Page 223 of Nightshade

It wasn’t Jericho I saw that time, but a woman with fiery red hair.

Daring to close my eyes, I let my mind wander into the unbidden thought.

The crackle of flesh. Red hair catching fire. More screams.

“Mother!” I called out, unwittingly, and opened my eyes.

Mother?

I’d seen the woman in my mind somewhere. Her face. That hair. It was familiar.

Where had I seen her?

Fire. Red hair. Books.

The bookstore! The strange woman who’d given me the book. The one whose name the clerk hadn’t recognized.

What was it? I tapped my temple, eyes screwed shut, trying to remember the name she’d given me.

On the tip of my tongue …

Catriona.

“Catriona,” I whispered. And at the mention of her name, a new memory appeared.

Dancing across a dirt floor. Taking her hand. Laughter.

“Lady Lustina, may I have the pleasure of a dance?”

“Why, yes, Lady Catriona.” I giggle and take her hand, and she spins me around in circles, until dizziness claims my balance, and I tumble to the floor. More laughter. “Were you truly the daughter of an earl, Mother?”

“I was. The Earl of Kildare.”

Catriona. Daughter to the Earl of Kildare.

I typed the name into my search bar. The only thing spat back at me was a paper written by a historian from Ireland. According to the article, Catriona seemed to be something of a rebellious young woman, an aristocrat, more feral than refined, who’d criticized and rallied against the hanging of two infamous criminals. On the eve of their execution, she and one of the criminals had mysteriously gone missing, in what was believed to have been one of the earliest recorded abductions. Unconfirmed, of course, as she was never found.

Checking the date of the publication showed it’d been written back in the early sixties. Dread weighed heavy in my gut, as I typed the author’s name into the search bar. Was she still alive? Did she even remember writing the damned paper? I’d already suffered a series of disappointing dead ends. Could I possibly bear another?

Breath held, I clicked the search button.

* * *

My hands shook as I passed the paper with the angel’s name to Xhiphias. It was bad enough that he’d led me down to the creepy basement of the abandoned building, where he apparently kept the scrying mirror, but on top of that, every nerve in my body felt like a livewire.

“How did you find it?”

“A historian from Ireland. Apparently, Catriona was the victim of a famous kidnapping centuries ago. A young aristocrat stolen by a criminal she tried to spare from death.”

“The kidnapper is the angel?”

“I’m not entirely sure. It was the only name associated with her, prior to her disappearance.”

Xhiphias unfolded the piece of paper on which I’d jotted the name from a log of those sentenced to be hanged by the king. “Ceallach O’Ruairc? That’s quite a mouthful.”

“Do angels tend to keep their names throughout their lifetimes?”

“Not typically their earthly names. But if it belonged to him at any time, one he may have gone by, it should still work.” With a huff, he unsheathed the mirror, whose surface was an obsidian black with an ornate iron frame. In the light of the candles he’d lit about the room, it gave off only a faint reflection. Definitely not something I wanted to stumble upon in a dark room by myself.