A sudden, high-pitched yelp and then a small, snarling hiss made us break apart. Dúfa had leaped after the kitten, who was rapidly and expertly scaling a stable wall in front of the interested eyes of Geoffrey, Reyn’s favorite horse.
“Dúfa,” Reyn said. The small dog was torn—surely the cat deserved justice—but her beloved was calling her…. In the end, she reluctantly left the kitten, coming to plonk herself dejectedly in front of Reyn. “Good girl,” he murmured.
He turned back to me, the warmth of his chest still comforting me. “A closet, the pantry, the hayloft, the woods, the barn. Why can’t we do this somewhere normal?”
“Normal?”
“Like my room,” he said, his voice low. A delicious shiver raced down my spine. “Or your room. Or a hotel room.”
I looked at him then. Somehow, the fact that we always met up in goofy places made it seem less important, less premeditated. The idea of actually planning to be together seemed so much more serious. My feelings for him were growing more serious, too. I tried to dampen the panic rising in me—I knew that I was really bad at relationships, still.
Beside me, Sorrel shifted her weight, pulling a bit at a crosstie.
“I should finish this,” I said breathlessly. You are the biggest coward ever.
Reyn gave me a look that echoed my private internal assessment and told me my days of being such a wuss were numbered. I finished up Sorrel’s hooves, then curried her until her coat was soft and perfectly clean. When the weather got warmer she would lose a lot of this thick winter fur, and then her summer coat would be smooth enough to shine.
The horses my father had had were big warhorses, even more heavily built than Titus, and not as gentle. My father had also kept a couple of “lady horses” for women or children to ride. One time I’d tried to climb up onto Djöfullinn, my father’s own horse. His name meant “devil,” so you won’t be surprised to hear that I’d barely reached his broad back before I found myself stunned on the ground with the breath knocked out of me. I remember trying to suck in air, unable to move as Djöfullinn’s huge hooves stomped nervously around my head. My father’s steward caught me, yanking me by one arm out of the way of the horse’s slashing feet. And then he’d told my father, and I’d gotten whipped with a birch switch. Between the bruises from falling, the arm almost pulled from its socket, and my whipped butt, I’d eaten standing up for a week.
But my father had loved that horse, and only my father could ride him, to battle, for festivals, for the village races, for hunting with his men. Faðir had ridden him the day his brother had come, my uncle Geir. They’d ridden off together, but only my father and his men came back. Only recently had I realized that my father must have killed his brother, in the old-fashioned way of immortals, so he could keep his power.
I stopped, brush in hand, as thoughts scrolled through my brain. What had Faðir said? That they’d gone hunting, that Geir had insisted on a race, that he hadn’t known the woods stopped abruptly at a cliff… so had Faðir hounded him off a cliff? Or had he killed him and then thrown the body off the cliff? My heart squeezed painfully, remembering, and I realized that my father must have killed the horses, too. God.
Uncle Geir.
My uncle… the standard of five black bears…
Jess came into the barn, carrying pails of oats. I jumped up. “Jess—do me a favor, put Sorrel back in her stall? Thanks!”
River was in the front parlor, having tea with the Fun Four. I hesitated in the doorway, my brain humming.
“Yes, Nastasya,” River said. “What is it? Will you join us for tea?”
Yeah, that’s gonna happen. “Um, I just had a thought,” I said. “I was wondering if I could talk to you? Alone?”
Ottavio put down his cup, offended. “There are no secrets among us.”
I looked at him with pity. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
River was already standing up. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“Whatever you have to say to her can be said in front of all of us,” Ottavio insisted.
River rolled her eyes at him and took my arm.
When we were sitting on my bed, I told her the story of Uncle Geir, how he’d been the only uncle I’d ever heard of or known about. But I vaguely remembered hearing my father say something about the five black bears on our family standard—how they represented five brothers. Maybe he meant five brothers from long before his time, or maybe he himself had once had four brothers. What had Geir said? That he was the only one left? The memory was foggy. It was a whole bunch of lifetimes ago. Obviously. And I’d been, what, maybe seven years old?
“Just now when I was currying Sorrel, it made me think of my father’s horses and how he’d ridden off with Uncle Geir and his men. He came home without him, saying Geir had gone off a cliff.”
River listened intently, the way she did, her eyes never leaving my face.
“I’ve always believed that Uncle Geir was killed, four hundred and fifty years ago. And that he was the last uncle. And he probably was. Almost certainly was. But… what if he hadn’t quite been killed enough? Like, if Faðir slit his throat but didn’t cut his head off completely, and then they went over the cliff…” Yes. This is the family I came from. “And he wasn’t quite dead, do you see?”
River nodded slowly.
“It would have taken time to heal, maybe even years, and before he could come back for revenge, we’d all been killed anyway,” I said. “Or—what if he wasn’t the last uncle? I have no idea if there were others, when or if they’d been killed.”
“But wouldn’t Geir or some other brother come forward sometime in the last four hundred years to claim the Iceland throne?” River asked. “The whole world believed the entire house in Iceland had been killed. No one knew that there had been one survivor. Surely Geir would have come to claim his power?”
“Hmm. Yeah,” I admitted. “Obviously he would have. I can’t come up with any reason why he wouldn’t. I don’t know—it was just a weird thought I had, and then I remembered my vision about the procession, from my meditation. I don’t know. But you’re right—if anyone else was left, they would have taken over long before now.”
I sighed and leaned against the wall. “I just want to know who’s behind all this,” I said, completely inadequately. “Like, could it be someone we all thought was dead? Someone from the Russian house? Or the house in Libya? But why would they be attacking everyone now? I don’t understand.” I picked at the hem of my blanket in frustration.
“I know,” River said. “It’s almost all I think about—trying to solve this, trying to figure it out. I’ve done everything I know to reveal who’s behind this—”
And again the glaring, unwelcome thought that my magick had ruined the spell of protection. And maybe even other spells, too. Maybe my presence alone, or the existence of my amulet, was making magick wonky in this whole area.
“What is it?” River asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just thinking through all the possibilities.”
If she grilled me, I would last about thirty seconds. I hated lying to her—my life had become so much simpler now that I didn’t have to remember and keep up a long list of lies. In fact, I was opening my mouth to blurt out everything when we heard the doorbell ring downstairs. Hardly anyone ever rang the doorbell—we didn’t get many visitors, and the mailbox was at the end of the driveway, a long way from the house.
Lorenz called, “Nastasya! Package for you!”
River and I made surprised faces at each other. “Been ordering shoes lately?” she asked.
“I wish.”
Downstairs I found a white, medium-size square box on the narrow entry table. Lorenz’s scribbled signature showed where he’d accepted it from the delivery guy.
“It’s heavy,” I said, lifting it. “I can’t see who it’s from—the return address is all smudged.”
“Wait—” River said. Quickly she stepped forward and brushed her fingers over the box, he
r eyes closed.
“Do you feel anything?” I asked softly.
Opening her eyes, she frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I—” She shook her head. “All the same, would you mind opening it here, in front of me? In case it isn’t… benign?”
“No, of course,” I said. “I hope it’s chocolate. Several months’ worth of Snickers bars.”
The smell hit us as soon as I cut the tape. Puzzled, I pushed aside some crumpled newspapers, and then—
It took several seconds for my brain to process what I was seeing. It was Incy? Incy in a box? What?
“Holy Mother,” River said, her voice cracking.
Then it clicked, and I realized I was looking at Innocencio’s head in a box that had been mailed to me. Someone had mailed me his head.
My hands flew from the box as if on fire, and I staggered backward. The truth struck me like gunfire: This is Incy’s head this is Incy’s head so he must be dead Incy is dead and someone mailed his head to me—
It was too much. Reason shorted out. I stared at River as her face grew dimmer at the end of a long, black tunnel. I don’t even remember falling.
Someone was holding my hand. No, someone was patting my hand firmly. Someone was holding my head, smoothing my hair. I was on a hard surface. My head hurt as if I’d hit it on something.
“Sweetie.” River’s voice. “Poor honey.”
I swallowed. “What?” By concentrating I was able to open my eyes, and I looked up to see a circle of faces over me, solemn concern on all of them. Rachel and Lorenz were there, still wearing kitchen aprons. “What happened?” My voice was a croak.
It came back like a freight train, barreling through my consciousness, a fresh horror that made my eyes snap open and lock on to River’s face. “Oh my God. Oh no.”
“Yes, dear,” she said, her face sad. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh God.” I tried to sit up. Roberto was kneeling next to me, and he put his arm around my back. I tried to scramble to my feet, only to find that my knees were wobbly.
I breathed in and out as I crouched there, my hand over my mouth. I searched the crowd for Reyn or Brynne, but they’d missed this terrible scene. “Oh God.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” River repeated.
“Where is it?” My voice cracked.
“On the table,” said River.
I swallowed. “Is it… real?”
“Yes, dear. I’m afraid Innocencio is dead.”
That just made no sense. My brain threatened to shut down again. I was shaky, my senses lit with nauseating adrenaline, my ears full of a high-pitched, anguished keening that only I could hear.
I moved toward the box.
“Dear, do you—” River said, her hand on my arm.
“I have to see.” Maybe it was fake. Maybe we had all been fooled.
Sheer nerves kept bile from rising in my throat as one trembling hand reached out to the box. And there he was again. Innocencio’s beautiful, unearthly, appealing face. I’d seen it almost every day for a hundred years. He looked like he was sleeping.
But there was dried and crusted blood on the plastic lining the box, and the smell made me feel sick. I’d seen severed heads before, of course. I mean, my own family. Later I’d been in town for the French Revolution. The last time I’d seen Incy, in fact, my friend Katy’s head had rolled toward me on a dirty warehouse floor. Because Incy had cut it off.
“Maybe Innocencio didn’t kill Louisette,” Asher murmured, and River looked at him. “Maybe someone killed Louisette and kidnapped Innocencio and then killed him as well.”
Another layer of sadness darkened her eyes. “Yes. It’s possible. This gives us new questions to ask, anyway.” She came to me again, putting her arm around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry, my dear. Perhaps you should go lie down? We can bring you up some tea.”
A hysterical bubble of laughter threatened to erupt as I remembered Anne’s sister Amy joking about how they thought tea solved everything here. Including a severed head, apparently.
Being in my room would feel claustrophobic. “I think… I want to be outside.”
River’s eyes searched mine. “You won’t leave the property?” She meant, You won’t run away, try to run away from this pain? Like you always do?
My throat tightened. I shook my head. As I went out through the dining room, Solis said, “We have to find out where this box came from, who mailed it.”
“We should call the police.” That was Charles.
In the kitchen I saw a meal half prepared and hastily abandoned. The kitchen door led outside. As if sleepwalking, I plodded out toward… anywhere.
CHAPTER 21
The world looked surreal, colors a bit off. The sun was warmer today. It felt weird on my skin, as if I shouldn’t be able to feel warmth or anything normal. I was chilled through, down to my bones, as if I’d never be warm again, didn’t even know what warmth was.
Warmth—sunshine…
“Sea—there you are.” Innocencio jumped off the boulder onto the sand. I was bent over the low tide, scouring the seabed for shells, bits of driftwood, pieces of sea glass. My usual outfit of a sarong was wrapped around me and knotted on top of the thin cloth covering my neck; one hand held up two corners of the hem and I was putting my finds into this pouch.
We’d been in the French Polynesian islands for a couple years. I had gone totally native—living in a hut on the beach, wearing lengths of local cotton as clothing.
I looked up. “Sky—you’re back!” We kissed each other’s cheeks three times, left, right, left, and I patted his shoulder with my free hand. “And how was…”
“London,” he supplied, frowning that I hadn’t remembered.
“That was a short trip!” I said, and then spied a beautiful, tiny conical shell half buried in the sand. I pounced on it and swished it in the water to get the sand off.
“I was gone more than two months.” Innocencio-Sky leaned against the huge rock and crossed his arms over his pale blue linen suit. The tone of his voice made me look up, and I saw irritation on his beautiful face, which was paler after two months in London. In… I thought—March?
“So this is what you’ve been doing?” He gestured to my damp dress. “This is why you wouldn’t come for spring in London?” He shook his head. “Everything was in bloom. You know April is the best month.”
Oh. April. I started some brain gears whirring, trying to get up the speed required to have a conversation with Incy.
“I was planning to come out,” I said vaguely. “Time just got away from me.”
Several years earlier, Incy and I had stopped off in New York City before catching a cruise ship to Greece. New York had always been one of my favorite cities, and it was where we’d first met, back in the 1880s. But in the early 1970s, New York City was a pit. America was in a recession, and NYC had been hard-hit. The city was dirty, run-down, with lots of crime. Hundreds of thousands of people had moved to the suburbs or to other cities with slightly healthier economies. Whole blocks of the Upper West Side were abandoned, with brownstone after brownstone boarded up, graffitied, used as squats by homeless people or drug dealers.
It was awful seeing it like that, and to help take our minds off it, we drank a bottle of champagne and then went to the Metropolitan Museum, on Fifth Avenue. Even the Met seemed lackluster, stuffy. Of course we went to see the Old Masters, many of whom I’d seen when they were current: the New Masters. Or even: the Shocking Upstarts.
I sat for a while in front of a couple of Vermeers—the light in his paintings always brought me back to the north with a nostalgic recognition. I’d lived in all of the Scandinavian countries over many lifetimes. There’s a unique quality of light there, and Vermeer caught it as if by magick and imbued his luminous paintings with it. It made my heart feel heavy and leaden.
We decided to quickly dash through the Impressionists and then get an early dinner before seeing some Broadway play or something. Impressionism sometimes seems the m
ost accessible of all the art periods, the most cheerful. Maybe it’s all the colors. I don’t know. But compared to, say, the German Expressionists, the Impressionists are a bright, humming skip through the park.
But I digress.
The whole point is, that day we’d seen several paintings by Gauguin. Who was, you know, very into Tahiti. The way he painted it made it seem lush, wild, and primitive; bursting with life and juice and sunshine.
So we went to Polynesia instead of Greece, and we stayed there for years.
Leaning against the rock, bits of seaweed strewn close to his handmade Italian sandals, Incy sighed. “I sent you how many wires? You should have come out. I met some great people. Boz was there for a while—we stayed in his fabulous townhouse in Whitehead Crescent. You said you would.”
“I meant to.” I gave up on the day’s hunting—Incy needed appeasement. “I can’t believe you’re back already. I was going to come out in a week or two.” We scrambled up the rocks to the narrow path that led down to this secluded beach. I was one-handed, but Incy, watching me climb up after him, didn’t offer help.
“I’m sorry,” I said as we headed toward the road. “I really did mean to. You know I love being in London with you, April or no. I guess island living has made me fuzzy-headed.” Incy didn’t say anything. “But man, I’m so glad you’re back!” I put extra enthusiasm into my voice. He glanced at me. “I missed you so much,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt, because I guessed I hadn’t missed him quite as much as he’d missed me.
In Tahiti my name was Sea Caraway. After we’d first come and bopped around the islands for a while—Bora Bora, Tahiti, the Marquesas—we’d settled on Moorea, the island closest to the big island of Tahiti. To Incy’s amusement and then concern, I had fallen in love with a little hut on a beach. Pineapple fields came up practically to the back of my house, and for ten months of the year the air was heavy with the sweet fragrance of pineapples ripening under an untamed sun.