"I didn't know which way was up most of the time. And I didn't even know I was that close to running out of Life-Stream. I killed so many people, and I don't even remember doing it. The team that caught my beast and packed me up— everyone thought they were S.W.A.T., but they were actually hunters of rare Fae. They sold me to the druids, to Stanley's father."
When I turn off the car, she stops talking suddenly, like a switch flipped. "We're here."
The building is one of those generic medical office type places, several stories of concrete and a bunch of beige and white inside. The selkie therapist has an office upstairs, on the third floor— a quiet place with thick carpet that muffles your steps, and chairs with tightly stuffed cushions, and art that's basically just soothing colors washed across canvas.
The selkie looks perfectly normal and human, except that her hair is short, very flat, and very shiny brown, almost like an animal's pelt. She has abnormally huge dark brown eyes too, that she tries to hide behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
When she calls Wynnie back to her office, I'm left in the waiting area with an hour to kill.
Good thing I brought along my Sociology homework.
14
REAPER
Aislinn
Friday afternoon. The perfect time to deep clean our filthy bathrooms.
I decide to work on the one Wynnie and I share first. It's the biggest, so I may as well get it out of the way. With the music up loud, I'm jiving and practicing my hip rolls while I clean the shower. Music is the best way to get through a boring job, with or without pixie powers.
"So the Soul-Stealer cleans bathrooms."
I jump and turn around, nearly dropping my sponge. "Kieran! I didn't give you a key so you could sneak in and scare me! How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to enjoy the view."
My face heats up, and I throw the sponge at him. He catches it expertly.
"I suppose the Far Darrig doesn't clean?"
"You've seen my loft, and my condo. What do you think?"
"I think you have a maid."
"Guilty." He grins. "But I can clean, if I have to." Tossing my sponge back to me, he picks up a bottle of spray and spritzes the mirror, then wipes it down with a paper towel. "See?"
"Uh-huh. That's the easiest part."
"You want me to clean the toilet? Because I will."
"I'd say yes, but I already did that. You can do the floor."
In a minute he's on hands and knees, scrubbing the floor like he does this every day.
"So are you looking forward to dinner with everyone tonight?" he asks. He says it casually, but I know he's asking because of Zane.
"You're not still jealous, are you? Zane and I broke up. The end. I'm with you now."
"You're not going to change your mind?"
I turn to look at him, but he's very intent on washing the floor. "Kieran, it's you. No one could ever replace you."
He smiles at me, a little sadly, like he knows something I don't. Maybe I seem young and fickle to him sometimes. I wish I could convince him that my feelings for him run deep, down to my very soul's core.
But he changes the subject. "I had a thought. Why don't we go back to your old house? I'd like another look in Maeve's closet, to see if there's anything else useful we may have left behind last time."
"You're probably right— we should take another look," I say. "But they're not going to want us in the house, and I don't want you to terrify them or spell them into submission, okay? Let's just transport in there quietly, at night, and then it won't be a problem."
He nods, and we go back to cleaning. It feels so comfortable, just being here with him, doing something that normal people do. As much as I love the Fae experiences we share together, sometimes I miss just chilling. Watching TV. Eating takeout. The normal dating experience.
"So we'll have several hours to kill tomorrow evening, before we can go over there," he says. "How about a movie?"
My jaw drops. "Did you just read my mind?"
He sits back on his heels. "No. What?"
"I was just thinking, just this second, that it would be nice to do something more normal. I don't want normal all the time— but now and then it's good."
"I agree. Let's go see a movie tomorrow night. I'll buy you anything you want, popcorn, candy, a very large Diet Coke—"
"Aren't you generous? And I'll buy you anything you want."
"Should we ask Wynnie to come with us?" he asks. I can tell he doesn't want to, but he's trying to be nice.
"No, she doesn't like movie theaters— too dark, too many people crowded together. We tried it once, and she had a panic attack."
"Is she seeing that therapist I told you about? The selkie?"
"Her first appointment is today. Zane drove her over there. She seems comfortable with him now."
"Do they have a thing, the two of them?"
"A thing? Like a romantic thing? No! No, of course not. I mean, Wynnie's nowhere near ready for a thing. And Zane, he's sort of seeing Laurel again. At least, they're hanging out a lot."
"Ah, the love triangle," he says, smirking. "I'm relieved not to be a part of one anymore."
I move to the sink and start polishing the faucet handle. It bothers me that he thinks Laurel and Wynnie are both into Zane. That kind of scenario might not end well, especially with Wynnie being as fragile as she is.
Kieran's arms slide around my waist from behind. "You're frowning," he says, looking at my face in the bathroom mirror and kissing my temple. "Stop worrying. Think about our date tomorrow— dinner and a movie, just like a normal couple."
"And then we'll go hunting for relics in the dark closet at the Korrigan house," I say. "So normal."
"Hey, every couple needs a hobby."
The dinner that night is weird. Awkward. It's me and Kieran, and Wynnie and Zane, and Julio and Carmen, so it feels like a triple date. To complicate matters, it's Julio and Carmen's first time meeting Wynnie, and they seem unsure what to make of her behavior. She's quiet, and when Zane touches her arm to get her attention she nearly jumps out of her chair, knocking over a glass of water.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she says.
"It's okay," he tells her. "Hey. Look at me." She looks at him, her lip trembling. "It's okay, really. It's just water."
She takes a deep breath, and Kieran moves the conversation smoothly into a discussion of politics— which I would normally hate, but in this case he's doing it to spare Wynnie from unwanted attention. I think we're all relieved when dinner is over, and we can go our separate ways.
Zane pulls me aside as we're walking out of the restaurant. "She did good today," he says. "At therapy, and before. She talked to me a lot. Just keep an eye on her, okay? The therapist said she might be kinda fragile after the session they had."
"I noticed."
"Crazy night, huh? Not like before."
Not like all the fun we had when we were dating, hanging out with his friends, being normal teenagers. In just a few months, so much has changed.
"I feel older," I say. "Like, years older. Is that weird?"
He shakes his head. "No, it's not. You been through stuff; hell, we all have. I get what you mean."
Kieran steps back into the restaurant, a question in his eyes.
"Zane was telling me about Wynnie's appointment," I say.
He relaxes noticeably. "Ah. Good. Take your time." He goes back outside.
Zane chuckles. "He's still jealous of me."
"He's trying hard not to be. Give him some credit, okay?"
"I am, it's just flattering that the Fae god-guy feels threatened by my very presence."
We both laugh, and it's nice. Normal. Comfortable.
"It was good seeing you, Zane," I tell him as we walk outside.
"You too, girl."
◆◆◆
Saturday night, Kieran and I get back to the apartment very late— mostly because we spend a couple of hours kissing in the Audi after
the movie. At this hour, I'm sure that the Korrigan are all in bed, or at least in their rooms.
As soon as the apartment door closes behind us, I slide my arms around Kieran and transport us both to Maeve's secret closet.
Except that instead of a clear floor space, we appear in a pile of drawers and rubble.
"What the hell?" Kieran turns on his phone and shines it around.
The closet has been ransacked, drawers ripped out and overturned, papers scattered and torn— even the frames of the shelves have been broken apart, as if someone were searching for something in the walls behind them. Most of the artifacts and relics are gone.
The door to the closet has been cut open with some kind of huge power saw. The locks dangle uselessly from the leftover bits of wood, still clinging to their place in the doorframe.
I step over the rubble, into the office, and turn on Maeve's desk lamp. There's a mess out here, too— drawers hanging open, books swept in a jumble to the floor, furniture tossed and rugs kicked aside.
"They were here," I say. "They were looking for the stone."
Kieran comes out of the closet and walks toward the open door of the office. Then he stops. "Aislinn, do you smell that?"
Coming nearer to him, I catch a whiff of it— a smell like several overflowing toilets, or a hundred rotten eggs, or the worst-smelling garbage dumpster. There's a weird, cheap-perfume sweetness, too, under the powerful rank smell— and that somehow makes it all the more sickening. It's worse than the charred-meat smell of the dead leprechauns, worse than the smell of the druid's fresh human sacrifice.
It's the smell of death. Days-old death, and decay.
Magnolia. Gemma. Gillian.
I stare at Kieran. "No, no."
I try to run past him, but he grabs my arm. "Aislinn, no. Let me go check it out."
"Stop it. I need to see." I break away from him and run through the dark rooms to the entry hall.
As I shine my phone light, several roaches swarm off Gemma's body and slither under the furniture. A rat looks up, still chewing, and scampers away.
I scream.
Kieran is there, crushing me to him, pulling my face to his chest so I can't see it again. But I have to. I have to know what happened.
Covering my nose and mouth, tears streaming down my cheeks, I walk a few steps closer. Gemma was shot, point-blank, right in the forehead. She must have been the one who opened the door. And Malcolm— I know it was Malcolm— didn't even stop to find out if she would cooperate. He just shot her.
"How long ago?" I whisper.
"I'd say several days." Kieran's voice is gentle, sympathetic, even though I know he didn't care about Gemma at all. "Aislinn, I think there might be others."
Others. Other bodies. Magnolia and Gillian.
We find Magnolia in the kitchen on the floor. She must have been running, because she's face down, legs sprawled, with several bullet holes in her back. My head tells me these facts as I reach for her, touch her frizzy red hair, crusted with old blood. I can't stay near her too long, because there are things in her body, things that think of her only as food. I throw up in the sink, and then I rinse the sick down the drain, and then I wonder why I did that because the smell is so strong already and no one will care.
Upstairs, behind the broken doors to Maeve's room, we find Gillian. She must have barricaded herself in there when she heard the shots downstairs. There's a man lying near her, his head smashed in. Good. She took one of the bastards down with her.
Kieran steps over to examine the man. He holds up a bloodstained ward medallion on a thin chain, then shows me the man's palms and wrists, scarred from ritual cutting. "Druid."
"We should have protected them better," I say. "We should have made them leave and go somewhere safe."
"Aislinn, we couldn't have known the druids would do this. We thought they might know where the stone was, and they might try to steal it, yes— but murdering all the Korrigan like this—"
"We should have known. We know what they're like, what they can do."
He stands up and takes me by the shoulders. "Don't do this to yourself. This guilt isn't yours to bear."
I twist away from him. My stomach is roiling again from the rancid stench of the two bodies, so I walk the halls upstairs, checking the bedrooms. Everything has been wrecked and tossed around and trampled. A ceramic figure of a shepherdess, one of Magnolia's collection, lies in the hallway, broken in two pieces. I pick it up and touch the glossy finish of the outside, the plain white of the inside. The red cheeks of the shepherdess and her staring blue eyes make me suddenly angry. Angry with Magnolia for running instead of fighting. For being so weak and submissive her whole long life, and for never standing up for herself, or me, or anyone. And now she'll never get the chance.
Screaming a curse, I throw the shepherdess against the wall, and she shatters into a dozen shards.
Kieran dashes into the hallway, alarm in his eyes. "Aislinn! Are you all right?"
I shake my head, my face crumpling. He's about to see me cry yet again, and it's going to be ugly. As I sink to the floor, he sits beside me, holding me.
"Why did Gemma open the door?" I yell through my tears. "Couldn't she see that it was someone strange, maybe dangerous? She was so— so stupid. I can't believe— she never did anything worth anything. You know you gave them a gift, right? Not just a curse. They got freaking immortality. They lived more than a thousand years— and nothing to show for it, nothing! At least you did things. They just sat here, they did nothing. They were nothing. No one is going to miss them."
"You will, and Arden will. And maybe Wynnie."
"Kieran, they're dead!"
"I know."
"All of them! He killed them all! Why?"
"Because he didn't care. He is single-minded, focused on his goal. Anything else is unimportant."
I choke back another sob and look up at him. "You understand him, don't you?"
"In a way."
Pushing him away, I get up and head for the hall bathroom. There's a box of tissues there, sitting unmolested by the sink. I'm furious at it for existing, and I rip two tissues out and knock it to the floor.
Kieran leans in the doorway, looking sad and gorgeous, and I want to smack him.
"Just because I understand how he thinks doesn't mean I would ever do something like this," he says. "You know me. This wouldn't be my style. I'd terrorize them a bit, take what I wanted, and leave. They'd be scared, but alive."
"My parents aren't alive." I know it's not fair. The leprechauns killed them, not him; he couldn't control what those little monsters did, and he took steps to ensure I was safe. And when I asked him to get rid of the leprechauns, he killed them all himself.
But I'm so torn up inside that I say it anyway. And I regret it immediately, because pain flashes across his face and he walks away.
When I come downstairs, he's sitting on the bottom step, not far from Gemma's body. The smell is so strong I have to cover my mouth and nose. I motion for him to come with me, and he follows me back to Maeve's office, where I shut the door.
"I'm sorry," I say, when I can breathe again. "I shouldn't have said that."
"No, it's true," he says. "In a way, I'm responsible for that. Your life could have been so much better if it weren't for me."
"Actually, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't even exist," I say. "My mother would have died back in ancient Ireland, and she would never have lived the long life of a Korrigan and met my father. So I have you to thank for my very existence."
I stroke his face, the smoothness of his cheekbone and the roughness around his jawline. His eyes are still sad.
"How can you forgive me for all I've done? I don't deserve it."
"It doesn't matter whether you deserve it or not. Forgiveness is something that happens in spite of you. And, Far Darrig— I love you."
At the use of his old name, his eyes meet mine, and I know he understands why I said it— because I accept all of him, not just the new
Kieran.
But that's as far as I can go to make him feel better right now, because I have so much heaviness inside me. "Kieran, we have to tell Arden. And Wynnie— poor Wynnie!"
"Can you call Zane, as well?" he asks. "I might need help, digging the graves."
"Um, you really think we should call him for that? He'll be pissed— he's a busy college guy now. And he had his time with us last night— the rest of the weekend is for his family."
"He'd want to do it, for you."
"But I've kind of used him, a lot, in the past, and I don't think I should be doing that anymore."
"All right then. You and Arden can help me with the digging."
"I'll go get her," I say. "Shovels are in the basement closet where we found the drill last time."
In a split second I'm back at the apartment. It smells so clean and fresh— except that I'm getting whiffs of dead people floating up from my clothes. That kind of stench soaks in deep, and doesn't come out easily.
Wynnie is asleep on the couch. We really need a bigger apartment so we can give the poor girl her own room and her own bed.
Rather than wake her, I flash into Arden's room and shake her shoulder. "Arden. Arden, wake up." She whips over in bed, one hand smacking me hard in the face. "Ow!"
She sits up, rubbing her eyes. "Aislinn? What are you doing in my room?" She checks the clock. "It's 2 a.m.!"
"Arden, Kieran and I went back to the Korrigan house tonight to look through Maeve's closet one more time, and—" The tears are starting again.
"What?"
I can't talk. I'm going to burst into tears if I do.
"What? What is it?" She's getting desperate.
"The druids broke in and took everything. Broke everything. And Arden, they killed them."
"Who was killed?"
"Magnolia, Gemma, and Gillian," I manage through the tears. "They're dead."
She goes white as death herself. "Are you sure?"
I nod. "Kieran's there now. Starting on the graves."
Arden's eyes flit to the side, looking at something behind me. It's Wynnie, framed in the doorway, shock on her face. "Magnolia's dead?"
Samhain Page 14