Sariel thought of Rufus listening to thoughts like this all day in Edinburgh, and smiled, seeing his brother’s bored face in his mind.
“What aren’t you thinking about? Something about Rufus?” Miranda asked. Sariel almost jumped, stuck in minutiae.
He turned to her, watching her smooth pale face, the smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks, her eyes ocean blue in the lamplight.
“Rufus, and a little bit of everything,” he said. “There’s just so much I need to tell you.”
“So tell me. Obviously, I can take any story now,” she said. “Not like before when you first told me about vortexes.”
She smiled and then seeing his blank look, shrugged. “You’ll remember. It was a long explanation because I kept asking so many questions. But let’s just put it this way, I believed you even back then.”
They walked in silence for a while, nothing but the sounds of the street and the gravel underfoot. Finally, Sariel breathed out deeply.
“You have to know this. There’s only so far you can go into someone’s mind before that person’s mind and yours become joined,” he said, imagining the way it felt to be inside another person’s head. It wasn’t like being in matter, which was vast and forever. A mind was closed and rich and thick and almost claustrophobic. And as you got closer and closer to the beginning of that person’s thoughts, it was even denser, sticky with the past, dangerous to stay in.
“Joined?” Miranda said. “You mean like stuck?”
He nodded. “It’s happened. And it makes both people crazy. They can’t pull apart, no matter who tries to intervene. They become mental and emotional—”
“Conjoined twins?” Miranda said, shivering and holding his arm tighter. “That’s horrible. Can you ever separate them?”
“No,” he said. “As long as they live, they live in both minds. When one dies, so does the other.”
A police van peeled by, siren blaring. On the corner of a street, three teenagers grouped together, laughing. Sariel and Miranda continued walking, and when it was quiet again, he went on.
“So tomorrow,” he said. “You can’t go too far into Kallisto’s mind, no matter how tempting. She might be so distracted you will have the chance. But we don’t need you to go too far. Just enough so that we can stop her. Nothing more. If you start to feel slow, sluggish, trapped by thought, pull back. Force yourself to stop.”
As he spoke, he felt her fear, heard her repeating his own words in her mind. Stop. Nothing more. Pull back.
Miranda nodded. “Okay. I will. I promise. But what is it really, Sariel? There’s something else you want to tell me, but you’re hiding it behind that wall of yours. This time, I can’t get past it.”
They turned onto Kensington Road, Palace Avenue, and then made their way toward Kensington Palace, walking for a while in silence. Lights shone from a top floor of the palace, and tourists stood at the black gate even now, wanting a glimpse of the place Princess Diana once lived.
“You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t know how to show you.”
“So tell me. My God, Sariel, I can take anything now.”
He squeezed her arm, wishing that they could both go back to her memory, the one of their first lovemaking. How much easier it would be to live in that time than in this one!
“Don’t do that,” Miranda said. “You know you can’t live in the past. Even I know that. And after what my sister Viv told me before I left, I don’t even know my past anymore.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s about my father.”
He didn’t say another word for a moment, not knowing how to continue.
“Tell me,” she said softly.
A couple walked by, the woman walking a Yorkshire terrier on a thin leather leash. Miranda nodded at them, and then turned back to him.
“You can tell me.”
“I know,” he said, sighing. How much more personal could this fight with Quain be for him, he wondered? A father dead, a former lover wanting revenge and seemingly furious over his new lover. All of that as well as the destruction of everyone’s way of life. Where were the words to explain? But then he felt her mind so softly in his, and he closed his eyes for a moment, letting her lead them both through the confusion of his ideas. After a moment, Sariel heard her gasp.
“He killed your father,” Miranda said. “Oh, Sariel.”
He nodded. “They were friends and partners for a long time. They worked together, doing what I do.” Sariel looked at her, feeling her question. “Catching people who practice wrong magic. They were a team.”
Turning away from the palace and back into the park, they walked on, their thoughts together. Just thinking about Quain and his father exhausted him, so Sariel let Miranda see what he knew, opening up the scene as he had been given it, giving her what his father had passed along before he died.
First there were stairs, echoes from others running away in fear, Moyenne and Croyant alike. Then the scene widened, opened up in a Paris metro station, Chatelet, across the Seine from Notre Dame. Mysteriously, a vortex had dissolved and now commuters and tourists looked around in confusion, finding themselves at the wrong station, on the wrong line, on the wrong bank of the Seine altogether.
While other Croyant collected themselves and began to enchant the Moyenne, moving them carefully out of the metro onto the Boulevard de Sebastopol, Hadrian and Quain circled down upon their quarry, Felipe Zimbardo, a thief, a murderer, a sorcier using his power for his own gain.
Over here, Quain thought out, looking at Hadrian. “He has a sortilege du deguisement. He’s blending himself into the tile.“
Hadrian nodded, moved closer, waited for Quain to make a move. But then something went wrong. And even Sariel’s memory flickered, faded, came back half strength. Hadrian’s actual memory didn’t survive past this point in the story, so all of what Sariel could give Miranda was a secondhand memory, stories from a sorciere named Laelia, who often worked with Hadrian and Quain.
As they circled closer to Zimbardo, Quain suddenly struck out, a blaze of energy taking Hadrian by surprise, throwing him down, flat on the tracks. And then—and then the train pulled through into the station at top speed from Les Halles. Despite Laelia’s and other Croyants’ attempts to stop the train, Quain froze all movement save for the train barreling down with its awful wheels. No one could do anything until it was too late for a spell, too late for a healer. Too late for anything.
On the tracks, Laelia held Hadrian’s head in her lap, cried, called out with her thoughts, not understanding what had just happened. And then the scene faded, the light in the metro station growing dim, Laelia’s cries fading into weakened echoes.
Sariel opened his eyes and stood in front of Miranda, who was pale, her eyes squeezed shut. For a moment, they stood still in the cold air.
“No,” she whispered.
Sariel nodded, thought, I wish it were no.
“Oh, my God,” Miranda said, blinking. “Why?”
Sariel swallowed, trying to find the answer he’d never been able to find. Miranda looked up at him, wiping his face with her mittened hand.
“I’m not sure why completely. But my father had found out what he was planning. Quain had gone to the Council a few months before, asking for more powers. Wanting to create a new system. My father and mother had voted against him,” Sariel said. He breathed in, his lungs full of the cool air. “Quain took his revenge, and after that moment, he was lost to his own plan. For years, I blamed Adalbert and the Council for my father’s death, and even though I did my job, I turned down assignments that might have led me closer to Quain. I was scared about what I might do if I ever found him. How I would feel.”
Miranda nodded. “I think Brennus said something about that the first night I met you. What did he say? Something like, ‘You’ve chosen to ignore the signs.’”
Sariel felt himself laugh, despite his sadness. “I’m really looking forward to remembering that whole conversation. Let’s just pu
t it this way: we are not in each other’s fan club.”
They started walking again, heading back to the house. “I don’t think Brennus has a fan club,” Miranda said. “But you do.”
Grabbing her, he turned her to him, taking her shoulders in his hands, leaning down to kiss her. Her nose and face were cold, but her lips were warm, her mouth hot, her tongue against his. Here. Sariel wanted to stay right here, in Hyde Park on a freezing fall night before anything could happen to ruin everything.
He put his arms around Miranda tightly, holding her body against his, his mouth against her smooth neck, wishing it wasn’t so cold so he could rip off her bulky parka and make love to her behind one of the giant plane trees, putting a vortex around the whole dammed park.
Without knowing it, he’d been waiting for her, as if her story had been connected to his long ago. Nothing Sariel had ever felt for another woman—not even Kallisto—matched what he felt for Miranda.
He was thinking too loudly, he knew that. Hadn’t he learned to keep his thoughts a secret? Look what had happened with Kallisto.
“I’m not Kallisto,” Miranda whispered against his face. “I’m much better looking, with my frizzy hair and red nose.”
Sariel had no words or thoughts for hers, just feeling. Holding her even closer, he let loose the energy in his body, the kind he used when he’d healed her ankle. Feeling Miranda’s shivers and cold face, he touched her with his hands, with all of his body.
“Oh. Oh, my,” she said, her voice trailing off.
He warmed her, through her parka, through her clothes, all the way to her skin and up to her most amazing, adorable red nose.
The house was quiet, everyone asleep or trying to sleep. Every so often, Sariel caught a strong thought or image from one of the bedrooms: the Fortress Kendall at dawn, Quain’s pale face, sneering, a whirl of people fighting as magic flashed in a cavernous room.
Miranda was asleep, her body curled against his, her breath light and untroubled because she really didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow. She was too new to their world, too untried. Even though she had done well, today’s training had been a game, a lark. How could she really know what she was going to face, even with the story he’d told her about Hadrian?
Sariel kissed her shoulder, tracing the line of her arm, and then dipping down to her waist and up to her hip, her skin smooth and pale. He let his hand slide onto her belly and then moved up to her breasts, letting the weight of one rest in his palm. He’d only known her for a couple of weeks and then—without his memories—for only a couple of days, and he didn’t know what he would do if something happened to her. How could that be? How could you meet someone and feel like this?
Miranda stirred, turned, and held onto his shoulder. “It happens,” she mumbled, yawning. “Haven’t you read any poetry? Any Shakespeare? Browning?”
“You’re awake?” He kissed her forehead.
“How could I let a petting session go by?” she said. “I’m still not convinced that you won’t disappear.”
He pulled away, looking her in the eye. “Miranda, this is serious. This isn’t a dream. Everything that’s going to happen tomorrow is real.”
They stilled, staring at each other, the room warm around them. Finally, Miranda took in a deep breath and turned onto her back.
“I never told you about Jack. Have you heard me think about him? Or was he floating around there in my brain?”
Sariel leaned up on his elbow. “No Jack. I think I remember a Dan somebody.”
Miranda closed her eyes and shook her head. “God, Dan. Always Dan. No, he’s my editor. But at one point, I thought Jack Gellner was my ultimate true love. The thing was, loving him was so hard, even in the beginning when it’s supposed to be easy. The falling in love part wasn’t even fun, but because he was a poet and I was a poet, I thought we were going through some tormented, destined writer love. Sort of a Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes kind of thing, and we know how happily that ended.”
“What did Jack do?” Sariel asked, certain he really didn’t want to know, even if the story ended with Jack gone and Miranda here. But if Miranda had watched what had gone on with him and Kallisto in his house that terrible night, he could listen to her story about Jack.
“I thought he was such a brilliant writer and a true, absolute, one hundred percent genius that I decided that his drinking and his drugs were part of his brilliance. Part of his quirky charisma and intellect,” she said. “Then I thought that the way he ignored me was part of it, too. Then I lumped in the strange calls and his girls on the side. I let all his behavior slide because I believed that real love is hard and gritty and intolerable. I thought true love had to hurt. And it was real when he left me and stole my computer and a year’s worth of writing I’d managed not to back up on disk. That was what felt real.”
At her words, Sariel felt protective, angry, jealous, and an image of Jack—a good-looking, blond man—flicked between them. He shook his head and breathed in.
“There are only five geniuses on the planet,” Sariel said, smoothing her hair. “No one knows who they are.”
“Well, Jack isn’t one of them.” She brought a hand to her eyes. “But my point is, that was my life with Jack. For me at the time, it was real. But this? Us? You?” Miranda turned onto her side, watching him. “Even Quain. That feels more real to me than anything I’ve ever felt before. It may be dangerous and horrible and tragic, but I’m involved in something that’s worthwhile. And somehow, I’ve met you. With the magic and mystery—with you, with me and my life—I feel more real than I ever have. In a weird way, I feel like I was meant to be here all along.”
She sat up, looking down at him, running a hand on his chest. “For the first time, things are making sense. I always knew something was off. I never fit in, except with artists and writers. My sister was always normal and perfect. Talented with great hair. My mother never seemed to expect much of me—she still doesn’t, every achievement a surprise to her. And I think I always knew my dad was holding a big secret. I’d see him watching me as if he were trying to figure me out, as if he were seeing someone else. But when I’d try to catch his gaze, he’d look away, talk about baseball or the weather. Or he’d ask me about my poems, anything but tell me the truth.”
“He never said a thing to you about the adoption?” Sariel asked.
“Not once. Never. So all those years, I felt wrong. Finally, here, with you, I feel like I’m who I’m supposed to be.”
Taking her in his arms, he pulled her to him, lying back on the mattress, pressing her against his chest, her breasts and belly and thighs burning into him.
“This is where you belong,” he said into her ear, cupping her face in his hands. “This is where I want you.”
“So we’ll do what we have to, and we’ll go home,” she said, pushing up a bit, looking at him. “I have my theory that I invented when I was a kid and nothing seemed to be going right. I used it all the times I was feeling different and alone. It’s called the ‘Everything Will Work Out’ theory. Things come together as they are supposed to.”
“Have you written about that?” Sariel asked.
“No.” She pushed up on her arms, her breasts hanging like ripe fruit in front of him. “But when we get home, I will.”
He put his hands on her breasts, and she bent down to kiss him once, twice, and then before he could pull her tight, she whispered, “And after we’ve had a good vacation and you’ve taught me some more magic, I’m going to write my novel. It will be about us.”
Turning her onto her back, Sariel put his mouth on her pulse, moving his mouth up to her ear. “All I ask is that it has a happy ending.”
“It will,” she said. “I promise. All we need to do is get through tomorrow.”
Sariel whispered “Yes” against her skin, moving his mouth over her body, wanting nothing more than to live in the story they’d started, wanting a happy ending, despite everything.
Chapter Fourteen
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nbsp; Miranda woke up at four in the morning, shivering, even though Sariel was warm against her side. This is it, she thought. This morning I go off to battle.
She turned onto her back, wishing she had another skill, one that allowed her to pull Sariel, herself, everyone back into the past, back to the place where they could fix this horrible mess. Where would they have to go? All the way back to the scene Sariel had shown her the night before? Would they have to make sure Hadrian didn’t end up on the tracks, dying in Laelia’s arms? Maybe then Quain wouldn’t have escaped. Maybe none of what was planned for today would be necessary. Maybe no one would be hurt. Maybe no one would die.
Moving into Sariel’s side, she closed her eyes, hoping for sleep. Sariel breathed in and out, reaching out a hand for her, mumbling. She went into his mind and saw images of movement, fire streaking through a closed room. She felt sorrow and worry and fear.
Pulling away from his dreams, Miranda sighed. She would never be able to fall back to sleep. Her body was awake with nerves, jangling with energy. Not even a Xanax would help.
Two more hours until they awoke, prepared to leave, and thought themselves into a room where they all might be killed. She had paid attention to Sariel’s memory of Hadrian. Death came so fast to Croyant, trains whipped down the tracks at hundreds of miles per hour, spells keeping away healers. At least in Moyenne life, the known rules of physics applied and 911 was still in operation.
Okay, she thought. Plan. Plan as if you know this is your final chance to live.
Miranda put a hand on Sariel’s shoulder and closed her eyes. She imagined the fortress, the room, she pictured Kallisto, felt the steel of protection around Kallisto’s mind, and then found the way in, the softness, the vulnerability. Sariel. Miranda would slide in, just like that, find a way to occupy her, let the others work their charms. It would have to be all right. It couldn’t end now; the story was just getting good, perfect, the way she had always wanted it.
Focus, Miranda thought, even as she yawned, her mind growing fuzzy. Live.
When You Believe Page 24
