Immortal Beloved

  Oh, God. It could even be an amulet. An amulet made of ancient gold and carved with magickal symbols. For example. My head started to spin.

  “I saw the tarak-sin of the house in Coral Bay,” said Charles.

  “Really?” Brynne looked amazed.

  “Yes.” Charles looked very serious. “It was a barbie. They put magickal shrimp on it.”

  For a moment there was silence, then Jess guffawed. Asher cracked up and threw a piece of bread at Charles. River’s face lost some of its seriousness, and she put her hand over her mouth and shook her head.

  “We always tease my brother that our house tarak-sin is his Oscar, which he won for screenwriting, under his other name,” River admitted. “He keeps it in the bathroom.”

  More laughter, but inside I was screaming.

  River cleared her throat and became serious again. “But back to our story. West along that same line was the house in Iceland, in Heolfdavik. Or rather, a small village close to Heolfdavik. That line, sadly, was also destroyed, in 1561, by raiders. And again, a house’s whole power was lost.”

  I couldn’t say anything, just looked down at my plate and wondered if my face was just as white.

  “Truly lost?” Rachel asked. “I’ve never understood that.”

  “Yes,” River said. “The raiders killed everyone in the family, then found the house’s tarak-sin and tried to use it. But they weren’t strong enough, or something went wrong. The story is that they were engulfed in a tower of lightning, leaving nothing behind but ash. And no one knows what the tarak-sin was.”

  It was an amulet. Somehow I’d never realized its significance. I knew it was magickal, knew it was my mother’s most treasured possession, and had kept it hidden forever because it was the only thing I had from my old life. But it was actually a tarak-sin. I had half, so the raiders must have had the other half. No wonder their magick blew up.

  I felt as though I was going to faint. I was trying to keep breathing normally, but my eyes were huge, focused on River’s face. She saw my expression, and I thought I saw something flicker in her eyes.

  Reyn came back and sat down without a word.

  I was looking down, trying to swallow what felt like a golf ball in my throat. I had questions, but I couldn’t ask them now.

  “Brynne,” said River, abruptly changing the subject, “is there any dessert?”

  Brynne jumped but said, “Is there dessert? Did I make dinner? Do I ever make dinner with no dessert? I don’t think so.” She went to the kitchen and returned a minute later with two apple tarts on a tray.

  “Is there any ice cream?” River asked, and Brynne nodded, like, yes, of course we have ice cream, we have tarts, right? In a moment she brought out a container of organic ice cream made at a dairy a couple of miles away.

  I got the feeling that River was giving me time to get a grip on myself, and inside I was frantically clawing at my psyche to get it together, look normal, deflect attention away from myself.

  “So no one from those houses still exists?” Rachel asked.

  “Not that anyone knows about,” said River. “Awaynat is a complete mystery. And no one has ever heard of any survivors from Tarko-Sale or Heolfdavik. And somehow, the houses’ tarak-sins were lost.” River spoke quietly, scooping ice cream onto her tart.

  “We can talk more about that another time,” said Asher, looking at River. “And I can tell you about the last house, which corresponds to the last star in Canis Major. It’s in Salem, Massachusetts.”

  “You’re kidding me.” I forced a bite of tart into my mouth. “Of Salem witch trial fame?” My voice sounded like a croak, and the tart lodged in my throat, choking me.

  “The very same. Guess how many of those ‘witches’ didn’t actually die in their fires?” Solis looked grim.

  “Solis is from the Salem house,” River said gently, and my mind flew to the image of Solis being burned at the stake. For a long time. Without the blessing of death.

  “But there weren’t any people in America several thousand years ago,” said Charles. “Except Native Americans. Right?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Solis, meeting River’s eyes. “At any rate, we’re not going for a star walk tonight.” As if to punctuate his words, a huge clap of thunder exploded, seemingly right outside the building. I tried to gag down another bite of dessert as I heard the rain pattering coldly against the windows.

  I had a lot to think about.

  Later, when I was emerging from a long, hot shower, River was waiting for me outside in the hall. Her eyes were grave but kind.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, rubbing a towel against my wet hair. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She was quiet for a moment, walking beside me back to my room. “It was a lot of information to take in,” she said.

  “Yeah.” I opened my door and draped my towel over a chair by the radiator. “It’s amazing, these huge gaps in my education. On the other hand, I can swear in eight different languages. At least.”

  “Nastasya…” she hesitated. “You were born in 1551. Where?”

  My heart seized and thudded to a stop. I said the first thing that came into my head. “Japan.”

  She pursed her lips. “You’ll have to talk about it someday, my dear.”

  “Talk about what?” I looked at her blankly, something I’ve honed to an art.

  She nodded, then hugged me and patted my wet hair. “Get some sleep. You’ve got work tomorrow.”

  My face fell—I had actually forgotten. River smiled at my expression, then left. I had to think. She wouldn’t try to pin me down, would she? What would I do if she did? I was amazed that there were eight different houses, eight different lines of history. I guessed those were only the main ones, the ones who’d managed to hog a bunch of power. There must be thousands of others. But only eight original tarak-sins? Where had they come from? I pushed my fingers under my thin cotton scarf. What would River think if she knew I had Iceland’s tarak-sin burned into the back of my neck?

  Unable to stop myself, I listened for footsteps, and hearing nothing, crawled under my bed. A small piece of floor molding behind my bed was cracked, and I dug my short fingernails into the crack and pulled it out. I reached into the hole and felt, once again, the heavy gold ornament that always felt warm, no matter where it was. I reassured myself it was there and replaced the molding, lodging it back in tightly and wafting some dust over it so it would look undisturbed. Then I crawled back out and sat on my bed.

  If my amulet was the actual tarak-sin of my house, then it was even more powerful, more valuable, than I had ever known. It was what had gotten my whole family killed. It was what the raiders had come for. It was what they had died for.

  Did anyone suspect that half of it still existed? Was only half still worth killing for?

  CHAPTER 15

  I don’t know if Old MacIntyre was surprised to see me the next morning, on time, but I myself was shocked as hell. It took him about twenty minutes to explain shelf stocking to me, another five minutes to go over the intricacies of the old-but-not-in-a-charming-way cash register, and then another forty-five minutes to put the fear of God into me if I should ever happen to steal anything. He kept the back section, where all the prescriptions were filled, locked, so essentially he was warning me off smuggling Tampax, baby formula, and live bait home in my purse. Whatever.

  I rolled up the sleeves of my sexy and provocative plaid flannel shirt, cut open a carton of Garnier Nutrisse hair dye, and starting stocking my little heart out. Focusing intently on this mind-numbing work meant I couldn’t think about anything else. I was determined not to think about anything else for as long as I could. I’d gulped down my herb tea last night and had slept surprisingly well—no nightmares, no memories. But that was as far as I was going to go with the whole eight-houses thing. I mean, how could I come to terms with that? There was so much I didn’t know about my own past, my own heritage. I’d never wanted to know. Was
afraid of knowing. Look at everything I hadn’t known about my amulet. Now that I knew, it gave me a whole new level of paranoia. Fun!

  After about an eon of mindless drudgery, it suddenly struck me, the whole point of this, what Solis was hoping I would get out of it: He was hoping that this boredom and pointlessness would so overwhelm me that I would suffer a complete psychotic break, run screaming down the street, and disappear out of his life forever. That had to be the thought behind this.

  And, oh, baby, I was close. So close. But something in me forced myself to keep going, and all I could grasp was the humiliating, confusing certainty that my life wouldn’t be any better if I were anywhere else, doing anything else. Also, as hugely as this sucked—and believe me, it sucked big—this was about as much of a disguise as I could possibly manage. No one I knew would ever believe me capable of being here, doing this. I felt camouflaged, and that nameless fear hanging over me still felt that being camouflaged was important. Why? I didn’t know. I was one big mystery, even to myself.

  Someone was near me, had been lingering near me for some time, I suddenly realized. As Meriwether had said, the town in general didn’t have a lot going on, and MacIntyre’s in particular seemed to be on life support—hardly any customers to speak of. Now I realized that there was someone else here. I felt them, felt their energy, though I hadn’t heard the doorbell jangle.

  I gathered up some empty cartons and headed toward the back, glancing down each aisle. It was the punk/goth girl, the one I’d seen twice before, the one I kept running into because this podunk town was so tiny you couldn’t help running into the same people over and over again.

  She glanced at me, trademark defiant look on her face, and I acted as if I didn’t recognize her. But I watched her in the round mirror at the end of the aisle and saw her slip some nail polish into her pocket. I sighed and tossed the boxes out back by the trash can.

  When I came back in, she was waiting impatiently at the checkout counter. Mr. MacIntyre was helping an older woman in back who was getting a prescription, so I muttered a quick prayer that I would remember how to work the stupid cash register and headed over.

  Old Mac had given me some tips on customer service, but since he was one of the most hateful men I’d ever met, I’d ignored them.

  Now I took the stuff the girl had put on the counter and started punching register buttons, hoping I was doing it right. There was no nail polish.

  I dropped the other items into a plastic bag, then said, “Okay, the polish.”

  “What?” The girl was good—semiconvincing unknowingness coupled with a hint of belligerence that would make most people back off.

  “The nail polish you jacked,” I said matter-of-factly. “Hand it over.”

  Her face turned stormy. “I didn’t jack any nail polish!”

  I sighed and shook my head. “You know, you’re doing this all wrong. You jacked two bottles of nail polish that were on sale anyway, two for one. Then you paid full price for this Pixi Lumi Lux Eye Palette of shadows, which isn’t much bigger but cost three times as much. Clearly, you should have jacked the eye shadow and paid for the nail polish. Sheesh.”

  The goth girl stared at me.

  “If you’re gonna lift something, lift something that isn’t on sale,” I went on. It felt good to be instructing others for a change, instead of being instructed myself. “I mean, make it worth your while, you know? Now hand over the nail polish—I’m making you pay for it, just as a life lesson. Then maybe next time you’ll think ahead.”

  I held out my hand and waited.

  The girl stared at me, then looked around the store, checking for Old Mac or security cameras. Seeming bewildered, she dug into her jeans pocket and pulled out two bottles of L’Oreal and put them on the counter.

  “What now? You turn me in?” Her jaw stuck out a bit; her dark-rimmed eyes were sharp.

  “Now I’m charging you for the polish,” I said, ringing it up. “You already gave me your card, and it just processed.”

  “You gonna have me banned from the store?” She grabbed her bag and looked at me in what I assumed was one of her two or three basic expressions: defiance. Geez, who does she remind me of? Let me think.

  I snorted. “Nope. You’re the most entertaining thing that’s happened all morning.”

  “Who are you?” She looked as if she hadn’t meant to ask.

  “Nastasya. Nasty, to my friends.”

  After a moment, the girl said, “Dray, short for Andrea, which sucks, so don’t use it,” and tapped her chest. “ ‘Hey, bitch,’ to my friends.”

  “Pleased to meet you, bitch,” I said, holding out my hand. I kind of meant it, too. After all the goodness oozing out of everyone’s pores at River’s Edge, some good old-fashioned delinquency was refreshing.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she shook my hand. “Pleased to meetcha too, Nasty.”

  • • •

  “How did work go?” River’s question, innocent enough, caused everyone at my end of the table to look up and quit talking.

  I dug into my food and said, “Guess I’ll go back tomorrow.”

  I felt surprise and looked up to see Nell looking at me. It was almost like I could hear her voice inside my head, saying snidely, You mean, they’ll actually let you come back tomorrow?

  But she didn’t say anything out loud, and I wondered whether I was just imagining things or my own magickal senses, now awakened, were growing stronger. Probably the former.

  “Good for you,” said River, and her sincerity was so shining and clear that I felt almost embarrassed. “Oh, and everyone—it’s a new moon tonight, no rain predicted, so if anyone wants to join me for a circle after dinner…”

  Most people nodded yes. I wanted to hide. I still hadn’t recovered from the shocking revelations of the previous night. Somehow, dabbling with magick tonight felt extra threatening. I started to think of a likely excuse, and then the uncomfortable thought came to me: I had spent 450 years avoiding things. Avoiding knowledge. Avoiding magick and power and anything to do with my heritage. Trying to avoid pain. Pretending things weren’t true, weren’t real.

  I was here because I wanted to not be that way anymore, right? The inescapable logical conclusion was that I therefore needed to start facing things.

  I hate logic.

  But clearly I should perhaps take some risks—the kind that weren’t fashion-related. But then again, the few circles I had participated in had made me feel like crap. On the other hand, River was here, and I… trusted her. Amazingly enough.

  Then I noticed Reyn nodding. And Nell, watching Reyn, quickly nodded, too. That decided it: How could I let that opportunity slip past me? Like Oscar Wilde, I can resist anything except temptation.

  “I’m in,” I chimed recklessly, and was rewarded by Nell’s laser eyes. I mean, I’m hardly good yet.

  CHAPTER 16

  You’re coming, then?” River smiled and held her hand out to me. If I weren’t so emotionally retarded, I would have taken it, like a friend, and appreciated the warmth and camaraderie. Since I’m me, I ignored it and just tucked my scarf tighter around my neck. So far River hadn’t asked me anything more about the eight houses, or my reaction, or my background, and I hadn’t offered anything. I didn’t know how long she’d let me get away with that.

  We crunched through the leaves on the ground, feeling the chilly wind coiling around our ankles. As River had said, there was zero moon, and it was black outside in the way that, nowadays, only the middle of nowhere can be black. Two hundred years ago, stars were so much more obvious, the sky crowded with their pinpoints of light. Nervously, I tucked my scarf tighter around my neck, casting glances all around me. For, like, werewolves. Land sharks. Stuff in the dark.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I hate circles, but it’s probably good for me, you know?” See how virtuous I am? Plus, I got to watch another installment of the Reyn/Nell tragicomedy playing out before my eyes.

  “You hate circles?”

&
nbsp; There I went, running my mouth off. “Yeah. I just hate… messing with magick. Big magick. I mean, I like the rush, of course.” I could hear the others in front of us, leading to a clearing, but could barely make out their silhouettes. “But I hate the whole feeling-sick part, the visions, and so on.”

  River stopped, next to me, and it took me a couple of steps before I realized I’d left her behind. “What?”

  I turned back to her. “What?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Um, what what? When?”

  “Just now—you said you felt sick during a circle? You have visions?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I shrugged. “Sometimes. Usually. I guess I just do it wrong.”

  “No, Nastasya.” River’s voice was solemn. “Even if you’re Terävä, you shouldn’t feel sick during a circle or when working spells. And most people usually don’t have visions, unless they’re specifically trying to.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d never talked about this with my friends—I guess I’d just assumed that the magick hit us all in different ways, that some people felt ill afterward and some people didn’t. Looking back, I couldn’t actually recall anyone else mentioning feeling sick after a circle. But anyway, among my crowd, we thought of immortals who did circles as being kind of… Martha Stewart. You know? Quaint, sincere circles. Why bother?

  “Feel sick how?” River seemed very intent. The others had gone on without us, and I was glad I wouldn’t have to find them on my own—I’d be wandering in the Massachusetts woods for months. A nightmare.

  I wasn’t sure why River was pressing this, unless it had to do with my background, my personal history. I was pretty sure she had guessed where I was from. Maybe not all the details. Maybe she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just a big deal that I had these reactions. She was acting like Anne and Solis had, when I’d done that meditation thing.