Draicha’s bottomless eyes penetrated me as he smoothly produced a card from inside the chest pocket of his jacket. His pale hand pushed the card across the counter toward me.
I stared at the card, but made no move to take it. I had kept my distance from Draicha, and I was about five feet away from him and the card. Still, I tried to read what the card said, despite the distance and the fact that it was upside down.
Impossible. I couldn’t read it. I looked up at Draicha, and he stood motionless, expressionless, watching me. He disappeared before my eyes as he’d done in the Umbra Perdita.
But the card remained. I hurriedly snatched it up, seized with an irrational fear that it would disappear as well. I tried to memorize what it said in case it went the way Draicha did. After I’d read the card and pushed every piece of information contained on it into my brain, I shoved the card into my pocket.
I felt the warm blast of air at my feet from the heating vents. Suddenly, it felt like a tropical forest in my kitchen.
I ran down the hall and dialed back the thermostat, then moseyed back to the kitchen. I sat at the breakfast bar, pulled the card out of my pocket, and studied it. I don’t know what I expected to see. It was like maybe if I held it long enough and focused on the energy of it, the card would yield answers.
I was pulled out of my musing by the loud wail of the smoke detector going off. I looked up and saw grey smoke billowing from my oven.
I grabbed a potholder and opened the oven door, the smoke hitting me in the face. I coughed and gagged as I fanned the smoke away. I pulled the pizza from the oven, the edges like cinders.
My dinner. Black and unsavory, a bit like most everything else in my world.
The smoke alarm blared, but I didn’t dare open a window to get air. It would only alert the people in the shadows that I was easy prey.
I sat on the barstool where Draicha had been only minutes before. Instead of it being warm from his body heat, it was cold. I stared at the card again. The high-pitched screech of the smoke alarm sang in the background, but it sounded as if far off and down a tunnel.
I was on a battlefield, my fellow warriors around me. We faced an enemy constructed from the dark shadows of our fears. I searched my mind for the answer to how one kills a shadow.
16. Welcome to the Ritz
Jake
It was Saturday, and I spent it the way I spent most of my Saturdays in those days. I scuttled my ass to the bus stop, then scampered like a rat into the grocery store where I worked. The whole time I tried my best not to draw attention to myself and to ignore what I couldn’t fix.
Like most jobs that teens have, my job sucked. But with each passing week, I felt more and more fortunate to have a job at all. Most teens had been laid off or fired from their jobs at fast-food restaurants and clothing stores. Places were closing down. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to hold on to my piss-ass job moving boxes from one place to another and slinging dairy in the cooler. We got fewer and fewer deliveries. I got sent home before my shift was over most of the time because there wasn’t enough work to keep me busy. I figured it wouldn’t be long before the place had to close up. What will I do then?
The manager had installed bulletproof glass around the ‘customer service’ area to protect himself. The near-bare shelves were protected by armed guards at the end of each aisle and posted at the door. It was like a freakin’ militia-run commissary in a war zone.
The bulletproof glass and men-at-arms had become necessary after an all-out riot by a mob of hungry people who couldn’t afford to pay ten bucks for a carton of milk or thirty for a bag of oranges. They stormed the store and looted the place. The police never came, and the folks made off with most of the inventory. That just drove the prices up more and forced the management to arm the place, but hey, a small group of people got a week’s worth of food for nothing.
In a strange way, I was safer in that crap-hole store than just about anywhere else. I’d managed to blend into the dull linoleum like a piece of hardened gum, stuck and forgotten. I kept my head down, my eyes averted, and I did my job.
I was in the middle of heaving a box when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I looked around and saw that I was in the stockroom alone, so I pulled the phone out.
Emily.
“Meeting. My house. One hour,” the text said.
“Can’t. Working,” I texted back.
I stared at the screen, waiting for her reply, but it didn’t come. I was just about to put the phone back in my pocket when it vibrated in my hand.
“Piss on work. This is important L.T. business.”
What can be so damned important? I needed that job. Emily didn’t have a clue. Neither did Greta. Tristan was probably the only one who had any idea what it was like for most of us.
Emily’s dad may have been gone, but he’d left her with a healthy pile of money. She griped and complained along with the rest of us, but at least she had the dough to lay down the ridiculous money it cost to buy basic things. And Greta? Don’t even get me started.
Emily didn’t understand how much I needed that job. That crappy, smelly, scary, stupid job was what helped my mom to feed us.
My fingers typed a message, then I deleted it. I tried three times to type a message that would get across how I wasn’t going to leave my job just because she snapped her fingers without sounding like an ass. Finally I said, “Can’t now. Work. Meet later.”
I expected an angry tirade back at me, but what I got instead was, “K. What time you get off?”
“3,” I typed.
“K. Meet T, G and I at my house when you get off. K?”
She’s asking me, not telling me?
“K.” I hit the send button and shoved the phone back in my pocket.
I had no idea why I was meeting with them at her house. ‘Important business’ she had said. What can be so damned important? Did Greta break a nail?
I worked my full shift that day and got to Emily’s around 3:15. As I approached the steps, I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I hadn’t even knocked on the door when I heard the deadbolts unlock and the chain fling against the wood frame of the door.
“What’s this all about?” I asked. I followed Emily down the hall to the kitchen.
“I had a visitor,” she said.
“Ciardha?”
“No. Draicha.”
“Draicha? Who the hell is that?”
“What do you mean, ‘Who is that?’ You know. Draicha. From the Umbra Perdita?”
“Sorry, but I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
I nodded a hello to Tristan and Greta, who were already seated at the breakfast bar counter, a place I’d sat so many times before. I took a seat and realized I was sitting on ‘my’ stool. It felt weird without Liam and Fanny there.
“I … oh, that’s right. You never saw him, did you?”
I just shrugged my shoulders.
“He was in the Umbra Perdita. He wore all black and had this cat. And he helped me. Well, sort of.”
“I’m not following,” Tristan said. He looked at me as if I could help him out, but I had no clue.
“Okay, look, it doesn’t matter what happened then. What’s important is what happened today. Draicha was here, right on that barstool that Greta’s sitting on.”
We both looked at Greta. She returned an icy stare.
“He was here, and he gave me this.”
Emily stood across from us. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a business card, and pushed it across the counter to us.
“You can end your stakeouts,” she said. “Draicha gave me what we’ve been looking for.”
I picked up the card and read the address, then handed it to Greta.
“That’s downtown,” she said.
Tristan read the card and agreed with her. “Yep, there’s a swanky hotel there. What the hell is this Ciardha guy doing at a ritzy hotel? I thought he was like a god or something.”
“He is,” Emily sai
d.
“Or a demigod, anyway. I don’t know. Ciardha hanging out in the swankiest part of town sounds about right to me,” I said.
“I don’t know who this Draicha dude is, but looks like he’s watching out for you, Red. We got what we need. Time for the L.T. to roll,” Tristan said.
“Not so fast,” I said. “We have no idea what we’re walking into. It could be a trap.”
“No could be,” said Greta. She had been scribbling things down on the back of the card while we talked. “It’s definitely a trap.”
Greta pushed the scribbled-on business card back across the counter to Emily. Emily picked it up, read Greta’s writing, and then threw the card down on the table as if it had burned her. Her face turned so pale, it looked like all the blood had been drained from her.
“I … I can’t believe it,” she whispered.
“I know,” Greta said. “Weird, huh?”
“What? What’s weird?” Tristan asked.
“I can’t believe he was here. He was on that stool.” Emily pointed to where Greta sat. “I talked to him like it was normal. He was right here.” She pounded her fist on the counter.
“Who? Who was here?” I asked.
“Ciardha,” Greta said. She pushed the business card over to me. I saw that Greta’s doodles were attempts to rearrange the letters of Ciardha’s name until she hit on an arrangement of letters that was familiar: Draicha. I pushed the card over to Tristan.
“What the …?” Tristan said.
“To think that I believed he could be Madame Wong. He’s the furthest thing from her.”
“He’s a master of manipulation. He used Madame Wong’s words to tell you what you wanted to hear,” Greta said.
“But Draicha always helped me. In the Umbra Perdita, he was the one who helped me find Owen, and he helped me escape before my brains got scrambled.”
“How did he help you?” Tristan asked.
“He encouraged me. That’s when he sounded so much like Madame Wong, telling me not to give up. And he told me to call to the Goddess. You know, to ask her for help.”
“He did?” Greta asked.
“Yes. I see what you did there on the card, but I don’t believe Draicha is Ciardha. Ciardha wouldn’t help me.”
“But did Draicha really help you? I mean, if you hadn’t called to the Goddess, none of this would have happened,” Greta said.
Emily stood silent, her face ashen.
“It can’t … I can’t believe it.”
“Well, believe it,” Greta said. “Ciardha played you then, and he’s playing you now.”
“I should have realized it. I should have been able to see through his disguise, and then I could have–”
“Could have what? Punched him in the face? We know that doesn’t work with him,” I said.
“No, but …”
We fell silent. We had his location and the possible location of Liam and other lost ones. But it felt like we were farther away from the end of the thing than we’d ever been.
“So, what do y’all think we should do?” asked Tristan.
“March to that address, confront the asshole, and get our people back,” Emily said.
“No, no, no,” Greta said. “What, did you not learn from the last time we saw this dude in action? He freakin’ defeated a goddess! What? You think we’re going to waltz in there and Jake’s going to beat him up with one of his sticks and voila! We defeat the God of Dark Energy?”
“The dude can’t be everywhere at once. If we take enough people, we may not be able to defeat this Ciardha dude, but maybe we can at least free some people,” Tristan said.
“I don’t mean to burst your perpetually happy bubble, but yes, he can be everywhere at once,” Greta said. “You weren’t there, Tristan. You don’t know what we’re dealing with. But you two do. Emily, how can you think this is a good idea? He gave you his location so you’d come after him. It’s clearly a trap.”
“Probably,” Emily said.
“So you agree that we shouldn’t go after him?” Greta asked.
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“What the hell?” Greta asked.
“Look, Ciardha wants me to come to him. I don’t know what he wants with me, and I don’t know why he’s playing the cat-and-mouse game instead of just taking me. But if he wants me, why not give him what he wants?”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“It seems like a fair trade to me,” Emily said. “My life for many.”
She looked me in the eyes, and I knew that she was serious. Her eyes were clear, bright and focused with not a hint of bullshit in them.
“Emily, I agree that he wants you to come to him, but if he wants you, there’s nothing good that can come from that. Of all people, you definitely should not be the one to go,” I said.
“I agree with that,” Tristan said. “So maybe the rest of the L.T. should go. We scope the place out, see what’s what. Maybe we even find some people that’ve been taken and get them back. But Red, you stay behind.”
“No way, man. No way am I letting you guys fight this battle for me.”
“It’s not just your battle,” I said. “You’re not the only one affected by this.”
“I know. I didn’t say I was. But I’m responsible for all this shit in the first place, so I should be the one that faces Ciardha and sets things right. And who knows? If I go and he takes me, maybe he’ll stop taking other people.”
Greta laughed so loud and suddenly that it startled me.
“Why are you laughing?” Emily asked.
“Because that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. ‘Maybe he’ll stop taking people.’ You know he’ll never stop.”
None of us said anything. Greta was right. Having Emily wouldn’t stop Ciardha from greedily hungering for more. It was in his nature to keep going and going until every last good thing in the world was destroyed, replaced with his rank odor of darkness and death.
“Emily, look at me,” I said. She did what I said and turned those emerald pools on me. “What Greta said is true. You and I – and Fanny if she was here – we know it’s true. Some of us probably have to go to that address, check it out and see what’s up. But not you.”
“No way,” she said and shook her head. Her long, red hair was a wavy halo around her head. With the bright kitchen lights behind her head, her hair looked like it was on fire. Her eyes were ablaze with determination. She looked so hot that it took a huge amount of self-control not to get up and walk around that counter, grab her into my arms, and kiss her long and hard.
“You have the torc. That’s probably why that asshat wants you. If he has you, he has the torc, and if he controls the torc, he controls the last bit of Brighid’s fire left in the world. Don’t you see? You can’t give in to him, no matter what,” I said.
“But he has them.” I saw tears well in her eyes. They turned her emerald-green eyes into watery pools. I reached my hand across the counter and put it on her hand.
“I know,” I said. “I miss them too. And we’ll get them back. But this mission? It’s off limits to you. It has to be off limits to you.”
She knew the ‘them’ that I was talking about. Fanny and Liam. I tried not to think about them too much. If I thought about either of them, my mind began to think about what might be happening to them or I’d start wondering if they were still alive. The hurt would become unbearable. But being there in Emily’s house, sitting at her counter, brought back so many memories of Sunday breakfast at the Adams house, Fanny dogging me and talking sports with Liam or just sitting quietly while we all read a section of the paper. Stop it. Don’t go there.
Emily stood in Liam’s usual spot. I looked at her and noticed for maybe the first time how much she looked like her dad. She had Bridget’s red hair and green eyes, but her nose and chin were all Liam.
“So you think we should go there? It’s a suicide mission,” Greta said.
“Maybe. Look, I’m terrified
of what we’ll find at that address. And I don’t look forward to Ciardha frying my insides with his black fire. But we have to go through him to get them back. Fanny, Emily’s dad and probably a lot of other lost people. What do you think we should do, Greta?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You think we should just sit around and do more nothing?” Emily asked.
“Exactly. Look, if he wants us to come after him, we should do the opposite,” Greta said.
Emily didn’t respond to Greta but turned instead to Tristan. “T, what do you think we should do?”
For a while, Tristan didn’t say anything. His fingers were steepled in front of him, and he rested his chin on the tips of his pointer fingers.
“Well?” Greta asked.
Tristan unsteepled his fingers and wiped his thick hands on his thighs. “Look, I wasn’t there with y’all in that shadow world. I don’t know what this Ciardha guy is or what he’s capable of. If he defeated another demigod, then, yeah, it sounds pretty pointless to march our asses into his territory and try to kick him to the curb.”
“Exactly,” Greta said. She leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed across her chest. She had that ‘See, I was right’ look on her face.
“I’m not done,” Tristan said. “It may be pointless, but so is sitting on our butts doing nothin’. Day after day, we’re doing nothing to stop the spread of this shit. Just more people with dark eyes roaming the streets, more people missin’. What have we been training for if not to put up a fight?”
“But he’ll mow us down,” Greta argued.
“Maybe. But I’d rather go down with a fight than sit one more day on my ass doing nothing,” Tristan replied. “Red, what do you think we should do?”
“I’ve already told you what I think, and nothing anyone has said has changed it. It will save a whole lot of bloodshed – a whole lot of pain – if I go alone. He wants me, he can have me. At least you’ll be safe,” she said. She looked at me when she said that.
“None of us will ever be safe so long as Ciardha is free,” I said.
A long, awkward silence filled the space around us.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 59
