Rituals

by Kelley Armstrong

  "I did, all right? I take the blame. I made mistakes. I apologize. Is that what you want?"

  "What I want is an explanation. I believe I'm entitled to one."

  "No, you're not."

  I bristled and rose. "Gabriel is--"

  "I have never asked you for anything, Patrick," Gabriel said, his voice low. "Even as a child, when you offered to tell me where to find the last gargoyle, I refused. Now I am asking for something."

  Patrick shook his head and took out a small stack of books, laying them on the table.

  "Damn you," I said, shoving the books aside as I planted myself in front of him. "Your son is asking for words. That's it. Words. You'll damn well find the basic civility to answer--"

  "Stay out of this, Liv," Patrick said. "It isn't your concern."

  "If it's about him, then it is my concern. Isn't that what you once told me?"

  "Please lock the door on your way out. It's late, and I'm going back to bed."

  He started to leave. I grabbed his arm.

  The room went dark. Then flashes. Images. Still pictures coming so fast it took me a moment to realize they were memories of Gwynn and Matilda.

  Images flipped past, mostly of that fateful night when Matilda died. A few others I didn't recognize. Then the one I'd seen in Gabriel's memories--a Gwynn standing dumbfounded over the body of an Arawn, bloodied sword in hand.

  "You love games." A woman's voice pierced the darkness. "Just not when they're foisted on you. We could have avoided that if you'd spoken to me sooner. I presume you got my message."

  "Matilda is returning," Patrick's voice answered. "Here. To this region."

  The woman again. "Yes."

  "Has she been born?"

  "Not yet."

  "When?"

  "Eventually. That is all I know, bocan, so do not press me for more."

  "But you know more about Gwynn, don't you? That's who I saw. What's my connection to him?"

  "I'm sure you've figured it out."

  "I have no idea."

  "You lie so well, bocan. All right. Let me spell it out for you. Gwynn is returning, and you will be his sire."

  The voiced faded. Then I saw light. I blinked hard and opened my eyes to find myself staring at an open window, sunlight streaming through.

  I always close the curtains. Basic security. Particularly when borrowing a house not your own.

  I lifted my head and--

  "Cach!" Pain stabbed through my skull.

  I'm hungover.

  How was that possible? The last time I'd been hungover was nearly a century ago, after drinking four bottles of fae wine. Last night I'd only had half a glass.

  No, wait. Seanna had brought more.

  "Only for you," she'd said. "I know I've had enough."

  Seanna had dosed the damned wine. And then what...?

  I looked down to see I was fully dressed, and exhaled in relief. Then I glanced at the nightstand, where I'd left my wallet and watch. Watch gone. Wallet...I checked. Empty.

  I shook my head. That was a fine thanks for rescuing her from a beating and giving her a place to spend the night, but I'd known what Seanna was, and theft, sadly, was exactly what I should have expected.

  The scene faded. When it surged again, I was home in Cainsville. Veronica had summoned me, urgently, and I knew that meant trouble, but as I entered the hall, I slowed and pushed back my worry and then swung through into the living room, casually saying, "All right, where's the fire?"

  Veronica pointed to the couch. There was Seanna Walsh.

  "She was looking for you rather desperately," Veronica said. "I can't imagine why." She cast a pointed look at the girl's protruding stomach.

  "No, that's-- It can't..." I trailed off as I flashed back to the night Seanna had drugged me. The night I couldn't remember. Waking up fully dressed suggested I hadn't done anything to Seanna. It did not mean she hadn't done anything to me.

  The scene went dark again and...

  I woke in Gabriel's lap. He was crouched, as if he'd caught me mid-fall. Patrick stood over us, his face colder than I'd ever seen it.

  "Discovered a new power, Olivia?" Patrick said.

  "You didn't seduce Seanna," I said. "You didn't even have a fling. You rescued her, and she repaid you by robbing you blind. But your watch and money wasn't all she took. She drugged you and had sex with you. Without your consent."

  His face went even colder, and behind his eyes I saw a rage that made me want to take his advice, to get out as fast as I could.

  I looked him in the eye. "It was blackmail, wasn't it? She knew you had money. Another of her half-baked schemes. Only this one worked. She did get pregnant."

  "Get out. Now."

  I rose. "I will. But you--"

  "Stop talking," Patrick said.

  Gabriel shouldered between us. "Don't tell her--"

  "Get out of my house, Olivia, and if you ever invade my privacy again--"

  "Do not threaten her," Gabriel cut in, his voice quiet. "If you want to blame someone, blame me for pressing. I asked because I needed to understand, even if I would love to say it doesn't matter and I'm quite over it. I asked, and you refused."

  "I--"

  "You refused--to protect your ego and your pride. You were conned and assaulted by a teenager. That did not fit the image you wish to project. So you refused the one thing I asked of you. I will not forget that."

  Gabriel ushered me through the house and out the front door.

  --

  Lloergan fell in at my side. We'd walked to Patrick's, leaving Rose's car at her house. I had to nearly jog to keep up with Gabriel's long strides as he headed back there. Lloergan whined and pushed at my hand.

  In rejecting the overture, Patrick rejected him. It was a reminder that Patrick had left him with Seanna, turned his back, and then said, "Hey, kid, I helped you with the gargoyles. What more do you want?"

  What happened to Patrick was horrible, and if it was possible to hate Seanna more, I did. But Gabriel had nothing to do with that. If the admission was too shameful for Patrick to share, he could have made up a story. She got me drunk and...I guess we had sex.

  He refused to answer for exactly the reason Gabriel said. To protect himself. To protect his ego and his reputation.

  I would not forget that, either.

  IN THE CARDS

  It was nearly 5 a.m. and Rose was in her parlor, flipping cards onto the polished wood of her desk. She could say she'd gotten up early, but the ice-cold tea at her elbow told another story. She stared at the cards. With a soft growl of frustration, she gathered them up and reshuffled, as she'd done so often in the last few hours that she could feel the cardboard edges dig in, tender spots forming as her hands begged for a break.

  Give me something. Just give me something, damn it.

  Finally, the cards obeyed. The four of cups. Reversed. Seanna's card.

  Rose reached to turn it upright and stopped herself. She'd done that for so many years. Tried to fix the card. Tried to fix Seanna.

  The four of cups was a card of love in all its forms. Reverse the card, and it tells of too much love, too much forgiveness, little of it earned, none of it returned.

  Rose did see love in her niece. Seanna was the product of love between her parents. The recipient of love from her family. But did Seanna give love? To anyone? Rose used to say yes, but it was like squinting through a peephole into a shadowy room and telling yourself monsters couldn't possibly lurk in the corners. You saw what you wanted to, and you knew the deception for what it was.

  As Rose fingered the deck, she pictured Seanna in her grandparents' home, a rambling Victorian only a few houses from where Liv now lived. Seanna's parents had lived in a smaller house right next door, and they'd taken out the fence so Seanna could come and go between her home and her grandparents'.

  No excuse there, Seanna. You had a good life, just as I did. A family who loved you. Adored you.

  One could blame the tragedy that killed Seanna's paren
ts--a car crash when she was sixteen. But Seanna had left home a few months before the crash, and her parents died while on yet another endless drive through the city, searching for their lost daughter. Years later, Seanna admitted she'd heard of her parents' deaths and just hadn't bothered showing up for the funeral.

  I was busy, okay?

  Rose squeezed her eyes shut. Where did we go wrong, Seanna?

  She imagined Seanna at six, standing on her tiptoes to watch her teenaged aunt deal tarot cards.

  "Teach me, Rose," she said.

  Rose smiled and lifted a card. "See this one? It's yours. Four of cups. That means you're very much loved--"

  "No, not that. Teach me to use the cards."

  "I am, Seanna. If you understand the meanings, you can pretend to tell the future."

  "I don't want to pretend. I want to do it. Like you."

  "Here's a secret." Rose bent and pushed a dark curl behind Seanna's ear to whisper. "Most of the time I do pretend."

  Seanna didn't giggle the way most little girls would have, pleased to be told a scandalous secret. Instead, she said, "But you can really do it. You have the Sight."

  Rose's smile fell away as she nodded gravely. "Yes, Seanna, I do. And do you want to know another secret?"

  "No." Seanna's small face screwed up. "I don't want your stupid secrets. I want the Sight."

  There had been, deep inside Rose, the urge to snap at Seanna. To tell her not to talk to her aunt that way, not to talk to anyone that way. When someone offers a secret, it's a gift and an honor. You don't spit on it.

  Rose reflected maybe that was where they'd gone wrong with Seanna. In Cainsville, children were cherished and loved and, yes, sometimes coddled. The same went in her family. The Walshes might steal and con outsiders, but family was family, and no family was more precious than children. Instead, they'd tried gently to guide Seanna to better behavior.

  That day long ago, Rose had just taken a deep breath, pushed aside her own temper, and said, in a firmer voice, "Well, you're going to listen to this secret, because it's an important one, Seanna. Gifts are curses, too. They give you something special, but that makes you different, and different isn't always good. Even the gift itself isn't always good. Do you know why I usually pretend with others? Sometimes it's because the Sight won't work. Other times it's because what I see is bad, so I tell them something nicer while trying to help them avoid the bad thing. Does that make sense?"

  Seanna scowled. "You just want the Sight all for yourself."

  That was all her niece heard. Embedded deep in that explanation was the word "no," and it was all that mattered.

  "I can't give the Sight to you, Seanna. Either you have it or you don't."

  Rose remembered her niece's scowl again, and it brought to mind another face. A face she tried to forget. Bobby Sheehan. A boy who lived in the city and had family in Cainsville. A boy, she now realized, who'd been a changeling, taken from a dysfunctional fae blood family and placed into a normal one with Cainsville ties. A boy who always knew that he didn't belong--a cuckoo in the nest of very ordinary sparrows.

  That realization had driven Bobby to murder while barely in his teens. Murder and then madness, condemned to a psychiatric ward. He'd given Rose the same look Seanna had, when Hannah had told him their secrets: that Rose had the Sight and Hannah could understand animals in a way ordinary people could not.

  Hannah.

  My, my, you're really piling on the punishment today, aren't you, Rose? Why not add Gabriel to the heap of mistakes you've made, people you've failed to help, failed to save.

  But Gabriel was already on the list, wasn't he? Right at the top, and that was what had her up all night, begging the cards for answers. Rose Walsh, who never begged for anything. Now she was. Yet the cards stayed silent, taunting her instead with a never-ending parade of people she'd wronged and mistakes she'd made.

  Hannah.

  Her best friend from the day they'd met, too far back in memory for Rose to recall, though Hannah's mother always told the story of two toddlers fighting over a toy at a town picnic. Except they hadn't been fighting to take it from the other; they'd been trying to give it to the other. You want it, so you take it. No, you take it. True or not, Rose supposed it said a lot about them, and why they'd become such good friends.

  Best friends as toddlers, as schoolchildren, as teens. Then Hannah went off to college. Rose had visited her on campus, where they'd gone to a party and had too much to drink. Ducking the advances of frat boys, they'd stumbled, laughing, into an empty bedroom and locked the door. Drunk and sleepy, they'd decided to take advantage of the bed and lie down, and they'd curled up together, as they'd always done, and then...

  Rose never could quite remember how it started. Or who started it. They'd been cuddling, with the alcohol buzzing, and the cuddling felt so good, not quite like it did with boys, slower and sweeter and not necessarily better but not worse, either. And then the cuddling turned to nuzzling, and the hugging to touching, soft strokes on an arm or a back, fingers searching and then lips searching and a kiss. That first kiss answered all Rose's uncomfortable questions about boys and sex, and why she liked it--really liked it--but there was an itch it didn't quite scratch.

  That kiss had seemed to go on forever, and somewhere in the middle of it, hands slid under clothing and then clothing fell to the side of the bed, and then hands on skin and hands everywhere, touching, exploring, and Hannah gasping. Rose had been alarmed until she saw her friend's face, eyes closed, lips parted, panting softly as she moaned, that gasp clearly not telling her to stop. So she didn't, and afterward Hannah whispered that'd been the first time that happened. Her first climax. So Rose did it again, and then Hannah did it for her, and that night, that perfect, endless night...

  Then came morning, when the frat boys picked the lock, expecting to sneak in on one of their confederates, and instead finding the girls in bed, curled up together, naked.

  Rose hadn't cared. Rose never cared. That was the Walsh way. Take your judgment and your so-called morality and shove it up your ass. I'll live as I want. I'll be happy however I want.

  But that wasn't Hannah. It had never been Hannah. Even if today's society had not yet progressed quite as far as Rose would like, it had been so much worse for two girls caught together in bed forty years ago.

  Rose sometimes felt the temptation to give Liv a shake and say, "Just go for it with Gabriel." But that impulse never lasted long because Rose understood, better than anyone, that even the strongest friendship could shatter, and the move from friend to lover was exactly the sort of pressure that could do it. Sometimes, you can't go back. You might wish it with all your heart, but you can't, because, sometimes, that isn't up to you.

  Rose stared at Seanna's card. Then she went to flip another one, and it sliced the edge of her finger. A drop of blood fell onto the card. Rose quickly grabbed a tissue to wipe it off--these were the cards she didn't use with clients. It was a rare Victorian deck. Gabriel had bought them for her when he was a boy--a Solstice gift that had required both great thought and great expense. These cards reminded her of how important she was to him, even if he was unlikely to ever say the words.

  When she wiped the blood, it only smeared on the plastic-coated card, and she started to wipe again. She ran her finger along the edge. Too worn to cause a paper cut. It was a message, then.

  Or a wish.

  She looked at the card, Seanna under a wash of blood.

  I wish you'd stayed dead. It kills me to even think that, but it's true. If there was any good in your life, it's all in that son of yours. You're hell-bent on destroying him, and I won't let you do that. I just won't.

  Rose's phone chirped with an incoming text. She picked up the card, cleaning it as she walked. When she found her phone, there was a message from her nephew.

  We need to talk. Please let me know when you're up and ready to receive visitors.

  Receive visitors. She smiled. That made her sound like a character in one
of Liv's Victorian novels. Great-aunt Rose receiving visitors over tea in her parlor. Not exactly the image she liked to project, even if the component parts were accurate.

  She tapped back, I'm up. Come anytime, and then she went to start the kettle for tea.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was barely five-thirty, and Rose was already dressed, with tea and fresh biscuits and jam waiting. I was going to say, "You're up early." Then I saw the hollow circles under her eyes.

  We settled in at the desk in the parlor. As I spread homemade raspberry jam on a warm biscuit, Gabriel said, "We wouldn't have come so early if it wasn't a matter of some urgency. Seanna disappeared from the hotel where Patrick put her, having faked her death again. There was a great deal of blood, but Lloergan"--he glanced at the hound, eating meat from a china plate on the Oriental carpet--"confirmed that a trail outside the window was indeed hers, meaning she was not seriously injured."

  Before Rose could respond, Gabriel continued, "Olivia's car was spotted shortly before the incident. Pending analysis of the crime scene, the police insist on treating this as a possible homicide, which means if they manage to obtain identifying details on the vehicle, they'll know it's Olivia's. That will make you a suspect."

  "I--"

  "I'm not seriously concerned that you'd be arrested, and even if you were, there's no body, but I still need to obtain the details of your visit."

  Rose said, "May I speak?"

  "Yes."

  "Seanna called my business number and demanded to see me. I went to the hotel. I can confirm it seems to be her."

  "It is," I said. "Patrick knew she was alive. He's been paying her to stay away for years."

  "And he never imagined she'd come home once she realized how much her son is worth?" Rose shook her head. "I'm sure Patrick thought she'd take the guaranteed payout rather than risk un-faking her death, but Seanna only sees dollar signs."

  "And she presumes whatever trouble she gets into, she can get out of."

  Rose refreshed my tea, her gaze on the cup. "Yes, I'm afraid early experience taught her that. Police bought her tears and fell for her sob stories. Family bought her lies and gave in to her tantrums. Plenty of blame to go around."

  "No," Gabriel said quietly. "The only blame falls on her own shoulders. Mistakes may have been made, but help was offered. Endlessly offered."