‘We have the video,’ Ari suggested. They had filmed the moment she had…except they hadn’t. They’d filmed up to the moment the eel attacked Thierry. Not the rest.
‘The video, sure. Or at least some of it. And the photos. But that…that looks nothing like it did this morning. They’ll say we switched it out. We can’t…’ He seemed to deflate just standing there. ‘Jesus, I don’t know.’ Then he looked up at her. ‘How did you know something had happened to it? What happened to you on the way back anyway? You never answered.’
Ari couldn’t answer, couldn’t find the words to tell him what she’d seen. He’d say she was mad, or hallucinating. That her grief had finally gotten the better of her.
Rafael came to the rescue again. He lied so smoothly, without even a flicker of hesitation. ‘Ari wasn’t feeling well after dinner and wanted to come back here. I offered to walk her back, over the cliffs. There was a storm.’
‘A storm, just on the cliffs, got you that soaked. One no one else noticed?’ Jason’s voice went flat with disbelief.
‘Well, it was windy, and there was rain as we drove back,’ Nico offered gently. ‘It would have been worse out on the cliffs. You know how exposed they are.’
Ari could have hugged him. It didn’t mean much to Jason though, who was clearly on a mission to prove someone accountable. For what, she wasn’t sure even he knew.
‘Not that much rain. You’re saturated. I don’t know what’s going on, Ari, but don’t lie to me.’
She opened her mouth to argue but couldn’t think of anything to say. How could she tell him what she had seen? He’d never believe her.
Jason snorted when she said nothing. He was barely listening anyway, so caught up in his outrage. ‘Yeah, I thought so. I don’t have time for this. I need to work out what to say tomorrow. I don’t know how I’m going to convince them this isn’t a joke. Thatwearen’t a joke.’ Jason glared at Rafael again and then swept from the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.
Ari balled her icy hands into fists. How dare he? He didn’t get to take this out on her. And certainly not on Rafael. He was the one going on about how they needed the du Lac money. Had he forgotten that?
‘I should go,’ Rafael said softly.
‘No,’ Ari said, a little too quickly. She hurriedly corrected her tone. ‘I…I mean, we need to talk.’
A fleeting smile crossed his lips, but it didn’t linger. ‘I’d like nothing more, but you should get dry and warm. You’re shivering and you’re tired. We can talk tomorrow. We must. I’ll take you out to lunch.’
Not actually an invitation, she noted. But he was right and she was too shattered to argue. She hugged her arms tighter around her body and felt the cold water chilling her skin through her clothes. She shivered, unable to stop herself.
‘You’ll catch your death of cold, Ari,’ Nico told her in as gentle a voice as ever. She’d almost forgotten he was there, but he was, watching the two of them. Her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘He’s right. Jason will calm down. You know he will. But let him be now. I’ll talk to him later. Monsieur du Lac, I can drive you home if you want. I’m sure your family will be concerned.’
Rafael nodded, although he didn’t look as certain about that. ‘Thank you. That would be most helpful.’
Nico squeezed Ari’s shoulder, his touch an unexpected comfort. ‘And you, step into the shower and then go to bed, Ari. That’s an order. I’ll let Jason know. God knows, if we just take off now, he’ll lose the plot completely. Just give me a moment.’
She couldn’t argue with Nico. She didn’t have the heart. The wave of tiredness sweeping through her was too much to fight off. Was it shock? she wondered. After all, she had seen…Simon…
She looked up at Rafael helplessly.
Tomorrow would have to do.
As Nico left the room, Rafael leaned over the box again, studying the now pristine mask through the veil of water. The expression on his face was unreadable but it made her chest clench tight around her heart. There was some sort of horrible recognition to it. She thought of the illustration in the book. It was so similar.
‘Rafael?’ she murmured hesitantly. But she had to know. She had to ask. ‘You…you saw him too, didn’t you?’
He tried to smile again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I saw him.’
‘But I—’ Her throat closed, choking her words, and her eyes began to burn. ‘It’s impossible.’
She surged to her feet and instantly regretted it. The room swam around her and dark tendrils of shadows like storm clouds closed around the edges of her vision.
He reached out a hand to steady her. Drawing in a deep breath, he paused, as if he didn’t want to say what he was about to say, and yet, couldn’t avoid it either. His hand cupped her arm so gently and his warm touch seemed to be the only thing real and solid in the world.
‘Mémé has always said that this is a land of signs and symbols, Ari, a place of portents. She believes there is meaning in everything if you know how to read it. Nothing is impossible. The veil between us and the supernatural realm is thin here, so they say, stretched out almost too far at the edge of the world. It’s all liminal space, all of the Cap Sizun, perhaps all of Brittany. There are pockets where time moves differently, where old traditions are more real, where things not of the modern world still walk – the forests of Huelgoat and Brocéliande, the many islands in the gulf of Morbihan, the Monts d’Arrée where the bare bones of the world thrust through the earth, and here…most of all here, where stone and sky and sea meet in chaos and rage, where everything falls apart.’
His dark eyes searched hers, his voice rising and falling like a song. He didn’t sound like the jaded, cynical businessman anymore. He sounded like a poet or a mystic, one of the ancient druids who once walked here. Like someone as old as time, someone who knew this land more intimately than anyone living had a right to.
Rafael had said his family was ancient and royal.
