No Time to Cry (Nine While Nine Legacy Book 1)

by Stasia Morineaux

  Plates were passed, the savory fare dished out, glasses filled.

  I was still mesmerized by the wood of the table. The waves in the grain of the wood, combined with the flaming variegated colors, had a hallucinatory effect that I had a hard time pulling my eyes from.

  “It’s Cocobolo wood,” Gideon informed me.

  “Oh.” I pulled my eyes from the undulating embers within the table. Michael had Cocobolo eyes.

  Gideon raised his glass and the others followed suit, mine fell in a step behind.

  “To new beginnings…and new bonds,” he toasted, they all toasted, raising their glasses to me.

  I sampled from my glass, it was wonderful. I looked at Liam over the rim. He was engrossed in conversation with Erin. Music played softly in the background, similar in genre to my Dead Can Dance station on Pandora…in fact…that actually was Dead Can Dance that was currently playing. The Host of Seraphim. I stifled a laugh that threatened to bubble up and out. The song was a favorite of mine, very atmospheric, soothing, but not coma inducing.

  As I ate, or attempted, small bites, I noticed the others stealing glances my way. I was the newbie, the outsider, the different one. I remembered the ambiguous words of Gideon and Liam faintly in my mind.

  Gideon and Liam were speaking to each other in low tones. The other four talked with one another, comfortable with well known company. I wondered how long they had all been together at this.

  “So, Iliana,” Gideon turned his attention to me, as he refilled my wine glass, “is the apartment to your liking?”

  “Yes, it’s perfect. Thank you,” I stumbled.

  “What did you do with yourself the past couple of days?”

  He didn’t know? I figured he ‘knew all’ or something, or at least what I’d been up to. Should I tell him? Hey Gideon, I sat around all pissed off and stewing over this whole flipping situation, how you don’t really tell me anything and just leave me sitting around waiting for you…’cause a girl really likes that. Oh, and I spent at least half of one of those days thinking about your kiss.

  Nah, maybe not.

  “I shopped, I painted.” Liam was watching, listening to our exchange. “Nice thing about Capitol Hill is how accessible everything is, a great walking neighborhood.” I felt a surge of that influence, that new something extra that I did not use to possess, rise within me. I felt Michael list ever so slightly in his chair. At the same moment I felt his survey of me.

  “I used to come here years ago. I’m glad I can still find my way around.”

  Gideon stilled. He laid his fork on his plate, remained still for a moment, his brow furrowed, his eyes suddenly hard. What had just happened? All the affable sounds of the dining room ceased and I felt all eyes hesitate on me.

  “How often?” Gideon asked, his voice stone edged. All previous warmth and geniality departed.

  “What?” I asked, confused deeply. “How often did I shop? Or how often have I been here?” What had I done now to get his knickers in a bunch so quickly? His eyes turned to me. I tamped down one of those shivers. How could I feel that even when he was so angry at me?

  “Seattle. You’ve been here? How often?”

  “Lots of times. I used to come here all the time. I had friends here.” I was baffled. Why did it matter?

  He pushed away from the table, standing up brusquely, running his hand coarsely over his jaw, deep in thought.

  Deep in anger.

  “Oh for the love of the gods…what did I do now?” I huffed.

  It only took three ticks of the mantel clock for Halah and Nicklaus to join him. I looked at Liam, shrugged, he looked a little sick. I threw my hands up, exasperated. I downed the last of my wine and then helped myself to a little more. I leaned back in my chair.

  Ah hell, let them all be all ruffled and disgruntled and whatever else they felt like being. I felt like a goddess tonight and I wasn’t going to let them ruin my night. All this furtiveness and mysterious crap was idiotic. If you pull a girl out of her life and give her a new one, for the love of Puck, tell her what the heck is up already.

  Erin excused herself from the table, the room. Liam followed. What was that about? He was just going to walk away and leave me to this? I turned to Michael, who was still seated, and silent.

  “It was eight years ago. What’s the big deal?” I asked him, since everyone else had moved far from me.

  Our eyes caught, I felt dizzy. He didn’t feel human. I don’t even quite know how to explain it other than that way. He just did not feel human. I guess it’s one of those things you’d never even say unless confronted with someone who must not be…human, I mean. Anyway, he was much more than a mere human. And like Gideon, I wondered if he ever had been.

  “Gideon will explain it.”

  “I’ve been waiting days for answers.”

  “In time,” he stated calmly. I felt a tranquility wrap softly around me. It was coming from him. He was doing it.

  “You’re not a Coimhdeacht,” I stated. Knowing he was not, just as I knew he was not human.

  “No. I’m of the Léimhanam.”

  Huh. Had Gideon told me that one? I could recall so little of that first meeting, so overwhelmed by it all, except of course how crazy it all sounded.

  Gideon was returning to the table, his countenance still resolute and glowering. But oh, what an imposing figure he was.

  I was still feeling serene, and knew that it was more from Michael than from the wine I was sipping. Nicklaus and Halah took their seats, resuming their meals, as did Liam and Erin.

  But Gideon remained standing at the back of his chair. I couldn’t help it. I felt a blush of warmth spread through me, my heart rate pick up.

  What is wrong with me?

  “Where are you planning on going later tonight?” He asked. His temper reined in, at least for the time being.

  “To Allegory. It’s a club, a dance club.”

  “And will your friends from here, the ones you used to visit, be joining you?” His voice was tight, brimming with carefully bridled anger.

  “No, of course not.” I nearly laughed at the ridiculous question. Of course he didn’t know the details. “I haven’t even been here in eight years. And the friends I did have, they were friends with my ex-fiancé first. He cheated on me with my best friend. He took custody of those friends.” I shrugged. C’est la vie. “So, rest assured, I have invited none of them to come out and play, I haven’t spoken to them since that happened.” I couldn’t help being incensed, having to reflect on that painful time.

  Gideon sat back down; he didn’t seem quite as pent up now with ferocity, seemingly made more unperturbed by my proclamation.

  “I have not been to Seattle in eight years because it’s one of the last places I would choose to come on my own accord now,” I expounded. “Why do you think I’m so pissed? I mean, besides the whole dying part.” I paused wanting my words to sink in to Gideon’s brain.

  I locked eyes with him. “I die and I get to come back to a place where I already dealt with so much pain when I was alive, a place that represents one of the worst times in my life. It began as one of the best places…”

  The memory of how in love I was, how blissful, brought a smile to my face. But summoning up the incident that transpired on my last trip to Seattle, remembering that even though it was so many years ago, ripped open that old wound enough to make the pain feel fresh. It killed my smile instantly. “And one brief moment turned it into the most awful place, filled with sadness and heartbreak...lost dreams. Those people, I don’t know them anymore, and I have no idea if they still live here.”

  He seemed to be mulling over that information.

  “Alright.” Gideon drank from his wine, his infuriation dissipating. His brow relaxing, though his words were modulated, his voice constrained. “Now what we have to do is deal with the issue of you becoming a Coimhdeacht in a city in which you lived…and you still look like you. Look like Isabelle.”

  “I didn’t live
here. I flew up once or twice a month…eight years ago,” I stressed the eight years part. Eight years ago. Almost a decade. Was he not grasping that? “And I don’t look all that much the same.”

  He studied my face. I felt his hand at the back of my head, his breath and words against me cheek. I nearly dropped my wine glass. I pushed the thought away, and the sensation away, turning my face from his scrutiny.

  “As per Liam’s observation, you look very much the same.”

  “Maybe from what he knew.” I looked at Liam, then to Gideon again, “but eight years ago my hair was black, very straight, and I was much paler. You can see it on my Facebook page if you want. If I were ever to run into any of them, on some wonky off chance, they would never recognize me.”

  Gideon considered me, deliberating. “We’ll give it a try. But, if even one person recognizes you, calls you Isabelle…” He raised his eyebrows, shook his head solemnly. “Other arrangements…”

  He didn’t finish, but I understood, sort of, what he was getting at.

  ~ Chapter Fourteen ~

  He’d said Isabelle. My name. My real name…my old name.

  It didn’t sound right on his lips. When he said Isabelle it didn’t give me that oh-so-pleasing tremor like when he said Iliana. I nodded my agreement.

  “So, let’s try this again, since I was so obviously unsuccessful three nights ago.” Gideon took a large sheet of parchment paper, which Liam passed over from the sideboard, and rolled it out between us.

  It was a diagram.

  A much more well drawn out one than the hastily penned counterpart which he’d presented to me on the napkin that first night downstairs. It looked something akin to a family tree.

  “I think it may also prove helpful having representation of the roles present.” I watched as he pointed to the bottom rung of the chart.

  He read, “Coimhdeacht,” Liam is currently our only Coimhdeacht. And now perhaps you.” He looked at me, but his face, I’d noticed, held something of a doubtful bearing that didn’t sit well with me.

  Was he that unsure I could do it? Was he uncertain about having me around?

  I fiddled with my boot, looked at Liam when Gideon did.

  “I’m aware that I’m repeating myself and that I’ve explained most of this before, but I think emotions were running a little more on the unruly side that night, and we didn’t get a chance to cover everything. Hopefully tonight I can make it more cogent.” He gave me a sidelong glance, a roguish grin edging his mouth. “Hopefully you’ll stay seated this time?”

  I replied with a defiant scowl, or at least I think that’s what it was. It was at war with something else caused by that grin of his, so I couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  “To begin, the Coimhdeacht is responsible for the division of na mhésen from body, but never the death. You do not have the ability to do that.”

  “Got it,” I told him.

  I felt this would go better if I was taking notes, but I figured he might think I was being a smart ass, so I didn’t. Maybe I could steal his diagram later.

  Wait. What? Naw veshen?

  “No. Don’t got it. What is naw veshen?” Such strange words he spoke, so foreign…and yet…they stirred something in me. There was a distant familiarity somewhere deep in my mind. But I didn’t understand why or how that could be remotely possible. I looked at the parchment, to where his pen was resting, that word didn’t look like it should be pronounced veshen.

  “Mhésen,” he smiled, pointing to the diagram, “is the essence or the nature of a being. It holds your consciousness, ancient recollections and knowledge. It is the fire, the light, the illumination of a being. It’s what makes you very unfalteringly you.”

  “So it’s the soul.”

  “Oh no, absolutely not.” He paused, as if weighing up the best way to word what he was to say. “If anything it would be what is commonly referred to as the spirit. Souls,” he shook his head with a look of distaste across his face, “such an abused and overused word. Ghemúcht is what your people refer to as the soul. The term soul is for the most part an invention of the philosopher Plato.” He stopped and studied me to see if this was sinking in.

  “Plato invented the term soul, or the idea of soul?” I was baffled. This was not what I had been taught. This is not of the belief system I had adhered to all of my life, even if I did so loosely.

  “There’s always been a word for it, Plato simply named it soul and it stuck from then on.” He sipped from his glass before continuing. “Plato separated the soul into three parts, rationality, spiritedness, and desire.”

  Desire.

  That one word emanating from Gideon sent a small quake up my back.

  “As stated in his teachings, each person had a responsibility to strengthen their rationality, so it could properly guide their spiritedness and desires. Keep in mind, that in this plan, having spirit and having desire weren’t considered evil, they provided the vital force that propelled a person through life, they were never meant to be repressed, only harnessed. Without them humans would never thrive forward.

  “In those times, people didn’t live in fear of some sort of eternal punishment or damnation, as they do now, if they failed in this life to have a perfect soul, they would be reincarnated and could try again next time.”

  He must have seen my confusion and dismay on my face. “I realize I’m off the topic, but I feel as if you should understand this before I go on further with explaining Na Teagmhasach Bháis.”

  My brain was spiraling, who was I to argue at this point? I just nodded for him to go on.

  “You have to unlearn everything you’ve been taught or you will not be able to accept the actual truth.” My head continued to spin. I had never heard any of this.

  “Catholic dogma was established roughly in the third and fourth centuries AD. Under the church rules, urges and passions were no longer considered healthy workings of the soul, as Plato had ascribed, but were recognized as external forces of temptation and demons.

  “Falling prey to an unsanctioned impulse became a sin, a crime against their savior, and could only be absolved by an agent of their Church. This keeps the body the prisoner of the soul. People stopped living the way in which they were designed to live. They live in constant terror of this place called Hell.”

  “Their church…their savior…are you not a part of that church?” After all didn’t angels of some sort do all this soul parting stuff?

  His laugh was one of bitterness when he answered. “No. We’re not a part of that church, not exactly, not in the way you think. We existed many thousands of years in this realm prior to Plato, prior to this church. We’ll talk more of that later, it’s rather involved and complicated and won’t make any of tonight’s subject matter easier to swallow.”

  He took another drink while glancing around the table. “Let’s get back to ghemúcht. Ghemúcht is your mind, your feelings, your awareness of self and memories, your conscience, your desires…it’s your moral compass, what became known as the soul, as I said before. At death, both are shed, or culled from the body. The ghemúcht is a part of your mhésen.”

  He must have seen how baffled I was by this input of new and incomprehensible information. “If it helps we can refer to it for now as spirit and soul.”

  I nodded.

  “The ‘soul’ is a part of your greater ‘spirit’. The ghemúcht belongs to the mhésen, it is entwined through it. Spirit and soul are one,” he went on.

  “Okay, so for the sake of my sanity, and my brain not imploding, spirit would be equivalent to mhésen, and soul to ghemúcht?”

  “For the sake of simplicity and clarity, for now, yes,” Gideon conceded. “The soul belongs to the spirit. The spirit can go on without the soul, and sometimes will choose to do so, but the soul cannot choose to be without the spirit. And not all spirits have a soul, some never did, and some just have broken ones.”

  I drank from my glass, pondering, and attempting to arrange, all that was swirling a
round in my brain. “When we cull, the ghemúcht comes with the mhésen?”

  “It does. You’ll come to understand it all, with more time. When we talk of it, to keep things simple, we just refer to the mhésen, since the ghemúcht is a part of the mhésen.” Gideon studied me, deemed me ready to plunge onward into this abyss of enlightenment. “To continue, Michael is our Léimhanam.” He gave a nod in Michael’s direction. “He’s rarely with us; his skills are generally utilized prior to your assignments. The Léimhanam reads the mhésen, judges it, makes the determination of its path…whether or not a Breithiúnas will be necessary.” I looked at Michael. He could read…spirits? Had he read mine? Could he read mine?

  “What do you mean its path? If there is no hell what is there to judge and where would it go?”

  “I’m getting to that,” he smiled slightly again. “Erin is our Breithiúnas. Like Michael, she’s rarely with us either. She’ll only be with you if there is a crime to be avenged. If the penalty is to be placed on the corporeal form, instead of on the mhésen after separation from its body, Erin will show to the cull instead of you. If she is there without you, it is due to dire circumstances and she will perform the escort herself.”

  “So…I’m confused. If there is no Hell—because that is what you said just a bit ago, and how humans lived in fear of punishment—then how can there be one of you that deal out punishment? Doesn’t that contradict what you were just talking about with Plato and the Catholic Church?”

  “I was speaking of the church’s belief in eternal damnation for living as a mhésen is designed to live in the flesh. The punishment that a Breithiúnas deals out is in response to a life of violent crimes, a life without honor, without respect. Transgressions against humanity, misdeeds against nature, offenses against mhésen. Not gluttony, nor coveting, nor sloth, nor any of those other conditions of free will and choice.

  “A moment of distress, a cleansing, and then freedom, is not the same as an eternity with no hope. Though facing the Breithiúnas in itself can be quite terrifying. Mhésen under Fódhla Laws are not condemned to an existence of pain until the end of time, they become corporeal again at some point in time depending on the edict received by Na Ceann Comhairle. I will explain much more of the Fódhla Laws at a later time. Tonight I just need you to grasp what we do directly.”