Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Perhaps,” the man says, “I should have changed into something less threatening before visiting.” He begins to morph. His hair slowly grays and thins until it’s bald on top. The taut skin covering his muscles moves until it’s sagging and wrinkled. Ears and nose grow longer. He shrinks, his clothes now a bit too big for him. The green eyes that were just sparkling a few moments before are now dull with age under bushy gray brows.
“H-how did you do that?”
“I be one of the lucky gods. Me powers are restoring.” He places his coffee cup down on the tiny circular table. “I come because of a promise made to a woman I admired.”
“Answer me. Who are you?” I try to make my voice sound commanding, but the shaky words give my fear away.
“My name is Lugh,” he says, picks up the other coffee cup, and carries it over to me. “Here. You slept poorly last night.”
I’m in a daze and not sure why I take the cup from him, but I do, and it’s almost too hot to hold. “You were watching me?”
He vigorously rubs his nose, his droopy lids almost hiding his eyes. “You make me sound perverted. I’ve merely been trailing you since your arrival in Rome. I was across the way. Could see you through the window.”
“Trailing me? What for?”
As he lifts the cup to take another sip, his hand shakes, not because he’s nervous, but because he’s now as old as sin and seems to be aging to the grave by the minute.
He swallows. “You’ve been watched all your life.”
Now I’m angry, which makes me anxious. I throw a bunch of thoughts I can’t hold back at him. “Are you going to kill me? Because if you are, you should just do it already. Stop toying with me. And will you please stop aging. It’s creepy and freaking me out.”
A laugh bubbles up from his chest, and he coughs around it. “Me heart can’t take such excitement. You don’t seem to understand. If any of the gods wanted you dead, and I be one, you’d be pushing up daisies already.”
I’m not sure what to feel. Scared? I’m not. Sad? I’m not. Anxious? Not anymore.
He adjusts in the chair, wincing in pain. Fingers bent with arthritis, he grips the armrests. His bones under paper-thin skin look fragile and could easily break at any moment.
Curious? That’s what it is. I want to know what he knows.
“I’m okay,” I say. “You can change back before you die.”
Watching him grow young is just as fascinating as it was when he aged. His fingers slowly straighten, hair changes to auburn and more of it sprouts on his head, filling in the baldness, wrinkles smooth out. His back straightens. He grows taller and fills out his clothes.
“Much better,” he says and slurps coffee from his cup. “Me name is Lugh, as I said. I knew your mother well. She was a great woman. Beautiful. Just like her daughter.” He removes a photograph from his pocket and passes it to me. “That’s at her wedding to your father. She made me best man. I knew your uncle, too. Most of your family were dear friends to me. Great people, none better. Your grandmother was a firebrand.”
“And my grandfather.”
“Richard? Ah yes. Great man, that one.”
The picture is of my birth parents in a garden. They must’ve had a non-religious ceremony because my parents were raised in different faiths. My mother’s dress is pale yellow and conservative, something you might wear to a tea party. He wears a blue suit, and his matching tie is messy. To their right is a woman with tight curls, then Lugh.
The digital screen of the alarm clock on the nightstand shows it’s almost nine in the morning. I have no idea what time Marek left the room or when he will return. Since my biological parents died when I was a baby, I only know what Dad told me about them. He left out the part that they were friends with gods and goddesses.
“How did you meet my parents?” I ask.
He leans forward in the chair, his knees almost pushing up to his chest. “At university. Just as I did your grandfather. Since I never age, I enjoy attending colleges and making friends. I’ve been sticking to your family ever since I met Angelique in the Italian countryside.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Let me see. That had to be somewheres near 1820.”
I stare blankly at him. I’ve never heard of the woman before.
Noticing my reaction or lack of it, he clarifies, “She be a relative of yours. One of your grandmothers with all the greats in front of it.”
“I see.” Never heard of her, but it looks like he has more to say, so I don’t ask any questions about my quadruple, or something, great grandmother.
“It’s a lonely life being a god without power. Immortal. Never to age. It raises eyebrows if you stay in a place too long.”
“I guess that would suck.” I actually feel bad for him.
“Especially when you fall in love with a mortal.” He glances at nothing, from what I can tell. “It can’t last long. She ages while you stay young. There be about ten good years, before the questions. It starts with comments about how well you age. That’s when I know it’s time to go. To save me loves from searching for answers, I fake me death. It helps them move on, so it does.”
There’s sadness in his voice that weighs on his words. I know that misery well. I’ve never met my birth parents, but I long for all the what-could-have-been moments—school plays, holidays, and family vacations. Instead, I had those times with my uncle’s family. I’m not complaining, though. I was lucky to get a fantastic dad and a brother who only annoys me part of the time. Jane and I tolerate each other at best. Without her, I wouldn’t have a roof over my head, and all that stuff parents provide.
And that is why, while I’m looking at my mother’s smiling face, that feeling of what-if comes rushing back.
“What was she like?” I mutter, forgetting about my other questions, forgetting that this man is a stranger and I have no idea what he wants.
Lugh’s eyes are glossing like mine. “Have you ever seen sunshine dancing on water?”
“Yes.” I give him back the photo.
He stares at it. “She was like that but a thousand times brighter.” A sigh lifts his chest, and he shakes off the spell the image has on him.
A few tears escape my eyelashes and drop onto my cheeks. I swipe them away and sniff.
“Ahem.” He clears his throat as if he’s trying to hide his emotions. The chair is so snug around him that it almost comes up with him when he stands. He extends a flash drive to me. “A message from your mother.”
It’s then that I realize I’m still pushed against the headboard. I scoot forward and hold out my hand. He drops the flash drive, and it lands on my palm.
“As long as I breathe, you won’t be alone.” He opens the door and hangs inside the frame. “It’s a promise I made to your mother and one I’m making to you. My phone number is on the drive.”
I’m not sure what to say, but I don’t have to come up with anything because he leaves, the door closing behind him with a soft click.
I fixate on the flash drive in my hand, playing with the sliding button, watching the metal USB plug extend and retract. A message from my mother? I’ve only seen photographs of her. My dad said all videos of her were lost. Was this a recording of her?
My stomach is all in electrical knots. Excitement sparks from within me and zaps across my skin, over my skull, and down to my toes. I’m about to see my mom in real movement, maybe even hear her voice for the first time.
I decide to distract myself and get dressed. That way I’ll be ready when Marek gets back, and we can leave right away. The public library isn’t too far from here. We can view it there.
…
The library isn’t busy. The flash drive is in the port, but I can’t bring myself to click and open it.
Marek’s been on guard since finding out about Lugh getting into our hotel room. Doesn’t matter that the god didn’t do anything harmful. But Marek’s too busy looking for someone that resembles a god to see Lugh. He’s in his old man state, and I’ve already spotted him twice. Once on the street and now sitting at one of the tables with a stack of books. Come to think of it, I may have seen him over the years before he broke into my room this morning.
“We might have to use your grandfather’s rules for ditching a tail again.” I move the cursor over the navigation pane, drag the mouse down to the drive, and click. There’s a frozen image of my mother on the screen.
“Why? Is he here?” Marek casually rotates, scanning the room.
“Old man at the table over there.” I nod my head in Lugh’s direction. “With the books stacked as high as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
Marek rests his butt against the edge of the table. “That’s him?”
“He can make himself young and old at will. He’s a Celtic god. Known as a trickster and other things—smith, craftsman, and warrior.” Acting as if I’m getting something out of my jacket draped over the back of the chair, I do a sneak-look over my arm at Lugh.
“You’re stalling,” Marek says when I straighten. He holds out a set of old headphones.
I snatch them from him. “No, I’m not.” I totally am, nervous about what my mother had to say. It’s like having a ghost visit from the grave. “All right, I’m ready.”
The headphones wobble every time I move. So irritating. I try to keep as still as a pole in concrete. My mother’s young, maybe in her mid to late twenties, and she resembles me. Same brown hair and hazel eyes. Same body build, more on the curvy side. Same dusting of freckles over an upturned nose. She wears her hair away from her face. Doesn’t care about showing her widow’s peak. I hide mine under side-swept bangs. It makes her face look like a heart. It’s almost as if I’m staring into a mirror. I click on the play arrow.
“Now,” a man’s voice says somewhere offscreen. It could be my father. I use the mouse and drag the play bar back to hear him again. “Now.” Deep and confident for such a small word.
My mother smiles. She’s sitting at a table inside a small kitchen. “Hello, um…I’m sorry. Can we start over?” She has no accent. Her family immigrated to America from Italy in the early 1900s.
“Of course,” the man says. He does have an accent, just like Safta and Saba, his parents. “I’ll edit it out.” He obviously never did.
Taking a deep breath, she continues, “Hello, my dear Ana’le … um …Analiese. I’m your mother, Alea.” A nervous laugh escapes her lips. “But you probably know that. So, if you’re viewing this recording, then Mommy and Daddy are gone. We wanted so much to be with you, our little butterfly.”
“It wasn’t a butterfly, it was a moth,” the man offscreen says.
A moth? Could it have been a death’s-head hawkmoth?
My mother frowns at him. “I don’t care. It didn’t look like a moth to me. Now you’ll have to edit that out, too.”
“I know. I know. Continue.”
“Okay, where was I?” She lowers her head and then looks up. “It doesn’t matter. Analiese, know that we love you deeply.” She chokes on a sob and pauses to regain her composure.
Her glassy eyes stare back into the camera. “Sorry. This is hard. Saying goodbye to you is tearing our hearts out. Our baby. You’re so tiny. Uncle Eli will take wonderful care of you. What I’m about to tell you shouldn’t be too shocking. We’ve instructed Lugh to only deliver this recording once you’ve learned of the hidden secrets within our world. I hope that you never have to see this. That you live a happy life without the knowledge of what you are.”
She picks up a glass of water, takes a long sip, and puts it down. “You are a descendant of the death god, Soranus. Which means you are a Death Riser. Just like me, just like Daddy and Uncle Eli and our ancestors. You can raise the dead.
“Those brought back to life can also be controlled by you. The Risen, that’s what they’re called, will do whatever you command. At first, the Risen seem normal, but they will turn into beasts. Beasts that can tear gods to pieces. Powerful and without a conscience. You must not bring anyone back from death. Gods will want to use your power as a weapon in their war. No matter what a god may offer you, don’t give in. Don’t be that weapon for them. For all humankind will become their slaves again.”
Tears run down her cheeks. “Daddy was adopted, so Safta and Saba don’t know any of this. You mustn’t tell them. It is why we’re sending you to live with Uncle Eli.”
She looks over the camera at who I think is my father. “Did I miss anything?”
“I think that’s it.” A chair scrapes across the floor somewhere in the kitchen. A man comes into view dragging it. He places it beside my mother and sits down. Lanky, sporting dark hair with unruly curls, he holds my mother’s hand. “Ana’le, it’s Daddy. I want you to always remember that I love you with all my soul. There isn’t the proper word to express how deep that love is.”
My mother places her free hand on her heart. “I love you, butterfly.”
He says something in Hebrew like what Safta and Saba use, but I don’t understand him.
She frowns again. “Jake, she might not know Hebrew. She’ll be raised in America. Eli isn’t Jewish.”
“You’re right.” He grabs the back of his neck. That’s when I notice that both my parents look tired. “It means,” he says, “love is like the wind, you can’t see it, but you can feel it.” He grabs my mother’s hand. “Feel our love, Ana’le. We are always with you—”
The recording freezes, my mother’s lips pressed together and my father’s mouth wide open as if he was going to say more. I remove the headphones and place them on the table.
“What did they say?” Marek asks.
He puts the headphones on and listens to the recording. When it ends, he looks at me with concern. As if I’ll fall apart. I’ve never seen my birth parents in motion—living and breathing. At the same time my heart is swelling to capacity, it’s also losing air at my mother’s puncturing reveal.
Marek’s hand covers mine, bringing my attention to him. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
I’m okay.
My skin is sensitive to Marek’s touch—every slight tremor registers high on my internal Richter scale.
I take a measured breath, filling my lungs and releasing it slowly through my nose. There’s a poster of a woman reading to a boy. It’s in Italian, so I don’t know what it says. Most likely something promoting literacy. The hum of a water fountain breaks the shell of silence over the library.
I’m okay.
The anxiety bubbling up my chest recedes. I am okay. Today is a spectacular day. Today I’ve seen my birth parents alive within a recorded time capsule. But their sadness crushes me. Their final hours of life marred by the idea they’d have to give me away. And I want answers.
I charge over to Lugh. Marek’s footsteps behind me are muffled against the carpet. Lugh’s old hunched shoulders straighten just a hair. He’s fragile in this state, and I’m glad for it. Because if he were in all his god glory, I wouldn’t be as brave as I am right now. I sit in the seat across from him. Marek drops on one beside me.
“Why did my parents send me away?”
He gives me a questioning look and scratches inside his ear. “You know, the old sure do grow a lot of ear and nose hair. I wonder why that is.”
“No, you don’t,” I snap. “No distractions. Just answer my question.”
“All right,” he says. “Don’t give me the evil eye like that. I’ll tell you. Your mother was discovered. It was only a matter of time before they killed her. She sent me off with you. I brought you to your uncle.”
“Why? Who killed her?” The chair is solid, but I’m sinking. I place my hands on the tabletop to steady them.
“You see,” he says. “Death Risers went into hiding when the first piece of the Divinities Keep be found centuries ago. Some keepers of the talisman decided that getting rid of all Death Risers would prevent gods from using them as weapons. They formed a group, Lares, the name for ancestral spirits, deities that guard each family. The Lares believe they be protecting mortals by eliminating the Death Risers.”
Marek shifts in his seat. He probably has the same question that I have. I stay quiet and let him ask it. “Was my grandfather a Lares?”
Lugh’s face is growing younger, his shoulders expanding. “If he were a Lares, Analiese would be dead already. He protected her. Eli knew your grandfather well. They’d even meet in the park while you played in that jean jacket with the unicorn and stars patches.”
“How do you know that?” I sound croaky, so I clear my throat. “About the jean jacket.”
“I be there a few times.” He’s back to his younger self.
I glance over both shoulders to make sure no one saw his change. The tables are empty.
Lugh smiles. “I take care changing. Make sure no eyes be around to see. Now then, the two of you were devising a plan to ditch me. Best get on with it. I’m in the mood for games today.”
“We weren’t—”
Marek cuts me off. “You’re worried I’ll side with the Lares. That’s why you’re following us.”
“You’re not as careless as I thought.” Lugh looks from him to the librarian passing by. She’s an attractive woman, short hair, average height, a little weight in all the right places. Something behind the woman catches his eyes. He’s rapidly aging. “Your wish is about to come true. You’re going to lose me. Go out the emergency door. It’s behind me. Don’t look back. Just go.”
The librarian stumbles, noticing Lugh’s change.
“What is it?” I ask, but Marek is up, tugging at my arm, urging me to go.
“Don’t ask questions,” he says. “We have to go.”
I take a few steps, turn around, and whisper, “The Colosseum.”
Lugh nods, and I can see the side of his mouth lift.
Marek and I weave around the tables to the emergency exit. The alarm goes off when he pushes the door open. A chorus of screams belt out, and the crashing of furniture follows, and I catch a last glimpse of the library before the emergency exit shuts.
I see them. I see him. And I just stare at the closed door. Two beasts. The Risen that can tear a god apart. They could rip Lugh to pieces. With the Risen was a man commanding them. A man I’d seen before in the photographs around Shona’s apartment. Her father.
Our missing number twenty-six.
Joel Jackson.