by Tracy Clark
I spun around.
Dark curly hair flew within the white covers as they rolled over, oblivious to their audience. Her back was to us, bare but for one distinguishing mark—the knife. I felt like one had been driven hard into my chest.
Without thinking, my hand slammed on a switch next to the window. The light changed in the room we were in. He noticed and sat up. Giovanni peered around Cora’s back. Lorcan pushed another button and we could hear Giovanni’s flagrant curses in Italian.
Cora slowly turned. Time snagged, stopped. Light caught the spiral of dark hair that hung over one eye as she looked over her bare shoulder.
Our eyes met.
I didn’t know what Dr. M was saying, or what crude comments Lorcan was spouting after he waved to her and said, “Hi, doll.” I only knew that the girl I loved, the one person in this world I wanted to save even beyond myself, was gathering a blanket around her body and walking slowly, wordlessly toward me.
Her hair was wild from his touch. Her lips were plump and wet with his kisses and slightly open in bewilderment. Her eyes, her beautiful green eyes, confused, blinking as she realized what was happening. She opened her mouth to speak, looked from me to Lorcan to Dr. M, and pursed them. A closed book.
I wished I’d never made it off my boat. God could strike me dead on the spot and it would be a favor, though God owed me no favors and wouldn’t spare me this pain.
Giovanni was suddenly next to her. His arm wrapped possessively around her shoulders. “You could help us. You know you could, you Arrazi bastard. At least save her!”
How on earth could I save her? This facility was controlled by the Society, and they had them, three of them, whether Ultana knew it or not. After this, she’d surely know. Lorcan would tell her immediately.
Lorcan waved his finger at Giovanni. “We’re not going to save her life. And I’ll tell you what, you will never save her life, either,” he said. “Or you will die.”
“Lorcan!” I yelled. That simple word “or” was an evil spell coming from his mouth. My God, he’d cursed Giovanni and by doing so, Cora. I may have hated Giovanni, now more than ever, but he was the only one who seemed to care about her as much as I did. And she, him. That was bloody obvious.
Torture was standing there, hoping that she’d say anything to explain what I’d just seen, anything to comfort the gash in my chest.
Instead, she focused on Lorcan and her face turned from astonished to vicious. “What did you do with my cousin, Mari? And Teruko? Where are they? Did you kill Mari?” Tears streamed down her face. “I know you killed her,” she said to him, dissolving to sobs. “I know you did…”
“And you.” She slammed her palm on the window, hitting me with such a savage glare that I recoiled. “This is the second time I’ve been prisoner while you’re on the free side of the wall!”
I had no idea what to do, but I couldn’t help them at that moment. It was obvious that I knew them personally. Seeing Cora so stripped, her pain raw and unmasked, resentful as a caged animal, was like having teeth ruthlessly clamp down and rip my heart to shreds.
Lorcan crossed his arms over his chest. “So you do know her? Why don’t you tell her what happened to her cousin?”
Cora’s eyes slanted to me, agony and questions in their green depths. I leaned my head on the window, flogging myself with whips of guilt. “I do know this girl,” I said to Lorcan. To deny her now, when she was about to find out what I’d done, would have been shameful and cowardly. “I’ve loved her,” I answered. “Every day.”
My voice sounded like the brush of dead leaves to my own ears. My heart beat too thick and heavy to be dead. I opened my mouth to tell her about Mari.
“Liar!” she cried, both fists beating the glass. “Look at what you’re doing, who you’re here with!” It shouldn’t have surprised me that Cora possessed such ferocity. She’d always coursed deeper than she’d shown.
“Cora, I—”
“Your love was a lie!”
She called my love a lie? It was the only real thing in my heart. Inside, something snapped. “You want to hear something true?” I yelled back at her, not caring that I’d lost control, that I deserved every drop of her hate. I slammed my own fist on the glass against hers. She didn’t flinch, didn’t back off from me. Just stared at our hands pressed with glass between them. God, she was so close…
“That bastard that you’re in there having sex with…” It sickened me to even say the words. Inexplicably, her eyes flitted to Dr. M and then back at me, pained. “You want to know his darkest secret? The blackest hole in his heart? My mother told me all about it after she met him in Clancy’s cell. He’s paid to find and bring in his own kind! Ask him how much money he got for your precious little Scintilla head!”
She opened her mouth, but then closed it again. And I saw she’d bitten her lip so hard, a welt of red blood sliced across it.
No more words. I had to get out of there. I’d done enough damage.
Fifty-Three
Cora
Finn turned his back.
Of all the moments in the world, he’d looked in on that one. My chest felt like someone had hacked out my heart with a long, corroded nail. He’d been so angry, treated me like I’d had a choice and had made the wrong one. Choices my ass.
Not only did Dr. M leave me no choice, but Finn being Arrazi left me none, either. Was I supposed to pine away for the rest of my life for someone who I could never, ever be with? Finn would never know that he was always in my mind, my heart. I was pushing him away, pushing him uphill like a boulder, one that I would always be chained to. No matter what I did, or how I tried to leave it behind me, it would always roll back at me. My love for Finn would always flatten me.
Still, even if he was angry, how could his pride be more important than my freedom?
How could he have shown up with that Arrazi piece of crap who taunted me about Mari? I still didn’t know what happened to her. But Finn did. How could he hear Giovanni ask for help and just…just leave?
Giovanni would never know how much of myself I’d given to him. It might not have been my full heart, but it was as much as I had left. Now it was smashed in my outstretched hands. I felt the air charge around me as Giovanni’s hand reached for my back.
“Don’t touch me.”
I stood with my eyes closed, seeing only two palms pressed together against the glass. Finn and I would always be divided by something impenetrable.
“What he said—”
“Is it true?” I turned and shoved Giovanni in the chest with one hand and clutched my blanket to me with the other. He stumbled backward, his face insolent as a child’s. He opened his mouth to speak, but I saw it in his eyes. “I know it’s true. You told me—nobody does something for nothing, remember?”
Bitterness roped around me and squeezed so tight, I felt the welts of it inside and out. I swiped the tears away with the back of my hand. “My family, my real family, is here because you brought us here. We are prisoners again, because of you. And you’re profiting from it? How much?”
“You’re not letting me explain—”
“Nothing you can explain will erase the fact that you used me for your own benefit. This is the secret Finn’s mother saw in your eyes when they found us at Clancy’s. I stupidly assumed it was your telekinesis. I assumed and you never corrected me.” Revulsion and humiliation rocked me so hard that I shook. “You were using me. Oh my God, in the worst way! Were you getting paid to try to screw me? How much for a Scintilla baby, huh? Ugh, this is sick.”
I flung myself away from his reaching arms and reaching aura. Degraded down to my soul, I wrapped the blanket around me tighter, went to gather my clothes that lay crumpled on the floor, and ran into the bathroom. Once the door was shut and locked, I collapsed against the wall and sank to the cold floor, shivering—in complete shock.
Blades of truth jutted into my chest.
Mari. Her name was a twist of the blade. I didn’t know if they’d killed
her, though my heart told me she was dead. If it wasn’t that Arrazi, then I probably had Clancy Mulcarr to blame. My mouthy, freaky, feisty, sparkly cousin was gone. How could this be happening?
Another blade, that Finn could see me behind the glass, knowing I was in danger, and still walk away. And what was his part in all of this? How did Finn end up on the other side of that window, in Dr. M’s facility with that Arrazi son of a bitch who took Mari?
The blade of truth Finn had thrown about Giovanni had hit its mark, deeply. I bled inside from the betrayal. No wonder Giovanni had been so pushy about Dr. M, always bringing it up. Money was a great motivator. I always thought it was odd that he’d had so much cash available. I also blamed myself for agreeing to come when my gut wasn’t sure. Every decision I’d made in the last two months had led to nothing but death and disaster.
I couldn’t trust anyone.
Least of all myself.
It was awful not being able to scream my truth in Finn’s face. I was gagged by my very situation, muzzled for my mom’s survival. Stupid to worry about what Finn thought. Yes, I was feeling something, many things, with Giovanni, but always Finn was in the back of my mind. I couldn’t escape him. It was Finn I’d compare everyone else to. Every other love was counterfeit—tin in the face of the gold. I slammed my palm on the cold tile. Damn it. Was Finn always going to feel like a home I could never return to?
I had to stand in front of him, head up, silent but crumbling inside. I knew if I opened my mouth, Finn had the power to pull the truth from me in front of Dr. M., the one person I needed to buy the farce that Giovanni and I were actually having sex. I could only stare and let them all believe the lie. Luckily, Finn didn’t ask me outright. Hell, he even helped corroborate it when he yelled at me. He’d sold it hook, line, and sinker because he believed it himself.
Giovanni knocked softly on the bathroom door. “Cora? Let’s talk, please. You must hear what I have to say.”
“How many chances have you had to tell me the truth?” I asked, not moving from the floor. “What I must do is get my family out of here.”
He sighed against the door. “You no longer include me when you say family.”
“You don’t know what family means.”
“I don’t. How could I? But the situation is not what you’re thinking.”
“Shut up! Stop talking. Honesty doesn’t mean as much when you’re giving it to buy forgiveness. You’re still just looking out for yourself. You were always looking out for yourself.”
Fifty-Four
Finn
My torn and bleeding knuckles throbbed as I dialed the phone. Lorcan would have to deal with the fact that his van took a few punches. The bastard had cursed her by cursing Giovanni and callously volleyed her cousin’s fate back at me. I wanted to confess to Cora. She deserved to know. But then, then everything got out of hand. It would be a matter of minutes before Lorcan alerted his mother about the Scintilla at the facility. I had to find a way to get them out of there before it was too late.
Saoirse answered on the fifth ring. “Lorcan is probably going to call your mother. Can you please run interference if you can? I’m asking you as my friend to do this. The girl…the one who ruined me…” God, I was ruined. I couldn’t tell Saoirse she was Scintilla. She didn’t need to know that. She needed only to know that I was asking for help. She owed me. “She’s being held inside this facility. You have to buy me time to help her, Saoirse. I’m begging you. I helped you when you most needed it. Now, I need you.”
“Okay, Finn. Okay. I’ll do what I can.”
I scribbled a note and left it on the driver’s seat of the van.
Urgent. Your mother sent a car for me. Instructs that you make no phone calls until you get my call. Get the van away from the facility for your own safety and drive it to “Hell.” Wait there.
I had to smile at telling Lorcan Lennon to go to Hell.
My father had been out of town for two days of a month-long stint with the Defence Forces. He couldn’t help me. I called my mother and was told she was in surgery. I had noticed how many people worked for Dr. M in that facility. I was outnumbered at least twenty to one and had no idea what ways they might have of stopping me if I tried to free the Scintilla by myself. My next move was a complete gamble, but I was desperate. I ran a block away, hid behind a metal grate, and called my uncle to come right away, giving him the address of the building where I hid.
While I waited, I watched Lorcan wander out from the facility with Dr. M. They glanced around for me, shook hands, and Dr. M returned inside. Lorcan paused when he got in the van. He pulled away shortly, and I ducked down as he passed, hoping to God he and Clancy wouldn’t see each other on the road.
Minutes later, my uncle arrived.
“I know where the Scintilla are. All three of them.” Clancy didn’t react, but his neck turned red the way it always did when he was riled. “Ultana is quite possibly about to know where they are as well because Lorcan was with me. It comes down to this—she wants three Scintilla. You’re trying to find them before she does. Whatever power she thinks that will give her, I figure you intend to claim it for yourself.”
His head jerked up, surprised. “Your sortilege is frightening, Finnegan. You have the potential for there to be nothing you can’t know just by asking.”
“Don’t patronize me. Right now, all I want to know is whether you’ll help me rescue them and keep them out of Ultana’s hands. I’m not stupid enough to think you want them to play cricket. But it’s a fact that Ultana sides with the Society, who wants the Scintilla dead. Between that devil and the devil I know, I choose you. I have to get them out of there, and I can’t do it alone. You don’t want the Society to know you already had possession of the three once,” I said, drilling him with his own secret. “I will tell Ultana how you’ve been going rogue unless you help me now without hurting any of them.”
“Aye, Finn,” my uncle said, looking straight into my eyes. “I’ll help you.”
“We both know you’re only about helping yourself, so cut the crap. You will not hurt them or I’ll kill you. I swear it. Hurt them at all and you won’t live to see tomorrow.”
Fifty-Five
Cora
“Cora,” Giovanni knocked on the door to the bathroom sometime later. “Dr. M said he wants to see us.” His voice was urgent. This might be the time to make our move. I wasn’t sure how long I’d sat on the cold floor, but my body was tense and stiff as I stood and opened the door.
“With luck, he’ll want to meet outside of this place.” At the first chance, I intended to break free of this compound or die trying.
I would rather die than be anyone’s prisoner, ever again.
Giovanni reached for my hand, but I slid out of range and shot him a warning look.
“He conned me, too,” he said. Hurt and defensiveness filled his voice and showed in his retracted aura.
“Con artist got conned?”
He turned away.
“There’s no excuse for not telling me. I thought we were lost together.” My voice cracked on “together” and it pissed me off. I’d known Giovanni was wily from the minute I’d met him, and yet I trusted him. Time and time again, I proved to be too naive to trust my own judgment. I wished my father knew how his protective bubble had rendered me ill equipped for this harsh world.
I yanked on my pants, slid my feet into the flat slippers they provided, braided my tangle of hair, and waited like a coiled snake on the foot of the bed, prepared to strike when the summons came. Giovanni was ready, too. He hung off the small love seat’s edge, ready to jump.
I stared at the window, wondering if we were being watched. It had been an ugly scene with Finn and his Arrazi friend. Even after Finn stormed out, the guy stared at Giovanni and me. I thought a lot about that stare. It was hard to read. Gullible me would have thought there was wondrous awe in his gaze, but gullible me had gotten into enough trouble. He was nothing but a killer.
Before they came f
or me, I had to find a way to give Giovanni a secret message. I scooted off the bed and walked up behind him. His whole body tensed when he felt me approach. His back was rigid and straight as he leaned forward on his knees. I leaned over the back of the couch and pulled his shoulders toward me. He slumped against the seat, letting me wrap my arms around his neck. On the side away from the mirror, I whispered in his ear.
“I’m going after mine. You go after yours. We’ll get out of here, whatever it takes.”
His right hand reached up and around and stroked the back of my head. He turned sideways slightly. I started to pull away, but he held my head close. “And after?”
I swallowed hard as I tried to say the harsh truth. “I can’t depend on someone I don’t trust.”
“I would die to save you, you know that?” he said with quiet ferocity against the edge of my mouth.
A buzzer rang, and the metal door slid open. Dr. M stood in the doorway. Two men, both armed, flanked him. The spark of Giovanni’s energy fueled my own. As I glanced quickly at Giovanni’s aura, I could see we both struggled to hold our intensity in check. His face was impassive, almost bored-looking, but his aura flared so wildly, it hooked around me and combined with mine. If this were the dining room, they’d see that we were an enormous ball of silver fire, ready to fight.
The young men strode forward. “Turn around,” one ordered Giovanni. Giovanni did as he was told, and the man pulled his arms behind his back and slipped a zip tie around his wrists, pulling it taut. Gone was one method of defense and attack.
Dr. M kept one hand on a Taser at his waist as the men led us out. We walked in a line down the long hallway toward the elevators. A million possibilities whirled through my mind. Could Dr. M somehow be electrocuted in that high-voltage dining room of his? Would we go into the biometrics lab where I could wrap some of that copper wiring around his neck? My sortilege was useless. I couldn’t kill him with a memory.
