Listening to him speak softly to me, it was as if we were the only ones in the room. I closed my eyes, my face still turned toward him and took the excuse to break eye contact and retreat, at least visually, into my own head, to try and come to terms with the overwhelming feelings hitting me.
“The first time I met you was approximately seven hundred years ago. The Black Plague struck a little town in France you were living in. You were fourteen at the time. Your father was dead and your mother was recently struck down by the disease. You had five younger siblings you were caring for when you got sick. But you were supposed to make it. I came to your bedside, ready to intervene if necessary. As soon as I saw you, I knew I wouldn’t have to. Even then, ravaged with sickness, you were the most beautiful mortal I’d ever seen.
“I still remember you turning to one of your younger sisters who was petrified to leave your side, fearing her last caretaker would die if she so much as stepped a foot away, and telling her you weren’t leaving her. And I knew you weren’t going to need me. You’d make it all on your own.
“Three hundred years ago, you were a girl of twenty on a ship sailing off the Massachusetts coast during a storm. The boat smashed into the rocks. Every passenger, even the hardest sailors, all died except for you. Waves pounding your body, over and over again, taking you under until I thought you couldn’t possibly make it. Just when I thought I’d need to intervene, I saw you break the surface. You never quit. As others tired and lost their strength to go on, you kept fighting. You fought for hours, longer than I thought a person could even will their body to swim in such frigid waters, but you did it.
“The fight in you, the pure essence, was like nothing I’d encountered. Not in a human, ever. Not before and not since. I was captivated.”
“It’s not going to work,” Cutty said, interrupting the moment and I felt Fate’s hand tighten on mine.
“You didn’t even try yet.” I hadn’t felt the scalpel on my skin.
I opened my eyes and sat up partially to get a view of the area myself. I was as unmarred as I’d expected.
Cutty tossed down the scalpel onto the tray as if annoyed with the item. “I can’t get through the skin.”
“Try farther away from it,” I said, wanting this to be over if it was what needed to be done.
I looked about the room at the other people gathered who’d been watching, and I could see the answer on their faces before Cutty said anything.
“I tried all the way up to your ribs. Whatever is going on, it isn’t something I can get at.”
Fate grabbed my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Sure.” I nodded.
His hand wrapped around my nape, as if trying to impart his own conviction in a belief that was looking hazier and hazier. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay,” I said, more for his benefit.
I got up and started to right my clothes as Fate and his guys seemed to have been answering some silent invitation I hadn’t received to gather, one by one, into the office. Faith was minding her own business on the other side of the room, looking over something by the register, clearly trying to give me my space.
I sat on the bench and Paddy sat down beside me.
“You know I care for you,” Paddy said.
“I do.” As much as someone like him could but there wasn’t any need to get insulting. I’d already stolen a chunk out of him, might as well leave the feelings intact if possible.
So wrapped up in my own thoughts, it took me a moment for the way he’d said the words to hit home. This wasn’t a let’s chat about our feelings because it’s looking a little ugly right now type thing but something altogether different. It was an apology. The prospect of what he was apologizing for put a golf ball sized lump in my throat.
Paddy started speaking again. “The others, they would’ve done something immediately at any hint.”
I nodded, listening and letting him do the talking. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions but the more he talked, the worse the feeling became.
“If it were just I…” Paddy shrugged. “I’m tired. I’ve been around long enough to have lost the thrills of being alive in the typical sense. I could let it all go tomorrow. But there’s certain things that can’t happen.”
“But it’s not so just say it.”
“If this continues, it’s going to be too dangerous for you to…remain.”
We sat, staring at each other. I got it. I understood on a larger level why he felt this was necessary. But it didn’t stop sharp claws of hurt from shredding through me. I’d known for a while that I could only trust Paddy to a point, but having now reached that limit still felt like a betrayal.
“I didn’t ask for this. And whatever it is that’s happening, I can’t even use it,” I said, pleading my case and trying to buy time until I figured something out.
“I’m sorry, but if we can’t stop this,” he motioned to the chunk in his arm, concealed by clothing, “even if I didn’t, they would.”
“Do they know what is happening?”
“Yes. I felt I had to tell them. I know this was my idea in the first place and I’m trying to fix it.”
“I understand.” But I wouldn’t go down meekly. I’d let him think I was fine with playing the sacrificial lamb. I wasn’t but he didn’t need to know that.
We fell into silence again but not the calm companionship of friends. No, this was a silence born of regrets and fear. The fear was mostly me. He’d kill me. I had no doubts about that. I’d like to think he was the one with regrets but that might’ve been wishful thinking.
Fate walked over and stopped in front of where we sat in silence. His eyes flitted between the two of us and I knew he was picking up on the tension. You would’ve had to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to, and Fate was none of those things.
“You ready?” he asked, probably sensing my desire to leave.
I nodded.
I didn’t say another word until we were several miles from the tattoo shop and I knew Paddy was gone. Even then I hesitated. What if in some small way Fate felt the same? That maybe it would be better to get rid of me than jeopardize the long time establishment?
No. I wouldn’t think like that. For all the faults I could lay at Fate’s feet, he’d been loyal, more loyal than perhaps I’d deserved.
Finally, when I knew we’d be at his house soon, I managed to get the words out. “If we can’t stop what’s happening to me, they’re going to kill me. I got the sense that Paddy will do it himself if needed.”
His knuckles turned white where he gripped the wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me back there?”
“I thought it would be better if I didn’t. We aren’t at that point yet.”
“The point where I kill him?”
“Or he kills you.”
“I wouldn’t have been the one that died.”
God, how I hoped that was true. “He’s strong, even with me draining him.”
“I don’t make idle promises. I wouldn’t have died.” He slammed a fist against the steering wheel. “Fuck. You know he won’t show his face again now. If I see him I will kill him.”
We pulled up to the house, three thirteen year old looking boys walking on the roof with rifles in hand.
Fate slammed the gears into park in the garage and I thought the car door was going to fly off the hinges from the force of him closing it. I watched him walk into the house, too mad to speak.
I got the anger part. It had been growing in me since we’d left Lars’s shop, and I was starting to wish I’d had it out with Paddy there.
I looked upward. I didn’t know who I was talking to anymore, whether it was God, the four, or some other universal power. I wasn’t sure it mattered.
“You think you’ve got me beat? That I’ll walk softly into death? Throw my body on the top of some heap reserved for martyrs and saints?” I let out a cross between a sigh and a laugh. “Shows what you people know. You’ve got me pegged wrong then. Go ahead. Try and take me.” I held out my hands as I stood alone in the garage. “Go ahead. I know you hear me."
One of the stockpiled guns fell off the shelf and landed pointing directly at my chest.
“What? Can’t do it?” I said, not budging a hair as I stared down the barrel. “Come on. Give it your best shot!”
“What the hell you doing?” Bobby stood in the doorway.