Chapter 20
A buzzing noise zipped circles around Griffin’s head, and flashing lights alternated with dark spots careening like a swarm of angry bumblebees. The scent of clean linen and flowers infused his nostrils, and a pair of breasts were pressed against his chest.
“Areyou okay?” a female voice asked. “It’s not too hot, is it?”
Griffin blinked harshly and snapped his head back and forth to shake off the noise and lights, but he savored the fragrance of the woman’s ruddy hair and the softness of her embrace. He let his mind focus on her touch and inhaled slowly, letting the troubling noise fade.
“Where are we?” He looked up from the place he wasstanding and let the colors of stained glass absorb into his eyes.
“The hospital chapel,” Clare said. “I brought you here right after the doctor visit. You okay now?”
His mouth was dry, and there was a metallic taste on his tongue. “Yes, I might have blanked out, but I remember everything.”
“That’s good. You don’t have to make a decision today.”
“I’ve apparently beenputting it off for a long time,” he said. “Is it true I might ultimately lose the ability to recall anything?”
“That’s what the doctor said,” Clare replied. “Each time you have a seizure, you’re damaging your temporal lobe. The more seizures you have, the more damage accumulates. I know it’s frightening. The thing that worries me is that you remember less and less with each attack. It won’tmatter how many notes and videos we keep, you might not be able to catch up on all of the annals and lists before you have another seizure.”
“Are you saying I won’t know who I am?” He held her close and put his face in her hair. “If I ever forget my grandfather, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“You must consider the surgery,” Clare said, pushing away from him and staring into his eyes.“I know it’s scary to have them cut a piece of your brain, but if it stops your seizures, you would be able to live a whole life.”
“A single complete life with my Brigid as a mortal. That’s the promise.” He struggled to recall exactly why he would agree to it.
“Yes, that was what your grandfather wrote in the annals.”
“It’s a bum deal.” His lips pressed together. “I’ve livedover a thousand years, multiple lives, but I’m supposed to end it here? One last life with a mortal?”
She pulled his hand and led him to the altar under a large wooden cross.
“Would one coherent mortal life be worth more than thousands of fractured lives?” she asked as she looked up at the cross.
What she said made sense in the abstract. He only had bits and pieces of hispast lives, but it was what made him different from everyone else.
He also let the image of the cross pervade his field of vision. He’d lived before it ever came to Ireland.
No, he could not accept such a limitation to the boundless past he owned.
He turned away from the altar. “I sailed in a longboat. I burned our boats and forged the swords that fought the sea elves. I borethe shield for Brigid when she was victorious over the Norsemen. I survived the potato famine, bled for the Irish Free State, and fought for Home Rule.”
“Were these real memories?” Clare asked. “Or stories from Irish history?”
Griffin startled, jerking his head as waves of sights and sounds assailed him. He’d lived all those lives, hadn’t he? They’d been scribbled in the annals,and the timelines were filled with details.
“You don’t believe I was alive a thousand years ago? You know time passes differently in the Otherworld.”
“Yes, it does,” Clare said. “But how come you have no notes about the Otherworld? Descriptions, sights, sounds?”
“I wouldn’t have remembered if I were dead,” he said.
“Except you weren’t dead. No one dies in the Otherworld.Fae are immortal. It’s true they could erase your memory. But is that what really happened?”
Griffin held his head with both hands and rattled it, trying to shake the fog loose. “I don’t know. You’re using too much logic on me. I like to believe I have these powers.”
“I know.” She pried his hands from his head and held them. “I love storytelling and pretending. But if you continueto let your epilepsy attack your brain, you may lose the ability to come back to any life.”
The expression on her face was filled with compassion, and her eyes teared over. Was she pitying him?
