Chapter 4
Thousands of glaring, bright, blinking blue dots flooded the room. They hovered and swayed like waves in the ocean. They hummed. “Little hummingbird, do you see the sky . . . ?”
The dusty room swiveled and swung back and forth, zooming in and then back out again.
The dots kept humming. “. . . It is free. It is yours. Fly. Past the mountains. Past the oceans . . .” Madeline’s vision blurred with the glare of the blue shade.
“ . . . There. You will find love . . .”
She couldn’t get a word past her mouth. She just wanted to tell Ciaran she saw the blue dots and they were singing to her.
“Madeline!”
She heard Ciaran calling out for her. But then she was flying. She tried to regain her footing, but she kept flying.
When the world stopped spinning, she realized that Ciaran was carrying her. They were at the far end of the hall, almost out of the old quarter of the house.
“Put me down, Ciaran.”
He stopped walking and set her on her feet but still held on to her shoulders firmly.
“I’m okay.”
“You fainted, Madeline. That’s not okay. Was it because you spent a couple of nights down at the creek?” He put his hand on her forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”
He gazed at her, searching for an answer. The worry in those intense gray eyes bothered her. Should she tell him? After all, he’d just told her a secret that he had refused to revisit for many years.
Hell, forget this! “Please don’t think I’m crazy, Ciaran,” she began. “I don’t have any magical talent. But I do see things. It’s very random. I don’t have a theory of what it is that I can and can’t see, or even what I’m going to see. Sometimes I hear things. But most of the time, I just feel things.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She didn’t think romance was the reason for the kiss, rather that it was the only way he could stop her from ranting. She was babbling nonsense again, and she knew it. But then nothing was making sense to her at the moment.
When he finished with the kiss, he spoke gently, “Now, tell me one thing at a time, Madeline. What do you think you can see sometimes, and what did you see in that room?”
She drew in a breath. “I think I can see people’s thoughts. They appear as blue dots. I don’t know their meaning—they just hover in front of me. That’s how I found you at the creek. You thought of me, and I followed the blue dots, the trail of your thoughts.”
Ciaran lifted her chin up and looked into her eyes. His intense gray eyes filled with curiosity and his face lit up with fascination. “You’re a . . .”
“Don’t label me, Ciaran. I’m not one of your science projects.” She turned around and walked away. He grabbed her elbow to stop her.
“I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again. Please calm down. Stefan will ring again at any time. We should try to see if we can do something to prepare.”
She stopped walking. He was right. “I’m sorry. My head just scrambled a bit. Let’s get back to the room,” she said.
“Not until I’m sure you’ll be okay. Tell me what you saw in the room?”
“Lots of blue dots.” She looked straight into his eyes. “I don’t think you want to hear this, but if what I saw were thoughts, they had to be Juliette’s.”
“Only living people have thoughts, Madeline.”
“Well, it can’t be the air bender because I haven’t met him. But I do have a connection with Juliette via you.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Now you think I hallucinated it?”
“No . . .”
“When you brought me here the first night, as soon as I walked into the house, I not only saw the blue dots heading toward the old quarter, but I heard a woman’s voice welcoming you home.”
Ciaran raked his hands through his hair. “Juliette died in my arms. I wish it were a mistake. But it wasn’t . . .”
“Does she have an Irish accent?”
Ciaran simply stared at her.
Madeline hummed the tune. “Little hummingbird, do you see the sky . . .”
Ciaran gestured for silence. He braced his hands on the wall. She couldn’t see his face, but she guessed he was wanting to bang his head against that wall. She must have gotten it right.
He hadn’t told her anything about Juliette apart from what had happened in that room, and he certainly had never mentioned her accent. And the song did it. It was Juliette’s song.
“Ciaran, you asked me what I saw . . .”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. It was just . . .” He turned around. “Okay. Let’s just go back to the room. We’ll figure out what’s what later. But you have to let me know right away if you feel uneasy.”
She nodded and headed toward the room. When they entered again, there were no more blue dots.
Damn!
The room was a mess as a result of what appeared to have been a massive fight, and nobody had cleaned up a thing. Ciaran glanced at the bed and then focused on the floor in front of it. He deliberately avoided looking at Madeline. She knew he was trying to control his emotions and didn’t want to create any awkward moments, so she kept silent.
He crouched and pointed to the floor. “You see the circle here? This is where the light circle landed. It must have scarred the wood . . .”
“Ciaran!”
He traced his fingers on the floor in circles.
“Ciaran!”
“Yes?” He looked up.
“I don’t see any circle marks on the floor.”
“You can’t see these?” He pointed.
“No.”
He frowned.
Then she saw a single lonely blue dot blinking in the corner of the room. She pulled at Ciaran’s sleeve and nodded her head in the direction of the dot. Ciaran looked and obviously saw nothing except a sturdy cabinet standing there.
“Over there?” He pointed.
She nodded and felt a chill run up and down her spine. The air seemed to have become hollow. She heard the voice of the woman again but couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. It was more like weeping or chanting of some sort.
Madeline stood up and saw Ciaran examining the cabinet without any hope of finding anything. The temperature in the room seemed to suddenly drop several degrees. She was trying to tell Ciaran to get out, but she had a feeling if she spoke, he wouldn’t be able to hear her. It seemed as if they were in two different worlds.
The weeping sound still echoed in her mind.
Ciaran approached her and looked at her face. He said something, but she couldn’t quite hear him. He seemed to know she was in trouble. He held her shoulder gently. And then reality suddenly blasted back at them.
“Ciaran!” a voice came from behind them.
Madeline and Ciaran both jumped out of their skin. Ciaran turned toward the voice and saw Tadgh standing at the door.
“Don’t you knock?” Ciaran growled.
Tadgh raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t your room anymore. Why do I need to knock? What are you two doing in here? Doctor Thomas asked for you. He wants to check up on you. Your painkillers are running out soon.”
Ciaran glanced around one last time then led Madeline out of the room. “Where’s Mother?” Ciaran asked Tadgh.
“I have no idea. She doesn’t usually report her whereabouts to me. And after last night, I don’t think she’s ever told us anything real.”
“What do you mean?” Ciaran asked.
“How do you think we got you back home?”
Ciaran shrugged. “I haven’t thought about it. We’ve been busy!”
“I see.” Tadgh shot a glance at Madeline and rolled his eyes. “You put Mon Ciel on lockdown, remember? She unlocked the shield. We got you onto a chopper.”
Ciaran stared at Tadgh for a moment then strode down the hallway. Madeline trailed right behind. “There are only two people who have the key, and she isn’t one of them. Mother didn’t unlock it by herself.”
“You mean Father helped her?” Tadgh asked.
“I don’t want to hear about two ghosts in one day, Tadgh!” Ciaran growled and punched a code into the security pad of a room that looked like some kind of control room.
Ciaran’s phone buzzed. A text message read, “Meet at British museum in one hour.” The caller ID was Sciphil Two.
“What that hell is Sciphil Two?” Tadgh asked. Ciaran shook his head. At the same time, Madeline’s phone buzzed.
“It’s the same No Caller ID,” she said, looking at Ciaran.
Ciaran nodded. She picked up the phone. From the other end of the line came Jo’s voice. “Madeline?”
“Oh my God, Jo, are you okay? Where are you now?”
“I’m fine. I ran. Stephen—no Stefan—got me, but I ran.”
“Where are you now?”
“In London . . . where are you?”
“Can you find your way to the British museum? We’ll be there in an hour.”
“I’ll be there. I never get lost in a big city, and I always find you.” Jo hung up.
Madeline stared at Ciaran and Tadgh.
“What’s the matter?” Ciaran asked.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why? Didn’t you just talk to Jo? She escaped? Why isn’t that good?” Tadgh asked.
“You don’t think Jo ran again, Madeline?” Ciaran asked.
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I think I’ve just given Stefan our location in the next hour. Jo makes fun of people who use the words never and always. She wouldn’t say always with an emphasis. I didn’t catch it when we spoke. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Madeline. Stefan will be at the museum. We’ll get him and bring Jo back,” Ciaran said. But she caught the way he glanced at Tadgh. His eyes were too dark—they scared her.