21. You’re Not Alone
21
YOU’RE NOT ALONE
She trembled a little when he came near her for fear he would prove too loving.
— PáDRAIC ó CONAIRE, “AN BHEAN A CIAPADH” (“THE WOMAN WHO WAS MADE TO SUFFER”)
A s a child, my favorite thing about Manzanita Beach was the sand dunes. Rising ten, even twenty feet from the edge of the beach, the soft white sand sprouted beach grass that could reach up to my shoulder. The dunes provided refuge where no one could find me, not even my grandmother or my mother, or any of the visions that lurked in corners of the house.
The visions let me go now as I wove through a well-worn path through the dunes at the edge of the property, then made for a driftwood log washed up with a pile of bull kelp. My toes sank into the cold, wet sand as the high tide rushed in to cover my feet as bare feet into the cold sand and watched it flow through my toes as the winter wind blew straight through my thin sweater.
I barely felt a thing. All I could think about was Gran and the monster who had literally squeezed the life out of her and, for all I knew, was still lurking somewhere in the area. Looking for her Secret. Which I was now supposed to guard.
The box, maybe. Whatever it was.
It was too much to take. I tipped my head up and screamed into the wind as loudly as I could. Over and over I shrieked, keening wordless wails, willing the mountain to hear me and take vengeance on behalf of my family.
Finally, my howls quieted to gasps that were swallowed in the wind and the roar of the surf. By the time I was finished, I was shaking so violently that I didn’t notice Jonathan’s approach until he was sitting on the driftwood next to me.
His shoulder didn’t quite touch mine, but I could sense its warmth all the same.
Or maybe I just wanted it.
“It’s going to be all right, you know,” he said.
“Everyone says that, but they have no godsdamned idea.” I scrubbed my face with the backs of my hands. “And neither do you. You don’t know what it’s like to watch someone close to you be murdered like that.”
“Oh, I do.”
I turned. “You do?”
He reached out a hand and hovered it over mine. “Yes,” he said with an air of decision and let his hand drop.
An image of a woman bloomed in my mind’s eye. The first thing that struck me was her beauty. The same tawny skin as Jonathan and the same darkly lined eyes, tilted toward her temples like a cat’s. A lush fringe of lashes and hewn cheekbones would have inspired Michelangelo along with the glassy tendrils of blond hair escaping around her neck. Magnetic light shone through obsidian eyes.
She was a siren, one of the vivacious folk who inspired poetry and art, though she was far more magnetic than any I’d met in real life. A true muse. The sublime embodied.
I also had no doubt that she was Jonathan’s mother.
The woman lay on a bed, and I was worried and very, very young. A queer blue tinge covered her skin, and she was shivering. She smiled and reached out a hand before her full, pink lips contorted into an “oh” of pain.
Concern and fear thrummed through my body when the woman bent in half, then wretched bile and blood into a basin at the foot of the bed. When she was finished, she collapsed onto the edge and then rolled to the floor, unconscious.
“Mama!” I cried as I fell to my knees, trying to shake her back to life.
But she didn’t move. Another woman rushed into the room, speaking furiously in a language I recognized but also didn’t. German? Italian? It sounded like a mix of both.
The memory disappeared along with Jonathan’s touch, and I was facing the sea again, still fighting the winds, but somehow quieter than before. Jonathan was staring out at the gray, kelp-filled waves.
“You’re very good at that,” I said finally. “I’ve never known anyone who wasn’t a seer that could focus so well. Most people’s thoughts are just a muddle.”
Jonathan sighed. “It’s taken some practice. And a bit of skill.”
“You seem to have a lot of skills for a sorcerer.”
He didn’t reply. We sat in silence for a few long moments, letting the memory swirl around us along with the salty air.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “That you had to go through that. That I assumed you didn’t know what it felt like.”
“I wasn’t looking for sympathy. I simply thought you might want to know—really know—that you’re not alone.”
“How old were you?”
“Six.”
I shuddered. Even younger than I had been when we’d lost my father. And Jonathan had watched it happen. “What was it?”
He reached down to trace a long finger through the sand by his feet. “Influenza.”
I gawked. “Your mother died of the flu?”
“Yes, the flu,” he snapped. “Up to sixty thousand people die of it every year in your country alone, you know. We lived in a remote village, there was no time to bring her to a hospital, and the nearest doctor was miles away. It took her quickly.”
I didn’t respond. I supposed there might still have been tiny towns in Europe where people died of things like the flu. Perhaps it had progressed to pneumonia or bronchitis. That would explain the blue pallor of her skin. His mother’s beautiful face rose again in my mind, and I could almost see her under normal circumstances, laughing with the kind of infectiousness that spreads to everyone around her.
“She was very beautiful,” I said honestly.
The edges of Jonathan’s mouth turned up in a sad, wistful smile. “Yes. She was.”
Something about his calm admission cut right to the quick of me. My heart clenched as the realization that Gran, too, was relegated to the past tense, sank like a sharpened knife through butter, without a hint of resistance. The kind of wound you don’t even know you have until it’s proven fatal.
I didn’t know I was shivering until Jonathan gathered me to his side and coaxed my head into the crook of his shoulder. Although there were only a few thin layers of wool and cotton between us (and only skin in some places), I couldn’t feel anything he thought or felt—just the warmth of his body pressed to mine. Not because he had figured out how to stop me, I realized, but because there was no room in my Sight or anywhere else for anything but complete and utter loss.
So, I let the grief come. I sighed into the kind of touch I so rarely admitted I craved and could almost never have. I ignored the fact that it was a strange sorcerer holding me instead of someone I knew and loved. And I savored the moment, knowing that in this man’s company, at least, I could mourn my grandmother the way she deserved.
Jonathan waited at the house until I’d showered and gotten ready for the day so I could drive him back into the town. We took the short ride in awkward silence, and I was surprised when he offered to spend the rest of the day with me.
“Why?” I asked. “I know I’m a bit of a mess, but honestly, I’ll be fine alone.”
The moment the words were out, they weren’t actually true. It was just my default response to almost everyone. Don’t let them get too close, lest chaos ensue.
But maybe it wasn’t what I actually wanted.
“Given what you saw, I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Jonathan replied. “I cast a few more obscuring spells on the house last night, but nothing’s foolproof. Whoever did that to Penny is a bloody powerful sorcerer, and he may be back if he didn’t find what he was looking for. I don’t want you there alone, and neither would she.”
I pulled up outside the inn. The interior of the Prius had warmed, but my hands felt cold at the thought of that thing returning.
Still, what right did I have to ask Jonathan to stay?
He had a motive—to get me to Ireland.
And I wasn’t sure about that either.
“You can’t babysit me forever,” I said with more bravado than I felt. “Nor do you need to.”
“Cass—”
“No. The autopsy will be finished by Friday, you said, and I have a week until I have to get back to Boston. Possibly longer—the department can cover my class as long as I need, they said. I need to See what else the house might want to show me.”
I rubbed a hand on my forehead, trying to figure out the logistics of staying here versus returning to Boston. I would probably have to take a leave of absence to figure out everything I wanted to know, especially since the house seemed to have its own timeline for giving up information. As for the idea of the shadow in the fedora returning…
I shook my head. From what I’d Seen, Gran had caused him just as much pain as he’d caused her. He might have been her end, but I had a feeling he was gone too.
“I’ll be fine here,” I said again. “The house wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
Wouldn’t it? This time Gran’s voice seemed to reach me from beyond. A warning, not a vision.
I ignored it completely.
Jonathan was studying me like I was something in his lab. “You want to wait around for the house to offer you more…what? Of Penny’s death?”
I nodded.
“Some seers know spells that reveal a specific history if you know what you’re looking for. They’re fairly common. Penny didn’t teach you any?”
“No. She didn’t teach me much of anything, if you can’t tell. I still don’t understand why she didn’t tell me about the Council either.”
“Well, that’s because she wasn’t meant to.”
His words came out sharply, but before I could snap back at him, Jonathan got out of the car. He leaned back down to peer through the door and chewed on his upper lip for a few moments before he seemed to come to a decision. “I’m planning to go for a hike this afternoon. If you won’t let me be your escort, perhaps you’d like to join me.”
I blinked. “A hike?” Talk about a change of subject.
He looked toward the ocean, just a few blocks from his inn. “You touch the water to reset, right? I find the woods and the earth more soothing. Do you know of any good spots?”
Touch the water. Breathe the air. Feel the earth. Light the fire. Hear the silence.
I looked up at the sky. It was cold and blustery today, but the cloud cover looked relatively thin. A good long hike did sound like a pleasant relief from the literally suffocating confines of the house.
“Do you have good walking boots?”
“Always.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Go get a raincoat and a hat. We’re going to climb the mountain.”