Page 129 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

He leaves Riley with the sandwich and a pat on the shoulder.

✴

It’s winter when Riley sees the girl with the red hair again.

She doesn’t come in the day, and she doesn’t go through Troy this time. Riley, a naturally light sleeper, wakes the instant he senses someone in his bedroom. He hears a new heartbeat, rapid and strong.

He smells jasmine, juniper berries and moon-song silver.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispers to him. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

Riley isn’t afraid. He knows it’s her because he remembers her perfume, but this time his senses are so much more heightened and they quickly build up the skeletal profile of this woman he saw only once four years ago.

‘It’s you,’ he says, soft with astonishment, sitting up fast.

She crouches beside his bed. The door is open behind her.

‘Darling boy,’ she utters, her green eyes filling with tears as she looks him over thoroughly. ‘Oh, you look so like her.’

Her hand is gentle against his face when she cups his cheek, and Riley is struck for the first time in his life by a surge of total certainty that she’s like him. He can’t even name it, this feeling of base recognition. He reaches up clumsily to place his hand atop hers, keeping it there with careful desperation. He wants to babble, to speak, to say a million things. For the first time in his life, he has so much to say and no clue how to say it.

‘They said you cannot hear.’ She caresses his cheekbone. ‘Is that true?’

‘No.’

‘Clever boy for lying,’ she praises fervently. ‘I’m proud of you. Listen to me. I am taking you away from here.’ Riley’s heart leaps. ‘I know you may feel torn, but this is no place for my nephew to grow up in. My sister and I are working to free you both. Of the two, you are less guarded.’

‘Both?’

‘Your little brother. I will explain everything to you once we are safe in France, but for now I need to know if you will come with me. Yes or no?’

Riley slips out of bed so quickly his knees buckle. ‘Y-yes, yes, please.’

She gives a faint smile. ‘I am sorry for not coming sooner.’

‘I can hear things,’ he tells her in a rush as she offers her hand and he takes it, awash once more in the warm rush of family and connection and what he dares think might be a scrap of love, the kind he read about in books. ‘And smell everything.’

‘I know,’ the teenager says, pulling him close to her, peering around the door. ‘You are like me. We knew you would be and so did your mother.’

‘You know my mother?’

‘Your mother was my sister, Isabel. Didn’t he tell you?’

‘No,’ Riley utters. ‘D-did she leave me here? Why didn’t she want me?’

‘Oh, darling, no. She loved you so much. So much, believe me.’

Isabel.

His mother’s name is Isabel.

‘What’s your name?’

‘My name is Céliane. Can you say it?’

‘Céliane,’ he recites slowly, determined not to stumble.

‘Perfect.’ She grips his hand tighter. ‘Your name is Jean-Marie.’