Mark of the Witch (15 page)

“That was our first meal together,” I said. “Belgian waffles at
IHOP.” Maybe it was a little wistful sounding. Because I was feeling wistful,
and also twisted and conflicted and confused about the man. Maybe I’d loved him
once. Maybe he’d killed me once. Maybe he was lying to me now. He was forbidden.
Maybe a danger to me. And yet I wanted him so much it was like a knife in my
belly.

He stopped, hand on the doorknob, and looked over his shoulder
at me. “I know you sense Dom’s…dislike of witches,” he said. “I don’t share it.
I think you’re a terrific human being, Indy, and I did even when we were
basically strangers.”

I blinked. He was winning me over. “We’re not strangers
anymore?”

He shrugged. “You feel more like family now. I know Rayne feels
the same way.”

I closed my eyes, smiled easily. “Thanks, Tomas. That means a
lot to me. You and Rayne… No, never mind. It’s none of my business.”

He shrugged. “Go on and ask. I know you’re dying to.”

“Okay, I will. I didn’t think you had any family. Why are your
last names different? She’s never been married.”

“Well, we’re not full brother and sister. We just have the same
father. My mother committed suicide when I was ten, and hers OD’d. We both went
into the system, not even knowing each other existed. Rayne wound up being
raised by a halfway decent aunt on her mother’s side. I spent most of my
childhood in an orphanage run by nuns. Until Father Dom took me in.”

“And sent you to Cornell. How did he afford it?”

He lowered his head. “I had a pretty sizeable scholarship.”

Holy shit, he must be even more brilliant
than I thought.

“My plan was to attend a seminary after that, and I started,
but Father Dom pulled me out early. Said it was urgent that he begin one-on-one
training with me.”

“And you went for that?” I asked, surprised.

He nodded. “Father Dom was the closest thing I had to a father.
I never knew my real one. So when he told me God had spoken to him, and that the
Church had given him a special dispensation to ordain me himself
immediately—well, what could I say? I was handpicked by God for this, Dom said.
And you know, given what we’re learning about the past, I’m starting to believe
it.”

I was mesmerized, soaking up every revelation about Tomas as if
I were starving for information. In my mind’s eye I could see him as a child,
and then as a young man. And now. I could definitely see him as he was now.

“When did you find each other?” I asked.

“One of the sisters in the orphanage sent me a letter right
after I was ordained. She said she’d held on to the secret as long as she could
and thought I had a right to know. She sent Rayne a copy, too. I have no idea
how that nun knew, and she died before I had a chance to ask her, but she’d
known about us all along. She thought she was doing us a favor not to tell us
when we were still too young to do anything about it. Rayne’s aunt didn’t want
any more kids, and we lived on opposite sides of the country. So knowing just
would have made things harder, she thought.”

“Wow.”

“You wouldn’t believe my surprise when I found out my sister
was a witch.” He smiled when he said it. Like it was a term of endearment.

“Or hers, I’ll bet, when she found out you were a priest.”

He lowered his eyes. “You know, she never passed judgment.
Never condemned me. I even started reading books on the Craft so I could
understand her better. And she started sitting in on mass to learn more about
me. He sighed, shaking his head slowly. “She’s not your average witch,
Indy.”

“And you’re not the average priest. Not even…the average man,”
I whispered before I could stop myself.

I love him.

Shut up.

He was staring at me as if I’d just revealed more than I ought
to. Was my voice all raspy when I said that? Were my eyes all dreamy? I thought
so. Was it possible all my casting and conjuring had finally paid off? My soul
mate had finally shown up, only—surprise, surprise—it turns out he’s a priest.
Not only that, but apparently, my sworn enemy and former murderer. Nice.

If the Goddess is real, She’s a total
bitch. Sorry. A total Bitch. Capital B. Out of respect. And why the hell am
I feeling like crying again?

“I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be down in twenty minutes for
that breakfast you promised me,” I told him. “French toast sounds perfect.”

I left him there staring after me, and I took the journal with
me when I went to take my shower.

10

I
sat on the deck in the sunshine, my belly
pleasantly full, embracing a warm coffee mug, watching Tomas flip pages in my
journal, which I’d been discussing with him. I would never know if I could trust
him or not unless I gave it a try. Besides, he knew things. He was the kind of
man I had aspired to be with one day, back when I believed in gods and goddesses
and magic. A spiritual man, deeply intelligent, curious, open-minded, apart from
his rather blind devotion to Father Dom. And now that I knew how much the old
man had been to him, I couldn’t even hold that against him, could I?

Maybe I was starting to believe again. A little bit.

He flipped another page and paused. “What’s this?”

I reached for the book, turning it to face me. “Just a drawing
of a tree. I keep seeing it in the dreams. Over and over. And it always
feels…important. Like it means something. But so far, I don’t know what.”

I studied the image of the gnarled old tree, but it didn’t mean
anything more to me now than when I’d drawn it.

“What kind of thoughts or feelings come to you when you see
it?” he asked.

I sighed, shaking my head. “Excitement. And fear. And a kind
of…knowing, except I don’t know what it is I’m knowing.”

He pulled the book back to him, staring down at the picture.
“It looks kind of like an old man, doesn’t it?”

“I thought that, too,” I said, glad he was seeing what I had.
Maybe that meant I wasn’t completely insane. “There’s his head, that big knot
near the top.” I pointed to the spot. “The swirls in the bark there look like
wrinkles, and you can even pick out eyes.”

“Yes, I see them. And that root almost looks like a crooked
foot.”

“Yeah. And this one limb is like an outstretched arm. Even has
a finger at the end. That sharp twig. Like it’s pointing at something.”

“What is he pointing at, Indy?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

He sighed. “It’s a good start. Keep doing this, keep drawing
what you see, writing about those dreams. It’s bound to help.”

“Oh, I will. I
am.
There are
several other things that make me feel the same way the tree does. A boulder
with writing on it. A medallion on a floor. A dark doorway underneath a statue.
Oh! And a castle with spires. Look at it.” I flipped pages, showing him my
drawings as I listed them, glad to have someone to share things with.

Glad to have
him
to share it with
was what I really meant. And I wanted to share a lot more with this man. I
looked up then, caught him staring at me instead of the journal, and I could
have sworn his eyes reflected the same senseless longing.

And then I looked away, because what the hell else could I do?
“I just wish I knew where all this was going to end up.”

“Well, that much I can tell you, Indy. You’ll help me. The
demon won’t be able to come through. Samhain will come and go, and the Portal
will close. And the world will be safe for another three thousand years.” He
touched my hand sending shivers up my spine. “If Father Dom is right about this,
your dreams and flashbacks will go away, and you can get right back to living
your life the way you want to.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “And what if he’s wrong?”

He looked at me. “You know something you’re not telling
me?”

I wasn’t quite ready to admit to him that I had snuck a peek at
another journal last night. Father Dom’s. But I did want to see his reaction to
what I had learned—to test him a little, I guess. “Tomas, what if it turns out
that I’m supposed to help the
demon,
not you and
Dom?”

He frowned, and looked away from me. “Dom would see that as
validation of his own prejudice. To him, witches are
all
in league with demons.”

“I guess.” I swallowed hard. He already knew all this, and he
hadn’t told me. Why? I wondered. Why would he lie to me? I stared at him,
willing him to open up and tell me the truth.

Finally he tipped his head and said, “You know, even if you
were on Team Demon in that past lifetime, it’s not like you still would be now.
You’re a good witch. You would never want to help some demon take over the
world.”

I sighed, disappointed that he hadn’t revealed more. “I guess
you’re right. I just can’t help wondering… If that’s true and Dom knows it but
hasn’t said anything, then what else might he—or even both of you—be keeping
from me? I don’t like being lied to.”

“I don’t blame you.” He reached across the table, clasping my
hand in both of his. “Keep listening to your dreams, Indy. I think they’re
pointing the way, I really do.”

“Something else has been niggling at me,” I said. “That tattoo.
‘Daughter of Ishtar.’ If we were harem slaves, it stands to reason the king
would have had plenty of chances to see it. Wouldn’t it have given us away as
witches?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Ishtar was one of the goddesses of the
Babylonian pantheon. Today, only witches and Pagans worship her. But back then,
everyone did.”

I nodded. “I should have known that. I just didn’t think that—”
I heard a car pull up out front. Our respite was over. And I regretted it to my
toes.

* * *

Later that morning Tomas sat in Jon’s office,
uncomfortably aware of Dom standing judgmentally off to the side, fighting to
keep his own face impassive as Jon did his bit with the subway video. He’d asked
Indira for it, but she’d claimed to have deleted it from her phone. Which had
him worried. Because he hadn’t believed her. She’d seemed off this morning. All
through breakfast. Quiet, watchful. He kept getting the feeling she was trying
to see through his skull into his brain, trying to get him to tell her the
things he hadn’t yet revealed. Because she was right—she was supposed to be
helping the demon. At least according to the legend. But she couldn’t know
that.

Unless she’d remembered.

No. She would have said so. Besides, she’d just learned that he
had probably been the guy who’d pushed her off that cliff thirty-five-hundred
years ago. He supposed that might have something to do with her wary
demeanor.

Fortunately Rayne had saved a copy of the video on her hard
drive at home, then accessed it from her phone and emailed him a copy, which he
had in turn emailed to Jon Yates.

Jon was just as theatrical as ever, he thought. The guy could
have just typed up the translation and sent him a copy. But no, it was
considerably more dramatic to play a little bit of the video and then interpret
Indy’s foreign words, and then play a little more. He had the giant monitor
turned toward them so they could follow along, and he stood, as if he were the
star of some a.m. newscast, pacing as it played, then pausing it, and standing
beside the screen to recite the lines in modern English.

“As you can see, she’s just repeating the same phrase over and
over again. ‘Where is the Portal?’” He leaned over and tapped the mouse, and
Indy started moving again. She spun in a beautiful martial arts move, threw her
hand out in a punch at the end of it, then spun back the other way and did it
again, followed by a flip. She thrust both hands out as she landed. Each time
she punched the air, men went flying, but it was obvious she never touched them.
She was throwing them around with some unseen power.

Then, just before the thugs ran off, she spun around to face
the leader and shouted something else. Again Jon paused the recording.

“Here she says, ‘Attacker of innocents! Just like the priest
who killed us. Where is the Portal, damn you?’”

He hit a button and the images ran forward. This time he let
the video play out almost to the end, where she was panting in exhaustion.
Everyone else had fled the scene except the man recording it, who had finally
gotten around to asking Indy if she was okay. She lay on the concrete, looking
at the thugs as they ran off, and she spat out a sentence with so much hatred
that Tomas almost felt it burn. Jon paused the video and said, “‘I will find
that priest. I will kill him.’”

Tomas got to his feet. “That’s enough.”

“There’s one more line. ‘Who can know the minds of the
Underworld Gods?’ It’s right—” He was fast-forwarding as he spoke, but Tomas
reached past him and stopped the playback.

“Enough, it doesn’t mean anything.” And yet, he was remembering
that she’d recited that same line when he’d shown her the video for the first
time. So she knew what she’d been saying....

“Considering that a hotel full of clergy got blown to hell and
gone yesterday, Tomas, I beg to differ,” Jon said. “Was this woman out of your
sight at all that day?”

“No, she was not. And I don’t even see how that’s relevant,
since the police have already arrested the bomber.”

“A young man without so much as a speeding ticket—”

“A mental patient,” Tomas inserted.

“He was there for depression.”

“I don’t care if he was there to quit smoking. He did it.
There’s no doubt about that, is there?”

Jon sighed. “The only question is whether he acted alone. The
police can’t find a motive, and he claims not to know why, either. Kid’s back in
the hospital and on suicide watch now.” He looked from Tomas to Dom and back
again. “If you two know anything about this, or if your…friend is involved in
any way—”

“We don’t and she’s not,” Tomas interrupted.

“Then why are you here in town? And why is she with you? And
how the hell did she do all that stuff in the video. And—”

Dom held up a hand for silence. He had stayed in the back of
the room, saying not a single word the entire time. Tomas thought he was trying
to let him take the lead, to make him feel as if he were the one in charge of
the mission. But he knew that would only last until he disagreed with the old
man.

“Could you get anything else from the tape?” Father Dom
asked.

“Tape?”

Dom waved a hand at the computer. “Pardon.
Digital-whatever-it-is.”

Sighing and, Tomas thought, finally seeing he would get no
answers from them, Jon returned to the desk and hit the mouse. Tomas watched as,
on the screen, Indy crawled into a corner and huddled there. Tears streaming,
she moved her lips, but if she said anything, it was inaudible. He had totally
missed that before.

“What was that?” Father Dom asked.

Jon held up a hand, clicked a few buttons. “Let me enhance the
sound. I think I can get it.” The video playback screen was reduced to a small
box in the corner, and an audio box came up. As Jon clicked the Play arrow,
vertical lines appeared, spiking and dipping as Indy’s voice rose and fell.

Jon looked at the other men. “‘Where is my beloved? How much
longer must I wait to feel his touch again?’”

Tomas closed his eyes. God, could she be talking about him? The
man who’d pushed her from the cliff all those lifetimes ago? And yet hadn’t she
just promised to kill him if she found him? It made no sense.

Despite that threat, the anguish in her voice, in her face, as
she expressed her longing for his return was real. And heartbreaking.

And it got to him.

When he opened his eyes again, Father Dom was shaking Jon’s
hand. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch if we get any more…anything.” He glanced at
Tomas, and his eyes said,
I told you so.

As they walked across the beautiful campus, far from the area
that was still barricaded with crime scene tape, and crawling with investigators
and journalists, Dom put a heavy hand on Tomas’s shoulder. “At least now you
have no doubt whose side she’s on. Do you?”

“She didn’t know what she was saying.”

“Part of her did, son. The part of her that lived then.”

“But that’s not who she is now. No more than I am the same man
who pushed her from that cliff three thousand years ago.”

“But you are that man. And just as you did what you had to do
then—what God demanded you do then—you will do what He demands of you now.”

Tomas stopped walking and lifted his eyes to meet those of his
mentor. “Did you know, when you chose me for this task, about my past-life
involvement in all this?”

“No, Tomas. I didn’t know. I chose you because God told me to
choose you. He led me to you. He knew. He knows all.”

Tomas’s heart twisted into a knot of pain. “I want to
remember.”

“What?”

“I want to remember that past lifetime. I want to know what I
knew then, to understand what brought me to the decision I made.” He didn’t know
if he could bear it, but he knew he was on the right track. “I need to know,
Dom. Is there a way?”

Dom’s expression was like a door slamming. “No, Tomas. The past
is gone. Only the future remains, and that’s where you need to keep your focus.
On the future. And your part in ensuring that there is one.” He sighed, then
strode onward. “We’re going to have to come back here. We can’t let your friend
Jon keep any of his notes, much less that video. We should have taken it with us
today.”

“He won’t share it. I’ve already told him to keep this between
us.”

“And you trust him to do that? With something this
explosive?”

“I do,” Tomas said.

Dom lowered his head. “Then you’re a fool. Come on. I think it
would be a good idea for us to have a talk with that bomb-making mental patient,
don’t you?”

* * *

I recounted the entire breakfast discussion to Rayne,
only I told her the truth about having had a look at Dom’s journal, and what it
had to say about me being on the demon’s side and having to find some kind of
amulet Past Me had hidden in the astral plane in order to set him free.

I told her, too, while letting her flip through my journal,
that I thought Tomas knew all that and was keeping it from me. And she insisted
that if that were true, he must have a damn good reason. But I knew she loved
her brother. She wasn’t exactly unbiased here.

And yet I wanted so much to believe in him, too.