Chosen - Kiersten White Page 0,57

since we lost his father, I’ve been trying to prepare. I don’t know what will happen with Cillian. If I can connect with something bigger—something greater—maybe I can find direction.” She looks at me as though I’ll understand.

I don’t. I have a mother who did things in what she thought were my best interests, and it nearly broke us all. “Try connecting with him instead.”

I hurry past Esther before she can ask me any more about her son. Outside, Cillian is throwing things around in the shed, nothing gentle or careful in his movements. “Where is that fecking box?”

“Here.” I push aside a stack of traditional Irish fairy-tale collections and tug the box free. But, forgetting my own strength in my haste, I tug too hard and it flies across the room. It hits the far wall and drops to the floor. The contents spill out.

“Sorry.” I kneel and begin replacing things. Cillian grabs the handcuffs and shoves them into his pocket. My hand freezes on a weird metal puzzle I vaguely remember from the last time we went through his dead father’s things. It’s a series of interlocking triangles. The same design as the necklace I took from the woman in the alley and put on the kitten. And … I hold the triangles out, getting a different angle. It’s the exact image stamped on all of demon-drug dealer Sean’s tea. And the symbol from the book Artemis stole. What is it doing here?

“Everything in this box was your father’s?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Cillian’s distracted and on edge as he stares through the night at the house. I can’t tell whether he hopes his mother will come out here after him, or whether he hopes she won’t. I doubt he knows which he prefers either. But his mother is illuminated in the kitchen, dancing slowly as she makes tea.

“Even this?” I hold it up.

He barely glances at it. “Yeah, it’s a toy or something. A puzzle. I used to play with it, but it was his.”

“Are you sure?”

He finally focuses, frowning. “Why does it matter?”

“Because I’ve seen it before. At Sean’s place, branding his demonic tea. And a woman who attacked me in an alley was wearing a necklace with it.” And it was on the book Artemis stole.

“That exactly, or something like it? Kind of Celtic, innit? Could be a similar design.”

I have enough room for doubt. I was sure, but maybe I’m seeing it everywhere because I have sisterly betrayal on the brain. “The necklace is on the kitten. We can go check.” I keep the puzzle in my hands. “Do you want to—I mean, are you going to stay here tonight?”

“I want to be with Rhys.” He sounds miserable, and it hurts me to know I can’t fix it. But Cillian still hasn’t moved to leave. He’s standing in the doorway, staring through the window at his mother.

“I could send Rhys back here.”

Cillian takes a long time to answer. Then he shakes his head and abruptly moves as though being tugged by strings, his gait forced and unnatural. “No. Nothing here that needs doing.” He opens the back door.

“I’ve got tea on!” His mother turns with a tray already set with three pretty pale-green cups. Her eyes shift from Cillian to me, then to what’s in my hand.

She drops the tray on the floor with a clatter of metal and a shattering of ceramic. “Where did you get that?” She steps right through the shards to me.

“Mum! Your feet!” Cillian tries to steer her away from the sharp pieces, and I can see smears of blood where she walks barefoot. But she doesn’t pay him any attention, instead grabbing the triangle thing out of my hands.

“Where did you get this?”

“In the shed. It’s a puzzle? Cillian wanted to, uh …” I look at him for support.

“I wanted to show it to my boyfriend. He likes puzzles.” Cillian grabs a broom and dustpan and sweeps up his mother’s mess.

Esther’s gripping the interlocking triangles so tightly her hands shake. “This isn’t a toy. You shouldn’t have it.”

“Da used to let me play with it,” Cillian says.

“No, he didn’t!”

Both of their jaws are set in rigid, angry lines, but his mother also looks scared. She used to be a witch. Maybe not everything in the box belonged to Cillian’s dad, after all. My eyes flick to her neck to see if she’s wearing a necklace, but her dress neckline is too high to tell. Where has she really been going