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I blinked. "I'm sorry?" Not, what happened, or, why are your eyes red, but how long?
She gave her head a quick shake. "Come with me." She didn't wait for a response, just used her grip on my arm to tow me through the store. Only when we'd passed through a nondescript door behind the checkout counter and found ourselves in a small storeroom did she release me.
I rubbed my aching wrist with my other hand. "What—"
"This is my fault," she said, her pale eyebrows drawing together. "I tried to warn you, but perhaps I was too vague. You and all the others out there in Old Kulmeira. It was really just a matter of time."
"What are you—"
"Why, I had one of your group in here just the other day. The redhead. I thought maybe she had more sense, would at least listen to my warnings, but apparently no. You are all still there, disturbing things that should be left alone."
Raheem had said Ona was crazy. Now, though, her warnings were sounding less farfetched.
"What things?" I asked, a little desperately. "What's happening at the dig site? What's happening to me?"
She reached out and took hold of my chin with one hand, tilting my face to one side and then the other. "Did I not tell you? Blood calls for blood." Abruptly she released me, and her gaze softened, taking on an abstraction that made me wonder if she perhaps really was crazy.
She looked away, appearing lost in thought, and I shifted my weight, unsure if I should press her for more answers or run out of the store while I had the chance. "Ona?" I said tentatively.
She focused her gaze on me once more, and gave a deep sigh. Her hands clasped together at her middle, and it took me a moment to realize that she was twisting something off her finger.
"River. You will take this."
She held out her hand, and in her palm sat the same ring I had noticed on the plane. A gold band set with three large rubies, tiny twinkling diamonds encircling each blood-red stone.
"I can't take your ring," I said, staring at her.
The corner of her mouth pulled up. "The time has come to pass it on. I believe you are now in need of its protection more than I am."
A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside me. "I couldn't possibly—"
"I insist." She was already grasping my hand, sliding the ring onto my fourth finger. Her gaze met mine, and the protests died on my lips. Behind the icy blue of her irises I saw, for the first time, the faintest glint of red.
She patted my cheek, then opened the door to the store room. "You will wear it now," she said. "Let it keep you safe."
Shaking, I backpedaled out of the tiny closet and into the shop. She looked at me imploringly, as though she wanted to tell me more, but I was beyond hearing. I turned, clutching my bag to my chest, and stumbled out the door into the sunlight.
Outside, I took deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart. I found my sunglasses with trembling fingers and put them on. The people on the sidewalk seemed to blur, their smiling faces bewildering and foreign. I felt strange, dissociated. Almost as though—
It looked like you, but it wasn't you.
A suspicion was growing in the pit of my stomach, ice-cold and putrid. I forced it down. It's not possible, I told myself firmly. I made my way to the street corner, crossed toward the ocean, and walked down worn wooden steps to the beach. With my feet in the sand, and the crowds of tourists behind me, I began to feel a little more normal.
Breathe. I inhaled the warm air, tasting salt. The wind lifted my hair. Breathe.
It wasn't possible. I was a scientist, for God's sake. I dealt in facts. Evidence was my touchstone.
Breathe.
Ona's eyes had been a trick of the light. Or a hallucination, maybe, a flash of delusion brought on by anxiety about my own affliction—an affliction that could certainly be explained by the right physician. I simply shouldn't have visited a doctor in a strip mall.
Breathe.
The ring on my finger felt heavy, still warm with the heat of Ona's hand; it sparkled madly, the rubies seeming to have depths that rivaled the ocean before me. Strangely, it fit my finger perfectly.
Though she was bent with age, Ona was significantly taller than I was. Her hands on the armrest of the plane had been large, her knuckles gnarled. She had removed the ring with relative ease, but now—
The ring fit snugly against my finger, resisting when I tried to remove it. It was as though it had been made for me. The breeze had cooled my skin, and yet the gold band still felt warm.
