“Krishani is dead.”
She put the phone in her lap and pressed her forehead to the steering wheel. They could show up anytime, come with crescendos of clouds roiling over the horizon, and fiery bolts of lightning. They could decimate the town with a single blast of dragon’s fire or put the town to sleep for hundreds of years. They could turn people against her; have the police detain her in detox until they came for her. She put her head on the steering wheel knowing she couldn’t go home and pretend like everything was okay. She couldn’t function and let it pass and pretend his death didn’t do something to her that made her want to carve her own heart out with her fingernails. She picked up the phone and texted Steph.
“Michael is dead.”
She stared at the hospital. It was past midnight and her phone was full of a bunch of missed calls from her mom. She didn’t care anymore. School, work, living at home, it all seemed so pointless. It didn’t matter anymore. She started the Sundance and pulled out of the parking lot, feeding her ticket into the machine, the bright yellow bar lifting. She pulled the car down the hill and took a right onto the Seventeen. She drove over the bridge, knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. The Seventeen ran right past Michael’s flat and by the time she rolled under the peachy pools of streetlight, her phone was buzzing again. She pulled into a stall and stared at the one oh five on the glass door. She didn’t know where Tom was. She swiped the phone face and held it to her ear. She had no more tears to cry she was so shocked.
“Maeva? Maeva!” Steph shrieked on the other end, seeming her usual hysterical self.
“I’m here,” she said, her voice not sounding like her own. She swallowed a lump in her throat and kept her eyes on the door.
“What happened?”
“I need to leave. I can’t come back.… I have to go.…”
“What? No. Tell me what happened,” Steph brayed.
“He had cancer.…”
Steph took a sharp breath. “I’m so sorry … everyone thought …”
Maeva shook her head, not caring what the graduating class thought of Michael. “He’s dead.”
“Were you there?”
Maeva felt a wave of tears in her eyes and she let out a pip, holding her hand to her mouth. “I was holding his hand.…” she scarcely whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Holy shit. Can you drive? I can come pick you up. Where are you? We’ll have a sleep over. God, I’m so sorry … I didn’t know—I would have been there. I feel like such a selfish bitch … Maeva?”
“No.”
“No?” Steph seemed offended.
Maeva blinked. She didn’t want ice cream and girly movies and Steph’s mom checking on her, calling Grace. She didn’t want superficial pity and fake friendship on the worst night of her life. All she wanted was Rob, she wanted to curl up beside him and let him stroke her hair and tell her it would be okay. She wouldn’t believe it if he didn’t say it. He was the only one she trusted.
“I have a friend in Thunder Bay …”
“No. No! You are not driving to Thunder Bay tonight. I’ll be there in five, give me five okay?”
Maeva hiccupped as tears came down like a monsoon. “I’m not coming back, Steph. Tell everyone I’m sorry.” She hung up and laid her head on the steering wheel trying not to feel like her arms were spaghetti and her legs were rubber and her insides were mush. She didn’t think she could hurt so much.
She wiped her eyes and dialed Tom. It went straight to voicemail and she tossed the phone on the backseat and drove. She flicked the brights on when she left city limits, nothing but dotted yellow lines, shale sheets of rock, lakes and forests around her. Her phone buzzed like a fucking bumblebee and she did her best to ignore all the little zings rippling through her. She shoved the cassette into the deck, soothing sounds of Ani DiFranco filling the Sundance. Her eyelids drooped, fatigue setting in. She veered over yellow lines and back again, then over white lines, hitting ruts on the shoulder, jolting her awake. He told her to go to Thunder Bay; it was the last thing he said. She wasn’t going to stay knowing she wasn’t safe, knowing that despite his best effort to protect her he failed.
She veered again and felt the Sundance rumbling over ruts. She depressed the brake knowing if she didn’t stop she was going to pass out and plunge to her death in a lake somewhere. She glanced at the faded green numbers on the clock, reading one forty three. She shook herself awake and squinted at the shoulder looking for something wide enough to pull onto. A few stretches later she found a truck turn off, one of those little cul-de-sacs on the sides of the road for wayward semis. She pulled to the very edge and shut off the engine, her bones aching. She pushed all the locks down and crawled over the median, moving her backpack into the front passenger seat and stretching out on the smoky smelling fabric.
She laid her cheek on it, knowing it’d make an imprint, but she didn’t care. She hunched her knees to her chest and closed her eyes, wanting sleep, wanting the world to fade away. Somewhere during all her bumbling she knocked her phone onto the floor behind the passenger seat, face up, little lights blinking, jarring her out of her delirium.
She pressed the face and looked at the call display. Steph called three times, her mom called twice, and Rob sent about fifty text messages. She tried to scroll through them, most of them in all caps telling her to stop driving. They blurred as she got about halfway down, the phone ringing again. Rob. She groaned and put the phone to her ear.
“Kaliel?”
“It’s okay, I stopped driving,” she said, barely hearing what Rob had called her.
She heard him collapse on a couch. “I was going to tell you to go to Elwen, and come here tomorrow. Did you read my texts?”
“Some of them. Who’s Elwen?”
“Uhh … you don’t remember?”
“Remember what?” Maeva said, terse. She asked Michael a million times about the past and all he ever said was that she’d know. She’d feel it and she’d know it. She felt a lot of things now, distress, helplessness, fear, exhaustion.
“You called him Krishani.… I thought …” Rob sounded small.
Realization hit her like a lightning bolt and she propped herself on an elbow, anger lancing through her. “You knew?” She never told him about the woman in red, about Michael being a Wraith, about being hunted.
“Um …”
“I don’t remember anything.” She punctuated the words with sharp syllables, wanting to be angry with him but she couldn’t, not when she needed him so much.
“He asked me to take care of you when … when he couldn’t anymore,” Rob said.
Maeva couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Maybe they were all in on it, maybe Michael and Tom and Rob … maybe her parents … no, her parents never wanted her. She was a girl that was supposed to have died when she was five … but didn’t … and woke up with a golden pocket watch and no memories. “I’m a walk-in too, aren’t I?”
“A what?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t born in this body.”
“No …”
“Are you … a Wraith?”
Rob coughed. “No.”
“But you know what I am?”
“I knew who you were.”
She laid down, the top of her head pressing against the door, her feet bunched up against the other door. “What am I?”
“You’re my best friend, Kaliel.”
Her eyes watered; the same name Krishani used for her when he woke, the name she heard in dreams but it was all mumbo jumbo when she woke up. “He told me to find Pux.”
“You found Pux,” Rob said, sounding sad.
“Oh,” she said, surprised.
“Are you okay?” Pux asked.
“No.” She was a desolate desert island, feeling the worst she ever felt in lifetimes. Everything was almost at the forefront of her mind, almost but not quite.
“You shouldn’t stay there. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t care.” She felt so hollow and dead inside she could barely speak anymore. She wanted to let the darkness take her, let them come for her. She didn’t even know what she did to them that made them hate her so much. In her opinion she was a weird, loner girl nobody cared about. Everyone she had ever known wrote her off or shoved her into the background, forcing themselves into the spotlight. She didn’t draw attention or demand respect, or stand up for herself. If people didn’t like her for all the unknown reasons she was unlikeable, they joined the rest of them. She never set out to be liked or loved, but she ended up being both, and liking and loving those people back broke her into tiny little pieces and fed her to wolves.
“I’ll call Elwen and tell him to come get you. Where are you?”
“No. Don’t hang up. I’ll—I’ll drive when—” She closed her eyes, feeling darkness pressing in on her, Pux’s voice becoming watery and distorted.
“Kaliel? I’m sending Elwen … try to stay awake.”
The phone slipped out of her hand as darkness enveloped her in thick arms.
O O O
Sharp loud banging pulled Maeva out of her dreamless sleep. She opened her eyes to the sound of rain crashing against the Sundance, the thick figure of a man outside the window at her feet. She yelped as he rapped on it with the side of his fist. There was nothing strikingly different about him. He was a silhouette with a bulky muscular body and slicked back dark wet hair. The thing that made her tremble to the bone was the gold eyes, cracking with jagged bursts of black lightning. They bored into her and she closed her eyes, waiting for the axe of destruction to fall.
He was one of them—The Powers That Be and staying out on the highway in the middle of the night was the stupidest thing ever. She didn’t have Michael, Rob was far away and Tom had disappeared again, as if he could help. None of them could help. Successions of screams ripped out of her throat, her voice becoming hoarse and raw.
The man pressed his hand against the window, popping the lock up and wrenching the driver’s door open. Maeva huddled in the backseat, her screams dwindling into whimpers until the Sundance roared to life and she reached into her pocket, feeling the keys.
He looked at her, his expression deadly. “You’re really stupid, you know that right?”
He slammed on the gas, pulling a U-turn that would have flipped any other car, and sped in the opposite direction at an incomprehensible speed.
Maeva grabbed the back of the seat, unable to form words for all the foam, screams, and saliva in her mouth. She flailed as he hung a sharp left, leading them into unknown territory. She tried to straighten her back, pull herself upright, unlock her door and jump from the speeding bullet of the car but she knew if she did that she’d fall off a cliff or something. She kept her hand on the door handle, ready to jump out at the first sign of him slowing down. She kept her back ramrod straight against the back seat, her eyes glued to his head, a scowl on her face.
His gold lightning eyes flashed in the rear view and she tensed again, feeling sick everywhere. “Sleep,” he commanded.
And she was out cold.
***
Chapter 33
The Golden Pocket Watch
Maeva woke in a bed that wasn’t hers. A thick fuzzy red blanket was pulled to her chin, her hands piled neatly on her lap. She frowned at the four-poster bed, burgundy sheets of veneer hanging from the top. She sunk into pillows, confusion rattling her. She was comfortable, well rested, at peace. It was all the things she never expected to feel after what happened. A dull ache spread through her heart at the thought of Michael—Krishani.
She pushed herself onto her elbows and a black cat on the edge of the bed looked at her with sharp green eyes. The bedroom door was wide-open, showing off wainscoting in the hallway, and wallpaper along the walls. Thick chocolate brown carpet covered the floor. She leaned forward. The room was normal, painstakingly normal. It wasn’t a dungeon or a basement or a torture chamber. Accordion closet doors faced her, and an oak dresser with a large mirror sat against the wall on the right. An eighteenth century lamp sat on an end table on the left, the window behind it open a crack to let in the breeze. It resembled her room on Valley Road. Big two storey suburban homes with pools in the backyards.
Krishani slanted into her thoughts and she hung her head, running her hands along the soft blanket. She didn’t even know how to feel. He was gone and she was in some strange place. The cat jumped off the bed and shot a couple meows in her direction, three syllables sounding like, “follow me.” Its bushy black tail shot straight up as it curled against the door and narrowed its eyes at her. Maeva curiously pushed the blankets aside, realizing she was in the same clothes she had been wearing when Krishani died. She bit her lip and pulled her sleeves over her hands, her jeans feeling scratchy and heavy on her legs. She took a shaky step forward, her legs resembling gelatin. The cat trotted down the hall and she realized how big the house was. There was a bathroom, and two other doors along the wall, the last one opposite a banister overlooking the parlor. There were mirrors everywhere, some of them outlined in gold, others in black wire, ivory tea lights on little platforms in front of them.
The cat paused at a set of polished wooden steps on the left, but it wasn’t the only set of stairs. There was another set on the other side, leading, presumably, to more rooms. The cat continued down a wide staircase towards the double doors at the front of the house, one of them solid, the other complete with a frosted glass oval, shoe rack, and coat rack beside it. The whole house resembled the Victorian Era, very unlike the suburban homes in Kenora. This felt … old, in a hundred years kind of way. She took careful steps, her hand trailing along the smooth banister. She glanced over it, seeing a hallway, more mahogany wood coating the walls. Halfway down she saw part of the kitchen, the man who had found her on the road cutting lettuce on a wide island. She took a sharp breath and he looked up, waving the knife in the air as a hello.
“You must be hungry,” he said.
He seemed friendly, but he was built like a wall. Shorter than she originally thought, thick chested, a black t-shirt pulled across his biceps. His hair was brown with a few hints of gray, pulled into a ponytail. She took a step backwards up the stairs, though she didn’t really know where she was going; the front door was in the other direction. Her stomach felt like snakes had crawled into it, swishing and hissing at her to run. It wasn’t a cage, and so far the only threat she saw was a regular kitchen knife and whoever he was he seemed to be engrossed in making lunch. Her breath hitched as she took another step back, fear coiling her muscles into tight springs.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
He laughed and shook his head, and resumed chopping up lettuce, scooping it into a big metal bowl. “No.”
She gulped; her level of trust considerably low for a morning like this. Krishani drifted into her thoughts again, all the things he said about her not being safe making it impossible to think. “Are you one of them?”
He smiled. “I’m Christian De Luca.”
A normal name. She eased down one of the steps, her fingers gripping the banister hard, her eyes full of distrust and worry. The more awake she became the more her heart ached and all the stitching pain inside her returned. She eyed him, trying to place where she might have seen him before, something about him striking her as oddly familiar. She didn’t like the feeling at all.
“I work at Big John’s and I found you on the side of the road in the middle of the night.”
Maeva moved downstairs, vaguely recalling last night. She was so disoriented she didn’t know if she was seeing things. She was sure she shut off the Sundance and locked the door, but sometimes … with the ignition problem … there was no way someone could start a car without hotwiring it or using the keys. No way could he have unlocked a door like he was the male version of Carrie.
“So you brought me here?” she asked, hugging the thick carved wooden post at the bottom of the stairs.
Christian shrugged, grabbing a pair of tongs and mixing up the salad. “I didn’t know where else to go at the time.”
She felt drawn to him, and her stomach grumbled. She wasn’t just hungry she was starving. She neared the kitchen, reddish granite counter tops, stools around the island, dark brown wooden cupboards. The fridge was puke yellow, and the stove in the far left corner looked old, with coils for elements. She settled on one of the stools, keeping her eyes open for any signs of danger.
He put a plate in front of her, quesadilla and Caesar salad. He set a down a glass of brown liquid—iced tea. She picked up a fork and folded the lettuce into her mouth savoring the taste. She took her eyes off him for a moment to inspect her surroundings, a big window showing off the porch on her left, a short hallway on the other side of the fridge. She couldn’t see anything beyond that. It was quaint, home-like, comforting. Christian sat on a stool and they ate in silence.
Maeva didn’t understand any of this. One minute she was expecting the sky to turn to fire, breaking apart at the seams because the only boy she ever loved was gone, and the next she was waking up here. She didn’t want to admit she needed Krishani, but ever since he found her, life was different. She felt like a part of her heart was gone, and whatever this was … waking up in someone else’s house … it didn’t seem real. She thought about Kenora, and about what would happen after lunch. She promised she’d go to Thunder Bay and find Pux. He had all the answers Krishani wouldn’t give her. Maybe he would tell her who she was and why all of this happened.
“What were you doing out there?” Christian asked, interrupting her thoughts.
Maeva looked at him, feeling really stupid about trying to drive all the way to Thunder Bay in the middle of the night in the climax of a full-blown panic attack. “I was um … on my way to Thunder Bay … to see a friend.”
“In the middle of the night?” he pressed, his thin lips turned down, his eyebrows furrowed. Maeva thought he was being awfully parental, but for someone who looked to be in their forties, she half expected it.
She looked at her food. “My …” She didn’t know what to call Krishani. He was so much more to her than just a boyfriend, he was everything. She dragged in a breath trying not to cry all over again. “My boyfriend died.”
Christian stuffed a piece of quesadilla in his mouth, and spoke while chewing. “Sorry to hear.” He got up, taking his plate to the sink.
“Is there a bathroom?”
He nodded and pointed down the hallway beside the stairs. She swiveled on the chair and tiptoed down the hall, pushing the door open. It was small, nothing but a toilet and a sink. It was painted entirely pink with stenciled roses along the walls. She closed the door, happy for a small amount of privacy. Sharing wasn’t her forte. She didn’t like talking about herself with people like Steph, whom she knew for years, let alone someone who scared the crap out of her by picking her up off the highway and taking her to his house. Everything about last night was a blur. She put her head in her hands, feeling broken on the inside. She had to push through it. She knew all along it was going to happen, that the chances of him going into remission were scarce. She watched him waste away, and took pleasure in all the time she had with him, but it was always limited. He told her so many times it would end.
And she didn’t listen.
She fell in love with him anyway and didn’t really think about what she would do after. Everything she did was an effort to keep him alive for one more day, one more week, one more month. And despite all her efforts … he didn’t make it. She let out a shaky breath, sobs clogged in her throat. Her heart felt like a cauterized wound.
Pulling up her jeans she turned on the sink and splashed water on her face. Her hair was a frizzy mess, skin feeling slick with grime, and she desperately wanted to pour her aching muscles into a hot bubble bath. She stretched, not feeling any kinks in her shoulders, only heaviness pressing on them like gravity was against her. She dried her hands and tried not to think about what she was going to do when she got back on the road. She hoped Christian hadn’t touched anything in her car, like her backpack, her phone. She needed to check it for all the crazy calls and texts she’d likely gotten. She’d never be able to explain this to her mom.
She left the bathroom and noticed a door underneath the stairs, leading to either a cubbyhole or a basement. She shuddered at the thought of unfinished basements, cold cement floors, and open ceilings. Down the hall she saw a small atrium and a back door. Clutter crowded the atrium, everything from firewood to hack saws and orange garbage bags were back there. She headed back to the kitchen, expecting to see Christian sitting there but dishes were neatly stacked on a rack on the side of the sink, drying. The island was wiped off, cutting board replaced, knives put away. She heard a television, and curiously padded past the front door, stopping at the foot of the living room.
The hardwood flooring was traded for thick brown carpet, and a flower print chesterfield sat in front of a television in one of those big entertainment systems. Bookshelves lined the walls, knick knacks intermingled with books, giving the room that museum feel. She recognized pyramids, miniature head from Easter Island, carved elephants, faery and dragon statues, crystals. There were things she didn’t understand like the handful of rock, gold lined goblets, dragon shaped blowgun, and pretty daggers on plaques. A plain desk pressed against the staircase, a laptop open on it.
There was a bay window, with a wide ledge on the other side of the front door. She had a perfect view of the wraparound porch, faded yellow paint splashed across the corner pillar. Christian sat on the couch watching some old movie, his arm draped across the back. He glanced at her and she felt transparent. He held the remote out to her and she took a few steps until she was at the back of the couch, on the opposite end.
“You want to watch a movie? I don’t really watch a lot of television.”
“I should go. I appreciate the help but …”
Christian’s eyes went dark, and in a flash they were the same lightning gold she’d seen the night before. “Maeva …”
She stumbled, tripping on her own foot and almost landing on her butt. She found her balance and righted herself, scrambling to get to the door, locked. She slipped, banging her chin on the doorknob and sunk to the floor, trembling, burying her face in the circle of her arms.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Christian said, his voice the epitome of calm. She heard his footsteps as he rounded the couch.
Maeva pivoted, brushing her hair out of her face and trying to seem brave. “But you’re one of them.”
Christian’s gold eyes looked sad and worn. He looked too normal, blue jeans, legs crossed at the ankle, casually leaning against the couch, arms across his chest, head bowed in admittance. “Yes … I am one of them.”
She tried to stand but she felt like a fish flopping around sand, unable to get a breath. She pressed her hands to the floor and bent her knees up. Bitterness filled her mouth and she resented him. She hated everything he was and she didn’t even know him. He was so unthreatening, so accommodating and she didn’t understand why. “Why haven’t you hurt me?”
He reached into his pocket, and took out something she’d seen a million times before. The chain dangled from his fingers, the perfect smooth roundness ticking back and forth like a pendulum. The last time she saw the golden pocket watch it was in her bedroom, in the little box on her dresser. Fear cascaded through her, too shocked to say anything.
“Because I’m the one who gave you this thirteen years ago.”
O O O
Tor steadied the pocket watch, gathering it in his hand and shoved it back into his pocket. She looked afraid, disheveled, and broken but all the waiting and watching was over. Krishani was right about one thing, he had to do something, even if that something was going to hurt a lot. She eyed him, her hazel eyes sharp, her mouth pulled into a pout. She fidgeted with her sleeves and flexed her heels against the floor. He needed her to trust him, and from the look in her eyes, it was last thing she was ready to do.
The Valtanyana were a formidable force. In the past she betrayed him, letting the full breadth of their power fall on him. He ran, took as many different identities as possible, blended into society, influencing it from the inside out. Over time their popularity faded. They became Titans and later The Powers That Be, most of their lore locked in the minds of civilizations they all but wiped out. The Atlanteans, Aztecs, Babylonians, Egyptians, Mayans. They destroyed anyone who got too close to realizing they were the enemies.
Tor didn’t want to admit that despite all the good he tried to do, he was an enemy too. Humans referred to him as a demon, devil, and shadowman. Corruption twisted history and turned his reign over the Lands of Peace into a mockery, his own Lords turned against him out of fear.
He wanted to be angry with her but he couldn’t feel emotion anymore. She was a means to an end, a way to bring back the old ways, restoring the Land to its former glory. And he couldn’t deny needing her. Being trapped in an immortal human body limited him. He didn’t have access to the kind of power he used to possess. Cut off from the Great Hall, unable to break into his vault. Necromancer was discreet, bringing him small things, but there were other things … Flames he couldn’t find, swords he didn’t have access to, dust he didn’t have enough of. All he had was her, a waif of a girl who didn’t know the first thing about what it meant to be a Flame.