River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)(11)

I stiffen, eyeing the tea for a moment. “Why?” I ask hesitantly.

“Because it will open your heart and mind. What I’m about to tell you will be hard to believe at first, but it’s imperative that you believe. The tea will help.”

“How do I know this tea isn’t going to make me forget everything you say?”

He chuckles, looking positively boyish, and I’m briefly trying to place his age again. He could be eighteen. He could be in his mid-thirties. He might even be in his eighties since he just used the word imperative. “There’s another tea for that. And I don’t want you to forget a single word. I’m going to need you to remember. The truth will serve as fuel.”

I stare at him to go on, my patience already threadbare.

He stares right back until I relent. I pick up the tea and have a tepid sip. It’s hot, but not scalding, and the fragrant scent of the pines seems to wake me up. The tea itself tastes like sugared lemons, and before I know it I’ve finished the whole thing.

He clears his throat. “Good.” Then he looks into my eyes, so deep that I feel like I’m being pushed back into the couch cushions, my body melting. “Hanna, your father was dying of cancer.”

I didn’t expect him to say that. The words are sharp and cold and they seem to puncture the air.

“What?”

He grimaces. “He didn’t want to tell you. He didn’t want to tell anyone. Only I knew. Eventually Eero and Noora figured it out, but he didn’t want them to know either.”

It feels like I have a vice placed over my heart, the pressure coming slow and painful. “What kind of cancer?” God, why didn’t he at least tell me?

“I don’t know, he never said. He did go to a doctor in town. They gave him six months.”

“And how long ago was that?” my voice shakes as I speak.

“Six months ago.”

I try to take in the information but it’s not sinking in. Not sure if this tea is working since it just doesn’t seem real. How could my dad have had cancer?

“So he wasn’t found frozen in the woods?” I ask absently.

“He wasn’t found at all,” Rasmus says.

I look at him sharply. “The body in the casket.”

“There was no body. You know that. Noora and Eero, they made you see it afterward. They put me in there as a base, and built your hallucination on top of it. I tried to stop them but sometimes, when they work together…”

I press my fingers into my temple, as if to keep my brain from unraveling. “Built my hallucination?”

He gives me a steady look before taking a sip of his tea, swallowing with deliberation. “Okay. Here we go.” He clears his throat. “Eero and Noora are powerful shamans. Eero most of all. I’m a shaman as well, as was your father. That’s why I was his apprentice. He was teaching me. The entire resort was founded in the hopes that one day the Sami people, and other indigenous peoples around the world, could come visit and practice their beliefs in private, in a learning environment. There was a time where the shaman here had to travel to Brazil, into rainforest communities, or to the Southwest of the United States, to the Navajo tribes, in order to practice without judgment or persecution. Your father’s idea was that there would be no need for running away. That we could find peace here.”

My father was a shaman? Somehow that isn’t surprising. Maybe the tea is working after all. Still, I say, “I can’t believe he kept all of that from me.” I hate how fragile that makes me feel. He didn’t trust me enough with the news of his diagnosis, nor did he let me in on the whole shaman thing.

“How long was he…practicing?” I ask awkwardly.

“Since long before you were born.”

Now I’m surprised. “He’s been a shaman my whole life!?” I exclaim.

Rasmus nods firmly. “A very powerful one. I was lucky he agreed to take me on. I’ve been training with him since I was ten.”

“And how old are you?”

“Thirty,” he says. “Don’t let my boyish good looks deceive you.”

Now I understand Rasmus’ involvement. He’s been with my father for twenty years, a couple of years before my mother moved me to California.

“I must have seen you when I was younger,” I tell him, trying to think of any older boys who might have been hanging around our cottage.

He shakes his head. “Your father was very discreet. He did everything he could to keep it a secret.”

“So my mom never knew?”

Rasmus gives another tight smile. Oh, of course she knew. That’s why she left him. That’s why she did all she could to stop me from having contact with him, even though it didn’t work in the end.

“Look, we will have plenty of time to talk about this,” Rasmus says. “But I believe time is of the essence. Eero and Noora will be here soon.”

Their names bring me back to the present. “So if my father’s body was never found, why did they tell me he died of exposure after getting lost in the woods? Why not tell me he had cancer? Why put on an elaborate fake funeral?”

And why the hell did they seem to want to kill me last night?

“Because they don’t want you to discover where he really went.”

I blink, growing more confused by the second. “Well? Where did he really go?”