He snarls down at me, a total stranger. A monster. His gaze is blank and milky white; his face and neck are burned, skin twisted on the left side. My vision blurs as he squeezes out my life, pressing me into the floor.
And then suddenly he’s gone and I’m gasping, choking on the burned air again. As I sit up, I realize he’s slumped against another male figure. “Well, hello there,” the new guy says. “You’re that girl who was a lost dove, aren’t you?” he asks, like I’m more interesting than Faelan’s burned body. He’s got a British accent, and as my vision clears I see he’s only wearing boxers. With heart-eyed emojis on them. He’s smiling that same sardonic smile that Aelia had on her face a second ago.
“Name’s James,” he says. “I’d shake your hand, but mine are a bit full. And I hear from Ben that your touch has some side effects. As we can see.” He nods to the wounded guy in his arms, then winks like he’s cute, and I feel like kicking him. What is so freaking funny about this situation right now? I nearly killed Faelan!
“Let’s get our resident wet blanket back to bed,” Aelia says, “where he can recoup a bit.” She and Niamh help James carry the large and limp Faelan out of the room.
I manage to get to my feet and follow them. But once we’re outside, in front of the door to Faelan’s cottage, James pauses and glances at me, then at Aelia, like he’s worried about something.
“Wait out here,” Aelia says. Then they all disappear into the small house.
I stand in a daze, staring at the green door. And as the stillness of the morning falls over me, the soothing sound of the waterfall in the background and the smell of sea air in my nose, the events of the last several minutes start to flick through my head in a panicked rush: the smoke-filled room, the charred surroundings, Faelan’s burned body on my floor, his milky eyes when he attacked me.
I feel like someone punched me in the face repeatedly. What just happened? Was it my fault? What did I do to burn it all? How am I not dead? None of it feels real.
Aelia and James emerge from the cottage before I can make sense of anything. That Niamh girl isn’t with them.
“It’s been a laugh, ladies,” James says, “but breakfast is calling, and I need to get to the set before they start the gossip about Rihanna’s new haircut without me. Plus, I’ve got lines to memorize for today’s shoot.” He flashes a quick grin at me, then moves in to give Aelia a blush-worthy kiss before he slips away.
“Your boyfriend works in Hollywood?” I ask her.
She just giggles. “He’s not my boyfriend, sweetie. James is a shade. They never reach status around here. Just keep it zipped to my dad that you saw the plebe with me.”
I’m not sure what she means, but it sounds vaguely racist. She kissed the guy right back, tongue and all. Is she telling me she French kisses all the peasants for fun?
“Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” she says in a bright voice as she hooks her arm through mine. She hugs me to her side, leading me toward the main house. “You poor thing. You must be so hungry after all that.”
“Is Faelan going to be all right?” Cold fear seeps through me again as the question slips out. And embarrassment is tangled with it. The charred skin, the white eyes—if I did that to him . . . me . . . I must be a monster.
“Oh, he’ll be fine. He just needs a nap.” She pats my arm. “He’s a downer, anyway. He’d probably have you on lockdown until he’s sure you’re not like the last female offspring from Brighid’s tree.”
What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I start to ask her to explain, but she keeps on talking.
“But bitches need to stick together, right? Can’t let the men push us around or they might get the idea that they’re in charge.” Then she winks and starts talking about some blog post on feminism she read this morning.
I tuck the information in the back of my mind and make a note to ask Faelan about this other “female offspring.” If I ever see the guy again.
The house is like a museum. There are artifacts from various eras and cultures in large glass cases along the halls and filling whole rooms. There’s even a room that looks like it’s entirely populated with old stone sarcophagi. I wonder if people really live in this house or if it’s just a place where they keep a collection of old stuff, like the Getty Villa. But then we finally pass what could be a den and walk through a real kitchen where a uniformed woman is chopping vegetables.
Aelia ignores the woman and leads me upstairs and down a long hall to her room—a vast space, the walls covered in images of . . . uh, herself: photographs, paintings, even mosaics. I have to bite my lip to keep back a derisive laugh. I don’t like to jump to conclusions about people, but this girl might be a narcissist. There’s a single eight-by-ten-inch watercolor of a pug near the window, the one sign she hasn’t reached Code Blue levels of navel-gazing.
The only piece of furniture in the room is a huge bed that looks larger than a king-size. Several of the throw pillows have her likeness on them too: her profile, a close-up of her wide eyes, even one of her lying half-naked on a golden couch on the beach, with the waves behind her. Wow.
She takes me through to a bathroom that could be a Roman bathhouse and shoves me into a large shower stall without ceremony. I toss the towel she gave me over the frosted-glass door, turn on the water, and wash off the soot and ash. It’s hard to believe I don’t have a single burn on me.
Once I’m done, Aelia hands me a slinky robe and takes me to what she says is her closet, but it looks more like a tiny mall. She studies my silk-covered body for a second—she’s obviously annoyed when I won’t disrobe and let her gawk at my naked self, but I need to retain at least a shred of dignity—then dresses me in ridiculously expensive-looking clothes from her nine-hundred-square-foot closet as she comments on my thin figure being great for movie roles and how she knows a guy who hires for body work if I’m interested.