Scintillate (22 page)

Forty-Five

I

wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell her who I was—who she was to me. Something to do with a heavy secret being on the shoulders of the one who’s strong enough to carry it. Finn had said that to me. Yeah, he’d know something about secrets.

Would it mend her heart even a little to know I was with her? Or break her completely knowing I shared her fate? If I were a mother, I’d rather imagine my child growing up happy and free, even if she could never be with me. Not this fate. Never this.

I watched curiously as Gráinne ran me a hot bath scented with small lavender flowers. She told me they were from the garden and today we’d be allowed to go outside to see it. She called it “Sun” day. I suppose you find ways to amuse yourself when you’re trapped in a place forever.

Tears welled up again as I shut the door to the bathroom, removed my clothes, dropped them to the floor, and slipped into the silky water. The key lay in a heavy lump against my chest, the leather string struggling to rise to the surface of the water. If I asked her about the key—what she was trying to keep secret, what it unlocked—I’d have to tell her who I was. I soaked in the water a long while, mulling it over.

Gráinne tried to offer me some of her clothes, but she was half my size. Clearly, I’d taken after my dad’s empanada-eating side. I put my own dirty clothes back on and slipped into my shoes. They were mine.

Mine
becomes a sacred word when everything is taken from you.

For hours, Gráinne alternated between staring into space and pacing the floor, anxiously waiting to get outside. I was as anxious as she, but only because I was fixed on the idea of escape, and getting outside put me one step closer. In the meantime, I wanted to ask so many questions but held myself back. If I blew her mind completely, she’d not be able to answer any of them. For now, I set to carving my first mark in the floorboard with the nail that Gráinne used for her moons. It was the spiral I carved. The one emblazoned across Finn’s chest that had enticed me from that first moment in the hospital when I saw it peeking from under his shirt
.
I swallowed the fertile germ of hatred so it would grow strong and choke off the love.

Every moment with Finn had been a lie. He knew what he was and obviously knew what I was. I saw he had a secret, but I’d underestimated the significance. I’d seen little balls of secrets in nearly everyone around me. Giovanni had tried to warn me as well. But my stubborn heart had heard only one truth and clamped its ears from all others. My heart was at home with Finn. How could it be so wrong?

Pain poured into my bloodstream. I tried not to let myself feel, but I shook so violently it hollowed out my bones, leaving me empty as tears dropped onto the wood beneath me, soaking the spiral.

I clawed the itch of my rage with every scrape of the metal into the wood until the carving was complete. My first. How many more goddamn spirals would there be? My eyes scanned the floor covered in Gráinne’s moons. The horror and injustice of it sickened me.

My hand found an engraving, and I lay my palm over its rugged surface, wishing I could erase it, take just one day from Gráinne’s captivity and give it back to her. Red fury and sorrow mixed to form a powerful new emotion I couldn’t name. I’d never felt it before. It jangled inside against the cage of me, slammed itself against my ribs, threatened to break me apart.

I was suddenly bombarded with images. They were alive. Palpable. They rose up and swirled around me, then inhabited me.

Gráinne closing her eyes, turning her head away as Clancy sucked her aura from her.

Gráinne falling to the floor, weak and desperate to be free. Slipping into unconsciousness with thoughts of my father sleeping on a couch with her baby, curved as a dewdrop, asleep on his chest, rising and falling with his slow breathing.

Tears seeping from the corners of her eyes, pooling onto the wooden floor. Her mouth uttering silent words as she carved this first moon with her fingernails. Blood soaking into the grain.

The room returned to now. My palm burned with fire. I snatched my hand away from the floor and the visions stopped, but the smoldering feeling lingered. I hissed and turned my hand over.

Centered in my palm was Gráinne’s moon, churning and swirling, beating in time with my erratic pulse. Black curling lines stretched up my hand, climbing my skin like a twisted vine, stopping where the blue lines of my veins met my wrist.

There was a quick knock on the door. I stuffed my hand into my pocket, fingering the little nail nestled there. The door opened a split second later. My heart faltered when I saw the man I’d come to know as Griffin looking a bit worse for wear. A plum welt swelled fat on his upper cheek.

I scrambled to my feet, wishing the nail was a foot long so I could drive it into his beady eyes. But my visions of violence halted when I saw the large knife sheathed at his side. As if he needed a knife to keep us in check. We were his for the taking, and by the smug look on his face, he knew it.

Gráinne ran past me. More than once that day, I’d had to stop her from banging her head against the wall as she leaned on it with her knees drawn up to her chest. It would’ve been so easy to slip into despair myself, but she needed me to be strong for both of us. She needed me to get us out of here.

I didn’t move. Griffin patted his knee like he was calling a dog. “C’mon. You wanna go for a walk?”

Bastard.

Curiosity and the desire to escape won out, so I followed Gráinne down the long, dark corridor that slanted sharply uphill as we neared a turn. I understood with sickening horror why the hallways slanted up so sharply. Our prison was underground. The skylight over the bed was at ground level. We were literally buried alive.

Griffin walked behind us. We turned left toward a glass door with sunshine streaming through it. I poised to bolt for it. But it would have done me no good. Griffin had to punch a code into a security keypad for the lock to recede and the door to slide cleanly into its groove in the wall.

“Have fun,” he said, pushing me forward. The door slid closed behind us.

“He’s going to let us be out here? Free?” I asked, but Gráinne was already running, her arms outstretched like a little girl’s.

It didn’t take long to realize why we were left to roam this garden unsupervised. Impossibly tall slabs of smooth green granite perched atop a concrete wall around the entire perimeter. The tops of trees could be seen outside the walls. It gave the illusion of a vast forest that ran on forever. Barbed wire coiled along the top of the wall. I turned away.

The garden, I had to admit, was a surprise—all bubbling fountains and lily-covered pools. One large hunk of the granite wall even had water flowing down its flat surface into a basin at the bottom filled with darting orange fish. I ran my hand over the slippery stone, letting the water flow over my newly tattooed palm and trickle to the crook of my elbow. Something about that made me want to cry.

I turned away from the weeping wall and found Gráinne in a small cutting garden, plucking stems and gathering them into a large woven basket. She must be the reason there were fresh flowers in our rooms. I wondered how much of this garden was her doing, remembering the image of her digging in the daisies at my childhood home. I left her chattering away to the flowers like they were her only friends. I supposed they had been.

I ran my hands over every corner of the granite wall, looking for a possible chink in the armor. My mind furiously scraped and scratched for solutions. There had to be a way to protect ourselves from people who wanted to take our spark. Every creature in nature had some kind of defense mechanism. Camouflage, thorns, even something as small as a horned lizard could spray blood out of its freaking eyes. What was the Scintilla’s defense?

A shady place under a weeping willow in the center of the garden curtained me from the world for a moment. I leaned against the tree, gaining strength from its life force. I appreciated that we were allowed outside in such a pretty place full of the sounds and the texture of nature. But as Mami Tulke would say, “You can sprinkle glitter on a turd,
mija
, but it’s still a steaming turd.”

I knew then that I’d do whatever I could to get out of here. I’d barter and plead. Beg and proposition. But I’d never try to love my way out. I’d rather die than give away more pieces of myself.

“I went into town and got you some things,” boomed Clancy’s voice from across the wide expanse of lawn. Fear and rage spilled into my blood. I looked up but didn’t move. Gráinne, however, sprinted toward him. He handed her a large green bag. She ran off to a nearby bench, sticking her scrawny arm in to the elbow to root around.

I held perfectly still, hoping he wouldn’t see me, but he walked over to where I sat beneath the swaying fronds of the willow. “There’s my little silver spark,” he said as he parted the green curtain of leaves and held out a bag.

“You can see my aura?”

“No. Arrazi can’t see auras. I can
feel
it. It’s a siren calling to my blood.”

I tried to remain calm in the face of his blinding white aura. Apparently, their auras looked normal until they were well fed. I shivered and crossed my arms over my chest but forced myself to hold his stare. “Unless you brought me a ticket to California, I don’t want anything from you.”

“May as well drop the sullen bit, pet. We’ll have the rest of your life together, and I’d rather not dislike you.” He tossed the bag at my feet and turned away. A bouquet of daisies flopped out. I looked up at him in shock, and Clancy smiled, satisfied, sick. “Did you like the flowers I sent to your hospital room,
Daisy
?” He turned to go, but then stopped. “Oh,” he said over his shoulder. “And I’ve left a surprise for you on your bed.”

I definitely didn’t know him well enough to read the secretive smirk he cast me, but its malicious glint put me on edge.

Griffin brought us lunch in the garden: slices of tangy Irish cheddar, warm bread, and chunks of juicy melon. I ate like a prisoner of war. It wasn’t hunger fueling my appetite but a desire to fortify myself for whatever lay ahead.

Shortly after lunch, we were led out of the garden to the door that would take us back inside and return us to our rooms. Gráinne was quiet but peaceful. In her arms, she carried the basket of cut flowers and both her shopping bag and mine, which she had retrieved from under the tree when she saw I’d left it lying on the grass.

Like the door that led to the garden, our inner door had a security keypad as well. Griffin punched in the code and shoved us inside, slamming the door behind us. I had watched his movements carefully, looking for habits I could exploit, lapses in attention. I had visions of snatching his knife from him. I wasn’t so sure what I’d do if I got it, however. I’d have to be quicker than his ability to suck me dry.

A loud thud startled me and I spun. Gráinne’s basket had dropped to the floor of our rooms, flowers strewn around it. Her hand flew to her mouth. I looked over her slim shoulder and shock and disbelief numbed my limbs so that I was unable to move for a moment, or even breathe.

Giovanni lay sprawled across my bed, bloody and very badly bruised. Dried blood caked the roots of his blond hair above his forehead, staining it a gory, rusted pink. A raspberry-colored lump marred his temple like a large marble had been wedged under his skin. His cut lips were open slightly. He was so perfectly still, so…lifeless, that the entire room seemed to hush in wait for his next breath.

I rushed to him. With shaking hands, I fumbled for a pulse on his neck because I saw no silver emanating from his body. He looked like his light had been beaten out of him. “I—I can’t feel anything.” My voice quaked. “I don’t think he’s alive.” My hands were unsteady. My own pulse thudded so loud in my ears that I couldn’t find any whisper of his. Seeing the lightless form of someone I knew, of someone like me, filled me with complete terror. If the Scintilla were so damn valuable, why’d they do this to him?

Gráinne came to my side. She didn’t look at me. In fact, her eyes were closed. Holding her hand an inch or so above his body, she moved it in small circles over his torso. Her hand slowed and hovered above his lower abdomen. “It’s there,” she whispered. “He’s in there. I can feel it.” Her eyes opened and met mine. “But barely.”

Forty-Six

“
W

hat do we do?” I cried. He looked so helpless, so weakened that I didn’t know if he’d be able to pull himself out of it.

“I found a dead bird once,” Gráinne muttered. “When I was a little girl. I tried to make it better, but it stayed dead.”

“He’s not dead yet. Maybe he’s strong enough.” I wanted to believe it. He certainly looked like he had put up quite a struggle before he lost the battle. I squeezed his fingers, proud of the fight in him. It explained Griffin’s welt.

Heaviness draped over my back like a lead cloak. I sighed and curled my knees to my chest. His being here was bad news. I hadn’t even realized until then that I had harbored a little bit of hope. Now all hope was gone. And Clancy had his prize, three of us. Whatever that meant.

Gráinne put her delicate hand on my shoulder as I sat on the edge of the bed with Giovanni’s limp hand in mine. A warm tingle of energy infused me where her hand rested. It gave me an idea.

“Can we help him?” I asked. “Giovanni showed me we could give to people to make them feel better. Can we give him enough energy to save his life?”

“The bird stayed dead.” Her hand slipped from my shoulder. “Maybe you could. I don’t know. I won’t. Forgive me.”

“Together we might be able to help him. He’s one of us. He needs us!”

She covered her heart with her hands and backed away. “Mine is mine. Mine is mine.” She kept up her incantation as she stepped farther away. I stared helplessly at his still form, wanting to believe I had the capacity to give even when I’d been taken from so cruelly. If I couldn’t believe in my own light, if I let the darkness win, then I might as well give up.

So instead of giving up, giving in to darkness, I thought of the old me. My old life. And the people I had loved.

My father, whose love was stifling but well intentioned. Even when I cursed him, I loved him. And now I knew why he had lied to me all those years, what he had sacrificed to protect me. His love and protection had been the most constant thing in my life.

Even if I did suspect some Arrazi in her bloodline because she exhausted me within moments of being around her, in her own frenetic way, Janelle had tried so hard to stand in as a mother. I didn’t make it easy on her. She also loved my dad, despite the fact that she knew she was a stand-in for his first wife. Anyone who could love so hard from second place was deserving of my love in return.

I adored my cousin Mari with her big mouth and fierce individuality. She was like a sister to me. If I had any bravery in me, it was because she showed me how.

I felt the love I had for Dun, for his loyalty, his goofy smile, his happy light. I smiled, thinking of that little boy sitting against the tree, crying into his scrubby knees, one big toe poking out of those old moccasins, and how he had grown into an almost-man. He could always make me laugh with his stupid jokes. He was the person who taught me how to laugh at myself.

I remembered the compassion I had for little Max and all of those kids at the Boys & Girls Club who needed the world to lend them some extra love and strength until they were strong enough on their own. Giovanni had grown up under worse circumstances. Alone, with no parents at all. He was so courageous. He’d had to be.

I closed my eyes and let all the beauty rise up in me. Feeling love was risky. But instead of being weakened by it, I was surprised to realize the love strengthened me.

I held both of Giovanni’s hands and thought of the powerful nature of love. How it was like water. It settled into the low, hidden places and seeped into my crevices, breaking me open. It eroded my fortresses and shaped me into something new. And even when I thought I’d had it wrung out of me, it could rain back down and satisfy a thirst I didn’t know I had.

All of this, I tried to offer to him through my hands, from my body into his. It was a prayer in physical form.

Nothing. No response.

Blinking away tears, I involved my whole body, sending positive vibes through my hands, my heart, my eyes. Would any of it penetrate?

I was blowing on cold ashes, hoping for a fire.

But then his fingers moved underneath mine. The faintest groan escaped his torn, parted lips. Encouraged, I continued, imagining my aura as a rolling ball of energy washing over him, into him. I scanned his body for any sign of the shimmer that had first drawn me to him that day at the airport, but he was still snuffed out. I pressed his hand to my heart.

“Take it in,” I whispered. “Come back to me. C’mon, G.”

Then a small sliver of sparkling light caught my eye where Gráinne had said she felt it above his abdomen. It pulsed and grew, spreading like liquid mercury over his body. It swirled over his heart and simultaneously out toward his arms and legs. He gasped and drew in a deep, quivering breath, and his eyes flashed open.

I smiled. Joy burst out of me. He was alive! I bent and hugged him, but before I knew what was happening, his hands wound around my wrists and he flipped me over, pinning me underneath him on the bed.

I looked up into his eyes, the swirling, glassy ocean of them. He looked confused, not all there yet. His aura shone above his shoulders again, but I couldn’t see it over his head. He pressed his body against mine, and I was shocked to feel his arousal. His body was completely, intensely alive, although it seemed his mind wasn’t. I was about to say something, try to call him out of his stupor, when he blocked my words with a fierce kiss.

His warm mouth melted over mine. The sensation of touching my tongue to his was like licking the tip of a battery. A metallic zing of energy traveled from my mouth throughout my body. Every point of contact from my toes to my lips burned with electricity. My hands were still captured above my ears, but our fingers had interlocked. Our palms pounded with our firing pulses. We were two streams of lava, fusing together.

I kissed him back, responding. Like taking something back, reclaiming my own spark. But then I realized his was a false desire, an aura spell I had cast, that just like Finn, his want of me wasn’t real but feeding off something else. And my want of him was salve on my wounded heart.

I managed to break the kiss and speak. “G—Giovanni, are you okay?”

His unfocused eyes rested on my mouth like he was trying to translate the sounds I’d made. The blood on his lip was bright and new again. I could taste it. Ever so slowly, his eyes ventured up to meet mine. There was recognition there, but confusion as well.

“Sleep now,” I commanded. I sounded much more in control than I felt. I was stirred but invigorated, which seemed strange considering how much energy I had given him. His grip on my hands released as he rolled off me, burying his face into my pillow. His eyes closed, his breathing slowed, his silver aura fired to life like a match around his entire body.

I lay on the bed, staring at the canopy overhead. My chugging heart lost momentum one pounding beat at a time. I closed my eyes, lulled to sleep by the sound of Giovanni’s breathing next to me. So glad he was alive. I didn’t have any power in my situation, but I’d had the power to save him.

A strong arm wound over my waist, and my eyes flew open. The room had morphed into the inky blue of twilight. The only light was from the wood-burning stove glowing in the corner.

Giovanni’s hand was tucked beneath my hip. With a commanding tug, he pulled my body against his. He curled around me like warm air, nestling his face into the back of my neck. I should move, I thought, lift his heavy arm from over my body and wiggle away from him. Sleep on the floor, or with Gráinne. But I didn’t want to. I pressed myself for an explanation, and my internal answer, my truth, was I liked the security of his arm over me. I liked being less alone.