“You’re serious about this quest?”
I raised my eyebrow at her question. Surely my persistence in trying to contact her had already demonstrated that I was. “Deadly.”
She hummed in thought again before turning and walking away from me. I assumed I’d been given silent approval to follow, so I did. Zarita pottered around for a moment, first twisting her long hair into a pile of curls at the top of her head, then moving to a set of drawers and pulling out scraps pieces of paper. She came back to a table in the middle of the room and laid out one of the pieces of paper.
“This is a map of the ancient city of Gubal, later called Byblos. According to legend, it was in this city that Ba`alat Gebal first fell to the Earth as fire after seeing the destruction of war. Lamenting the destruction of her beautiful city, she cried over the ruins and left her essence in seven special children.”
My heart thudded against my ribcage as I considered the fact that I might be that much closer to finding out the truth about Evie—the reality about her kind, why they existed, and exactly what she was capable of.
“Ba`alat Gebal?” I was certain I butchered the pronunciation, but Zarita let it go.
“She was an ancient goddess, known by many different names in a vast range of cultures: Anat, Hathor, Astarte. The Great Goddess. She was all-powerful, able to create, preserve, or destroy. Her name had been linked at different times with both the moon and the sun, and with the earth and the sea.”
“And that’s where it all started? That’s where phoenixes are from?”
She lifted her head from the map and looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I swallowed heavily and corrected myself. “I mean, according to legend.”
“The legend of the sunbird? Yes, that’s where it originates.”
“Do you know the legend well?”
“I have certain books here, and at La Vieille Charité in France, but there are still a number of gaps in my research that I’d love to be able to fill.”
“How exactly would you fill them?” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice.
“There are a few pieces in private collections that I have been unable to gain prolonged access to.”
“Private collections?”
She waved her hand as if to dismiss the thought. “Never mind, there’s no possibility of seeing those relics.”
“Why not?”
Offering me a patient smile, she stood and began to pack everything away again.
“Politics, dear. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get some things organized, and I’m getting rather tired. Come back tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you some more about the sunbird.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DAY AFTER I had finally made a break-through with finding Zarita, I was back on the street. Eth had only booked the hotel room for one night.
Although I could have called him and pushed for more time, I didn’t want to ask for too many favors. If I did, it was possible he would grow suspicious over exactly what the phone number meant, and who belonged to the address I’d had him find.
If I asked for a week or two, he’d suspect I’d found a solid lead and he’d want to know more. He’d want answers that I didn’t have myself yet. If Eth, my father, or any of their European contacts showed up, it could halt everything and push Zarita further into hiding. She would be as lost to me as Evie was. If that happened, I’d never get my answers.
It helped that it didn’t really bother me having to sleep outside. Not when I was edging closer to some concrete answers, for perhaps the first time in my entire European journey. If it took a few nights tempering myself against the cold to learn what I could, so be it.
The biggest issue with the bite of the frosty air as I slept was that it only served to remind me of how absent Evie’s warmth was from my life in general. My nights were plagued by dreams of her, and when I woke, the cold that echoed through me was more pronounced than ever.
The need to know more compelled me to knock on Zarita’s door. She’d open it to allow me entry before turning and silently inviting me inside. She’d then give me brief snippets of information before kicking me out again.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
At least at first.
Despite my initial rush of pleasure at getting some answers, it wasn’t long before it became clear that we had barely scratched the surface of the legends. With the exception of the history lesson on my first night, we hadn’t covered anything that went much deeper than the lore the Rain already had. As the days went on, Zarita had drawn far more information out of me than I had received from her.
By the fourth night, she’d learned of my sister’s death and about Evie being blamed for it—although not the circumstances surrounding the setting of the fire.
By the sixth, I’d confessed to almost everything. How I’d felt when Evie had run from me and how, even though there were thousands of miles between us, it was as if she had taken part of me when she’d gone. That she held that piece of my heart in the palm of her hand and it was hers to protect or scorch as she pleased. That some days I wished, more than anything, that I could be reunited with that piece of myself, not so I was whole but so I could be nearer to her just once more.
Within a week, Zarita had learned everything I could safely tell her without revealing the Rain’s secrets or sounding like I belonged in a mental asylum. But finally after that week, Zarita opened up to me a little more in return—as if my continued appearance was proof of something. Only, I wasn’t sure what.
On the eighth night, when I was already nose-deep in a book that Zarita had found for me, she placed a document down in front of me. Her hand hovered over the paper, as if ready to slide it back toward herself in a heartbeat. After a second had passed, where I was certain she was going to snatch it up and hide it away again, she pushed it ever so slightly closer to me and then moved her hand back to her side.
“This is something I wrote based on pictograms and writings found on relics that are in Marseille. It might answer a few more of your questions.”
I glanced down at the sheets of paper. It was a printout of a research paper that delved far deeper into the subject of phoenixes than anything else she’d offered so far. Way deeper.
“Why didn’t you show me this earlier?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. I flipped through the pages without reading it properly, but I could already see information and concepts that had never been touched on in the other research books she’d given me.
Before I could apologize for being rude, I turned back to the first page and skimmed the notes. Printed there was a vital piece of information that vindicated the way I’d falled for Evie. The sunbird, an entity that legend said resided within the soul of each phoenix, was a protectorate. She existed within each of the seven children to keep the city and people of the goddess safe. At heart, Evie was a force for good. My love for her wasn’t the betrayal I had been made to believe.
Zarita patted my cheek as I read. “I needed to know I could trust you.”
“Why?”
“Have you ever heard of an organization called the Rain?” The name was said through a sneer.
Trying not to give myself away too much, I nodded. “I’m aware of it.”
Her hazel eyes narrowed to slits as she assessed me carefully. “When you arrived on my doorstep, you said you were searching for Zarita Demitriou and yet, you found me.”
“Because she’s dead,” I repeated her words to me from the first evening I’d arrived in order to show her that I was still willing to play along with the charade. “And you’re not.”
“The Rain is the reason Zarita Demitriou had to die. They wanted to use her knowledge of mythological creatures for their own benefits and made her life difficult when she refused to kowtow to their expectations.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”
Tilting her head, her assessment became enquiring. “They have made your life difficult t
oo?”
My mouth formed a wry grin. “You could say that. Mostly though, they’ve made things harder for . . .” I was going to say Evie, but I didn’t want to arouse Zarita’s suspicions more than necessary. If I let her know about the Rain’s interest in Evie, it might provoke more questions about what an ordinary girl—someone without the knowledge and credentials that Zarita had—could possibly have to draw their ruthless attention. “Someone else.”
“For Evie? The girl interested in ancient Phoenician myths?”
I smiled at her perception. “Yeah, for her.”
“If this girl, Evie, left you, how do you know she’s still interested in these legends?”
I scrubbed the back of my neck. The truth could force Zarita to rescind the faith she’d shown in me, but being found out in a lie later could be even more detrimental, especially when I suspected that I’d barely scratched the surface of the information she actually had. Even more so when I suspected that in the short time we’d known each other, she’d figured out some way to tell if I was lying, or at least hiding the truth. Some tell that I had no idea about.
“Something happened when I met her at high school, and she’s been interested ever since.”
She gave me a questioning look. “You met in high school?” I hadn’t told her that part, or of Charlotte and our fatal reunion there. Only of Evie’s existence and the reason we fell to pieces. “You must know her and her family well.”
I found myself wanting to tell the story to someone else—at least as much as I could without revealing the truth about the world of all things other. “Not really. I was an idiot and overreacted to . . . something. Her dad took her away. We’ve just been lucky”—unlucky—“enough to have been reunited since then.”
“Before the fire?”
I nodded.
“Is that why she left?”
I winced at the unintentional brutality of her words. “Yeah, that, and well . . . everything. Life. It just keeps getting in the way.” I sighed. “That and my family.” I took a deep breath and blew it out as I readied myself for my next admission, and the possible fallout. It was something that had the potential to be more damaging than anything else I had admitted to her so far. “They’re Rain.”
She nodded as if she already knew, or at least suspected, as much.
“And I am too.”
Her lips turned up into a secretive smile. “Maybe you were once, but I don’t think so anymore.”
“You knew already?”
“I had guessed that you might have been. Very few other people have the resources to track down Zarita Demitriou. It was the reason I refused to speak to you at first.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”
Her smile grew a little wider and the corners of her eyes crinkled. “I probably wouldn’t have listened then. We all need to come to these understandings in our own time.”
“I never meant to worry you, I swear. I just needed answers.”
“I can tell. You are a good boy. I can hear that in your stories and through the sorrow in your voice. You’ve shown your persistence by returning here and patiently listening to my stories. I don’t believe you want to hurt anyone over things that are not true.”
“No, I don’t.” The blind hatred of my family rushed through my memory at her words. Of course, Zarita meant that the legends weren’t true, whereas I meant that the intention behind the extra gifts granted to Evie and other nonhumans like her. If some of them were set onto Earth as a force of good, how could the Rain justify their continued murder?
“And that’s why it’s now time for you to get this information.” She nodded at the document in my hands.
It was her way of letting me know she trusted me. Everything I’d said and done over the last eight days had somehow convinced her that I was worthy of that. A bubble of warmth spread through my body at the thought. It was an odd sensation because I didn’t know why that meant anything to me.
A little over a week ago, she was a complete stranger. Yet, her acceptance meant the world to me in that moment. Maybe it was the simple fact that by sharing my story without her judging me, I’d had the chance to understand it all a little better myself.
Zarita left me alone in her study to read through her typed notes. I devoured each bit of new information—the paper contained exactly the sort of details I’d been hoping for when I’d started my search so many months earlier.
The first few pages covered things I already knew, just in deeper detail. Things like the history of how phoenixes had come to be; what happened when a phoenix died—how a child was born from the ashes of her mother; and that the sunbird was carried only through the female line.
Then I hit a page that confused me at first. Like the others, it was typed with a few notes in black ink. However, one word was handwritten in red over the top of the page again and again.
“Agape?” I murmured as I read the word. I thought about calling Zarita back to the small study and asking her to explain the word, but I hoped something in the text would make some sense of it.
It was clear even after the first few sentences that this section of the paper was less detailed than the rest, consisting of little more than sketched out notes and frustrated comments about missing sources and desired relics.
The first few paragraphs were notes that linked the sunbird with Ba`alat Gebal. Then it listed other deities associated with Ba`alat Gebal, including Astarte, Aphrodite, Anat, Hathor, Astarte. The list went on and on. Multiple religions all apparently worshipping the one being. I skimmed until I saw something that might have been relevant. It spoke about the way the phoenix loves—of the way she identifies and then claims her mate.
As part of the protectorate, the sunbird is naturally drawn to partners who will continue to strengthen the blood-line. Desirable attributes include strength, integrity, tenacity, and compassion.
There were notes jotted in the margin that questioned why the genes of the mate mattered when each child was a carbon copy of the previous phoenix. It didn’t make sense to me either, but I pushed the thought aside and kept reading.
The sunbird bonds with only one mate each lifetime. Once forged, a bond is irreversible. Both the phoenix and her mate are—
The sentence cut off, and the word Agape was written once more, typed into the next line, but it wasn’t explained any further. I growled at the lack of decent information in this page—the one that seemed most relevant to everything I needed to know. My heart pounded as I continued to read on.
Once a phoenix has selected her mate, the bond is forged through the heating of her blood. Her fire sets within him the twin emotions of pothos and eros—longing and desire.
The first kiss I shared with Evie entered my mind. Her body had warmed noticeably in my arms, growing hotter until it was almost impossible to hold her but even more impossible to let her go. It took every ounce of strength I had to turn from her and as soon as I had, my anger had burned through me.
Based on the research in front of me, it was clear that Evie had set something in me.
She’d made me long for her.
Forced me to desire her.
My mind turned to my attempts to satisfy my cravings with other women. No fucking wonder none of it worked if I was under a spell wrought by the fucking sunbird.
My breathing sped as I read the paragraph again, trying to decipher some different meaning in it, but there was none. I didn’t want to believe it was true, and yet it was there in black and white. Despite it being the reason for my European sojourn, I wasn’t sure I’d actually expected to find evidence that Evie had forced me into feeling the things I did.
To find out that it was true, that everything I felt was manufactured—that it was all bullshit—made my hands quiver. The anger that had surged after our first kiss resurfaced and I clenched my fists.
Were those feelings my last real reaction to anything?
“Sets within him” and “Irreversible” leaped at me from o
ff the page.
After that kiss, I’d accused Evie of tricking me—of making me feel things for her just to get me on her side. I swallowed down a lump that formed in my throat even as my breath grew shorter. A barrage of rage battered at the walls that guarded my heart against the force of the remaining Rain conscience within me.
The pressure built in steady waves until the protection buckled and threatened to crumble completely, ready to force me into believing the truth of the Rain.
To the hatred of all non-humans.
Was I right way back then?
Did she trick me for her own purposes?
“Sets within him.”
The walls that kept Evie in my heart and the Rain out shattered, allowing the hatred to seep in, dragging a swell of betrayal with it.
I pushed back on the chair, forcing myself away from the table and the document on it. My fingers raked roughly through my hair in a desperate attempt to do something.
Anything.
Everything I’d felt for Evie pulsated around my body, twisting into bitter rejection and searching for release.
How could I have ever thought that I could genuinely fall in love with a monster?
How could I ever believe she loved me?
How could I have been so stupid?
What had she gained out of torturing me?
For a brief moment, I imagined her in the arms of the fae lover she’d already admitted to. The two of them laughing at my naivety.
“Irreversible.” The word flittered through my mind, and I couldn’t contain myself any longer.
The betrayal coursing through my system burst from me in a flash. I stood, grabbed the chair from beneath me and then hurled it across the room as a primal cry flew from my lips.
“How could you?” I shouted as if Evie were right in front of me and could justify her actions.
Dad and Lou had been right. Every damned thing I felt for her was nothing more than a trick. She’d forced me to love her and then ripped my heart out when she’d left.
Among the Debris (Son of Rain #2) Page 12
