Finn might love me. I’d never know for sure. Neither would he. And that was the biggest reason I had to let him go. The doubt would always tarnish what we had together.
I hadn’t needed a thing from him, and I loved him.
That was the truth. My truth.
For this one last moment, this last kiss, I set aside my confusion, my hurt, and my rage, and let my memories, my love, wash over him. Into him. Whether he liked it or not.
I willingly breathed my spark into his body.
He might die, but it wasn’t going to be because I did nothing.
Finn’s hands found their way to my hair. He grasped me tightly, returning my kiss. His lips grazed mine, tasted my tears, then he pulled his face away from mine. Just barely. The tempest of our quick breathing swirled over my lips.
“I hope someday you forgive me,” he said, tears pooling over his warm brown eyes.
“And I hope you forgive me.”
His eyes sprang wide with realization. I could already see his aura changing. A white ring of light surrounded his head. I thought he’d smile, but he didn’t. “You’ve only delayed my death, luv.” He gazed at me with an agonized face. “It’s like inhaling you,” he whispered. “You’re part of me. You’ll always be part of me.” I got to my feet and motioned for him to come, but he waved me away. He glowed with white, and it terrified me to feel the pull from my heart to his.
“Go, Cora!”
I turned and ran.
Forty-Nine
It was a strange, vulnerable sensation to exit through the final locked gate of Clancy Mulcarr’s secret underground prison. The walls of the garden were so camouflaged by trees, you could barely see it if you didn’t know it was there.
“Where does Clancy live? I don’t see a house.”
“On the opposite side of these woods. We looked there first and found nothing. But then Ina said she’d seen a forest in her vision. This is the only patch of forest on our land,” Fergus explained. “It was hard to find this place, though, with it being underground. We had to look for worn paths in the trees.”
With Fergus’s help, we found our way through a knotted cluster of trees out of Clancy’s compound. Thick fog curled and slithered around the bottoms of the trees along the path, moving like a living thing. Moisture clung to my skin. The world felt more expansive than before. Or maybe I felt smaller, more defenseless. Like evil suddenly had talons and at any moment could snap me up and plop me back into a cage.
Every footfall crunching into the gravel sounded like an army of horses in my head. I expected Clancy to pop out from behind every tree. Ahead, through the foliage, the lighthouse tower in the distance rose over the fog like a finger pointing at the moon. I couldn’t believe it. “All this time, we were only a couple miles from your house?”
“Right under our noses. Bloody bastard,” Fergus said with a grunt.
“How much time do we have before his drugs wear off?” my father asked, always the scientist. He had both my mother and me by the hand. He grasped a little too tightly, but I didn’t mind.
“I’d guess an hour or so. It was pretty heavy stuff, but it took us a while to find you.”
“It won’t matter,” my mother muttered. “He’ll find us.” She proceeded to chew nervously on the tip of her thumb. “He’s a ghost. Soul on a string.”
Fergus led us through another grove of trees and thick ferns. As we exited into a clearing, I saw an old shed on the edge of a dirt road. He sat Giovanni down on a large rock and fished a ring of keys from his trouser pocket. Fergus opened wide double doors to a tack shed. We followed him inside. It smelled of horsehair and dirt, and the tang of green grass crushed under a boot heel.
“We’ve got to find a safe place to go,” I said, unable to control my restless pacing. We were standing in a shed on the same property as Clancy’s house. And I wouldn’t go to the manor. Drugged or not, he was there. Not nearly far enough away. Nowhere would be far enough. He’d had three Scintilla. Three. The magic number that kept cropping up. The number he said would make him unstoppable. And now he’d lost his prize. Would he ever stop looking for us?
“We have to call the police,” my father said. “He kept a woman imprisoned for nearly thirteen years! He needs to feel what it’s like to be behind bars. I don’t care about any of this aura crap anymore. He can’t keep another human prisoner and get away with it.”
I’d never heard my father’s voice so desperate or so full of bitterness.
“Aye, you can call the police. Press charges. He deserves it. But it won’t make you any safer. He’s but one of many Arrazi who would seize these three.” Fergus clasped his hand to my father’s shoulder. “Or worse. Much worse. The Scintilla had almost been relegated to myth. It’s been so long since word of one had come ’round. But now…” He looked at Giovanni, Gráinne, and me with unconcealed wonder. “When people find out about you three, it will be open season.” He leaned in close to my father. “If it were my family, you can bet your arse I’d hide them away. Go off the grid, my friend. Find a mountain home far away from people, and live there forever.”
“That’s not a life. That’s another prison.” My voice ricocheted off the walls. We all looked around us for a moment, but the only sound was the screech of crickets in the night and the distant static of the ocean far below.
My father put both hands on my shoulders. I knew he was about to tell me what was and what was not going to happen. “I’m not that girl anymore,” I informed him. “We need to decide together.”
I turned to Giovanni. His matted blond curls were the brightest thing in the room besides our silver. His face wore the bruises of his beating and his lip was still swollen. A Nordic angel after battle. He’d been staring gloomily at me since he sat down on a bale of hay underneath a row of horse halters.
“Can we go to your hotel until we figure out what we’re doing?” I asked.
“We cannot go there,” Giovanni said. “That is where they found me. There is one place we can go. I know a man in Dublin, a doctor. I told you about him. He would help us. I know he would.”
“I’d rather contact the embassy,” my father said. “They can keep us safe until we leave the country.”
“And what are you going to say to them, Dad? Excuse me, but can you give us safe harbor because a bunch of soul-sucking lunatics are after us?” I threw my hands in the air. “They’ll think we’re insane.” I looked at my mother curled up like a pill bug, her lips moving frantically but without any sound.
“We’re not staying in this country, Cora. We’ve got to leave Ireland.”
“We’ve got to find a way to end this for good. There has to be an answer. You heard Fergus, Dad. They’re after people like us. They found us, found me, in Santa Cruz, California, of all places! Nowhere is safe.”
That girl’s not safe anywhere.
“Of all the unsafe places in the entire world, this is the most unsafe! You’ve flown right into the heart of the hornet’s nest. Your mother believed this is where it all started: that the origins of Arrazi and Scintilla started here, at Newgrange. Well, I’m not having it. I’m not losing either of you again.”
“I can’t leave.” My mother’s little voice startled us all.
“Why?” I asked.