No Time to Cry (Nine While Nine Legacy Book 1) (6 page)

 “I do want to apologize for the
manner in which you were collected,” he offered. “And for whatever else is
going on.”

My heart stuck a beat. How did he know
about the kisses with Liam? Had he told him? Was that a part of their private
little dialogue moments ago?

“What?” I asked cautiously.

“The way you look.”

Oh. Okay…not about the kisses?

“What? What’s wrong with the way I
look?” Now he was going to insult me?

“Absolutely nothing.” His eyes grazed my
face, drinking me in again.

What was that flicker in his eyes?

“And everything. You should not look
like you. You should look nothing like your previous self.”

“Well, I kind of don’t actually. And why
wouldn’t I?”

“You also turned corporeal too soon. It
should have taken hours, not minutes, for your spirit to develop a new body.”

“But why would I
not
look like myself?
And if I look so similar, fix this, let me go back. Let me have my life back,”
I demanded. I pleaded.

“No can do. And to keep things
straight—you did die. Your body was found shortly after you left your apartment.”
He stared intently at me, almost a glare. “Let me be clear, you pissed me off
plenty with what you pulled by pillaging your apartment. You should
not
be asking me for anything right now.”

“I didn’t take anything obvious, and I
only took what I needed.”

 “You have no idea what you need
now.” He paused, leaning back into his chair, and drank from his cup. He
appeared to be having a latte, or maybe it was a cappuccino? “
Nothing
should have been taken,” he growled lowly.

 
Then he shrugged, his expression lightening
some. A slight look of compassion passed over his face, through his eyes. “I’m
not sure what has happened, or why, or why it was different with you in
particular. It’s being looked into. But make no mistake, you were on the
schedule to be culled. You were on the schedule to become Coimhdeacht, and
Seattle was owed a Coimhdeacht, so your new home is now Seattle. There is
nothing more to it than that. It was not a personal choice of anyone in the
Rúnaigh. It just is. It is not your position to question what has been in place
since the beginning.” A look that I didn’t quite know how to label crossed his
face, gone as quickly as it had shown up. Was it confusion? As if a war between
hardness and tenderness had just coursed through him.

I put my face in my hands, hiding from
him, from looking at him. My emotions and sensibilities were too much all over
the place, and looking at him was just far too perplexing, too beguiling…in
addition to everything else that was going on.

Silence. Except for our breathing. I
knew the fire was crackling as it licked at the wood, that I should be hearing
the murmur of other patrons up the hall, through the open door. And the music,
music had been playing. But now, all was still—except for our breathing.

I focused on it. Why?

Things were so overly surreal now. Our
breathing seemed to be synced. And I could
feel
Gideon. Feel his anger,
tempered, but still present…lying just under that something else. Some other
emotion. What was it? Something strong. Strong enough to overpower the heated
displeasure.

I reached out to him, my mind, no…some
part of me that I didn’t recognize stretched out to him. I felt drowsy, yet
completely in tune with what was happening. The humming tremor increased.

Warmth. Concern.

Really? Hard to believe coming from him,
but waves of it were coming towards me so strong it was nearly tangible. How
could I feel that?

No. I was delirious. All the shock and
trauma was affecting my logic, to think I could read his feelings like that.
But I had to force myself not to look up at him anyway, to see his face, what
may have been visible there.

I could feel him staring. He was
waiting. But what else was there to say? I think I’d been pretty clear and
rather thorough in my tirade. What else could I say? His bafflement in regard
to the way I looked didn’t sit well with me. Something seemed off, but he’d
already told me he was working on that. And I was worn out, I was drained.

I felt like crying. I felt like
whimpering to him;
please make this all go away. I want my life back. I want
my home back and my friends…I want never to have met you.
But my brain
tickled and that shiver ran through me when I thought that last part.

I didn’t raise my head until I heard
Liam return. I tossed my hair back out of my face.

Gideon was eased back into his chair,
his feet propped on the table in front of him. Relaxed, but still watchful,
waiting, as he sipped his coffee. I purposefully looked at Liam and not to
Gideon.

“So, did you do it? Was it your mistake?
Are you the one that screwed this up?” I asked pointedly. Not really wanting to
converse with him, or look at him, when he’d been so clear about avoiding me,
and acting so contrite towards me.

He shook his head and met my eyes. The
look in them made my heart twist and I squeezed my eyes shut against it.
Against him.

“Liam did his job correctly. We don’t
know that anything has been
screwed up
. I’ve essentially never seen
this, or heard of it before,” Gideon interceded. “This will be investigated and
sorted. But have no misconceptions, your name was on that list. You were meant
to die, you were meant to be our newest Coimhdeacht.”

I didn’t turn to Gideon as he spoke his
harsh words. I kept my eyes closed. There was that word again, Coimhdeacht.
Everyone knew what a Reaper was. Death. But a Coimhdeacht? What the heck was
that anyway? I am supposed to play ‘death’ with them?

I felt hysterical laughter bubbling up
inside of me. In all my gothic days I never would have dreamed of myself being
within the court of Death. All the playing at vampire clubs, gothic nightclubs,
and writing of supernatural romance novels had not prepared me for this.

After several heartbeats, that seemed to
stretch out for many minutes, I found my voice, pushing the hysteria down deep.

“So what now? What am I supposed to do
with this information? I’m dead. Chosen to be some sort of assistant to Death.
I’ve got a new body, but I should not look like this. So what does this all
mean? My head is going in circles and you’ve yet to give me any useful answers
that I can actually grasp.”

Was I pushing too far? Did I care at
this point?

Gideon didn’t speak.

I only opened my eyes when I was
startled by the slap of something coming down hard on the coffee table. My eyes
jumped to him. He was pushing a large manila envelope toward me across the
polished wood.

“A new identity for starters.” He
settled back into the chair in an austere manner.

I leaned forward, my heart tripping. I
stared at the envelope waiting there for me.

A new identity? A vision of myself
asleep
on that couch flitted through my mind. By now I, that other body, was long
gone. Discovered and taken away. Everyone would know by now; that Isabelle was
dead. Gone forever. Dead. Tears filled my eyes. Hot and stinging. I would
not
let them spill. I would
not
let Gideon see them.

Eventually I looked up at him, trying to
read his expression—or maybe his mind. And why was Liam so silent through all
of this?

Gideon raised an eyebrow at me and gave me
a half smile, gestured to the packet, as if to tell me to take it…it was mine.

I lifted it gingerly from the table,
terrified of what fresh hell lay inside, my eyes still on him. Why did it have
to be so hard
not
to look at him? I bit my lip and stared down at the
envelope, weighing it in my hands, it was fairly heavy. Curiosity got the best
of me. I opened the crisp package without a word to either of them and poured
its contents onto the table. I touched the items, turning them over in my
hands, studying the details of each.

There was a birth certificate, passport,
driver’s license, social security card, bank book. But not a thing, said
Isabelle Finne. Instead, they all had the name Iliana Evenwicht. Pretty name,
but it wasn’t mine. And the driver’s license and passport had a picture of me
on them. How had he managed that?

Staring down at the bits and pieces of
my new self laying on the table, the actuality and magnitude of the situation
struck me with finality, deeper than ever before, with its permanence and
certainty.

 I wouldn’t think it was possible
to feel any more lost than I already was—but I’d be wrong in that opinion.
Somehow I had managed to become even more adrift. “It’s really over…” I
whispered.

Liam held out a steaming cup of coffee
to me. French pressed. My favorite. I didn’t reach for it. He set it on the
table in front of me.

“Drink up, Sweetness,” Gideon said, his
tone soft, warm. It stole pleasingly into my ears and wrapped, without
invitation, around my heart.

He took it all away.
I reminded
myself. He wasn’t the one who had drugged me, but he was a part of it. He’d
sent Liam for me.

Coffee. Maybe it would be good for me,
clear things up a bit in my brain some. It was normal anyway, real, and I was
so tired.

I wrapped my fingers around the large
bowl-like mug, breathed in the comforting aromatic steam before blowing on it,
sampling it. It was good, slightly smoky, smooth and robust. The best I’d had
in a very long time, maybe ever.
Of course it would be,
I thought dryly.
Why wouldn’t the coffee served at Death’s establishment be the best? I took
another sip, soaking up the warmth into my chilled hands from the heated
ceramic.

“Mysterious ways Iliana,” Gideon offered
just as I was preparing to pose to him the question as to how these documents
had come into being and how could they possibly have new pictures of me on
them.

That unnerved me. Had I muttered it
without knowing? Or was it like earlier, when I’d been with Liam and he’d
‘heard’ a thought from me?

“So, what do I do?” I looked directly at
Gideon. “And why did this happen? Why am
I
supposed to be
this…Coimhdeacht?” My voice was diminished and empty of any traces of emotion
at this point, drained away by the trauma and exhaustion.

 I was tired of it. And tired of
feeling whiny. Was I being whiny? I think I probably deserved to be so under
the circumstances. But by nature I was not a whiny person. I normally faced
problems head on and figured them out, resolved them. But this was not within
my power to figure out.

 I was at this man’s mercy in
finding out any information in which to utilize to better this situation.

A look passed between Liam and Gideon,
as if they were having a silent conversation. Weirder things had been happening
the past twenty-four hours.

“First, forget everything you’ve ever
been taught.” He drank from his cup, put his feet back up. So relaxed, so calm.

I wondered how many times he’d done
this. How many years. Had he gone through the same ordeal? How old had he been
when it had happened to him? What had his life been like?

I looked at Liam. Had he also been
through this? Had he been as upset, traumatized? How many years ago? He’d told
me a lot about his life on the trip from California, but never anything about
what he did now. Or how long ago all of that had been. My heart softened
towards him—just a little.

“The skeletal figure in a black cloak
with a scythe, all media hype, movie BS. Death looks like anyone. And it’s not
just one entity performing the task. It’s a multitude making it happen, an
entire array of positions existing to make one common goal come about.”

He stopped speaking, rubbed his hand
across his mouth, contemplating something heavily before proceeding.

“Bollocks, what the hell.” He grabbed a
napkin, and retrieving a pen and book from the side table he began to sketch a
diagram, talking as he did it. “So at the very top you’ve the Na Ceann
Comhairle.” I watched his hand scribbling across the white paper, he had nice
penmanship—of course he did.

Liam interceded. “Are you sure, Gideon?”
He waved at the napkin. “I thought we were waiting to hear—”

“Just the very basics.”

Liam shrugged and relaxed back into his
chair. “Your call.”

“The what?”

The room felt skewed and I was having a
hell of a time grasping his words.

He looked up from under his brow, his
head still tilted to his jotting. “Na Ceann Comhairle.” He kept writing, as if
that tidbit of information was self explanatory. Then you have the
Roghnú
D
eireadh
,”
he paused and glanced at me again, “they deliver the death notice, write it up.
They are the bringers of fate, to a certain degree.”

Was I really hearing all of this?

“Then you have the Caomhnoir. The
Caomhnoir watches over all the
Na Teagmhasach Bháis
,
an overseer or supervisor, a guardian. He keeps everyone in line and doing their
jobs. They’ve kindly dubbed me their Cerberus, not to be confused with the
three headed dog of Greek mythology, I’m sure they’ll fill you in on that.