by Talia Vance
He said it again. Bandia. Nana’s name for me. My name. I don’t trust myself not to lose it. At least there are no chemicals handy.
After about ten minutes, I finally hear the footsteps I knew would come, slow and resigned. His breath teases my neck as he steps behind me. If I lean back just an inch, I could rest my head against his chest. He could fold his arms around me and hold me to him. Or he could push me off the edge of the ridge. I turn to face him. Whatever happens, I’ll see it coming.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You know what happened.” My voice breaks. “On the beach.”
“I have an idea.”
“You know what I am?”
“You still don’t?”
I rub the poisonous flower that hangs from my wrist. “It’s nothing good, is it?”
He actually laughs, a sound that warms me from the inside. “I’m sure that depends on who you talk to.”
Taking my hand, he guides me to a retaining wall abutting the ridge. We sit and stare out at the view for a few minutes. I don’t let go of his hand.
Blake is pre-med. Maybe he just recognized the symptoms of my psych issues. Maybe there’s a diagnosis somewhere I haven’t found. I could just be a pyromaniac schizo. It’s beyond pathetic that this is sounding like a good thing.
“What am I?”
He’s silent for a few minutes before he answers. Finally, he takes a breath and looks right at me. “You’re a living, breathing bandia.” He swallows. “But it’s not like I’ve ever seen one before. I didn’t think there were any of you left.”
SIXTEEN
I’m more confused than ever. “There are others? With my nickname?”
“I don’t know.” Blake’s hand squeezes mine. “I mean, you … they … it’s just stories. No one has seen a bandia for generations. Then there was the fire, but even then, I didn’t believe you really existed until you walked into that kitchen.”
“Without this.” I hold up my wrist, ready to release the clasp.
He eyes the bracelet. “Don’t. It’s hard enough as it is, now that we’re … just don’t.”
“What does ‘bandia’ mean?” I brace myself for his answer.
“It’s a word from an old story, like a fairy tale. It means goddess.”
I want to laugh. I was ready for something like witch or fire monster, but goddess? He’s really reaching here. So it’s definitely crazy. Crazy I can understand, at least.
“You know the fairy tale? Are there horses?” I ask.
“Not that I remember.”
“A handsome prince?”
“Just listen, okay?” Blake scoots closer to me so that I feel his body heat along my side. I turn my face up to the sky but Blake’s warmth is a hundred times stronger than the sun on my face. “So, a long time ago … ” Blake starts.
“In a galaxy far, far away?”
“Close. A small village in Ireland.” Blake finally makes eye contact. “Will you let me finish?”
I shift, pulling my knees to my chest, trying to ignore the word that echoes in my head at his mention of Ireland: home.
He starts again. “This girl named Danu lived in a small village. She was hot, and all the guys noticed, but the villagers feared her as much as they wanted her. She was a creature of dark magic, with power over fire, earth, air, and sea. Yet lust won out over fear. The men fought for her attention.”
Okay, definitely not me. There has to be an evil stepsister.
“Danu ignored them all, except for the one man she couldn’t have, a young warrior named Killian, a leader in the Crusade against dark magic. Danu represented everything he was sworn to bring to an end. And even with her dark powers, she couldn’t make a man fall in love with her.”
I stifle a snort. Maybe I can identify with this girl after all.
“Danu would not be denied, so she seduced Killian and lured him to the spirit realm, where she bound him to her soul, creating a connection that couldn’t be broken. When they returned to Earth, Killian discovered that Danu had not only taken a piece of his soul, but cursed him with dark powers. He rejected her, even though it hurt him physically. He swore that she would never have his heart. Killian married the daughter of a neighboring landowner, even with his soul all tangled up in Danu. Her heart broken, Danu disappeared.”
“What about Killian and the girl next door? Did they live happily ever after?”
“Hardly. Killian was cursed with the very powers he’d vowed to banish from the earth. The evil he fought against now lived deep within himself. Even as he struggled to live life as a simple man, his soul still ached for the loss of Danu.”
Nice story. “What about Danu?”
“She appeared again, many years later, still young and beautiful, and hell-bent on destroying Killian and his family. Unlike his father, Killian’s son Brom found it impossible to resist her. Brom ran away with Danu, abandoning his own wife and child. Then Danu burnt Killian’s land to the ground and forbade the sea from giving rain, creating a famine across all of Ireland.”
The fire thing hits a little too close to home. “Isn’t there supposed to be a happy ending?”
Blake smiles. “You believe in happy endings?”
He has a point. “For fairy tales.”
“Not this one. But there’s more.” Blake looks at me then, really looks. “Brom and Danu had children. And their children had children. It’s said that every seventh generation, Danu’s daughters become more than just carriers of her DNA. The Seventh Daughters are said to embody the power and beauty of the bandia herself.” Blake closes his eyes, lost in his own thoughts.
My breath stops. “And you think that’s me?”
Even as I ask the question, I can feel the surge of adrenaline that comes with positing a new theory that might actually work. The scientist in me is already checking off the boxes. The nickname Nana gave me … my connection to Ireland … the woman in the field with flowers … the seventh generation thing Mom told me about. My fire.
Hell. What if the monster in me isn’t something I can chase away with scientific theory or antidepressants? What if the monster in me is really some dark goddess who won’t hesitate to kill to avenge her broken heart?
Blake opens his eyes. “I’ve seen you when you aren’t hiding behind that bracelet.” He stares out at the view. “We were together in the spirit realm.”
I’m trembling. “At the beach?”
Blake nods. “That was all you, sweetheart.”
Except I’m not sweet. “Can you not call me that?” I push his shoulder.
Blake pushes me back. “I wish I didn’t like you so much.” There’s a darkness behind his eyes that makes me uncomfortable.
“Why?” Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m a raving lunatic who burns things. Who may or not be the descendant of a crazy goddess.
“It would make it easier to end this.”
Oh. I’d almost forgotten that we’re here for some big breakup scene. Yet another way that I’m like Danu in the story. I can’t make a guy love me. Not Derek Kingston, and certainly not Blake Williams.
“You’re shaking.” He lifts a curl of hair away from my face and tucks it behind my ear.
“When we were together, something happened. We were joined somehow. It hurts to be apart.” I run my fingers along the bare skin of his arm, marveling at the little electric shocks that play at the tips of my fingers. “Do you feel this?”
He stares. “Even with your bracelet on.”
“It’s why I came to see you last night.” I look out at the view. Blake knows more than he’s saying. He knows the story of the bandia; he knew it before we even went to the beach. “How do you know all this?”
“My godfather likes to entertain us with st
ories about Ireland. I never believed it before.”
“Wait. Your godfather? The scary hunter guy? He’s from Ireland?”
Blake nods. “My whole family is. Well, my great grandfather moved to the States after World War II.”
Okay, this is starting to feel a little weird. “So, what are you doing for Beltane?”
He laughs. “I wouldn’t mention that word around my family if I were you. It’s not a holiday we’re particularly fond of in my house.”
“And you call yourself Irish?”
“Aye. As Irish as they come.”
“But you don’t celebrate Irish holidays? Not even as an excuse to drink whiskey?”
He squeezes my hand a little tighter. “We celebrate enough. St. Patrick’s Day, for one.”
“That doesn’t count. Everyone celebrates St. Patrick’s Day.”
“Even your family?” He looks skeptical.
He’s dead right on that one. For all Nana’s insistence on keeping old Irish traditions, she hated St. Patrick’s Day. One year I made the mistake of pinning a shamrock to my sweater before going to school and was branded a traitor. “How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess. Beltane’s an ancient pagan holiday. St. Patrick’s Day is basically the celebration of the death of paganism.” A cloud sits behind his eyes. “They’re not exactly compatible.” I can almost feel the remorse as he says the last part. I can feel it.
“Why does it matter to you?”
He looks back out over the view. “It shouldn’t. Let’s just say that your family’s Ireland and my family’s Ireland are two different places.”
“How’d your family end up in this town? It’s not like Rancho Domingo has a huge Irish contingent.”
“You’d be surprised.” He laughs. “My grandfather came here for college and never left. What about you?”
I kick the wall with my heel. “My dad got an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“Sounds mysterious.”
“Yeah, the dark world of life insurance is full of secrets.” I feel a hum in my stomach as he smiles, a combination of my reaction and his. “Do you think we’re bonded? Like Killian and Danu?”
He lets out a sigh. “I don’t know what else this could be.”
So we’re tied to each other somehow? Then the pain when we’re apart isn’t just my overreaction to his not calling—it’s a physical reaction to being apart from him. This could be a problem. It’s not like I can follow him around everywhere. Worse, it’s not like he wants me to.
“Didn’t Killian break the bond and marry someone else?” I ask. “There must be a way.”
Blake shakes his head. “Killian could never break the bond. He rejected Danu but spent his life suffering for it.”
I should be upset at the idea that Blake is bonded to me against his will, but some perverse part of me likes the idea of Blake being tied to me. I can’t say I’ll mind the suffering he’ll endure if he tries to be with someone else. Wow, I really am sick. “So I’m keeping you from a neighboring farm girl, is that it?”
“No.” He looks back out across the valley. “I don’t know. I’m eighteen. I haven’t thought much beyond next week.” Blake’s expression doesn’t change but his mood shifts. He doesn’t expect any happy endings. “I want my life back. You have to try to end this thing.”
Logically, I know he’s right. But I can’t say I want to go back to the way things were before. Even if he never really wants me again, he sees me now, and that’s something. Of course, Blake seeing me and not wanting me is going to be worse than his not seeing me at all.
Still, it isn’t like I can snap my fingers or wiggle my nose to fix something I don’t even understand. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” I tell him.
“I have an idea.” Blake takes my wrist and rubs his thumb across my bracelet, reaching for the clasp. “Maybe we can get back to the spirit realm and undo it.”
I don’t try to stop him when he takes the bracelet off. I don’t want to. The feel of his fingers on my skin is electrifying. Addictive.
His hand closes around the chain, his fist shaking against his leg as he stares at me with a hunger in his eyes that I feel in my bones. “God, Brianna. I thought it was bad before. I’m not going to be able to hold back.”
I reach across the short distance, setting my hand on his thigh. “So don’t.”
He grabs me by the waist, lifting me onto his lap until I’m facing him, my legs straddling him as we sit on the retaining wall. His arms come around me, simultaneously shielding me from the sheer drop of the ridge below and pressing me against him. His mouth covers mine, his tongue thrusting in and out, leaving no doubt where this is headed.
I move against him, desperate to be closer. I run my hands down his back and pull the back of his shirt up. My hands dive underneath, eager to explore his muscled back. He groans as my fingernails graze across his bare skin. I feel his desire build alongside my own. But there is no flash of light or swirling mist. This is purely physical.
He pulls back, his breath coming fast. “This isn’t working.”
I lean into him, letting my hands drop lower. “Isn’t it?”
His lips move closer to mine, so close that I can feel his breath mix with my own. He hesitates there, and I can feel the war he’s fighting with himself, trying to harness a desire that’s so strong, so there. He’s with me, and his lips brush mine for a second before he rips them away.
He lifts me off his lap with such force I almost lose my balance as he sets me down next to him. He throws the bracelet in my lap, his breath coming hard. “Put it on.”
My fingers clasp the charm.
“Better.” His breath is still labored. He turns away from me before he stands up and stalks back to the car.
I hold the charm in my fist tighter, fighting back tears and the biting sting of his rejection. There’s no consolation in being right. Having him see me and still not want me is so much worse than being invisible was. I wait until I’m sure I’m not going to cry before I walk back to the car.
Blake turns the engine over before I can shut the door. “You should go to school,” he says as we drive back toward my house, as if it isn’t entirely his fault I’ve already missed my first two classes.
“What’s your problem?” I blurt, tired of holding it in.
“At the moment?”
“I’m sorry, I should’ve realized that I would have to clarify, given the multitude of problems you undoubtedly have.”
“My problem,” he says, still looking straight ahead, “is you.”
I don’t have to feel the nauseating mix of anger and anxiety that rises in my stomach to know he tells the truth. But it’s there anyway.
SEVENTEEN
Christy is already fifteen minutes late. I pull my jacket tighter as I lean against my car. I glance at my phone again. Maybe she’ll change her mind about going to Joe’s party, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it. It’s far more likely she’s waiting for Haley. It always amazes me that it takes Haley so much time to get ready; it isn’t as though she needs the help.
Haley’s thing with Austin must be going well, since she decided she’s definitely coming to Joe’s tonight. Not that Christy would let me out of it. I can’t even come up with a good argument—we both know that if Austin is there, Haley will disappear within minutes of our arrival.
My one consolation is that it’s Christy’s turn to be designated driver. If she doesn’t drink, she might think twice about hooking up with Jonah Timken. And if she still wants to get with him, I figure I can come up with a reason for her to take me home in a hurry.
My pocket barks loudly. It’s not Christy, it’s Sherri Milliken. I hit the ignore button, even though I’m starting to reconsider. The math team might be just the distraction I need right now. Something logica
l and sane.
She leaves a text when I don’t answer. Time is running out. Just as I finish typing out a response, the headlights of Christy’s Mustang come around the corner.
Haley opens the passenger door. She doesn’t bother to get out of the front seat. She pulls the seatback forward, leaning her body with it, so I’m forced to suck in my gut and twist to make it into the back seat.
By the time we get to Joe’s, the party already has a buzz going. Most of the crowd is outside, milling around a custom pool and spa. The girls wear dresses and heels. The guys wear pressed dress pants and button-down shirts. Not a swimming suit in sight. Not even a pair of jeans other than mine. Not that anyone notices.
“Look who’s missing her weekly Scrabble tournament.” Haley points toward the patio.
A pretty girl with long black hair stands next to three guys. She twists a piece of hair around her finger while she talks. I don’t recognize her until she turns her head so that I catch the profile of her roman nose, less pronounced than I remember it. Sherri Milliken throws back her head and laughs.
“Is that who I think it is?” I ask the question even though I know damn well who it is.
“Ohmigod!” Christy’s mouth drops when she realizes who we’re looking at. “Did she have some kind of extreme makeover?”
It looks that way. Sherri’s hair is straight and sleek. Her face looks almost the same, but somehow her features now work together to form a striking whole. The curve of her nose draws attention to her large eyes and full lips. Cheekbones that once seemed too sharp now appear high and delicate. I would never have thought it possible, but Sherri Milliken is hot. The guys that surround her seem to agree.
“Good for her,” Haley says, not the least bit threatened by Sherri’s transformation. She turns to a group by a large firepit and flashes a smile at Joe.
