No Time to Cry (Nine While Nine Legacy Book 1) (7 page)

“Knows all, sees all, keeps them in
line?”

“Exactly. Next you’ve got the
Lanmhuchadh, what’s more commonly referred to as the Reaper. They orchestrate
the death of the individual, bring about the demise…”

“So is that what, who, did this to me…or
was it Liam…or was it you?” My voice was back to a seething moodiness, after an
instance of heated memory of Liam and now dealing with his detached state,
stoked also by Gideon’s indifference of all of it, all of this information.

“It was your Lanmhuchadh, not either of
us. Liam was simply your Coimhdeacht.”

“And you?”

“I’m your Caomhnoir.”

“Not mine.”
Mine.
That whispery
voice in my head again, echoing one word—
mine. “
Maybe his, but never
mine.”

My heads was spinning. Was he serious?
Was this really happening? Was this guy sincerely spouting all of this off to
me? I was seeing it on a diagram he’d illustrated on the coffee house napkin,
but…was this the for real?

“So last we have the Coimhdeacht…the
Usher.” He gestured to Liam. He drank more of his coffee. Calm, as if, this was
nothing. How many times had he done this? “They also serve as escorts, as in
your case.”

“My case.”

“Yes, retrieving you from California.”
This was insane. None of this was happening. The words on the napkin made no
sense to me. I looked at them, written in his elegant penmanship. What language
was it? None of this was true. They were crazy. Or not real. Shaking my head,
to myself. Because they couldn’t possibly be real. I stood up, even though the
room churned and the floor dipped, and I could barely breathe. I walked away,
but a hand—Gideon’s hand—grabbed my wrist. Momentarily stopping me in my
tracks. I froze.

His touch. I looked down at his hand,
his fingers wrapped around my forearm. His touch. Warm, tingling, firm—but not
hurtful—an anchor to my drowning all the same. What was this? They were crazy?
Or was I? I yanked my arm from his grasp, backing away to the doorway. They did
not move. Where would I go? Was I awake? Dreams were never like this. Dreams
darted about, they were not sequential. I had to be awake. That left me with
crazy.

“What are you going to do Iliana? Walk
back to Los Angeles?” Gideon asked, not even turning in his seat or looking my
way. Calling me by my new name. He had a point. Everything I had was at Liam’s,
and though I knew my way back, I didn’t have a key. But anywhere but here, with
them, was better. An improvement to all of this.

“Iliana?” This time it was Liam.

And him. Why had I left L.A. with him?
Why had I believed him? So what if someone—several
someones
—had
walked through me. Had they actually? Or did I just think they had? Where was
the factual, solid proof that what they said was true? Maybe my hand passing
through the door knob was hallucinatory, a result of the power of suggestion
and really strong, really awesome drugs.

Liam stood up, started to move toward
me. I touched my fingers to my lips, remembering the feel of his kisses. I’d
wanted those kisses, loved those kisses—craved more. My lips still felt plumped
from them.

“No.” I said against those thoughts. It
tore from me as some sort of sob. “This is insanity.”

“Whether you find it to be insane or not,
does not change the fact that it is indeed real.” Gideon pointed out.

I turned, shut my mind to them and ran
from that room, from that coffee house with the idiotic apropos moniker. I ran
in the rain and slowed only when I realized neither of them was following me.

Why hadn’t they followed?

 
~ Chapter Six ~

Where
was I going? I didn’t know anyone in Seattle—not anymore. I didn’t have my cell
phone, or tablet, or even my purse. I only had a twenty dollar bill that I’d
stuffed into my back pocket.

So I wandered. I wandered and replayed
it all over and over in my mind. I roamed all around the Capitol Hill area,
staying to the shadows, and when that seemed unsafe and ridiculous, I ventured
to Broadway, where I stared into shop windows, and then stopped my pointless
meandering at a Thai restaurant.

The smell had stopped me in my tracks;
the amazing smell of cooking food—real food—making my mouth water, my stomach
grumble. I was lured in easily. Seemed to be a habit.

Once I was sitting, just how tired I was
washed over me again and I melted into the red vinyl seat of the booth. I
ordered a pot of hot jasmine tea and an order of spring rolls. I was suddenly
starving, and I was soaked through from the rain.

I had to figure this out. This was not a
dream. That much was obvious to me. As much as I may want it to be ersatz,
every moment was too clear, lucid, and coherent. Dreams did not work that way.

I was on my second pot of tea when Liam
found me at the far back corner of the restaurant. Huddled sadly and
pathetically, hair still wet with rain even though I’d tried drying it with
napkins, in my out-of-the-way booth. He sat down across from me, uninvited,
much like our first meeting. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t look at him. I
didn’t acknowledge him in anyway. I just drank my tea, and shivered.

A smart phone slid across the table,
picture up to me. It was Facebook. It was my Facebook page. So, here was my
proof. My wall was covered, overflowing, with sadness and remembrances. A
flooding of condolences. A plethora after only twenty four hours.

For my death.

My untimely, mysterious death.

I shoved his phone back across the table
at him. My mind was an explosion. Blindness.

I must have begun to leave, because I
found myself being pulled back down into the booth by him, to his side of the
booth.

“I know it’s not easy. I know it’s
scary. I know it’s horrible, and I’m sorry—so sorry. But it has happened, it is
happening. And now we have to deal with this Iliana,” he spoke in a gentle
manner, using my new name again. He held my face in his hands, staring intently
at me. His touch so warm on my still chilled skin.

I was shaking my head, and he was making
it nod within the support of his hands. Such a silly, simple gesture, but it
made me laugh, softly, very softly and barely, but still a laugh. And then I
was crying. In his arms. Folded against him crying. The tears invisible against
his rain drenched jacket.

“Please tell me that it’s faked. That
you hacked my account and posted all of those,” I hiccupped into his chest.

“If you don’t believe those, check the
web. There are several websites that have write-ups on you, what happened. It’s
real Iliana.” He paused.

 His arms felt so good to be back
in, that I let the name use slide, though I hated it.

“I’m sorry. I wish that it was just a
hoax, a very bad one, but it’s all valid.” He wiped his thumbs gently under my
eyes, wiped away the new tears. I tucked into him tighter. “It doesn’t have to
be awful. It is possible to start a new life, be happy with this new life.”

“Gideon is horrible. He’s so cold.
Unfeeling. So nonchalant about the end of my life.”

“Gideon’s…just Gideon. He’s done this so
many times, it’s just business as usual for him. It has to be.”

“And for you? What about you?”

“I’ve been doing this awhile,” he sighed

“I wasn’t talking about your job
.
”
I slapped my twenty down on the table and stood up; hurried from the
restaurant.

All of this was beyond bad enough
without trying to figure out the whole
snogging
thing.

“Come on Iliana.” He caught the tail of
my coat as I stormed up the sidewalk. The rain had lessened, was just softly
misting now. “Wait up.”

I stopped and faced him.

“So it’s real. So I’m dead. And now I’m
supposed to be some part of some…whatever it was he was talking about. And I
get to work for some unfeeling jerk at a job I don’t want and I have nothing.
And no one. And all the kisses meant nothing.” I moved on in the direction of
his apartment. “Or can’t mean anything…or…whatever. And maybe it shouldn’t, I
mean really,” I laughed.

 Hmm, did that sound borderline
hysterical?

“What was I thinking? You tell me I’m
dead and I make out with you? That’s crazy. You we’re just doing your
job—soothe the newbie, keep her calm and under control. I get it. So don’t
worry about it. It’s done. Forgotten. Absolutely.”

It felt mean and I felt a twinge of
viciousness as the words finished passing my lips.

Because I knew the kisses weren’t
just
nothing
, not to me and not to him either. I’d been with guys who didn’t
care…and this had been different, had felt different. But still, I was hurting
and childishly I wanted him to hurt too. And it’s not as though he didn’t
deserve them with all of his push-and-pull indecisiveness.

All the way to his place he was silent.
Very downcast and brooding as he unlocked his door.

I was still full of indignation and not
quite finished. “And you know what? Gideon is just going to have to…”

“Have to what, Sweetness?”

Gideon.

My heart jumped into my throat, wedged
like a lump of ice.

Gideon was here.

 Waiting on the couch. I turned to
Liam, but he was already up the hall, his bedroom door slamming.

“Nothing,” I lied. All the fire
dissolved from me again.

“Ah. But we both know that
nothing
is always something.” He smiled that disarming smile, but his eyes were flint,
the smile didn’t touch them. “Sit. Relax.”

“I’d rather stand.” I was without oxygen
again.

He stared at me, his head cocked to one
side, his eyes narrowed. “So spit it out. What were you saying to Liam? I’d
love to hear it.”

Should I say it? Tell him what I was
really thinking about him? Could he take this life from me? What little of a
life it was. Why was he here, and how had I ended up alone with him again?

And what was that feeling? A prickling
up the back of my neck, a sharpness through my mind, the humming rapidly
shifting throughout my body. That whisper wrapping through my psyche.

~Milseachd ~

I fought it, gritted my teeth against
it. “I was just telling Liam how you need to stop being such an ass.” And there
it was. Out. A giant matzo ball. Did his left eye just twitch? Oh, he did not
look too pleased at all.

“Excuse me?” He stood and I backed up a
step before I realized that I was even moving.

He was tall. I’d been absolutely
correct. I’d have to go with the six feet five inch guess.

He looked even more formidable now.
Broader in the shoulders than he’d seemed when seated, and he exuded that
power.

But my mouth was on a roll. “You need to
stop being an ass. You’re cold and unfeeling, and you could have handled all of
this with me, I’m sure, in a much better way. There had to be a better way. It
might be same-old-bullshit-day for you, but for me this was monumental. Did you
forget that? Has it been so long since it happened to you that you don’t
remember? What it was like to lose everything, everyone that meant anything to
you. To be ripped away from it all. Or maybe you were never human. Maybe you were
always…this.” I spit out that last word with a touch of disgust.

My heart was pounding, racing with a
cocktail of anger and fear—he had moved across the room and planted his feet
firmly in front of me.

The way he moved and walked was all
quiet resolute power, and dominance.

“You’re treading a fine line. You need
to rein it in and be careful,” he said ominously.

“Or what? What Gideon?” Why did his name
feel so good on my tongue?
No! Stupid, stupid thought!
The air around us
felt heated, charged.
I moved closer to him. I wanted him to feel how
much I hated him. I wanted him to feel the waves of it rolling off of me.
Willed it. “What else can you do?” I challenged.

“I’m your Cerberus.” Deadly cold.

“Not mine.” Just as low, just as lethal.

“Yours.”

And there it was… weaving softly through
my mind, down my spine.

Yours.

And the scent of
amber, myrrh,
frankincense; smoky and woodsy and spicy—a slight hint of carnation—making my
head swim.

And then the floor was rushing up to me.
And my head fell back, suddenly heavy and floating at the same time. Then arms
around me, just before I would have struck the floor. Strong arms—and that
scent, that wonderful, mesmerizing scent—wrapped around me, lifted me.

“Iliana.” That voice. Gideon’s voice.
Deep and rumbly. Just the right timbre that struck me in some mystifying way.
And I was there, but not there, unable to even lift my arms to wrap around him.
That would have been nice.

Safe…
S
ábháilte

The word whispered through my head.

The room moved in and out of focus.

“Liam! Get in here!” And then Gideon’s
face so close

to
mine, but those eyes weren’t burning darkly with anger. There was something
else in them. Something that made me feel…taken aback, shaken, not in an
unpleasant way, but in a faraway sense. I felt there and somewhere else at the
same time. Was it worry that I saw in them? True concern? Maybe a hint, a tiny
hint of tenderness? My skin felt like Sprite was bubbling just under the
surface, and I couldn’t move, but the tingling, bubbling sensation made me giggle
ever so slightly. The sound felt far from me, as If I was hearing someone
across the room, not my own voice.

 It wasn’t fair that Death, or his
associates, were so beautiful. Thankfully, I passed out, my eyes slipping closed,
before I could utter the words that were settled on the tip of my tongue.

That I could look into his eyes forever.

Somehow I don’t think that would have
gone over very well with him after calling him an ass.

Voices.
I could hear voices fading in and out, bits of conversation. Liam and Gideon,
they sounded worried, maybe even fearful.

“I’ve never seen this happen before.”
Gideon murmured. “Who the hell is she?”

“I watched the Lanmhuchadh serve her the
tainted drink, he signaled before so I could cull her. How is she not Lissa?
How is she not the right one?”

“I’m waiting on those answers.”

“She’s going to be alright, isn’t she?”
Liam countered.

“I need to make more calls. Nothing about
this, about her, has been usual. She was not the one on our notice. She’s not
human. But if she was Sióg she’d know all of this already.”

“Something about her is…so different.”

“She’s more…something more than we were
expecting.”