19. Chapter 19
John finished washing his bowl and spoon before putting it away.
The chili he’d just finished was amazing.
Sienna hadn’t been exaggerating about how good it was.
But he couldn’t get used to the food, the accommodations, or the people for that matter.
Dinner last night with Sienna and the girls had been a mistake.
He ate alone, fought alone, survived alone.
He didn’t have time for feelings. Correct that.
He had time for anger, guilt, and grief with a side order of vengeance.
That’s what had centered him over the days, years, decades, and centuries.
Now was not the time for happiness, damn it.
Although when Sienna stood over him a couple days ago like an warrior and announced he wasn’t getting rid of her anytime soon, his brain came to a stutter stop and his words failed him.
She was getting under his skin unlike anyone had before, and that scared him.
And those two little girls were secret weapons of joy.
What did he do when confronted with them?
He danced. Hell, he was becoming a hero in one of those cartoon musicals that made him want to break out in hives.
It was time to shore up his resolve to end this curse.
His heart was gone. Not the one that kept beating over and over and over again even when it should have long ago ceased, but the one that believed there was light and love to be found. That he could be more than a conduit of hatred.
And just as he locked down his emotions, the sound of a UTV filled his ears.
Before he went outside, he knew Sienna would be waiting there.
Except the sound of a second UTV had his alarms going off.
Who was coming? He opened the door to see Adam driving one UTV with Tessa next to him and Sienna in the back.
Eric and Megan rode in the second vehicle.
Something must have happened. Good thing he was locking down his emotions again.
“What’s wrong?” John asked as they all piled out and headed toward him.
Megan held up her phone with a tight smile on her face. “Mia answered me.”
Goose bumps ran down John’s arms. “Already?”
Eric wrapped his arm around Megan. “My wife is a genius. She got her to respond.”
John crossed his arms. “What did you say? And what did she say?”
“I sent her a quote like she used to do as a professor for her classes.” Megan read the message she had sent to Mia. “And she sent back a quote from Picasso, ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.’”
“What does that mean?” Adam asked.
“It can mean a whole host of things.” Megan put her phone back in her pocket. “Art isn’t real, but it’s a representative of something real. It can reveal truths to us that we don’t normally see.”
Sienna frowned. “But how does this fit in the context of what’s happening with the curse? Is she talking about the Death of Magic painting?”
“Possibly. That would twist the quote in another way, wouldn’t it?
The painting was thought of as a mythical event, when we know that it’s a recount of something that actually happened.
” Megan hesitated for a moment. “Wait... I think there’s a second part to that quote.
” Megan pulled out her phone and typed for a moment.
“Yes, the whole quote is ‘Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.’”
“Do you think she purposefully left the second part out?” Eric asked.
“It’s a famous quote and it’s often only quoted as the first line, but I absolutely think that Mia the professor would have left that off for me to look for. Which makes me think that the second part of the quote is even more significant.”
“Meaning?” John asked, his head starting to hurt.
“Truth is elusive. Some would argue that there is no such thing as truth, but variations of it,” Megan said.
“We could all see something at the same time and walk away with different memories or impressions of what happened. The same could be said of using art to depict an event. Death of Magic was painted by your grandmother.”
“And she depicted it as she remembered or twisted it to be,” John added, his stomach rolling.
“Yes. The painting shows the dragons as the aggressors. Is that the way you remember it?”
John closed his eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and thinking back to that time.
“The dragons came to talk to the witches when they found out that they had cast a spell on the crops, killing them all in the hopes of driving the dragon clan away before the winter. The confrontation escalated.”
“So the witches weren’t innocent victims,” Adam said.
“No.” John blew out a hard breath. “But neither were the dragons. The animosity had grown over the centuries until no one could see reason. My grandmother had kept me and my mother in the village before the attack.”
Sienna took a step toward him. “What do you mean by ‘kept’? Did she lock you up?”
“We couldn’t leave, which is why my father and the other dragons came as well. At that point there could be no peace between the clans.” And he had been caught in the middle.
Sienna scowled. “Your grandmother saw to that by using you and your mother, didn’t she?”
John’s chest warmed at the indignation in Sienna’s voice for him. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever had someone stand up for him before.
Tessa stepped forward. “There’s something else we should be considering.
What if Mia’s quote isn’t about the Death of Magic painting?
What if she’s talking about herself? We don’t know what the truth is regarding Mia.
She reached out to Adam and told him about the curse and hid Lily away with Evelyn when Lily’s parents were killed in the accident.
But Mia has a Templar cross tattoo and seems to be working with them now. ”
Megan nodded. “Before I even attempt to answer her back, I think we need to talk more about Mia and what we’ve been able to dig up on her.”
Sienna pulled her phone out and made a call. “Ryan, can you go grab Jonas from his IT cave and meet us in the office in fifteen minutes. Oh, and tell him to bring anything he’s found so far on Mia and the Templars. Thanks.”
John’s head spun as he sat in the back of the UTV with Sienna. Were they finally close to the end? Could Mia White be the answer to his lifelong prison?
Minutes later they descended on the office. Ryan, Jonas, and Marcus joined them shortly thereafter. They quickly brought them up to speed on what had happened, and Sienna turned to Jonas. “What did you find?”
“So I started running programs with world events that might correspond with the timeline that Megan has documented from John’s journals.
But I got to thinking that I should also look more specifically into Templar lore to see if there were any ties and also more specifically into Mia’s life as well to see if there were any relationships that could be found. ”
“And?” Sienna prompted.
“And, we know that the Knights Templars ceased to exist around the 1100s. But from Megan’s research and what I found, there would have been remnants of the Knights until the early 1300s. There is even speculation that they used to be linked to the Freemasons.
“But I think that they still continued under other umbrellas and organizations. Many of these ancient organizations would have been carried down through generations of families.”
“Except we know that Mia was a foster child,” Tessa said.
“Yes.” Jonas continued. “But I found something interesting when I was looking at her college background. Mia was able to pay for much of her college tuition through a grant. I think that the organization that gave it to her might have been a front for the Templars.”
“You think they recruited her?” John asked.
Jonas nodded. “That would make sense, right? If you’re an organization bent on destroying magic, wouldn’t you want to recruit the best and brightest to help you do it?”
“Mia is brilliant. Even in high school, she published papers that caught people’s attention.
Her true passion was dragons, magic, and mythology.
She would have been the poster child for them to entice into their organization.
” Megan frowned. “But it’s hard for me to reconcile the person I knew as someone who would want to destroy the very thing she loved. ”
“Except we don’t know if something happened to convince her to help them,” Tessa added.
“Her husband died. And when Adam and I were looking for her last year, we talked to her coworker. She said that Mia blamed herself for his accidental death at the house they were restoring. And then she went off the grid. Everyone thought it was because she was grieving. Maybe it was, or maybe she went to work for the Templars.”
“I think Mia is trying to tell us that not everything is as it seems,” Sienna said.
“I know what I’m going to send her,” Megan said. “It’s a quote from Aristotle. ‘The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.’ And then I am going to ask her to lead us to what is significant.”
John kept quiet. As much as the quotes irritated him, if they worked to bring Mia out into the open, he was more than willing to play along for a bit to see if they had truly found a new avenue to breaking this curse.
He looked around the room at all the determined faces before stopping on Sienna.
Her brown eyes held a fire that was hard to ignore.
She wanted to protect her family and clan from this threat.
And he would do anything to make that happen.