Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“I want to see it,” I demand before we’ve taken even one step out of Avery’s stairwell.
Leo hesitates, shooting me a pleading look.
“She found it,” Rime says, pulling the box from the inside pocket of his jacket. “If she wants to see it, she should see it.”
With Leo’s last calming already wearing off, this might be my stupidest impulse yet.
For the last hour, I’ve been battling Ember’s rage and indignation, grabbing their lashing whips and harnessing them before they can snap.
I know the energies in that box are probably going to hit me like a cat-o’-nine-tails.
But I have to see it—the bracelet I nearly drowned for and that Rime killed for, the trinket that turned my universe upside down, the macguffin we’ve all risked our lives to retrieve.
“I don’t like this,” Leo warns. “I’ll take it away if I have to.
” But I know, I feel, that he understands.
He shifts to stand at my back, no doubt to catch me or restrain me if Ember’s emotions overtake mine.
A familiar warmth emanates from his hand on my hip as Rime carefully opens the box, its hinges creaking like a horror movie coffin lid.
I’m not sure what I expected, seeing as the bracelet has been underground for hundreds of years.
A thick bangle encrusted in jewels lying on a bed of blue velvet?
Engravings of triskelions, Celtic knots, and dragons’ heads?
Whatever notions were lurking in the back of my mind, they’re quickly shot down by the sight of a dull, cuff-style band, half-buried in moss and algae.
Rime lifts it out and holds it up to the anemic light above Avery’s door.
“Is it—” I squint. “—gold?”
“It looks like it.” He wipes it on his jeans and holds it up again. It’s about a quarter-inch thick and definitely gold, with Nàdarian carvings, sharp edges, and perfect form. Browne’s attempt to melt it down didn’t leave a single scar.
With shaking hands, I take it from Rime, the horror already pushing on my ribs and a ghastly darkness slithering between my bones. Leo’s fingers sink into my hips, his magic waging war with the bracelet’s. I don’t want to drain him. Just a few more seconds, just one up-close look—
I grab Rime’s jacket, dizzy and swaying like I’ve had an entire six-pack of beer. My heart drums a pounding death march in my skull.
Arms wrap around me and someone barks an order.
Terror seeps into my tongue, swelling it until I’m choking. My legs give out and a horrible sound—a keening wail—erupts from my chest.
I grope in the darkness, searching for any last shreds of life.
A pulse. I felt a pulse. I reach for it, for the vestiges of warmth among the rotting cold.
A grief like I’ve never known consumes me, robbing me of my will.
Lie down, just let me lie down alongside them. It’s my time too; I’m one of them.
The throbbing in my skull dulls to a gentle buzz as numbness overtakes the terror. The edges of my vision shimmer and go gray.
Warm, healing hands splay on my cheeks. “Harness, Betts. Put your cloak on and harness. It’s heavy, velvet, damp…”
…It hangs on my shoulders, so long it sweeps the earth, so thick the hood blocks out all light and sound. I withdraw into the silence and funnel the black terror and grief into my center, letting it fill me until it has nowhere to go but up my throat. I gag and step back.
“Give it to me.”
I blink into Leo’s dark eyes.
He presses my hands to his chest. “Give it to me.”
The energy.
I gather the emotions liquefying me from the inside out and vomit them out of my hands, so violently Leo jolts.
“You’re getting good at this, a chroí,” he pants, stumbling back against the wall.
Our breath freezes white as we heave in the cold night air.
“I don’t think that was Ember,” I say. “I think it was one of her victims.”
Leo’s brow knits. “Are you sure?”
“No?” I’m not sure of anything anymore. I moisten my lips. “Where’s Rime?”
“He took the bracelet to the car to get it away from you.” He holds out a hand. “Are you ready? We really need to go.”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
We hurry up the steps and down the sidewalk, nearly tripping over a squirrel darting across our path. A few yards away, Rime waits for us, leaning against Leo’s car.
He tosses Leo his keys. “You alright, little psychic?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“It’s in the trunk,” he says, opening the door for me. “That’s the best I could do.”
I manage a smile as I slide into the backseat. “Thanks.”
On the short drive to the church, I describe the energy coming off the bracelet. “I, or whoever I was feeling, was dying.”
“Then it couldn’t’ve been Ember,” Leo reasons. “By the time she was executed, the bracelet was long gone.”
“That’s what I figured.” I watch the downtown streetlights give way to a dark country road. “And the weird thing was, I don’t think I was alone. I think I was with other people who were suffering and dying too. I was mourning them, and at the same time, I knew I was next.”
“I wonder if it’s the caillecha you felt.”
“The nine she killed?”
“Doesn’t have to be,” Rime points out. “Ember was pretty well-known for mass slaughter.”
Leo sucks in a breath, his frown visible in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, but not by her own hand.”
“Do you know for a fact she killed the caillecha herself?” Rime asks.
“No. Just a hunch.”
I lean between the front seats. “The truth is in the bracelet, you know. If I had—”
“No way,” Leo warns, at the same time that Rime snorts, “Fuck no.”
“It’s the caillecha’s job to figure that out,” Leo says. “Not yours.”
I sit back in my seat, resisting the urge to pout. They’re right. There’s no reason to put myself through that again. Curiosity has already taken too many of my nine lives.
We wind along the driveway through the woods until Redemption Baptist Church comes into view.
It’s strangely eerie at night. Two meager street lamps, one on each side of the porch, cast weak pools of light on the steps to the main doors.
I huddle in the backseat, fighting the weird feeling that we’re not here alone.
I can imagine that each night, as the sun goes down in front of the church, God goes down with it.
And as the moon rises, the spirits take their place in the tall pines that tower over the churchyard.
Leo pulls into a spot close to the entrance. There are no other cars in the lot, but the church’s stained-glass windows glow softly and an orange-yellow light shines through the crack between the double entrance doors.
I ask, “Is she even here?”
“Maybe.” Leo points to the lights flickering between the swaying trees at the far end of the lot. “If not, she’s probably close. Usually, these old churches have parsonages nearby.”
We agree Leo should run up and scope out the church while Rime and I wait in the car.
“Once I know it’s safe, I’ll either text you or come back and get you.” Leo takes Rime’s phone—his own a casualty of the river—closes the car door softly, and jogs up the steps.
I can’t stop myself from picturing the worst. The moment he pushes open those doors, dozens of evil Brier followers will spring out from between the pews and ambush him.
Click-click. Rime cocks the revolver, sending my heart into a violent lurch.
“Could you not?”
“Sorry, a ghrá.” He throws up a sound shield. “Gotta be prepared.” He dips his head, peering out the windshield at the steps, already on the lookout.
I alternate between checking my phone and craning my neck to watch the front doors.
What’s going on in there? Leo’s been gone forever.
A glance at my phone tells me he’s only been inside for two minutes.
Impossible. I clear the screen. Something’s wrong with this thing.
It can’t tell time and it’s not sending messages from Rime’s phone.
“It’s a trap,” I moan, squirming and trying to get a good breath. “I know it is.”
Rime smirks at me over his shoulder. “‘Could you not?’”
I stick my tongue out at him.
Wham!
Metal crunches and the car rocks.
A dark figure blocks the moonlight shining through the windshield. I recognize that agile form. Juniper.
Rime fires, shattering the glass, but she’s already jumped onto the car roof, bending it with every stomp.
He aims up and fires again. I throw my arms over my head as the shots reverberate and slam into my ears.
There are shouts. Laughter. Leo! Where’s Leo?
Hot, clammy, and panicked, I whip this way and that. Is it safer out or in?
The door flies open so violently it shakes the whole car.
Before I can scream, bruising hands grab me and rip me from the backseat, scraping my skin on the seatbelt as it slides over my head.
I’m dragged across the crumbling asphalt and yanked to my feet, my back against a hard chest and a cold blade aimed at my throat.
Behind me, Burdock threatens, “You shoot, I kill her.”
Rime, who’s out of the car now, lowers the gun—the gun that was aimed at Juniper on the car roof. She dismounts in one graceful leap and lands as lightly as a dancer.
“We don’t have it,” Rime says. “So let her go.”
I jerk back against Burdock’s shoulder as the tip of his dagger presses under my chin. He smells like mildew. “Search him,” he barks at Juniper.
She snatches the gun from Rime’s hand and points it at his head, gritting her teeth. “Let’s make this even. A life for a life.”
When I gasp, Burdock snorts.
“I know it was you.” She circles Rime as she studies him, feet crossing and stepping, crossing and stepping, while her eyes—and the gun—remain level with his head. “You’re the one who killed him.”
Rime stands straight and still, expression impassive.
Arrogance and impatience bleed into my back. Burdock’s arrogance and impatience. “We don’t have time for this,” he warns Juniper. “Just search him.”