Chapter 12 #2
“No. I’m insane. I can’t—” Her breath came in short gasps. Buzzing filled her ears. Tears stung, and her throat closed. She turned and fled into the dark, her mother’s voice chasing her.
Pazza, pazza, pazza.
The creek under the bridge sang chimes and guitar strings. Cadenza wanted to scream at it. She ran past the bridge, towards the back edge of the estate. The dirt road hummed under her feet.
She abandoned the path, scrambled through the underbrush. The bear clover scratched at her legs, its notes scrappy and harsh.
Something fluttered in the trees to her right and an owl zoomed overhead, the dark between the trees swallowing it from view.
She clambered over what was left of the back fence, legs trembling.
The roots of the oak trees on the other side vibrated bass, and their leaves danced soprano.
The empty, packed-earth road thrummed. Notes hovered above the ground.
Go away!
The thrum ignored her, seeping into her shins. A night wind blew across the clearing, and flute melody stuck to her hair. Cymbals vibrated in her fingertips. The overgrown grass on the side of the road tangled in her ankles. She crashed to all fours gasping, sobbing, exhausted.
Her mother had warned her. She’d indulged this thing that she heard, never told anyone, never sought help, and now she was seeing things and insane. Because if she was hallucinating about Taran being the Ferrari, then what if the earthsong was a delusion too?
Pazza, pazza, pazza.
It made so much sense. Why she never had friends, why directors wouldn’t hire her. They could tell. They could tell she was wrong in the head and wanted nothing to do with her.
Just like Ilaria wanted nothing to do with her. Like Taran wouldn’t want anything to do with her now.
Just like the direttore in Venice won’t want anything to do with me, even if I can get there, which I can’t now because my car is ash and I’m insane and I can’t and I can’t and I can’t—
She raked her hands across the ground wishing it would open and swallow her whole. Her throat ached with song. Her skin felt ready to split. If she really were insane and none of this was real, what was the point of working so hard to control it?
She threw her head back. And screamed one note.
A crack ripped through the air, and an oak tree crashed to the ground.
Shock cut off her sobs. The night went quiet.
Her mind began to clear. Slowly, as if moving too fast might bring back the furor that had possessed her moments ago, she rose to inspect the tree.
Roots pointed to the sky, dripping soil.
A branch waved from the impact. Cadenza ran two fingers over it, the bark rough and grounding.
Real leaves. Real bark. Real tree. And really laying on its side because of her. No hallucination.
But then…
Cadenza spun and raced back towards the estate, searching for bodhran song.
She’d gone where he couldn’t follow.
Taran paced, twenty feet from the chain-link fence that marked the eastern edge of the estate.
Cadenza had fled the grounds, and he couldn’t go after her.
Couldn’t calm her, couldn’t comfort her.
He tore a rock as big as his head from the ground and hurled it at the fence.
The chain-link rippled in a benign wave that mocked Taran’s fury.
He ripped more stones from the earth, heaved them at his prison walls. He howled his grief until his throat burned. No one heard—another reason his father had bought the acreage he had.
He spun, panting, searching the ground, but he’d used every rock already. No matter. He ripped off his shirt and threw that at the fence. It didn’t make a difference what he threw. Rocks or fabric, nothing helped.
Bad enough he was trapped here with no hint of a way out. Now he’d hurt the one bright spot to his life, the one person who gave him a reason to laugh again. To wake up and see the stars.
His father had warned him.
“Selfish bastard,” Taran raged at himself, at his own helplessness, at this never-ending curse, a punishment for one mistake. Rocks and shirt expended, he launched himself at the fence. The metal swayed, flimsy under his fingers, and he tore away a chunk.
It did no good. Nothing would.
The fence wasn’t the problem.
He hurled the piece of chain link over the fence just as a breeze ruffled past his face. He jerked his head up, sniffing the air. Caramel and chocolate. Lilies from her shampoo. And stress.
“Taran?” Cadenza called his name, and his heart sped up. He turned, aware of the dirt beneath his nails and the sweat dripping into his eyes, and slid down the slope to where she waited, shifting her weight back and forth and clutching her hands.
He could still smell the stress, but the fear scent had faded. “You’re not crazy,” he said.
“I’m hoping that’s true.” She glanced between him and the hole in the fence. “Did you...rip out a section of the fence?”
Taran forced a smile. “Apparently.”
Cadenza started to pace. “You can rip up metal, and you’re a car?”
He followed after her. “I’m not actually—”
“I mean, if you’re the Ferrari, have I been talking to you this whole time? Did you hear what I told the car?”
“No, I’m not the Ferr—”
“And does that mean when I sat in the driver’s seat, was I sitting in your lap?
What about when I held the steering wheel?
Or shifted gears? What was I actually touching?
” Cadenza threw her hands around as she talked, her volume climbing.
“And how does that work with me replacing engine parts? Did I give you a new liver? And how the hell are you a Ferrari?!”
Taran gathered her hands in his, stilling her frenzy. “Cadenza, you’re not crazy, and I’m not a Ferrari. At least, not really. Not originally.”
“Not originally?” She gaped at him. “What does that even mean?”
He blew out a breath. “It’s complicated. I wanted to explain it all to you, but this isn’t how I meant to do it.” He sat and patted the dirt next to him. “Can I try now?”
Cadenza stayed standing. “Do you or do you not live in my garage during the day as a Ferrari F12?”
“I do, but”—he held up both hands to forestall her—“that’s not who I am. And I know it sounds mad but it’s not, and neither are you. Please, sit and let me explain.”
Cadenza knelt beside him, eyes taking in his shirtless back. Shivers rippled across his skin as she traced the Celtic knotwork wolf tattooed across his shoulders. “It matches the design on the dash of the Ferrari,” she said, voice low.
“Norroway crest, you could say. My father has one around his left arm, and my brothers have their own as well.” He shook his head.
“My father was born somewhere around 500 A.D.—he’s a Pict—myself, around 1100.
” He kept his tone light, but snuck a peek at Cadenza’s face, wondering if she’d get up, thinking him just as mad as she’d thought herself.
“But we’re not just Picts, or Scots. And not just humans.
” He blew out a breath. “We work for the Fates.”
“The Fates,” she repeated, face neutral. He wished she’d say more, but maybe it was better to get it all out first.
“Aye, the Fates. I can explain more about that later, but the short of it is that my father and brothers and I worked as bodyguards of a sort to someone who was like a king, I suppose.” Better to leave it at that term for now; what he was telling her tonight was already plenty to digest. “This ‘king’ also worked for the Fates. My father and brothers and I could change shape, shift our form. My mother had a different role. Another man who worked with us, Ercildoun, had the gift of prophecy, or Second Sight. One spring, enemies of the ‘king’ invaded. We all assumed they’d go after him, and we wanted to keep my mother away from the fighting, so my father asked Ercildoun where to send her to keep her safe.
” Taran paused. His stomach soured. Remembered adrenaline pulsed through his limbs.
“He was wrong about where to hide her, and we were wrong about their objective. They found her and murdered her.”
“Why?” Her brow furrowed. “Why were they after her?”
Taran pressed his lips together. “I promise I’ll explain that too, but there’s so much to get through just for where we are right now.”
“Alright. I’m still sorry about your mother.” She reached a hand up to his face, hesitated, then stroked his hair behind his ear. She was still touching him. That had to be a hopeful sign, didn’t it?
“Aye, well, as I told you before, I wanted revenge. We found and killed the ones who killed her.”
Her fingers froze in his hair. “You killed them?”
Bugger. Sometimes he forgot how much sensibilities had changed over the centuries.
“Try to understand, it was a different era of the world. There was no judge or jury to appeal to for justice, especially in the context of our lives outside of normal humans. We made our own justice. But it wasn’t enough.
I blamed Ercildoun as well. He should have seen, he should have known their plan. ”
Memories pressed in. Grief and blood and moonlight. He shook himself and tried to lighten his tone. “And after being right so often for hundreds of years, he’d really become a pompous arse. He wouldn’t admit he made a mistake, and I thought he needed chopping down a peg or two.”
He lifted her fingers from his face and rubbed warmth into them. The night was getting on, the ground growing chill beneath them. Overhead the stars glittered like broken glass. “So, I led a raid.”
“What does that mean, a raid?”