too?”
I nod, my mind flashing back to the scene at the Tower and the ritual the two of us performed with the payment and the polite words just before he carried out somebody’s order to have me killed.
“Okay, now, don’t freak out on me,” Rayne says. “But maybe you should talk to him. Just once. Get all the facts so that you don’t have to try to guess at things on your own.”
“No way,” I say, my heart contracting at the thought of not seeing him again even as I stand my ground. “You didn’t see the look in his eyes on the scaffold that day. He could have been the one to stop it. He could have not raised the axe, but he did. How can you possibly be a good person when your entire job is to chop the heads off of innocent people?”
“I agree,” Rayne says. “And I think that you should be careful. But maybe he had no other choice. You’re mad at him for something that happened between you five hundred years ago.”
“No,” I correct her, “I’m mad at him for lying to me an hour ago. I’m more convinced than ever that he’s lying for a reason, and that his soul or his essence or whatever you want to call it is evil.”
“You don’t think that’s a little dramatic?” she says, sitting down at her laptop. She types in some search words and clicks on a link. “There’s a ton of stuff here on the executions at the Tower of London. It says here that they only executed those of high rank inside the Tower walls.”
“That’s what they said on the tour that day. The ones on the hill were mobbed with spectators, but the executions that took place on the Green were always private.”
“Private as in not wanting to humiliate them,” Rayne says, looking over her shoulder at me, “or private because the execution was a secret?”
All this talk about my own execution is making me feel sick. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”
“Come on, Cole,” she says. “Maybe if we do a little research, we can come up with some answers. Might make you feel better if you know some of the details.”
“Knowing details from five hundred years ago isn’t going to make me feel better now.”
Rayne clicks the mouse a few more times. “How do you know? Maybe it will.” Her fingers hover over the keyboard. “You said fifteen-what?”
“Fifteen thirty-eight.”
“Okay. We have 1538. We have England—the Tower of London, specifically. Do you know what your name was?”
I swallow hard before answering. If Rayne does find something, some sort of record of a beheading, it will make it that much more real.
“Cole?” Rayne prods. “A name?”
“Allison. Lady Allison. But I don’t know the last name.”
Rayne types quickly with two fingers. “Hmm,” she says, peering at the screen. “Ooh, there’s a list of all the beheadings at the Tower of London.” She clicks on the site. “There’s a lot of them. Mostly men, though.” She turns to me. “You’re sure you weren’t a guy?”
“Not that time,” I say, watching the screen over her shoulder.
“Really?” Rayne glances at me and then turns back to the screen. “I don’t see an Allison on this list anywhere. Maybe I should do a search of ‘Lady Allison’ in Tudor England and see what comes up.”
“Tudor England?” I repeat.
“Forgive me for owning the entire boxed set of
I suddenly remember his name. “Try ‘Connor,’” I say. “See if there was a Connor executed somewhere around that time.”
“Connor?”
I hesitate. “Lady Allison’s husband.”
“Let me do a search for that name, then.” We both say nothing as the search results come up. “There’s not much here.” She studies the screen. “No. Crap. No. Wait, here’s something.” She clicks through to another site. “Here’s one that has hundreds of Tudor and Elizabethan portraits scanned in. The search results says that there is a Lord Connor Wyatt somewhere in here.” She clicks on a few links. “Here it is. It says it’s from 1536.”
The image of the young man in the flowing black robe is so familiar I gasp out loud. He has green eyes, and I can see blond hair peeking out of the flat black hat he’s wearing. Looking at his picture, I can almost hear his voice in my ear, and I’m surprised at the sense of loss that slams into my chest. “That’s him.”
Rayne glances at me. “Hang on, I saw that name somewhere else.” She clicks the back button on the screen until she comes to the list we’d been looking at before. “Here it is, on the list of people who were executed on Tower Hill. Lord Wyatt, burned at the stake, 1538.”
I close my eyes, trying to put the image of the man in the painting in a specific memory, but all I can see is the engraving in the tower.
I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself as the answers fall into place. “So there are records of him being killed, but nothing on Allison,” I say, scanning the list.
“Let me look for her full name.” She scrolls down the list of portraits, my stomach churning as I look at the people dressed in their finest robes. It’s like playing a game of hot and cold, and although I don’t know why, it feels like we’re getting hotter.
“Here it is.” Rayne clicks on a tiny thumbnail, and the portrait fills the screen. The woman in the painting is young, with dark brown eyes and strawberry-blond hair in a braid over her shoulder. She’s wearing a dark red velvet dress, with the square neckline that you see in pictures of Renaissance Faires, and folds of golden fabric wrap halfway down her arms.
“I’ve seen her before,” I say, recognizing her eyes and dress from somewhere.
“It was painted by an unknown artist in 1536,” she reads. “It says it’s of Lady Allison Wyatt and that it’s now hanging in the National Gallery in London.”
“Oh my God,” I say. “This is the same girl that was in Griffon’s room that day.”
“In Griffon’s room?” Rayne looks at me like I’m crazy.
“In a notebook,” I explain quickly. “He’d been drawing her in a notebook.” I shift the computer to my lap and study every detail, from her gold and jeweled belt to her outstretched hand. Looking closer, I can see that the painter has been true to every last detail of Lady Allison, from her small mouth and delicate gold earrings to the scar on her forearm. The scar that she’d gotten as a little girl when boiling candle wax spilled on her arm and her mother wrapped it up with special salve and crisp white dressings.
As I scan the image on the screen, my eyes are drawn to her right hand. A silver chain dangles from her fingers, and cupped in her palm is a barely visible pendant. The artist has painted it in shadow, but I can still make out the cross with the loop on top and the dark red of the ruby set in the center. My heart skips a beat as I recognize it. It was in my hand as I climbed the scaffold steps that day. My ankh.
The next morning I walk toward my house, and all I can think of is going to bed, pulling my shades down and the covers up and letting go of all this craziness. I want my old life back—the one without Akhet, memories of other lifetimes, and not knowing who I can trust. The life without Griffon.
By the time I see him lounging by the planter in front of my house, it’s too late to turn back.
“Cole! Wait!” He stands up, but doesn’t move toward me.
My heart is racing and I know I should run in the other direction, but my feet stay firmly planted on the sidewalk.
“Two minutes,” he pleads. “Just give me two minutes and I’ll go.”
“Two minutes,” I agree. I study his face as I walk toward him, feeling slightly satisfied by the fact that he looks tired and miserable. I stop a few feet from him and fold my arms across my chest. He’s even more handsome today, the stubble on his chin and shadows around his eyes adding a rugged touch. His bike is nowhere
