by Izzy Shows
Of course he didn’t. I cringed at the words. “I’ve been called before the Order,” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth.
He had to realise what a big deal that was. He was silent for several moments.
“Mal?” I was afraid the line had disconnected or something.
“I fail to see what this has to do with me,” he said, and that bored tone had come back to his voice.
My mouth dropped open, and I pulled my phone away from my ear to check that I was, in fact, speaking to Mal before I put it back against my ear. Why was he being like this? We hadn’t got into a fight that I knew about, and he’d never been so…brusque with me before. He’d never treated me like this.
Like a human. That’s what you are. Why are you surprised? My insecurities took on a voice inside my head, mocking me.
“I… I…” I stammered, trying to find the words I needed to say to him. But what was there to say? He was making it very clear that he didn’t care what happened to me. I had just as good as told him that I was going to die. He knew what the Order would do to me, and he didn’t care. He didn’t give a flying fuck about me, and I should remember that.
I drew myself up, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth.
I was Blair goddamn Sheach. I didn’t let anyone break me like this.
“The mark you gave me is going to get me killed if the Order finds out about it. I need to get rid of it.”
Another tired sigh came through the phone. “Honestly, Blair, I just don’t care right now. Go bother Raven with this nonsense. I can’t help you.”
And then the phone went dead.
That Gods-damned worthless son of a bitch had hung up on me.
Five
The morning rays hadn’t yet broken through my window by the time I gave up on sleep. I had tossed and turned all night, thanks to Mal and the other nightmares that had tormented me. It had been hard on my arm; every time I rolled over, I’d found a new way to cause myself excruciating pain.
This was supposed to be the night I got a good amount of rest, thanks to the pills given to me by my doctor friend, but it had turned out to be one of the worst nights I’d had yet.
A large part of the blame for that was on Mal, though. The bastard didn’t care that I was going to die. He had literally said so, and I didn’t know what to do now. Sure, it had been a long shot, thinking he might have a quick fix for me to get rid of the mark—after all, we had spent a whole summer training to learn to live with the mark because there was no way to get rid of it—but he could have had some compassion. He had been worse than Raven had ever been, and Raven didn’t understand the concept of compassion.
Malphas knew what a dick he was being.
I flung my good arm over my eyes and curled up on my side, squeezing my eyes shut, and sent up one last plea for sleep.
Why the fuck did Malphas have to be such a dick?
OK, no, I wasn’t going to lie in this bed and think about him, or about the Order and what they were going to do to me later that day. If that was all that was going to happen in this bed, then I might as well get out of it. I rolled out of the bed and debated getting dressed.
On the one hand, it was winter, and my sweats and T-shirt weren’t the best at warding off the cold. On the other hand, it would be painful to get dressed, and I wanted to put that off as long as was possible. On that first hand, though… I wanted to go outside.
I let out a frustrated sigh and grabbed one of the smaller blankets off the bed, compromising with myself as I wrapped it around me. There: no pain, and I would be warmer. Not as warm as I would have been if I had put on a few layers, and the sun wasn’t even out, so it was going to be so much worse out there than it would normally be—but I was as stubborn as a mule, and I couldn’t be convinced to abandon something once I’d started on it. And I was set on not getting dressed, so that decision was made.
Humph.
I headed out and made my way to the kitchen, where I put the kettle on and leaned a hip against the counter. A nice cup of tea would help the stinging bite of the cold, and besides, I had a nice pair of wool socks on. You can’t fight wool.
When the kettle began to whistle, I took it off and poured myself a cup of steaming hot tea. I carried that outside with my only good hand, using the side of my head to hold the blanket in place around my shoulders.
I ended up in front of Aidan’s gravestone, and anything I had been feeling flew out of me there and then, replaced by the aching sorrow of losing him as if it had been yesterday. I sat down in front of his tombstone, strangely comforted by the idea that he wasn’t so far down in the ground away from me. We were close in that moment, as close as we could be. I tightened the blanket around my shoulders as a breeze kicked up, whipping my platinum blonde hair around and slashing it against my cheeks.
I lifted my cup to my lips and scalded my tongue on the tea, savouring the feeling of being alive for that moment. Being at Aidan’s grave had a way of making me appreciate the little things, even something as ridiculous as being alive to feel the burn on my tongue. Who would be silly enough to be happy about that?
Me. Right now, definitely me, when I was about to face the possibility of being cut down with an obsidian blade, with no hope of survival.
“I wish you were here,” I said at last, getting to my reason for coming out here. This was something of a tradition of mine, coming out to talk to Aidan whenever I was having a bad moment, whenever I didn’t know where to go with my life. Whenever a case was so bad, I couldn’t see a way out of it. “You would know exactly what to do. You would have already smoothed things over with the Order for me. You would have told them the second Tyburn Tree was over, and you would have been the person standing there saying, ‘This girl had nothing to do with the deaths that happened. She was helping me.’ You may not have taken me under your wing after, and that’s OK. I never expected you to. But you would have been there for me when the Order came to kill me. And that’s what was going to matter.” Tears brimmed my eyes, and I placed the cup on the ground to bat at the tears with a useless hand. “I just wish you were here to tell me what to do, how to act, what to expect. Am I going to die, Aidan?”
My voice cracked, and I shook my head, at a loss for words. I didn’t know what I expected, coming out here and asking questions of a dead man. He wasn’t going to rise from the dead and tell me what to do. That was just… That was foolish.
I sighed, sipped my tea, and proceeded to tell Aidan every little thing I’d kept inside the past few days.
Six
My fingers were numb and my cup long since empty by the time I stood up from Aidan’s grave, and the sky was beginning to lighten above me as the dawn came. I figured it was almost a reasonable hour now, no longer twilight. I had less than a day left before the Order would come for me. A shiver ran down my spine at the thought of them taking me away.
Would I ever see this house again?
I made my way back inside, doing a better job of keeping the blanket around my shoulders now that the cup was empty and I could hold it against my chest along with the edge of the blanket. There was no heat in the house, and I didn’t have the energy to start a fire I wasn’t going to keep up for more than an hour or two, but it was much better than being outside in the freezing cold. I let the blanket fall to the living room floor and carried the cup into the kitchen to deposit it in the sink, then walked to my bedroom to get dressed.
It took me the better part of half an hour to get the deed done, and I was in excruciating pain by the end of it.
Oh, I should take one of those pills, I thought, and a wave of relief came over me—I didn’t have to live with the pain as bad as it currently was. I walked back to the kitchen where I’d left the pills last night, fixed a cup of water, and downed one of them. Relief wasn’t instantaneous, but I knew it would be coming soon.
Squaring my shoulders, I looked into the living room and wondered if I should just sit and wait out the rest of the day unt
il the Order came. That wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to call Emily and break down in front of her and receive the comfort I knew only she could give me.
I wanted to see her face one last time.
Chewing on my lip, I walked into the living room and sat down on the couch, then stared at my cell phone on the coffee table. Debating. She was probably asleep right now, and I shouldn’t interrupt her sleep. But this might be the last time we could see one another, might be the last time we could talk, and what if she hated me forever for not saying good-bye?
I didn’t want her to hate me forever. But maybe I was being conceited. Maybe she wouldn’t even care.
No, that was insecurity talking. I might have been rejected by Malphas for seemingly no reason—was he angry with me for not returning his feelings? But he knew that wasn’t the case. He knew it was just a matter of morals…and maybe that was worse. I shook the thoughts away. Emily wasn’t Malphas. She wouldn’t turn on me like that. I grabbed the phone up and dialled her number with shaky fingers, lifted it to my ear and issued a prayer that everything would be OK.
“Hello?” Emily said, her voice thick with sleep.
“H-hey…”
“Are you OK?” Now she sounded sharper, more alert. “Do you need me? What’s wrong? I can be there in five minutes.”
Tears pricked my eyes at her concern, at what a good friend she was, at how much she meant to me.
“Actually, no, I’m not OK. I need to see you. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’ll be right there. Everything’s going to be OK. Whatever happens to be wrong, we’re going to fix it together, OK? Hang tight.”
“Thanks. See you soon,” I said, and we hung up.
I relaxed on the couch, taking in a deep breath to quiet my breathing somewhat and to try to restore some of my mental fortitude.
“What is you doings awake, Miss Blair?” Fred’s voice came from the hallway.
I turned to look at him, a smile jumping to my lips immediately.
“Hey, Fred,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“I had bad dreams,” he said, looking down at the floor and fidgeting.
“Come here,” I said, patting the space beside me. “What did you dream about?”
“That you did nots come back.” He clambered onto the couch beside me and snuggled up under my good arm. “I was waitings and waitings, and you never came home, and I didn’t know what to do! I tried to call Raven, but theys did not answer me, and then I tried to use your phone, but the numbers didn’t push, and…and…and…” His voice quivered, and I held him closer to me.
“I’m going to come back,” I said, my voice firm as I patted him on his back. “I always come back.”
It helped to say it aloud, to hear the determination in my own voice. Like putting it out there for the universe to hear might make it true, but I didn’t think that worked. Some people believed in positive affirmations, but some people also believed that God would do things for them. I had no such illusions; I had long since given up on the idea of any luck coming my way in the form of the universe or a deity having my back.
Maybe they did care about other people, but they certainly didn’t care about me.
Still, it didn’t stop me from sending up a prayer now and then, when I was feeling down. I guess old habits are hard to break, and I had been raised Catholic.
“You does always come backs…”
Fred sounded like he was thinking about whether it would be true this time, and I couldn’t blame him. I almost hadn’t come back from the Utakar; I’d almost lost my life there and then, but that didn’t change the fact that I had come back.
Maybe there was something watching over me, making sure I could come home to the people who cared about me.
But I had no clue who the hell that might be.
Seven
“What happened to you?” Emily was standing on my doorstep, her hair in disarray, dressed in an oversized sweatshirt and jeans. She’d obviously just rolled out of bed, but that did nothing to diminish her charm. Her cloud of red hair still caught the light given off by the moon and stars above, complementing her golden-brown skin. Her eyes, a vibrant green, were still sparkling above the little freckles that dotted her cheeks.
Without further ado, I stepped across the threshold, threw my one good arm around her, and held her close. She was clearly surprised at first, so it took Emily a second—I wasn’t big on physical contact, and she knew that—but she wrapped her arms around me, careful not to squeeze too hard out of respect for my arm, and that helped me protect my ribs.
We stayed like that for several minutes, then I stepped back so she could come into the house. I put the wards back up and took a seat on the couch, and she sat next to me. Most people would take a seat in one of the chairs, but not Emily. She didn’t put up with that nonsense. She was my friend, and she would sit next to me no matter what. It had surprised me the first few times, but after two years, I’d grown used to it.
“Are you going to tell me why you look like you’ve been in a car crash? You’ve got a giant bruise on your cheek, which isn’t doing much to cover up the cut there, and you’re in a sling, and why are you sitting like that?”
I blinked, looking down at myself for a moment to figure out what she was talking about. I had curved my body somewhat to take the weight off the side with the broken rib.
“Oh, that. I’ve got a broken rib, too,” I said with a shrug.
“Oh my God, Blair. What happened?”
I grinned. She was worried about me. “Ha, ha. You care,” I said.
“Of course I care! Now, tell me what happened.”
So, I told her about the Utakar, not leaving out anything, and maybe going into a little too much detail about Tír na nÓg. I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a secret or not, but I didn’t keep secrets from Emily. She was someone who would always get the truth from me.
Her going through Tyburn Tree with me had sort of had that effect; you don’t fight a horde of the undead with someone and not come out trusting them.
“Sweet Lord above,” she said, shaking her head. Her curls bounced around, glancing off her cheeks. “Don’t tell me you’re about to get into something else. You need to rest, Blair. Let someone else handle it.”
“First of all, if there was something going on, there wouldn’t be anyone else capable of handling it. We both know that, or I wouldn’t be involved in anything. Second—”
“Well, that’s just not true.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “You aren’t capable of leaving well enough alone. We both know that.” Then she smirked at me, her lips curving invitingly to the side.
“Hmph.” I started to cross my arms over my chest but caught myself. Not in time to stop a lance of pain from rocketing up my arm and into my shoulder, and a groan escaped me.
Her eyes widened, and she lifted her hand, but she seemed to think better of touching me and put it back in her lap.
“Second of all,” I said, glaring at her. “This isn’t something anyone else can do for me. I’ve been called before the Order.”
Emily knew what the Order was, despite not being a mage and having nothing at all to do with it. I had told her all about it, and I was glad I had—if I made it out of this alive, I would be sworn to secrecy on the matter. Aidan hadn’t been able to tell me a whole lot about it for that very reason. But I wasn’t in the secret club just yet, which meant no one could stop me from blabbing.
A rush of air escaped Emily’s lips, and I saw the way they turned down, saw the way she deflated a little. She knew what this meant, and she understood why I’d called her here at last. It wasn’t for a chit-chat; it wasn’t for a pep talk. It was to say good-bye.
“I just wanted to see you before…”
“Don’t say it,” she said, her brows creasing together. “Don’t you dare say it, Blair, or I swear I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” I said, grinning. “There’s nothing you can do now, Emily. I�
��m going to die, and that’s all there is to it. We all knew there was a clock on me, on how much time I had to do my job before they came after me, and this is where it ends.”
“No, I won’t let it. How much time do we have? We’ll go to France, or Spain. We’ll go somewhere they can’t get you.”
“They can get to me in France or Spain, silly. They can get me anywhere. There isn’t a limit to their reach.”
“Oh, bullshit!” She slapped her hands against her thighs.
My eyes went wide, and my jaw dropped. Emily had never cursed in front of me before; I honestly hadn’t thought she was capable of it. It was so far above the perfect little persona she put forth, chosen by God and all. You expected a certain amount of purity for that.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, glaring at me. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to you talk about this being the end.”
“I can’t believe you said that,” I said, not able to get over it, though I did manage to shut my mouth. “You cursed!”
“And?” She lifted her chin defiantly. “I’m human, am I not?”
“I don’t know. I was starting to think you weren’t, but I guess that answers that.”
She groaned, leaning down to put her head in her hands. “I can’t be perfect all the time, Blair. Certainly not when you’re… When you’re talking about…”
“Dying,” I said.
Somehow, it was easier to face with Emily in front of me. I wasn’t falling apart, because she was the one experiencing the emotions I normally would have. I could be strong for her, and that had the side effect of being strong for myself as well.
“You’re not going to die. I’m not going to let you.”
“I appreciate that,” I said gently. “But it’s not really up to you. You can’t come with me. You can’t stop them from taking me. You can’t stop them from killing me.”
“Why not?” She looked at me, her eyes flashing with anger. I realised then just how much she cared, a level I hadn’t quite realised. “Why do you think I can’t stop them?”
