The Assassin: (Mortal Beloved Time Travel Romance, #2) (29 page)

“I heard rumors,” Ryan said, blew on his hands, and rubbed them together.
 

“How come you didn’t share those rumors with me?” I asked.

“How come you took off on your own journey when I distinctly said that you needed to wait and learn more?” Ryan stared down at me, his blue eyes turning gray under the light of clouds that drifted in front of the moon.

“I had to. My heart’s desire called to me. It’s been calling to me for a while now,” I said. “I can’t wait forever for yours and everyone else’s permission to live my life.” I leaned over and kissed him on his cheek: sweetly, softly. And then I pulled away, opened the passenger door, and stepped out of the car.

“Right,” Ryan said.
 

“I’ll see you tomorrow during the,” I air quoted, “‘debriefing’ with Chaka and Aaron.”

“Actually, no you won’t.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been given another task. I’m leaving tonight.”

I inhaled sharply. “But—”
 

“This is how it is.” He shrugged. “You travel to deliver a message. Sometimes it all works out really well, sometimes it doesn’t. If you live through it, congratulations, Messenger. Mission accomplished. Then you move onto the next one.” He looked up at me and smiled ruefully.
 

“Oh,” I said and hugged myself. “Oh.” I wiped away a tear. “Thank you for everything, Ryan.”

“It was my honor, Madeline. I’ll see you again.” He slipped the stick shift into drive and gazed up at me. “I know I will. Certain people—you just have a feeling about them.”

He drove off into the night as the breath hitched in my chest.
 

~ ~ ~

I lay on my bed and stared up at the map of stars on the ceiling. I missed Miri. She was so funny, devoted, and kind. I hoped she had lived a long life filled with happiness no matter where her cleaver as well as her cleavage took her. I missed Scout, the first dog I ever had.
 

And I longed to see Samuel, touch his face, hold his hand, and kiss him under a moonlit sky in any time to which I journeyed. I hope he survived the fire and followed his purpose to be a Healer. Whether we were together or apart, he’d always be my Samuel and would forever be in my heart.

There was a curt knock on my door. “You were out pretty late tonight, Madeline,” Dad said.
 

I glanced at my clock. “It’s 10:30 pm. I’m sixteen, not six.”

“Right,” he said. “Did you survive Valentine’s Day?”

“It was touch and go there for a while,” I said.

“Valentine’s Day always is,” he said. “The nonsensical pressure surrounding this overly-commercialized holiday is ridiculous. Get some sleep. See you in the morning.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Hey, Dad. Can we get a dog?”

“No dog,” he said. “We already have another mouth to feed with the new baby on the way.”

“Seriously, the right dog would be super great for all of us. I’ll do all the work, I promise. I’ll even find a part-time job.” I crossed my fingers.

He grumbled. “I’ll think about it.

“I love you, Dad!”

“I love you more! Stop stalling and hit the sack.”
 

I thought 1675 and King Philip’s War was the trip of a lifetime but perhaps 1355 and the saga of Pedro and Inêz rivaled that. I was starting to wonder where Samuel and I stood in this equation. I’d met him in four lifetimes now including present day. How many times did you have to meet someone before they remembered? Five? A hundred and five? I wondered if my handbook had any new clues…

I jumped out of bed, knelt, and pulled it out from underneath. I dusted off the silk fabrics that covered it and carefully unwrapped them. I laid my beautiful book on my desk and quickly turned the pages until I hit the one with the newspaper headline from VJ Day 1945.
 

The last time I looked at the book, the bottom half of this page was blank. Now there were mottled stains and what looked like dried herbs that formed a strange pattern. I ran my hands lightly over them and a few flaked up. I pressed my index finger to one, lifted it closer to my face, and gently sniffed: it smelled vaguely like tea.
 

My tea leaf reading that I gave Prince Pedro had found its way into my handbook! I stifled a giggle, and then I spotted a small line of cursive underneath the blotchy stains. I leaned in and read the words inscribed:
 

“
Até o fim do mundo...”
 

That’s how In
ê
z de Castro described her love with Prince Pedro, “Until the end of the world.”

Is that what Samuel and I would have? And if so, at what cost?

I couldn’t resist turning to the handbook’s next page, and flinched when I saw the fire-licked charred edges that had burnt almost half the page. I leaned in and read the words that remained,

“Madeline, I hope you don’t find it odd that I share this with you via an old-fashioned handwritten letter. E-mails can be hacked. Dreams can be invaded. And I can’t send a Messenger to you right now, as there are so few of us left, and we are fighting to stay alive.
 

Think, Madeline.

 
Who’s the message for this time?”

~ thirty-seven ~

I debriefed Aaron and Chaka at The Harold Washington Library, the stately, large central facility located in downtown Chicago. I figured we could avoid any Hunters or high school mean girls while I told them my story and we researched my latest journey to medieval Portugal. We sat at long tables poring over thick large paper books and online communities. And yes—we found a lot.

Pedro and Inêz’s love story preceded Shakespeare’s rendition of Romeo and Juliet by over two hundred years. After Inêz was crowned Queen post-mortem, Pedro built the Alcobaca Monastery, a small cathedral outside of Coimbra in her honor. He commissioned master sculptors to carve two sarcophagi in each of their likenesses with scenes from their lives chiseled into the stone. The foot pedestals on Inêz’s tomb even featured the faces of her assassins. Pedro insisted that the ornate tombs be placed at the very front of the cathedral so that on Judgment Day, when the dead could rise, the first thing Inêz and Pedro would see would be each other.
 

“I think I found something a bit odd about Pedro and Inêz’s son,” Aaron said.
 

“Which one?” I asked.
 

“Prince John,” he said.

“The boy who witnessed his mother’s death,” I sighed. “I wondered what happened to him.”

“He got married. Shortly thereafter, he accused his wife of adultery and murdered her. She died by his hand; no hired assassins involved. It says here that because of the adultery accusation, the judges ruled that Prince John should not suffer either punishment or penalty, and justice was never imposed.” He put down the book. “Yikes.”

 
“He became abusive just like his grandfather,” I said. “That breaks my heart.”

“The book I’m reading,” Chaka held up a huge book with beautiful statues and paintings on the cover “states that Pedro and Inêz’s love story was immortalized over the years with hundreds of poems, plays, operas, ballets, paintings, and songs. Their relationship was really quite beautiful, in a tragic sense.”

I am not an angel, and nowhere close to being divine, but I managed to hear Samuel’s prayer in the year 1355 and time travel to medieval Portugal. And during the most epic saga of Inêz and Pedro, I delivered my real message:
to remind Samuel that he was a Healer.
That he would
always
be a Healer.
 

My phone buzzed. I picked it up and spotted a text from a number I didn’t recognize, clicked on it, and read.
 

“Madeline. Can we talk? Pick a time and a place and I’ll be there. Yours, Samuel Delacroix.”

I stared wide-eyed at Chaka and Aaron. “Who gave him my number?”

They both whistled; Chaka suddenly absorbed in her manicure and Aaron fixated on his laptop. My phone buzzed again and I peered at it.

“Your friends gave me your number. I knew that would be your first question. Please don’t think I’m a stalker. Yours, Samuel Delacroix.”

“When did you give him my number?” I asked.

“After you left the club last night,” Chaka said. “He came back an hour later and asked how he could get ahold of you.”

“I’m dating someone, you know,” Aaron said. “We thought it might not be such a bad idea if you did the same.”
 

“This makes me nervous,” I said.

“Oh please,” Chaka said. “You nearly drowned and you kissed a dead woman’s hand. You are not allowed to be scared to talk to some stupid guy.”

I sighed but texted him back. “What did you have in mind?”

~ ~ ~

And so I walked with Samuel in present day Chicago down the chilly concrete city streets in the shadows of skyscrapers. It was afternoon and buses flew by us, pedestrians crisscrossed in front of our path, but for once I didn’t really care about traffic, noise, or congestion. Time slowed down and it felt like magic to be with him again.
 

His hazel eyes lit up as he smiled down at me. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“Sure,” I said. “But don’t you have a girlfriend?”
 

“Not anymore,” he said. “We broke up.”
 

“Aha,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“We both knew that it hasn’t been working for a long time,” he said. “Yes, I’m okay. Thanks.”

I nodded. “So… what’s on your mind?”

“It’s going to sound weird,” Samuel said.

“I speak the language,” I said. “Carry on, Lord Samuel.” I cringed as the words fell out of my mouth.

“Lord Samuel?” He asked and raised one dark eyebrow.

“Sorry! I’m watching too many of those medieval TV shows lately.” I curtseyed even though it probably didn’t have the same effect as I was dressed in a warm parka and jeans, not a long, flowing skirt.

He smiled. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you recently. Wherever I go, I’ll hear a song, and for some reason, it reminds me of you. That’s weird, right?”

“That depends on what kind of song?” I asked. “Heavy metal?”

He covered a smile. “You will never torture that information out of me, my Lady,” he said and bowed as the light to cross Michigan Avenue turned green.

“Barry Manilow? Ariana Grande? Taylor Swift? Pharrel? Hurry up.” I skipped out into the wide intersection. “You can kiss my hand if you beat me to the other side of this very long drawbridge.”

“Challenge on!” He chased after me and nearly beat me to the curb where we burst out laughing.

“I’m claiming my prize!” He reached for my hand.

But I tucked both of them behind my back. “There will be no hand kissing,” I said imperiously. “Because technically, I beat you. Besides it’s cold out and I’m not taking off my gloves. And you’d better not be thinking of me when a Bieber song plays,” I said as we made our way into a large city park. “Or I will sentence you to a fortnight in the royal dungeons. Pray tell why are we at Millennial Park? The giant orb scares me.”

We stared up at the enormous three-story steel art installation with its ultra polished mirrors.

“You’re scared of the Bean?” He asked. “Why?”

“It looks so frigging weird. I just know aliens are going to burst out of it someday,” I said.
 

“Hah! I will tell you why we are at Millennial Park after you allow me to kiss your hand,” he said.

“In your dreams. Do continue, Lord Samuel.” And we made our way toward the Bean, our breath forming small clouds in the air.

 
“Bear with me, Madeline. It gets stranger,” he said. “I spotted the back of a girl recently when I was jogging at Loyola’s track. She was about your height, your size, and she had a little sass about her. Her hair was long and shiny, like yours, and I thought, ‘That has to be to Madeline! It will be so great to see her again.’”
 

He reached to touch my hair and stopped himself but not before his fingers grazed my face.

I got the chills, gazed up at him, and silently willed him to place his hand on my face, to touch my lips, to take my hands and pull me close to him the way he did in Portugal. “Tell me more,” I said as the cloud from my breath misted between his fingers.

“So I raced to catch up with her,” Samuel stared at his hand and then back up at me. “But when I reached her—she wasn’t you.”
 

“Oh,” I said and peered down at my feet as we resumed walking.
 

“I was in line at the grocery store,” Samuel said. “I saw this guy flirting with a girl who resembled you a couple of checkout lines over. And I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and I even felt a little jealous. So I stepped away and waited, like a moron, and watched them leave the store. But she wasn’t you.”

“Right,” I said.

We stopped walking next to the outdoor skating rink and watched the people on the ice. There were kids and grownup, couples of all ages and groups of friends daring each other on with laughter and shouts. Everyone appeared to be having a good time; even the folks who fell would grumble but then get back up and try again.

“This is the problem, Madeline. All these girls I think about that might be you—
are never you.
And I am left lying awake tossing and turning in my bed night after night, wondering who you are, what kind of ice cream you like, are you a Cubs or a Sox fan, do you order thin crust pizza or deep dish, and what your big dream is for life after high school. And no I don’t mean which college you’re applying to, I mean your really outrageous big dream, like, do you want to join the Peace Corp, or you are you learning five languages so you can go to work at the U.N. and someday be posted abroad in a foreign consulate, or do you want to go into the arts and create stories through screenwriting, novels, or film?”

He took my hand but he didn’t kiss it. He just held it, tenderly, kindly, and firmly between his two hands and despite all his supplications in 1355, I think I forgot how to breathe.
 

“And I wonder why I can’t stop thinking about you,” Samuel said. “And I wonder if I could touch your hair, or your hand, or your face, or your lips; how amazing that would feel. Or what it would be like to just hang out with you somewhere and have a conversation about some stupid giant orb in a public park and who the hell thought that that was art, and I just knew you would feel the same way I did about the Bean, and you do.”