way she could help.

“I keep thinking if we can get to her, she can help all three of you. Maybe she could block it again if you were actually with her.”

“How did Mami Tulke do it? I know she’s some kind of medicine woman but—” I imagined potions, incense, chicken feathers…

“That’s her sortilege,” he said. “To cast a veil over a Scintilla. It’s called shielding. But she was suddenly unable to do it. Something’s changed.”

“With her or with me?”

“With the whole damn world.” Dad ran his hands through his mussed hair. He looked like he’d been through hell.

“What do you mean?”

“The world is undergoing a major, major shift. The discoveries of dark energy and then the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe were monumental. Science has focused its attention on the outer space of dark energy. I knew, because of my mother, your mother, you…that energy is much more personal—it affects us all—and so I began to study how dark energy might be impacting our planet and the people on it. Energy is not just something that is out there,” Dad said, pointing toward the sky. “It’s everywhere.”

“We’re made of it,” my mother mumbled. “Star stuff.”

I couldn’t help thinking of Finn’s starry tattoo; a family crest of sorts, he had said. Giovanni shuffled behind me. I looked over my shoulder. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but I could see his high interest in the conversation by the way his silver aura arched over my body toward my father.

My dad continued. “The increase in natural disasters was a sign that there is a serious crisis or imbalance going on in our world, but the more critical sign now is the people who are mysteriously dying.”

“Please slow down,” Giovanni requested. “I’m trying to understand what you are saying and what this has to do with us.”

My father held up his hands. “Sorry. I’m studying the incidents of people who are dying, just…dying from no known cause, all over the world.”

“It’s Arrazi,” I said, sure of it. “It happened right in front of our eyes at the airport in Dublin.”

“That was you?” Dad gasped.

“Yes. And there was a man with a white aura across the street—Arrazi.”

“No, no, no,” my dad interrupted. “The blood of the people who are dying shows a cellular abnormality. Violent expansions, if you will. Cellular activity is accelerating and expanding at such a rate that, well, I believe that dark energy is killing them, not the Arrazi.”

“And?” I asked. “What if you’re wrong?” If it wasn’t the Arrazi killing those people, then I didn’t see what this had to do with Scintilla and Arrazi at all. How could he possibly connect ancient breeds of humans to this theory about dark energy?

I still believed it was the desperate Arrazi doing what they were born to do, but I was trying to be open. I had a new respect for my father. His interest wasn’t just in trying to save the Scintilla he loved. He wanted to save the world.

“And your blood, Cora, it has the same abnormality. Only—”

“When those people died of our sickness, I lived.”

My father smiled as he did when I was little and had finally grasped a complex math problem he’d been trying to explain. “I know I sound crazy. But somehow, I think you, the Scintilla, are the key to the energetic imbalance. You lived! It somehow has to do with your life-giving, positive energy. I believe that. I proved it in the lab when I combined your cells with the cells of one of the victims. The expansion slowed, was brought back into balance.”

“You’re trying to tell me a few Scintilla are supposed to save the world? Oh, a simple little thing like that?” My voice sounded shrill, near panic at the enormity of what my father proposed.

“We can hardly save ourselves,” Giovanni pointed out rather unhelpfully. He reminded me of Mari that way.

“In so many cases, simple doesn’t mean easy, sweetheart.” He stepped close and put his arm around my shoulders. “People are going to keep dying. Catastrophes are going to keep occurring. The Arrazi are going to keep killing innocent humans. And if they find you, they’ll kill you, too.”

“Or enslave us,” I said with a nod to my mother.

Giovanni placed a hand on my shoulder. “Unless we correct the imbalance by killing all the Arrazi.”

My father and I both flicked our gazes to Giovanni. To kill for our own survival was as callous as what the Arrazi had been doing all along. Could I kill Finn, or his parents, who appeared decent at heart despite what they were? There had to be another way.

My mother reached out. “Sit with me, Benito.” It hurt the most when she sounded normal because I knew it wouldn’t last. He looked at her like she was new. Again.

My heart broke for the sorrow in their faces. Lost years. Promises broken in order to keep promises. Sorry was greenish-yellow, cloudy fingers grasping from Dad’s heart outward. I peered at my mother’s silver aura and could swear the silver softened, liquefied, in front of her heart as if her aura was fractured there.

My dad kneeled down next to her and placed his hands on both sides of her face. “I want to get you out of here, Grace. Make sure you’re safe. I used to look for you. I used to go with Cora to the redwoods, hoping you’d come.” He hung his head. “Eventually, I gave up hope.”

Then my dad cried, openly and without shame. He let go of her and buried his face in his hands. A big, sucking sob came out of him. She pulled his hands from his face. He looked at my mother with such regret. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I covered my heart. Tears streamed down my face to see my father’s sorrow. He hadn’t wanted to leave her. He was lashing himself with blame.

A bit of clarity surfaced in my mother’s eyes. “I was stubborn,” she whispered. “I wanted to know the truth so badly.” She looked at me from across the shack and pressed her lips together. “I thought I could find a way to end the danger somehow. That I could keep her safe. All of us safe. Oh, my love,” she touched his face. Then she looked back to me. “My little dark Daisy.”

All three of us were sobbing then. This tempestuous ocean of life tumbled us around and around and spit us back on shore together, forever changed. I backed away from my parents’ embrace. They deserved their time together.

Giovanni pulled down a horse blanket from a high shelf and spread it on the floor. He motioned for me to sit down next to him. I did. Mostly because I wanted to be next to someone but felt selfish to intrude on the intimate whisperings of my parents’ reunion. I was cold, too. Probably in shock. I wiped my tears and leaned into him.

“You did something to me,” Giovanni said low. “I am altered, not entirely myself.”

“I gave you some of my energy. You were nearly dead. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s a fairy tale, no? Being brought back to life by a kiss? You’ve done it for two men now.”

I set him straight. “I didn’t bring you to life with a kiss. You revived and”—I blushed deeply with the memory—“you kissed me.” I avoided his stare. “You were pretty out of it. I didn’t think you’d even remember.”

He looked at me for a long moment and said, “I’ll not forget.”

When I didn’t answer, he added, “And I didn’t like to see you kiss that Arrazi boy.”

“Finn,” I said, irritated. Though I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to elevate him from “that boy.” I didn’t simply kiss a boy. I kissed my boy. I kissed my boy good-bye.

A spike wedged deeper in the middle of my chest. Not only was Finn a danger to me physically, he was dangerous to my heart. And now I had a new worry: how many innocent people did I condemn to death because I saved his life? Or did he really mean what he said?

Had I only prolonged his life until he died by his choice?

“What’s this?” Giovanni asked, tracing the inky swirls above my wrist and opening my palm where the moon blazed. “I didn’t notice you had a tattoo on your hand before.”

I yanked my hand from his, leaned away from his warm body, and curled on my side on the smelly horse blanket. I watched dust motes bounce on the shafts of light from the lone bulb overhead. A few moments later I shoved myself up to my knees. My hands on my hips. “Tell me the secret Ina mentioned. I can’t have any more secrets. What’s the darkest hole in your heart?”

Giovanni stared into my eyes. For the first time, I saw uncertainty there.

Outside, I heard the low purr of a car engine approaching. My parents must have heard it, too, because the low murmur of their conversation fell silent. We all looked at one another. My mother’s and Giovanni’s silver auras pulsed in frightened unison with mine. The vehicle stopped right outside the shed. We listened as the car door opened and closed. Footsteps.

A hand rapped three times on the door. A pause. Then once more.

“Fergus,” I said with a sigh and stood.

My father stepped forward and unlocked the door.

Clancy and Griffin blocked the open doorway.