No!
I think I shouted it to myself. Either way they were gone. We were all gone.
I was back on the cobbles, my palms sweaty, causing my grip to fail as I tried to grapple to my knees.
For a second I thought it was one of the faces from above that petrified me, but he, although much like a statue, was living and he was standing right in front of me.
This time I didn’t have to consider it. The Vampire who came nose-to-nose with me when Jonah and I had come under attack; the same one I saw leaving Eligio and his clan; the very same Vampire who approached me in the airport.
He was once my fiancé.
Though his eyes now blazed with flames of red, and though his skin had changed to a porcelain milky white, they were one and the same. Only he had been human—mortal, when I had known him before—and now he was a Vampire.
Remaining poised, anger filled his expression. He knelt next to me and pulled my necklace out from under my blouse, cupping my ring. Tugging it toward him, the air rippled and the sound of the fiddler’s sad song faded into nothingness. Time was suspending itself and as it did, I felt the tug of the chain once more. But this time I was back in the barn and he was yanking it angrily away from my neck. I wasn’t watching; I was reliving.
The light at the entrance couldn’t have seemed farther away as I lurched forward, turning my back to him. But he pulled me backward, twisting me around to face him. I met the same eyes, only they belonged to him when he had been human. Streaming furious tears, his face flushed. He looked desperate. Gently I exerted some force against his shoulders, pushing him away, though I was hardly in control; I was merely trapped inside my body, my actions, and my choices in that pocket of time.
My legs scrambled, catching the inside of my underskirt, as I attempted to flee. The smell of the damp hay and the once familiar scent of horses filled me.
That’s when it happened: a deadly blow to the back of my skull. I heard the crack as I fell to the floor. I blinked my eyes so fast that my eyelashes were getting tangled up and he was there, lifting me up. Pure horror and regret lined his brow and he was shouting. Though it was muted, his lips shaped my name over and over again. Casting my eyes away from him, I noticed blood pooling from my body; it spilled down the sloping ground toward the entrance.
So this was how I had died.
There was no pain. I couldn’t feel any of it. Gabriel’s name floated around my mind; I must have thought of him in my final seconds.
Before everything fell into darkness—before I stopped breathing—the image became concave and popped.
I found myself breathing the same air as the Vampire again as he considered my gem sitting in his hand. The chords of the violin filtered back into my hearing, though they were slow, as though they were being sieved.
Automatically, I grabbed the back of my head. Crimson blood trickled through the lines in the palms of my hands.
Presenting them to him—and without thinking—I said, “Ethan, you killed me.”
His eyes were immediately flashing at mine as if I had been the one to deliver the blow. He pursed his lips, hiding his dangerous fangs. His angry expression subsided, to be replaced by one of mourning. The vibration of heavy feet racing across the market set me free of our exchange and when I looked back at him, he had vanished, like a puff of smoke. I guessed ghosts of the past were entitled to do that.
Remaining on the ground, I crossed my legs and cupped his ring as at last a piece of the puzzle snapped into place.
I don’t know how long Jonah had been beside me, but I finally gave him my attention.
“Cessie! Cessie! You’re bleeding!” His gaze found its way to the splatters over my hands and he pulled them in to him, following the scent up my arm to the marks smeared down my neck. Resting his cheek over my hair, he absorbed my fragrance. When he removed himself, his own skin blemished with the stain of my blood, he looked utterly panic-stricken.
“Give it a minute, it’s disappearing.”
Not only did my body heal itself ordinarily, having transitioned back into my body when I had relived the terrible memory of Frederic’s attack, I knew that the damage receded quickly when I returned to the present.
“What happened?” His eyes darted speedily around the immediate area, but he couldn’t be distracted long, his interest drawing intently back to me.
“Nothing. It’s just an echo of a two-hundred-year-old injury, it can’t kill me again.” Where I’d felt empty, a state of calm spread into the void. Perhaps it was the effect of the blow in the present, or perhaps I was just oddly relieved to finally have something—anything—of my own to understand, even if it was horrific. I think it was the latter.
Jonah breathed heavily, his fingers fumbling through my hair. I could see desperation, disbelief, and desire all surfacing through his worried eyes.
I glided my arm over his, pushing him away from my head impatiently. “I said it will heal.”
Scooping me off the ground and steadying my weight against his frame, he demanded, “I think it’s time you filled me in, don’t you?”
TWENTY
BROOKE’S ARRIVAL HAD BROUGHT a halt to Jonah’s inquires, and once back in the confines of the house, I made every effort to keep in the company of Ruadhan and Brooke. I wasn’t entirely sure how to play this; I needed to talk to Gabriel before I could delve into a revealing conversation with Jonah. I would have to tell him something, but how much and exactly what, I was unsure about.
Luckily the split in the back of my skull had receded quickly so neither Ruadhan nor Brooke were any the wiser. Convincing Jonah that no one had been in my presence, that no unearthly being had caused my spilled blood, hadn’t been quite so easy. He knew someone or something that shouldn’t have been in the market had been. He had sensed it.
I texted Gabriel, asking him to call me as soon as possible. Then I made my excuses and went for a nap in the basement bedroom.
I must have drifted off thinking of him, for as I slept an image of his blue eyes opened up in my mind. At first I was excited to see his face. He was in a bar, tucked away in a quiet corner, and he wasn’t alone. I watched as he talked quickly and I peered past his image to see a far older, light-haired man who was listening attentively while scratching his head, an intrigued look on his face.
I was dreaming, but I was confident that what I was seeing was real, either from the past or perhaps of the future. It was difficult to know.