The confrontation made everything in me shake. If I didn’t, Shannah wouldn’t. On one side, the Boss had control of the most excruciating pain I had ever felt. On the other, Lev had the ability to decimate my heart. Two sides pulled me apart. I would not survive the night, and if I didn’t, Shannah wouldn’t. The remaining shards of hope flaked away.
“Nothing. I don’t know anything.” I took a step back.
Woe’s advanced, and her mouth twisted into something ugly. “I don’t know what Lev thinks, but I don’t believe you.”
I slammed a fist into my chest. “I can’t remember. I don’t know anything. I have nothing to guide me. Except fear. Don’t you understand that?”
“Mara,” Lev said, his tone menacing.
“My memory is a sieve. How can I tell you anything? I don’t remember anything but the memories she wanted me to have.” I fell to my knees, shifting forward, tugging on Lev’s shirt. I only had moments. “I remember Shannah. I remember the horror in her eyes, the terror. What else am I to do?”
Woe snorted in disgust. “You were a risk to my family the moment you knocked on our door.”
I reached for him. “Please, Lev, believe me.”
Lev pushed my hands away, and my insides broke open as I stared into an abyss of my own making.
I wanted to be able to tell them. Surely, they understood that. “I only wanted to save Shannah. That’s the only reason I came to you.” My voice broke, and I swallowed a sob. “That’s the only reason I trusted you.”
Lev’s jaw set. “But what do you know, Mara?”
I smoothed a hand over my forehead. They had to believe that I didn’t know anything. Bitteen. I could tell them about Bitteen.
I began, “Last night, Bitteen confronted me in the bathroom.”
“Bitteen.” Woe’s voice fell leaden.
Lev cursed under his breath. “You didn’t think that would be important to mention this morning?”
“I was afraid. Shannah—”
Woe stomped her foot. “I don’t give a Fae bottom about your sister, Mara. Don’t you get that?” She clamped her mouth closed. “For all we know you made her up.”
I raised my hands. “No, no, no, I didn’t do that.”
Woe shook her head and turned away. “We’ve been moths to flame, Lev, and I think we’re about to be thrown into the fire.”
Lev sighed in a deep rumble over the ocean. “What other choice did we have?”
Woe’s wings shivered, and she advanced. “What else did Bitteen say?”
“Everything is going according to plan. I hadn’t been forgotten. That’s what she said.” I covered my eyes to hide from the anger in their faces. I couldn’t bear it.
The anklet buzzed.
A warning. I knew what came next.
I pointed to them both. “You already knew it was a plan. You said it. You knew it. We came here knowing.” The words came rushing out, and my voice ended in a near-wail.
Her wings reached toward me, the ebony feather reflecting the light in a myriad of colors. “What else have you kept from us, Mara?”
The circle on my leg warmed, and I gritted my teeth. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
A jolt, bigger than any the previous night slammed into me, and the world went dark.
35
Deception
Lev
Betrayal had come. I stepped away from Mara’s grasping hands. I could see her figure, contorted in the reflection on the inside of the lift. I couldn’t keep us safe on my own. Not Woe. Not Mara. I didn’t want to admit that her safety mattered to me, but it did.
I smoothed my hand over the pad sensor as though I could prove that it hadn’t happened the times before, as if we hadn’t missed the obvious clue in our haste.
Yet the doors didn’t open. We couldn’t stay in the elevator. It was a mercy that no one had come in, expecting to be lifted to the platform.
Unless they were purposefully being kept out. That was as likely as anything else. We were rats in a cage, running a maze designed for us. Information about my family was the prize at the center.
Despite cameras and security and the rude attendant, we’d been allowed to come and go from Raishana. We’d been given the opening and even the key. Someone knew exactly where we were, and the knowledge settled like a boulder in my stomach.
We hadn’t been arrested.
We hadn’t even been reported.
“We need to get out of there as quickly as possible,” Woe said, and she slammed her hand into the control panel.
Even as the words left her mouth, I knew…
I knew something worse was coming.
A feeling of weightlessness washed over me and signaled the beginning of our ascent. As it faded, another glaring unknown sent my thoughts into a bitter tailspin.
Woe’s gasp had me spinning back toward Mara. Mara laid, face down on the floor, the rest of her sprawled on the luggage. Her whole body seized.
“I don’t know,” Woe said. “It just started.” She bent down, reaching for the Mer.
I rushed Woe, then, slamming her against the wall behind her. “No, Woe, don’t touch her.” If they could incapacitate Woe or me, it would be easier to capture us all.
Her eyebrows met her hairline, and her chin quivered. “Why, Lev? Doesn’t matter how mad I was, she needs help.”
“I know. I know.” I helped her to her feet, careful to keep myself between her and Mara. “It’s the anklet.”
Mara still seized on the floor, and I dashed at the moisture on my cheeks. Sweat or tears, I didn’t know which. “Vic disabled that.”
“I thought so, too.”
Woe’s gaze darted from Mara to me and back again. “We can’t,” she gasped, choking on a sob, “we can’t just leave her like that.”
“We have to. We have to. We have to,” I whispered against her hair.
Woe collapsed against me and wept on my shoulder.
Mara’s torture went on, and I could do nothing. Nothing.
I had caused this. It was my fault. I was responsible for the mess we were in.
If I could shift, the whole of Raishana would know my fury. I stroked Woe’s hair, then tipped my head back and bellowed in rage.
Yet another thought followed and chilled me to my core.
I don’t know what awaits us at the surface.
36
More Choices
Jason
Our Lady of the Park, Catholic Cathedral, New Haven City
Filtering through the second-story window, the sunrise warmed my bare toes and shattered my feathery dreams. I was tucked in a bed against a beige wall, alone, rather than sharing a lush apartment with the woman of my fantasy.
As with most mornings, Woe was my first thought, and my heart twisted. I couldn’t live with the idea of a lifetime of her anger. I could barely live with the idea that she would never be mine.
I pressed my face into the downy pillow that still held her pomegranate scent. I would slip away while they were gone. A part of me hoped Woe would come bursting in to demand that I stay, but the sane part of me knew better than to believe that would ever happen.
I needed to get on with my day… my life. I had no idea when they’d be back. I unwound the ivory sheets from around my legs and gently placed what I’d come to think of as “Woe’s Pillow” in the drawer of the bedside table.
She had stayed in my apartment while she’d recuperated from her fall from heavenly being to mortal human. She’d been unconscious and fevered in my bed for days. Ever since her scent had lingered on the one pillow. I wasn’t proud of the fact that I slept with my face pressed into it, but I reached for it every night.
My cassock lay across the back of the chair near my bed. Twenty-four shiny buttons caught the light. I might never count them again. I couldn’t be sure what might happen. A sabbatical had the potential to change a man.
A collar sat on the green upholstered seat beside it. I left them there, reaching instead for the sweatpants from y
esterday. They still smelled relatively clean. I didn’t bother with a shirt. Vic wasn’t a morning person, and we were the only two currently in the church.
My stomach growled. I probably had a few eggs in the small fridge. When I opened the door, I found some leftover bread Lev had made me. The kitchen was situated in one corner, a seating area opposite, and a dining room table marked the center of the open floor plan. It didn’t take long before I was seated at the table, consuming my usual simple breakfast.
When I was done eating, I twirled the fountain pen around my finger as I stared through the window and out over the fire escape, struggling to find the right words to express my bevy of feelings.
Dear Lev,
That was as far as I had gotten. There was too much to say, so I didn’t touch on any of it. I scribbled a few more lines, then signed my name.
I had already written a letter to the bishop and the archbishop, explaining my need for a sabbatical from my position as paranormal hunter. I didn’t tender my resignation, but I didn’t discount the possibility in the future. Tugging my beard, I glanced at another blank page that rested on the kitchen table beside me. I’d successfully filled Woe’s letter with nothing—not a single word waited for her.
I wouldn’t be the first to leave a job over a woman. She’d called me Judas. Recalling the betrayal in her eyes still burned a hole through my chest, and I needed space to come to terms with her marriage to Arún.
Maybe I should never have accepted the appointment. Given my abilities, my appointment as the List Keeper made sense. The paranormal order predated the church ruling demanding celibacy, but I’d lived as though I had taken that vow as well. I remained married to the job. Until I figured out that the job wasn’t enough.
I intended to slip away without a word to any of them, but people-person Vic had insisted that would be the worst thing I could possibly do. I didn’t agree, but she’d refused to transport me to the monks if I didn’t write letters to Lev and Woe first. I smoothed my hand over my face, then tugged my beard. I had so much to decide.
Not the least of which… My thought started as one thing and turned into an intriguing idea that propelled me to my feet. On the way to the bathroom, I swiped a pair of scissors from the kitchen counter.
I padded across the floor to the small lavatory and positioned myself in front of my antique porcelain sink, next to the claw-foot tub. Surrounded by white subway tile that covered the floor and two-thirds of the wall, I studied the body I had grown into. I had added a few pounds with age, but I felt like the me I’d always known.
I tugged on the tip of my beard. I’d been bearded as long as I could remember. I might not have been born with a beard, but I’d kept growing it as soon as it had shown up. The last time I’d seen my jawline, I’d been a teenager. It had been a good prop for my tough-priest persona, and many holy men in history had been bearded.
A new chapter calls for a new face.
Before I could change my mind, I sank the blades into the dark curls and squeezed the handles. A chunk of my beard fell into the sink, long hairs like wavy lines. I made another cut and repeated the action three more times until the hair was close to my skin.
I hunted through the cabinets, but couldn’t find a razor to finish the job. In my pack, I had a knife that Vic had sharped to an extra fine point. It wouldn’t be as safe as a razor, but I was committed. I grabbed the aloe vera gel from the pack, too, and smeared it all over my cheeks and chin. Anything to make the blade slide more smoothly.
I took a deep breath and laid the blade against my skin, praying I wouldn’t slice myself to pieces. I took my time, and, fifteen minutes later, an unrecognizable man stood in my place. I didn’t know Jason anymore: I was going to find him.
Fitting.
Two knocks punctuated my thoughts.
“You ready? Let’s go,” Vic yelled through my door.
Gently rubbing a hand towel over my face, I ambled to the door and threw it open. “Vic,” I said, lowering the towel.
At first, she didn’t look up. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, she came barreling into my apartment like a bull with her head down and started slamming things in the kitchen.
“Do you have coffee? I’m not a morning per—” She spun around, and her eyes went wide. She stepped back. “What did you do?” she whispered.
“New chapter. New face.” I wouldn’t be criticized for going all in. I slung the pack over my shoulder.
“If I didn’t know it was you—” she squinted and leaned forward as if to illustrate her point, “—I wouldn’t know it was you.” She reached out but stopped mid-way between us. “May I?”
“Touch my face?” I asked, incredulous. When she nodded, I said, “Sure.”
She smoothed her fingers over my cheeks and jaw. Then she laughed. “Nope. Nothing. I like my men hairy.” She winked at me. “So much for needing coffee. I think that shock will get me through the morning. Goodbye letters?”
Lev’s note had been finished before the historic sheering, but Woe’s scrap of paper was white. Still drawing a blank, I stepped to the side and scribbled the first three words that came to mind and then signed my name.
See you soon.
Jason.
It was a lousy goodbye, but it was all I had to give her. I couldn’t profess undying love to another man’s wife, and I didn’t have much else in me. I stuffed the scrap of paper into an envelope and wrote Woe across the front. I put it with Lev’s note and handed both to Vic, who tucked them in her pocket.
“Let’s go,” I said and scooped up the pack that held everything I was taking.
I followed Vic to her metal box of a room, just off the Cavern. It was identical in shape and size to Lev’s, but eclectic decoration and haphazard organization all came together in a very unique gamer-geek-nerd crescendo that practically screamed Vic.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“You?” She rummaged in the stacks and piles on her workbench. “You do nothing.”
When she found a set of goggles, she gave a little giggle, then pulled them down over her eyes. “Me?” She rubbed her hands together. “I’m going to toss a priest through a portal.”
Perfect.
She shoved her couch out of the center of the room, grabbed my arm, and positioned me in its place. “Stand here,” she said, dashing into the bedroom.
When she came back, she pushed an apparatus that had been bolted onto a mechanic’s dolly. It looked like a child’s building set gone horribly wrong, and in the middle of it was a bathroom mirror and a hula-hoop.
Vic meant to have her revenge. I was sure of it. I just hoped it wouldn’t be painful.
“Stop,” she said. “Stop looking like I’m going to roast you and eat you.” She considered my stance and adjusted the apparatus accordingly. “All you have to do is stick your hand into the vortex that forms over the mirror. Once you do, it’ll suck you right in.”
“And where do I end up?” Vic was the smartest woman I knew. She was a credit to chemists everywhere.
“With the monks in Nepal,” she said as though it was the most logical answer in the world. “Or Tibet. But with monks.”
“You’re not sure?”
She winked.
“Have you tried this before?”
She shook her head back and forth. “Never to your specific destination in Nepal, but I’ve used this once or twice to get to the mountain raves in the Himalayas.” When she touched the surface of the mirror, she yanked her hand back with a hiss. “Still hot from last time, I guess.”
That brought up a good question. “Any side effects from using this thing?”
Vic stopped her fiddling and looked up me, staring. “I honestly don’t know.”
She doesn’t know.
“I’m pretty normal, right? I mean on whatever scale you use to measure that?” Her hair stuck up in all directions, and the goggles magnified her eyes to freakish proportions. She gave two thumbs up.
Perfect. I can’t remember i
f she’s always been this eccentric or if it’s gradually gotten worse. I offered a weak smile, and everything in my stomach soured at once. I might not survive long enough to take my sabbatical.
She flipped more switches and the lights dimmed in her room as the apparatus started humming.
“What happens when I want to come back?”
She froze, then started chewing a fingernail and scowling into the distance. “Oh, I know.”
When she didn’t immediately express her plan, I prompted her. “Yes?”
“I’ll come back and check on you every month. It’s not that far out of the way.” She grinned like it was the grandest idea she’d had all day.
It didn’t sound like the best solution to my problem, but I could figure it out later. It probably wouldn’t be the first time someone hitchhiked from Nepal to New Haven City. “Sounds good,” I said. If I didn’t go soon, I’d find a way to talk myself out of the trip.
She moved the portal machine a bit more and repositioned me accordingly. “Ready?”
My mouth was dry, and no matter how often I swallowed, it didn’t help. I was about to do something I’d never done before. I caught Vic’s hand. “What happens after I find myself?”
“That’s the exciting part,” she said, her dark eyes sparkling behind the goggles. “Anything you want.”
37
Truth Hurts
Woe
Transport Elevator, Raishana
Mara convulsed for an eternity.
The event had probably only lasted thirty seconds by the end of it, and now she was unconscious. The elevator took ages. She smelled of sweat and vomit and other things that turned my stomach in ways that not even fizz-tonic could help.
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