Chapter Thirteen
Sam
As promised.
It’s rough, but it’s something. I can tell she’s anxious.
Some phrases jump out at me where she’s trying too hard to emulate her father, but I’m not worried.
That’ll fade as she gets more comfortable with the material.
If anything, I’m relieved to see the hints of what she can do now.
There’s a dark scene toward the start with a trial and a dungeon that is one of the most menacing things I’ve ever read, and for the first time since I got here I’m excited about what’s to come.
All I can think about is that she might actually pull this off.
I didn’t realize how much I was doubting it until now.
We settle into a routine over the next few days without formally agreeing to.
In the mornings, I read what Ciara sent the night before and try to keep up with an increasingly full inbox.
In the afternoons, I go to her house to help plot out the stickier parts of the story and sometimes stay there until ten or eleven at night, which is when she starts to write, before I head back to Delaney’s to sleep.
There’s a lot to get through. I start dreaming about timelines and plot holes and it doesn’t help that she isn’t a linear writer.
Some authors can’t move on to one chapter without perfecting the first, but Ciara likes to hop around, more than once sending me a scene that I have no idea what to do with.
By the end of that first week, she has ten thousand new words and a solid outline for act 1.
By the end of the second, she gets more comfortable sharing her own ideas.
She’s had a lot more time than I with Frank’s notes, and it’s clear she’s been mulling them over.
She’s got the brain of a thriller writer, and leans more toward action, toward the dark instincts of the characters.
Some of her proposed changes are brilliant.
Others, not so much.
“You look so horrified right now, you know that? It’s kind of funny.” Ciara sets the jug of fresh lemonade on the kitchen counter, smiling widely at me.
It’s a Thursday afternoon, and she is in a very good mood. Meanwhile, I’m already regretting my choice to wear jeans. The temperature climbed another degree higher today, and I swear I can feel the difference, my brain unusually hazy as it tries to make sense of what she’s proposing.
“What reaction were you expecting?” I ask flatly. “You can’t just gloss over a major character.”
“Why not? He’s boring. No one likes him.”
“High Lord Aengus is not boring.”
“He’s so boring.” Ciara’s voice is strained as she reaches up on her toes, trying to get a glass from the top shelf. “Don’t lie to me. I know you skim over every one of his speeches. Everyone does.”
“I—” I break off, because all right, maybe I did, and she glances over her shoulder, victorious.
“Boring,” she repeats. “I can’t write pages of moral teachings like Dad could. That’s not in me. I’m sorry, I’m not that smart. So instead of wasting my time trying to do something that we both know won’t be any good, why don’t we just kill—”
“We can’t kill him off,” I say, frustrated. “At least not just because you don’t like him.”
“It can be a noble death. Respectfully done. Bye-bye, High Lord Aengus. Thank you for your devotion to the future of Ravian, but no one cares.”
Her fingers skim the glass as she swipes it again, and the shelf rattles ominously. Visions of the whole thing falling down make me move behind her, and before I know what I’m doing I lean up and over.
For a moment, our bodies align, her back pressed against my front, her hair tickling my chin. The heat of her is unexpected, as is the brief brush of our hands as I reach over her head and pluck the glass from the shelf.
I step back, feeling as though I’ve been given a jolt to the heart as I hold it out to her, but Ciara just takes it, her attention on the jug of lemonade she left on the counter.
She gets us our drinks, speaking so quickly that I have trouble understanding her accent as she details all the ways in which I am wrong and she is right, and then I follow her up the stairs on autopilot.
“He was blocking me,” she says, tapping her head as she sits in front of her laptop. “Killing him will help me unblock.”
“And if this is your solution for every time you encounter this problem?”
“If it is, we won’t have a problem sticking to the word count, will we? I’m doing it,” she adds, spinning her chair back to face the computer. “I’m going to write one peaceful death and one stabby death, and you can pick whichever one you like, but either way, he’s dying.”
“A stabby death?”
“I’m thinking by an assassin.” She looks up when I step back into the hallway. “Are you sulking?”
“I’m peeing,” I say, and her laughter echoes after me as I head into the hallway, only to pause at what I see.
I’m used to the layout of her house now. Or at least to the rooms she uses most. But for the first time, the door opposite the stairs, the one she pointed out the first day I was here, sits partly open in the middle of the landing.
This is my dad’s old office, she’d said. As though daring me to ask more.
It’s usually closed, and to be honest I’d forgotten all about it, but I have to pass it to get to the bathroom and it’s just…there. Ajar.
For a long second, I do nothing but stare at it. Anticipation makes me weirdly nervous, and, with a final glance back to make sure she’s still typing, I crack it open further, holding my breath as I peer inside.
He had a purple armchair. That much I remember from the one photo he ever allowed of where he wrote. A purple armchair and walls of books and…
A bucket and mop.
A dustpan.
A broom closet.
This is a broom closet.
It takes me only a second to realize it, and as soon as I do, it all comes tumbling down around me.
A folding ironing board crashes to the floor, narrowly missing my head, followed by some perilously stored cleaning products.
One whacks me in the shoulder before I can get out of the way, and I wince as a can of odor spray rolls down the hallway, stopped only by Ciara’s foot where she stands in the doorway to her office.
“I knew it,” she says, folding her arms. “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
“I admit it. I wanted to see his office.”
“He didn’t have one.”
I keep my gaze on the ironing board I’m straightening so I don’t show my surprise at her lie. Her pretty obvious one at that. “You need to organize this,” I say instead.
“I need to do a lot of stuff.” She kicks the spray can, rolling it back to me, and I put it back with the others before closing the door with a firm snap. As soon as I do, something falls again on the other side.
A heavy expression crosses her face at the sound. Something tired and sad that vanishes as quickly as it came.
“I’m done,” she announces. “My brain is fried, and there’s no point in working through the dead time anyway.”
“The dead time?”
“Two to five p.m. is the dead time. Everyone knows this. Let’s go out.”
“You need to write some—”
“I’ll do it tonight,” she promises. “When it’s not so hot and I can think. Besides, I’ve been meaning to show you something.” She pushes away from the wall, stretching her arms above her head. Her stomach flashes, a stretch of bare, tanned skin. I force my gaze away.
“Show me what?” I ask, distracted.
And she smiles a luminous smile. “A surprise.”
“And where exactly is this surprise?”
I look away from the rows of drab, uniform houses passing by outside to find Ciara smirking.
“Did you think I was going to take you on some beautiful mountain hike with a rainbow overhead? Green fields filled with sheep?”
“After I told you my dark hiking trauma?”
She makes a turn, and the houses turn into storefronts.
“Seriously,” I ask. “Where are we?”
“This,” she says dramatically, “is Rathcross City.”
“This is a city?”
“It has a cathedral,” she says. “Therefore it’s a city.”
“I see.”
She side-eyes me. “I can tell by your tone that you’re not impressed by the glittering metropolis around you. You don’t feel at home? You’re not getting New York vibes right now?”
“I was wondering what that smell was.”
She parks the car off a small square that looks vaguely familiar, but only because I’m starting to realize that every town and village in Ireland has one.
The streets are otherwise mostly deserted in the late afternoon heat, but the place is clean and the cafés are busy, and the locals have made an effort with a few well-watered hanging baskets.
Nothing at first glance explains why we drove an hour to get here, but my strange sense of déjà vu only grows stronger as we sit there.
It’s not until I look closer at the square that the penny drops.
“Wait…”
Ciara sighs dramatically, but she’s smiling.
“Is this the—”
“Statue city. Yes.”
I undo my seat belt so quickly it practically whips off me, and she just laughs as I scramble out.
“You’re welcome in advance,” she calls as she follows me across the road. I don’t answer, my gaze fixed on the tall bronze statue straight ahead.
“Oh my God.”
“I know.”
“It’s even worse in person.”
I stop in front of the weird bronze lump that is supposed to be Frank Sheridan but is really just…a weird bronze lump.
It was a meme for a whole month when they unveiled it, and for good reason. The eyes are too far apart, the face contorted into this weird smile. It’s Uncanny Valley to a T, and everyone was obsessed with it when it was first revealed.
“How did I forget this existed?”
“You mean you didn’t need a year of therapy to do it?” She tilts her head, examining it. “Dad liked it. Or at least that’s what he said to everyone.”
“It looks nothing like him.”
“I think he liked the idea of someone creating something.”
“I feel like if I look at it for too long it will trap me inside.”