The voices were coming closer. I had to get out of here.
Then I noticed something on the wall. A line of nails. Four of them, each with a delicate iris-charm necklace hanging off it.
And a fifth nail.
Empty.
Waiting.
I raced out of the room and locked myself into the bathroom just in time to lean over the toilet and be sick.
Almost instantly there was a pounding on the door.
“Clea? Are you okay?” Sage’s voice rang out. “You’ve been in there forever.”
“I’m sorry,” I croaked. “It’s my stomach. I don’t know why, but—” I felt my gorge rising again, and for the first time ever I was happy someone was going to hear me throw up—it gave me an excuse to stay in here and get it together.
“Ooh, okay. Take your time,” Sage said.
I listened to his footsteps as he walked away. When I could I got up to run cold water over my face and rinse out my mouth, but I was still breathing heavily and shaking all over.
Oh my God, was Sage going to kill me?
The paintings didn’t necessarily mean that. The ones on the wall were of good times. And hadn’t my therapist told me art was great for people who’d lost someone?
Maybe that helped him deal. And the necklaces … if Sage loved those women, of course he’d keep their most treasured possessions.
Unless he kept them the way serial killers keep souvenirs.
Was Sage a serial killer? Some kind of timeless, ageless serial killer who didn’t choose multiple victims, but instead just one … and killed her—killed me—over and over again?
“CLEA?”
It was Ben’s voice this time.
“Are you okay?”
Was I okay? I honestly had no idea. Was I going crazy? Maybe if I could tell Ben what I had seen, he could help me put everything together in a way that made sense. This was all far more his thing than mine.
My dad. I had to concentrate on my dad. Whatever Sage was, he was my only hope for finding my dad. I needed Sage for that, and if I told Ben what I’d discovered, he’d jump to the worst possible conclusion and do everything in his power to keep Sage and I apart.
I had to keep what I’d seen to myself. I had to act like nothing had changed.
“Clea?”
“I’m fine, Ben!”
I finished up, practiced a smile in the mirror, then emerged.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Are you okay?”
“Yep, I’m fine.”
“Did you see that Sage has an original Michelangelo? And a Rubens? And he has an original printing of Paradise Lost.”
Of course he does, I thought. He probably knew all of them personally.
“Wow,” I said instead. “He must spend a fortune on eBay.”
“Right, because who doesn’t buy million-dollar antiquities online?”
“Okay, so maybe not eBay …”
“Clea?” Sage’s voice rang out as Ben and I walked into the main room, and when I looked up I screamed.
Sage was brandishing a knife.
“Clea? Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes … sorry, I just … that’s a huge knife.”
He laughed. “I heated up a turkey I had in the fridge. I was going to make us sandwiches. Does that work for you?”
A turkey. The knife was for a turkey.
“Yeah, that’s great. Thanks.” I pasted on a smile.
Sage went back to carving the bird, but looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Maybe we should take you to a doctor.”
“I’m fine. Just a little disoriented from … you know.”
“Right.”
Somehow I managed to keep hold of my sanity for the next fifteen minutes. Sage finished making sandwiches, double-checked to make sure he had all Larry Steczynski’s necessary documents, and put together a small duffel bag of clothes. Every time he looked my way, I couldn’t help but feel that he knew exactly what I’d seen and done. He didn’t like it, and he’d find a way to make me pay.
Once we got out of the house, I felt like I could breathe again. I stuck close to Ben as the three of us made the short, moonlit trek to the garage. No way was I sitting next to Sage. I told Ben to ride shotgun and pretended I still felt a little nauseous so I wouldn’t have to talk.
Had Sage and I been reincarnated again and again over the centuries, only to wind up together each time? In a way it would make sense, except I’d been four different women that I knew of and he’d been … Sage. So that meant he’d what? Been alive for the last five hundred years?
I inwardly rolled my eyes at my own absurdity, then realized that all my other options were just as absurd. There was the incubus theory, but could spirits bleed? I wasn’t as up on these things as Ben, but I thought by definition a “spirit” wasn’t something that could bleed. I’d seen Sage bleed. I’d made Sage bleed. Not that it hurt him any; he healed so quickly.…
In smaller doses it has incredible healing powers. Ben’s voice rang out in my head. I remembered he said that earlier, about … the Elixir of Life.
The crackpot, completely bogus, absolutely insane Elixir of Life.