American Goth (38 page)

Fran glanced up at him with an expression that made me want to weep. “Thank you,” she said, “I feel the same way.”

Elizabeth stepped over then reached down to hug her. “Of course you do,” she said as Fran returned her hold. “We’re all part of and sealed to the same Circle.” She kissed the top of her head. “You’ve a home here, always, and I’m certain you’ll be back before you know it.”

She sighed as they released one another. “You’ve a little while,” she said, and glanced over and caught Cort’s eye, “so we’ll leave you to chat.”

He came over and crouched down to look into Fran’s eyes, then took her hand in his. “Whatever happens,” he said solemnly, “she is Wielder and your chosen Champion, and
nothing
can change that. Courage and faith, Fran, and we’ll see you soon.”

She nodded as he gave her a quick hug as well and when he stood, he and Elizabeth left us alone to our own good-bye.

Once they were gone, the same sense of wrong came back, was an alarm in my head, had grown from a shake in my gut to a repeated thump that I couldn’t ignore, and it combined with the frantic sense that I had to
tell
Fran, tell her that I—

I needed to do something, something tangible to let her know that even if she wasn’t with me… Inspired, I fumbled a moment with the clasp behind my neck until I got it loose and I held the ankh in my hands to drape around her.

“Here,” I said, “I want you to hold on to this, to have this.” I smoothed it along the soft skin where her collar left her neck bare even as her eyes widened at me.

“You, you can’t do that—it’s yours, part of you and—” she tried to protest.

“It’s part of both of us,” I corrected her quietly. “It holds both of us.”

It was appropriate—the symbol that promised me to life worn by the woman who had grounded me back in it, had willingly bound herself to me and me through her to the Material. The metal lattice not only charged with energy, the pure energy of the Light, translated through me, through her, it also literally carried the essence of us, our
intents
, even our feelings toward each other.

It was a powerful charm and if Fran kept it, not only would she carry a part of me with her, but in a very real way, she’d carry the Light, a shield, a very direct protection that I…I didn’t need anymore. I had it melted into my skin.

What I didn’t know then, would come to learn later, was that her wearing of it, that symbol and especially that specific charm, older than even I could have guessed at the time, marked her as directly under the watchful eye of the Inner Circle—on every possible level. That had been why Cort had bade me not to take it off before I’d been sealed; it marked and protected me until I was one with the Circle, with the Light, and could take care of myself.

Fran stared at me wordlessly through eyes that threatened to overflow, and I kissed the beginnings of her tears as she cupped my face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Frankie,” I told her through the salt taste on my lips and held her against me. I could feel her breathe, her heartbeat against my chest. “Everything’s going to be fine—go see your sister, and when she’s better…”

I couldn’t help it; I ran my fingers down her back, across her arms, trying to memorize the feel of her as I covered her lips with mine to lose myself, just for the moment, in us while we still had it, which was insane, because there was no reason to think she wouldn’t be back soon.

“Samantha,” she said softly, and the sound of my full name from her lips made my eyes smart, “I’m going to miss you—maybe you can come to Milan and—”

“One step at a time,” I said, “we’ll be okay.” I covered the ankh with my palm, felt the fierce thump under my hand. “We’re still together, we’re always together.”

And yet maybe…maybe now was the time, maybe there would never be another… “Frankie,” I breathed quietly against her. “I’m…you know that…that I’m in…” The words caught in my throat hard, burning, hurting, as she turned lambent eyes on me, eyes that told me she knew what I felt, what I wanted to say, what she wanted to say, too, and even if I wasn’t certain that she could read the same from mine, I hoped she did, even as the warmth of it, the reality of it, wrapped around and filled the spaces between us.

“Don’t,” she whispered even as she nodded that she did know, and placed gentle fingers against my mouth. “If you say it,” she told me, “I will, too—and then I
can’t
leave.”

She was right, and we both knew it as we wrapped around each other on the settee, holding each other so closely, so tightly, with so much to think and say and yet
almost
everything already said and felt,
known
between us. As the light from the fire flickered on the hearth and we simply listened to each other breathe, waiting for the inevitable, the lines of possibility and probability grew, stretched and shaped before my eyes, flashes of potential, flashes of the future. There was a quick but clear image in my mind, a sending through the Aethyr, a slip of the sphere projection-reality of time that made my pulse jump.

“Promise me something?” I asked softly against the hair I’d buried my face in.

“Anything, Sammer. Everything.”

“If your father asks you to go back to the States with him, will you do it?”

She stirred in my arms and kissed my neck. “I want to come back for Christmas, celebrate the Solstice with you.”

“I want that too,” I answered, “but would you? Please?”

She moved her head to gaze into my eyes even as her fingertips measured along my face, trying to memorize me the way I did her. I didn’t know if she could see what I did, but she easily knew what I felt.

“You’re scared.” It was a statement, not a question and I nodded, knowing it was useless to deny it to her when she lived under my skin too.

“Yes.”

“For Gemma?”

I could only bite my lip and shake my head. “For you.”

“Okay,” she said finally with a soft exhale. “I’m not going to make you ache it out. I love you, I trust you. I will.”

“Thank you,” I told her and we pulled each other in again, waiting, waiting, for the sound that would make us part.

When Uncle Cort and Elizabeth came to the doorway we knew it was time and he carried her bag down the stairs as we followed behind.

We stepped out into the frigid air and I helped her into the black car her father had sent. “Hey, if your dad asks you what I’m studying,” I began in an attempt to be lighthearted, “you can tell him—”

“Alchemy?” she supplied and grinned.

I chuckled. “Yeah. Sure. Something like that.”

And then it was time, one last hug, one last kiss, one last feel of the grounding fit of her body against mine along with the mute promise of
soon
as everything I felt burned through my skin, and then she absolutely had to leave. “Call me when you land,” I asked. “Don’t worry about the time, call collect if you need to, okay?”

“I will,” she promised, “as soon as I can, and then right after I’ve seen Gemma.”

“Yes, good.”

My chest tore open when the door slammed shut, and when the car pulled away, the pull of some vital part of me with it was a physical ache as I forced myself to watch and wave until I couldn’t see it anymore.

My eyes stung as I stared at the semiquiet street, and still I felt the drag, my edges raw, exposed, and empty. Uncle Cort patted my shoulder with bracing roughness. “You’ll freeze, come on.”

I’d forgotten it was cold. I followed him inside and up the stairs. Neither he nor Elizabeth knew what to say to me and we paused, all facing each other in the silent hallway.

Elizabeth’s eyes were large on me and I watched as Uncle Cort noted the charm missing from my neck. “You okay, dear heart?” he asked, gentle gruffness in the last words.

I was relieved to hear it because between the expression Elizabeth wore and the concern they both couldn’t help but show, any other tone from him would have probably brought me to tears, and that was something I didn’t want.

“Fine, I’m fine,” I said and nodded at each of them past the sudden thickness in my throat. “Just gonna clear the library, play a little bass, is all.”

“I’ll help you,” Elizabeth offered.

“Nah, ’sokay,” I said and tried to grin. I think I failed. “I got it.”

The fire still burned on the hearth while I cleared the detritus of the half-eaten food and as I carried the tray to the door, I paused—there, on that very settee, I’d held her, felt her heart beat against mine, could still feel the embrace of her body everywhere.

My room was even worse, because she lingered there even more strongly in my mind as well as the Aethyr, was a bodily flood of physical and emotional memory, and I pulled out my bass and slung it over my shoulder, hoping the vibration of it through my frame would still the thrumming pain that raced through me, would force me to center and still, to empty my mind. What the hell was wrong with me? I was caught between hurt and a panicky edge that swore to me that more was coming, the green sky threat of twisting, howling winds.

Oh dammit, playing wasn’t
working
and I put the instrument down. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t rid myself of the waves of tingling pressure that rode up and down my skin, nor the ripping that cut through me.

This was ridiculous, I couldn’t possibly allow this edgy hurt that scathed and tore and swam, it
had
to
stop
. For the first time since the summer, I rummaged into the bottom of the second drawer of my nightstand until I found it: a pack of double edged razors. I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled one out, contemplated its steel edge.

This can’t hurt, I can’t hurt like this, this is insane
, I thought, and grasped the blade between my thumb and forefinger.

The tremble grew in my body, a bag of worms tumbling under my ribs as I pushed my sleeve up and stared at the unmarked skin above my wrist, the skin I hadn’t touched—yet.

This I could control and if it didn’t hurt, nothing would, nothing could hurt me more than I could.
I can’t cry
, I thought and dispassionately drew a red line diagonally across my forearm. Blood for the lie I’d told, as if that could wash it away, blood for the lie based on the vision I’d had, the lie I sensed Fran knew anyway, and had been good and kind and brave enough to leave alone, blood for the tears, for the words, I couldn’t, I
wouldn’t
let go.

It didn’t hurt at all, not really, anyway. The pain was a distant reality, a sting that had no deeper meaning and I fell into that same distance, from my head, from my body.
Nothing
hurt.

That’s so odd
, I observed with the same detachment. The blood welled up, but even as it ran, it thickened quickly, turned almost jellylike. I’d noticed that the first time I’d slashed my wrist those months ago. I’d had to repeat and repeat the movement; the initials I’d drawn, the cut across my palm during my sealing, they too had only bled for moments before the blood had thickened in the same way. I wondered what it meant as I brushed at the stuff on my skin and right then I heard pounding at the front door.

The sheer panic that radiated from it made me fly down the stairs, Elizabeth and Cort seconds behind me as I unlocked the door and swung it open without thinking.

Graham. It was Graham, dressed in his shirtsleeves, tears in his eyes, and fear billowing from him like smoke from a fire.

I dragged him in from the cold even as he spoke. “Lyddie,” he said, “it’s Aunt Lyddie—a neighbor just came to tell me—she’s in London Hospital. Can you take me?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Come up and get warm, get a jacket before you go,” Elizabeth said.

Cort helped me hustle him up the stairs. “What’s happened?” he asked.

Graham drew a gulping breath. “Don’t know. Alice came by—thank you,” he nodded to Elizabeth as she handed him a cup of tea, “said we’d been burgled, heard a shout, then a shot, and now—we’ve got to hurry.” He was desperate.

“We’ll get there,” Cort assured him as I ran up the stairs to grab another coat. Everything fell into place with the vision I’d had before Fran had left. My father had known something, something definite and so, geographically removed, and more importantly, his connection from the Circle stretched, thinned, he had been vulnerable. I grabbed a jacket and then, inspired, took out a long coat as well.

Whoever these people were, I thought, they believed I knew it too—but they couldn’t get me directly. As above, so below…and as below, so above. So long as I was in the Circle…

Something else niggled and tickled at my brain and it seized on Fran and her family, her brother and sister who looked so alike and so like her, so like their mother…

“Fran was named for her mother,” I announced as I sped downstairs and Cort’s head snapped in my direction. “They’re trying to eliminate the Circle and anyone connected to it,” I explained as I crossed the floor. Cort nodded grimly

“What’ve you got in mind?” he asked.

An answer had already occurred to me as I’d covered the last few steps. “Take Graham to London Hospital, take Elizabeth with you,” I said as I tossed the jacket to Graham, then slipped my own coat on. “If Lyddie’s all right, take them all to Aberdeen—they should be safe there for a while. You and I will meet back here in three days.”