The Arrow (Children of Brigid Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

“Are you serious?” He rested his hands on her knees. “At every show, there were more demons in the audience. They waited for me in front rows and at stage doors. There were dozens at the Catalyst Club tonight. They followed you out. If you didn’t have so much silver in that sweater, you would have seen them, too.”

“Stop,” Fynn said. The heat from his hands through her dress was more than she could bear. “No more.”

Komo fell back into his own seat, glass crunching under his jeans. Fynn ached to touch him. A part of her wanted to say whatever it took to hear his laugh spill over his lyrics as he sang for an audience of one. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t become just another one of his entourage. Her demon-poisoned heart felt like it would kill her with disappointment and jealousy.

They turned onto a wooded road and pulled in front of a huge Victorian mansion perched on the edge of a cliff. They sat in silence after the driver cut the engine. She had been stupid enough to think that Komo wanted her. He was just another lost straggler clinging to her mother’s old stories. Her stomach felt as though it were full of lead.

Komo peered out the window. He looked like a scared kid. This was the result of her parents’ fear-mongering. Her parents had preached about a demon apocalypse so often that fear consumed Fynn and Komo, even though they were grown up and had been gone from the Keep for years. Brigid’s Keep craziness was a latent virus that made everything ugly.

“Why me?” Fynn asked. “Why not contact one of the disciples? My mother would spare you as many bodyguards as you want.”

Komo chuckled, but there was no joy in his laughter. He gave her one last long look before getting out of the car.

“You’re still the goddess of a religion you don’t believe in,” he said over his shoulder. “If you don’t come around to the truth, then we’ll die.” He kept the door open, but didn’t look back.

“Miss?” The chauffer extended his hand. “Are you ready to go inside?”

If she followed him, she would never go back to her life at St. Cocha University. Everything she’d worked for would be dust. She may have been a big fish in a small pond, but it was
her
pond. She didn’t have to deal with groupies who would laugh as they stole Komo away from her.

“Take me home,” Fynn said.

She picked a piece of light bulb out of her hair with shaking fingers. Talk of demons made her nervous, the way sudden noises bothered a veteran soldier. Especially these days when real or imagined, they seemed to be everywhere.

The tall house blazed with lights. The car crawled past the front on the curved driveway. She willed the driver to go faster. She just wanted to get home, so she could go for a long swim. She planned to swim until she was too exhausted to be sad. She’d swim all night if she had to.

One window of a high turret stood dark as a sightless eye. Fynn looked up, drawn to it without knowing why. While she stared, a pair of glowing blue orbs emerged from the blackness like a cat’s eyes reflecting the moonlight.

She gasped. In a blink, they were gone. She put her hand over her pounding heart.

“Miss?” the driver asked. “Is everything okay back there?”

“Let me out,” she said, already swinging open the door. She ran to the house, very glad she was wearing jeans and boots under her dress.

A woman met her at the door. Amazon Tinker Bell from the show. She looked like a Wall Street banker type, crisply dressed in her skirt and jacket. But if she was like any of the other women Komo liked to have around him, she wasn’t as serious as she looked. Fynn expected that she was nothing more than a party girl in a business suit, too in love with Komo to think straight.

“I’m Cate Soren,” she said, extending her hand. “We didn’t get a chance to meet properly before. I’m Komo’s manager.”

The woman had a strong handshake. The house loomed behind her, vibrating with a bass line, bubbling over with the shrieking laughter of what sounded like dozens of women.

“I need to get in there,” Fynn said.

“I wanted to have a word with you before you spoke with him,” Cate said. She grinned like the two of them shared a secret. Her red lips parted over white teeth.

“No, really,” Fynn said, moving around her. “I need to see if Komo is okay.” If there were Unhuman in the house, she needed to get Komo out.
Now.

The woman’s smile hardened into a glossy candy coating as she blocked Fynn’s way. “Has Komo talked to you at all about why we’re in St. Cocha?” Cate asked. Her luminescent skin glowed and she looked more than ever like an overgrown fairy.

“He said a few things,” Fynn said. She didn’t know how much Komo had told his manager about the commune or about her. A skittering feeling crossed the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry to even have to ask this question, but did he mention anything about devils?” Cate asked. Fynn fumbled for her phone. She wasn’t talking about this with a stranger, no matter how well-dressed and shiny. Komo needed to come the hell out.

Cate stopped her with a cool hand on her shoulder. Fynn’s bicep tensed. “Fynn, you can trust me,” she said. “I’m worried about Komo.”

Fynn held her thumb over
send.

“Thank God you’re here, frankly,” Cate said. She grabbed Fynn by the shoulders and gave her a hug that smelled of designer perfume and mint gum. “You’re the only person he will talk to.”

Fynn remained rigid. “I don’t know why you say that,” she said. “Komo is an old friend, but we’re not exactly in touch.”

Cate leaned forward. “No disrespect to your mother, Fynn. She’s a great woman. Her hospitals have helped many people. But that demon talk has our Komo turned around.”

“So you don’t believe in the demons,” Fynn said. She put her phone away. Not heeding the prophecies didn’t make then not true. Her mother was right about that. But it was surprising that Komo’s manager wasn’t a starry-eyed believer.

“Of course not,” Cate said. “Out of context, that would be a very strange question.”

“Right.”

“Your mother is a great woman. A great doctor, and nobody would dispute that. But her religion, on the other hand...”

“It’s crazy.” A traitor’s words. Fynn bit them between her teeth like nails.

“Of course it is.”

Cate and Fynn looked at each other. So Komo hadn’t hired a fan or party girl to be his manager. He’d shown some good sense and hired a down-to-earth woman.

“You’re tired, Fynn,” Cate said. “Come into the house. Spend some time with Komo. He needs you right now. You’re the only one who understands what it felt like to grow up in your mother’s cult.”

“Commune,” Fynn said. “It’s a planned community, not a cult.”

“I get what you’re saying.” Cate’s phone buzzed in her manicured hand and she turned it off without looking. “I’m going to ask them to get your room ready,” she said. “And have a hot bath and a good meal prepared for you, as well.”

A voice cried in Fynn’s head like a distant warning bell. It sounded like her mother. “I’m not staying the night,” she said.

“Okay.” Cate opened the door. “I have an herbal tea you’ll love.”

***

The kitchen in the Victorian mansion was removed from the rest of the house by a long hallway. A fire roared in a gray stone fireplace that took up one whole wall. Cate plied her with a hot mug of a flowery tea. Fynn took it, but didn’t sit down. The tea smelled like summer afternoons in the meadow and she didn’t mean to, but she took a long sip. She needed to find Komo, to go upstairs and find the hollow-eyed thing. Instead, she found herself drinking down the entire cup of summer-flavored tea.

“What’s in this?” Fynn asked.

“It’s a Chinese blend,” Cate said, with the wave of a hand. She wasn’t concerned with tea. “Ginger, I think.” She poured herself a cup and put her elbows on the table, as though Fynn had come expressly to visit with her. “He talks about you all the time,” she said. “He only agreed to come out of hiding if I promised to get him here to St. Cocha to see you.”

“Me?” Fynn said. “I don’t believe that. He didn’t call me once in five years.” She was having a hard time remembering why exactly she had to run upstairs. She’d had a good reason.

“Did you call him?” Cate asked.

“No,” Fynn said. “I thought he would be too busy.”

“Too busy?”

“I was in love with him,” Fynn said. The truth came out in a flood. “I was in love with him and I knew he would never love me back. So what was the point?” Her face heated. She felt her own forehead with the back of her hand. The kitchen was too warm.

“This doesn’t surprise me,” Cate said.

“Why would it? Everyone is in love with Komo.”

“Yes...but Komo is in love with only one.” Cate talked like it was a matter of simple arithmetic.

“It isn’t me.”

“It
is
you,” Cate said. Fynn’s heart leapt, treacherous with tired hope. She was such a trapped bird when it came to Komo, so ready to fling herself again at the possibility that he could ever love her.

“You want to believe me,” Cate said. “And you should. I know Komo better than almost anyone. Doesn’t matter how many fans rush the stage, how many crowd the exit. There’s an emptiness inside him. In the beginning, he went with the girls backstage, yes.” Fynn bit her lip to keep from wailing. “But in the past three years, he hasn’t. He hasn’t been with any woman.”

“You’re kidding me.” It had turned out that Komo had rotated through every one of the girls at Athenian in their short time at the school. She couldn’t imagine Komo celibate for a single night, let alone three years.

“What you and Komo shared when you were children is precious to him. No other woman can compete with that. He talks about you constantly. I think that this nervous breakdown he is having is because he misses you. He needs you. The devil that is after him is in his head and he won’t be able to escape it without you.”

“He’s not talking about the devil, exactly. Not the way you’re thinking. We were taught to be afraid of things,” Fynn said.

Cate shook her head. “I can’t imagine what you two went through.”

It took a stranger to understand it wasn’t easy for them to be Keep kids out in the world. It was nice to be understood for once, even by someone who didn’t know the whole truth and who wouldn’t believe it if she heard it.

“If you love him, you’ll stay,” Cate said. She reached for a pile of hand-rolled cigarettes in a crystal dish and lit the end on a candle flame. After sucking deeply, she exhaled in Fynn’s direction. The cloud of smoke blew wisps of hair from Fynn’s face. She flinched at first, but the smoke was sweet as the attar of an exotic flower. Fynn eyed the neatly-rolled cigs and wondered if it would be rude to ask for one. Cate filled her cup.

Another long sip of tea and the summer day extended from her stomach to her arms and legs. In the dancing firelight, it made sense to stay. At least for one night. Cate tapped a fingernail against the marble tabletop. “It was incredible to see him perform tonight. This is a man born to be onstage. Bring him back to it, if you love him.”

Fynn didn’t know what to say. In the teacup, leaves swirled and sparkled with glittery dust. Cate was so sure of her facts. Fynn wasn’t a rock star, but it would be such a relief to hand her life over to Cate to manage. Her chin fell to her chest and she wondered if she had been sleeping for a moment. She sat engulfed in a plush chair by the fire. She didn’t remember making the decision to sit. The ribbons tying her consciousness to her mother and sister pulled loose, their ends frayed. The urgency that had driven her to the front door was as ephemeral as a dream.

Cate took her hand and offered to show her around.

“It’s our house. That is, we’re renting it while we are in town,” Cate said. “Komo needs space and privacy.” Guitar riffs and bass lines reverberated through the narrow hall. It sounded like hundreds of people gathered in hidden rooms. There was talking and laughing, and in between, if she wasn’t mistaken, moans of sexual pleasure.

Fynn’s heart melted in her chest, as Komo’s voice rose above the others over the strumming of an acoustic guitar. He sang a tune from his first album that she knew as well as she knew her own skin.

You are the only one who can help me.
Fynn closed her eyes and braced her shoulder against a wall. She was losing her balance. Cate had taken off her jacket to reveal a sleeveless white t-shirt underneath. She wore silver cuff bracelets on her bare arms and they clanked together as she took a long drag and exhaled smoke like a dragon under Fynn’s nose.

“From the very first moment I met him, I knew he would be a real star,” Cate said, every word making so much sense. “I knew he was special,” she purred into Fynn’s ear. “Then he got too scared to go out on stage. Wouldn’t come out of the dressing rooms. Demons,” she huffed. “We had to cancel everything.”

Fynn burned in shame. It had been easier for her to believe that Komo was pulling a publicity stunt than it was to risk getting hurt by reaching out to see if he was okay. She wished she’d called him.

“I thought we lost him. I thought he would hurt himself or worse. It would be my fault if he did, Fynn. You should blame me for it.”

“I don’t think...”

“It
was
my fault,” Cate said, waving the perfumed cigarette between her elegant fingers. “I pushed him into the spotlight. I saw how much he loved it and how much money we could make.” She let out a wry laugh. “Here I am confessing everything. I just met you, and you already know more than my therapist. Well, maybe there is something special about you, too.”

They stood in the arched entryway to an enormous living room. Cate stroked Fynn’s cheek. Then she put her cigarette to Fynn’s mouth. Fynn closed her lips around it and sucked. Her lungs filled with velvet smoke as thick as incense.

“You’re so beautiful,” Cate said. “I see why he loves you.”

A peal of feminine laughter burst through the party noise. Cara’s voice was unmistakable, even in the crowd. Cate’s dark eyebrows arched under her fringe of bleached-blonde hair. This woman understood everything.

“These after parties are part of the business, but I can’t stand them,” Cate said. “Did you ever consider that the reason why Komo didn’t try to seduce you is because he thought you were too special for all of this?”