20. The Memory
20
THE MEMORY
Because we share all our sorrows and joys
All your intimate thoughts are mine
— JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT, “THE LITTLE BLACK ROSE SHALL BE RED AT LAST”
A flashlight was shining directly into my eyes.
Or maybe it was a laser.
I squinted. No, just the morning light, a most inconvenient sunbeam streaming through my bedroom window. The light flickered as the trees swayed in the wind, like an iridescent disco ball.
“Christ,” I muttered, grabbing my head and rolling my face back into the pillow.
My head throbbed, my mouth tasted like the dark side of death. I felt like Dorothy in Oz, waking up in a field of poppies. Exactly how much had I drunk last night?
One bottle of wine, which had eventually been replaced with another. A dinner I’d barely touched as I’d digested the news of a magical council and my future place on it. A future that all but erased whatever peaceful life I had been planning for myself. A small college job in Oregon? Forget about it. I was supposed to go to Ireland, find long-lost family friends or relatives or something who would train me for my new job for the next four years for the biggest test of my life. It was like grad school all over again, complete with the defense at the end—except this time I wouldn’t just be defending a thesis. I’d be defending my merits.
And if I said no?
The boogie man in the shadows would supposedly be able to come after me too. And possibly my mother. And whoever else might be attached to us.
I groaned. Water. All I needed right now was water. Then some extremely strong tea. And then maybe a shower or four.
Eventually, I found my way into the kitchen for drinks and anything else edible left in the house. The prospects were grim—a mishmash of baking ingredients and canned goods. Stewed tomatoes sounded terrible. There were a couple of eggs left…perhaps pancakes were the way to go.
I shoved a handful of stale granola into my mouth while I set some hot water to boil and pulled out the ingredients for my intended breakfast.
“Good morning.”
I shrieked, sending a spray of granola across the room at the sound of a charmingly scratchy, English-accented voice.“Jesus! Jonathan?”
“It would appear so.”
He sat up blearily on the sofa, one of Gran’s afghans draped over his lap. His suit and shirt were hanging neatly over the back of one of the dining chairs., leaving him in just his underclothes.
“I hope you don’t mind. You graciously allowed me to drive you home because you seemed…a bit out of sorts. It was presumptuous of me to stay, but I didn’t particularly relish the thought of walking the two miles back to the inn. Not in those shoes. Not in the rain.”
I rubbed one hand over my eyes, vaguely recalling my drunken walk to the car from the restaurant.
“I can open my own door,” I slurred. “Don’t you try anything.”
He helped me into the passenger seat, hands feathering over my waist and hips as he buckled me in.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured, though his eyes glittered as he pulled the keys from my grasp.
After that, I remembered nothing. How had I even reached my bedroom? How had my clothes changed from the mustard-colored dress to my favorite pajamas? How had I managed to get into bed, turn off the light, and settle under the covers without so much as a trip?
I turned back to the kitchen, studiously ignoring his gaze.
“Do you always drink so much with strangers?”
Something in the tone of his question made me look up sharply. “Always?”
“Well, first in Portland, and now here. Seems a bit reckless.”
I looked up to find him pulling on his pants. It was hard not to ogle at the sight of his long legs slipping into the wool fabric. Harder not to notice the sinewy muscles in his arms or the way his shirt clung to his chest. It was even more irritating that I couldn’t seem to stop staring.
With enormous effort, I moved my attention to measuring out flour as he came to sit at the counter. “It’s been a hard time, if you hadn’t noticed. In Portland, Reina and I were having whiskey in Gran’s honor. She…she was always telling me to live more.”
“And last night?” he prodded.
I looked up. I wasn’t sure what had come over me last night. After reading through Gran’s will several more times and having no more clue what I wanted to do about my “inheritance” than when I started, I had drowned my confusion in the wine that never seemed to stop flowing.
Jonathan’s gaze was as unnervingly penetrating now as it had been last night. And once again, I found myself wondering if it would be in poor taste to add a tot of whiskey to my tea just to get through the morning.
Gods. This was not a good pattern.
I cracked a few eggs into another bowl and started whisking them a bit faster than necessary. Jonathan smirked. He had done that a lot last night too. And if he did it one more time, I was going to chuck the can of baking soda at his face.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t just approach me in Portland like a normal person,” I grumbled as I took the whistling kettle off the stove. “Or tell me your name in Boston.”
“If there’s enough hot water, I’d love a cup too,” Jonathan said, nodding at the box of Barry’s I had taken out of the cupboard. “And I doubt you’d have wanted to hear the things I had to say at that point. It was difficult enough trying to remain discreet when you were throwing yourself all over a fool wearing a ladies’ kerchief as a hat.”
Heat rose up my neck as I poured our tea. I couldn’t respond to that. I had been acting like an idiot in the bar, and probably last night too.
“Hence my original question,” Jonathan continued as he accepted his mug of tea. “Do you always drink like that? I was under the impression that seers generally don’t enjoy getting pissed. Or spending time in crowds.”
I sighed as I went back to mixing pancake batter. “We don’t. At least I don’t. Except, apparently, in extreme circumstances where I’ve just lost the only family I had. I’m sorry if I got a little out of hand last night. I was…overwhelmed.”
Jonathan waved away the apology and reached his arms above his head toward the open beamed ceiling. The stretch seemed to ripple from his toes up to his fingertips, and I was momentarily transfixed at the revelation of long, elegant muscles peeking from under his shirt and flexed through shoulder and arm, particularly where a small tattoo was drawn on the back of his right tricep—a circular wreath with a four-legged animal inside.
“Are you all right?”
I blinked and realized I had been staring. Again. “Um, yes, fine. What did you say?”
“I said I called this morning and ordered a rushed autopsy. Penny’s body will be sent to the mortuary in Seaside afterward, and her remains will be ready to pick up on Friday. The report will be available the week after that. In the meantime, I’llescort you to Seattle, and then to Ireland, if you choose.”
I sniffed. “Thank you. I’ll reimburse you from her estate, I suppose.”
“She already paid for everything.”
I nodded. Of course, she had. “Well, you don’t need to escort me anywhere. I’m honestly not sure I can even deal with my mother right now, especially since she couldn’t even be bothered to come here herself.”
Jonathan’s lips pressed together. It was clear he shared a similar opinion regarding Sybil’s absence but didn’t want to interfere.
“As for Ireland, I’m not sure I’m going there either,” I said as I removed a cast iron pan from the hanging rack.
That got his attention. “Cassandra, Penny specifically requested that I make sure you at least go to Ireland and contact the Connollys. Even if you decide not to train with Caitlin, you should at least know what you’re turning down.”
“Did it ever occur to you or my grandmother that I might have had other plans for my life?” I demanded as I spooned some batter onto the pan. It sizzled as it made contact, hissing against the hot iron. “I have a dissertation to defend, you know. And a job to start in June. I don’t know how it works in particle physics, but the Irish Studies job market isn’t exactly booming, so getting a tenure-track position is basically catching a unicorn. I’d be an idiot to walk away from that.”
“And you think inheriting one of the most coveted positions in the fae world is something to scoff at?” Jonathan stared at me like he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “You’ll just walk away from everything Penny did? Have you any clue how hard it was for her to protect you? How much she sacrificed to raise you here, safely away from everyone who tried to find her?”
“As it happens, I have absolutely no idea because she never told me a godsdamned thing!” I exploded.
I flipped a couple of pancakes. Burned. I swore, then tossed them into the garbage and turned off the stove. Screw the pancakes. I’d find something to eat in town.
Jonathan, however, hadn’t moved from his stool, where he was watching me fall apart with an expression that was half-resigned, half-annoyed. “You can’t ignore your birthright because you’re angry at a dead woman.”
“That’s incredibly insensitive. And you know what? Absolutely nothing in that letter indicated I had to jump up and move to Ireland right this moment. I don’t even manifest for four and a half more years. What’s the hurry?”
I can’t stay here, waiting around for you to?—”
“No one is asking you to hang around!” I exploded. “Why would you even want to? I promise you, I’m not that interesting. Not even a little bit.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He rubbed his forehead. “Cassandra, it’s what she wanted you to do, and you know it.”
I grabbed the scorched pan and tossed it into the sink, where it landed with a heavy clank. “You don’t know the first thing about what she wanted for me. Or for my mother. Do you know how I know this? Because neither of them ever mentioned you in twenty-eight years.”
My jaw was shaking, and pressure was building behind my eyes. There were tears there. But nothing came out.
I tossed the spatula into the sink after the pan. “If you want something else to eat, you’ll need to find it yourself. I’m going for a surf and then to think. Alone.”
Jonathan worried his jaw back and forth, then slid off the stool. “I’ve intruded on your hospitality long enough. I’ll just wash up and go.”
Before I could reply, he had collected the rest of his clothes and carried them down the hall to the bathroom to change. I closed my eyes as the vise-like pressure around my temple increased, then bent over, seeking the cold granite counter for relief. The moment my forehead touched the stone, a vision bloomed.
I was still at the counter, but I wasn’t me anymore. I was my grandmother. There were her hands, strong and capable, clawing at the surface, looking in vain for purchase.
Something squeezed the sides of my head as if it were wrapped so tightly with a bandage that the circulation to my brain was being cut off.
I moaned like a trapped animal, but beyond that, I couldn’t speak. Behind me, a laugh broke through my pain, deep-voiced, male, muted in a shadow.
“Do you think that hurts, Penelope?” The voice hissed with snake’s venom. “It won’t be so bad if you just give me what I want. the Secret. Give me the Sssssecret!”
“Never.” Incantations poured from my mouth, some old dialect of Irish.
A hand slipped around my neck and squeezed, strangling the words.
“Give it to me!”
Both hands moved to my temples. The pressure there began to build. The voice—the man—whispered his own spell in a language I couldn’t understand. Maybe Latin. Some Goidelic, others that almost sounded Greek.
The immense pressure pounded through my temples, and then I blinked as memories started pouring from my mind like water, rushing across the stone, splashing the rafters, spilling onto the floors, where they seeped into the cracks between the cedar planks and disappeared.
Image upon image of a small, red-haired girl running up and down a rocky coastline with a brown-haired girl of approximately the same age. Another memory of cabbage and potatoes again for breakfast. One of an elderly man with a graying beard smiling from where he stood behind a hand plow in the middle of a field lined with rocks. A pretty woman with freckles and a thick cream sweater. Another boy with ashy blond hair and curious green eyes.
“No!” I cried as the images dug deeply, trying to hang on. These people…I loved them. But who were they? Where were they going?
“Give it to me!” the voice demanded. “Give me the Secret, and you won’t lose the rest!”
“Noooooooo!” I screamed, and then there was another scream, one that called after mine, horribly high-pitched, but the kind that can only come from a man when the deepest parts of him are torn apart.
“Cass? Are you all right? Cassandra!”
I was yanked up to a standing position by Jonathan, now fully dressed.
Hands at my shoulders, waves of concern shimmied through my muscles. The vise around my brain disappeared along with the vision and all of Gran’s perspective.
The world returned. I twisted around and shoved him away as hard as I could.
“Why did you do that?!” I turned back to the counter and smacked a palm against the surface again and again, looking for that horrible connection. “I was figuring it out, Jonathan! I was?—”
“You were screaming and thrashing around on the counter. I thought you were having a seizure.”
“Come back. Come back .” My slaps echoed through the kitchen, stinging my palm with each one. Jonathan’s hand closed over mine, holding it in place, but I yanked away and pushed him back again, ignoring the cold, clear concern throbbing through that broad chest. “Stop and let me try. I was Seeing what happened. How sh-she died, I know it!”
“A vision? Show me.” Jonathan’s tone sharpened considerably.
“I can’t; I’m not a freaking film reel. I was just figuring it out myself!” Frantically, I kept pressing my forehead to different spots on the counter, again and again searching for the right place where it had happened. Where she was…gone.
But eventually, I stopped. I lay there longer, struggling to catch my breath and suck back pending tears. The granite had long lost its icy appeal, but still, I made no move to stand again. I couldn’t let go. Not now.
“Cass.” A broad hand settled on my back, conveying warm, steady calm and a sense of reciprocity. “I know. I know.”
His fingers rubbed up and down my spine, feeling good. Too good. I moaned, and behind me, Jonathan expelled a labored breath.
I finally managed to stand only after his hand pulled away. I turned to find Jonathan watching me with concern.
“Tell me what happened.”
I took a deep, painful breath, then exhaled. “I was her. Here, in the kitchen, at the end. It was like he was wringing me like a towel. Everything in my mind—my thoughts, my dreams, my memories, my emotions—all of it was draining out of me. Except they weren’t mine; they were Penny’s. They were hers, and then she was gone, and he was hurt?—”
I choked at the thought of Gran lying prone over the counter, literally losing her entire self under the hideous pressure of the shadowed man.
“He wanted her Secret,” I whispered. “He wanted it, and she wouldn’t give it to him. So he took everything else and killed her. But I think—I think maybe she killed him too.”
I didn’t realize that Jonathan had reached for my hand until my emotions calmed enough to feel the concern humming through his being into mine.
But I didn’t want concern. I didn’t need to be rescued from my own grandmother by this person, I didn’t need to be taken care of in this whole mess, and I certainly didn’t need his pity.
Something tingled under my hands where they gripped the counter. Under my bare toes too. Visions threatened, moments I had Seen before. Not Gran’s history, but mine.
Every time I’d argued with her at this very spot.
Every time she’d tried to teach me something, and I hadn’t listened.
Every time she’d asked something of me, and I’d turned her down.
Every disappointment piled, one on top of the other, until the room was a cacophony of disappointment, all drawn in different shades of me.
Touch the water .
Jonathan reached out again through the visions. I swatted his hand away, then dodged around him to head for the back French doors leading out to the deck. The house shook as I clattered down the rickety wooden steps, away from the visions that seemed to follow me through the property. Even the manzanita leaves biting into my bare soles seemed to carry these memories.
Touch the water .
The ocean called through the dunes, though the wind tore through them, pushing me away.
Water, I needed water.
Anything to stop these voices. Anything to stop this pain.