Ashes on the Waves (22 page)

“You need some sleep too,” I said.
< saulder at t/p>

“I slept all day.”

“I know. I was there.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

It had been almost impossible. “You were so peaceful.”

She leaned her elbows on the railing. “So, did I do or say anything embarrassing?”

“I slept too.”

“Not while you were drawing me.”

I smiled.

“What did I say?”

I leaned my elbow on the railing next to her. “You told me that you wanted me forever.”

She blushed and straightened. “That’s so embarrassing.”

“Why?”

“It just is.”

I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her against me. “You only articulated my exact thoughts. I want you forever, Anna. In this world and whatever comes after.”

She entwined her fingers in my hair and pulled my lips to hers. “Forever isn’t long enough,” she said just as the Bean Sidhes started up.

I pulled away laughing.

“It’s not funny!” she said. “They’re doing it on purpose.”

“They’re reminding us to stay true to our task. We need to solve the murders.”

“This is making me crazy. You guys suck!” she shouted at the air. “Shut up. We’re working on it.”

“Where should we start?” I asked, chuckling.

She looked around and settled her gaze on the alcove to her uncle’s room. “Where he hung out the most, I guess.”

The room was even more oppressive than I remembered it—from the enormous carved bedposts with depictions of game hanging to dry to the grim paintings in the gilt frames. Most were still-life oil paintings, but something about the subjects unnerved me. They featured fruit or flowers past their prime in various states of decay and rot. Several had flies or worms. And everything about the room was dark. I felt certain that even in the daytime with the red curtains drawn open, it would still be gloomy.

I pulled one of the smaller paintings down and held it close to the lamp. “Whose initials are these: FMR?”

She continued rummaging through a desk drawer. “Uncle Frank’s. Francis Michael Richards.”

“Richards. Your mother’s side, then?” I hung the painting back on the hook.

She closed the drawer. “No. He’s not really my uncle. He was a friend of my grandfather’s. We just called him Uncle Frank.”

I examined another painting. The same initials were in the bottom-right corner. “How did he come to live here, then?”

Anna picked up a framed picture from the top of the dresser. “Because of her.” She turned the picture toward me. It was a portrait in oil as well, but it depicted not elements of rot or decay, simply a lovely blond woman smiling out at me.

“That was his wife. When she died twenty-something years ago, he flipped out and my granddad let him move in here. It was supposed to be temporary, but he never left.” She shrugged. “Or at least we think he didn’t.”

She stared at the portrait in her hands. “Wouldn’t “in herit be funny if he just left and hadn’t died at all and all of this is just a wild-goose chase? Maybe he’s hanging on a beach in the Bahamas laughing at all of us.”

The Bean Sidhes screeched at such a deafening level, she dropped the portrait.

“Okay. I get it! We’ll keep looking. Stop!” she said, ears covered.

The creatures ceased keening.

I took another picture down and held it to the light. This one depicted a large horsefly on a piece of half-eaten melon. The color he used for the melon flesh was a putrid shade of chartreuse that gave the entire piece a sickening feel. When I lifted the picture to replace it, I noticed something odd about the peg.

“Come look at this,” I said, putting the picture on the floor.

She studied the peg. “What?”

“There are notches in the wood just above and under the peg. The other wasn’t like that.”

On closer examination, I noticed the joint between the molding and the wooden panel was not as tight as that of the panels on either side. Warily, I reached up and touched the peg. Nothing. I pulled down on it with no result. I pressed in with no effect, but when I pushed up from the bottom, a loud click sounded behind the panel.

“Oh, my God. It’s like an Alfred Hitchcock movie!” Anna gasped.

“What’s an Alfred Hitchcock movie?”

“It’s probably better that you don’t know.” She ran her fingers along the crack that had widened when the panel clicked. “There’s a latch or something.” She bit her lower lip as she ran her fingers in the gap. “Got it.” Another click and the panel swung open.

A musty smell wafted from the opening and we both took an instinctual step back.

“This is really creepy, Liam. We should get a flashlight or something.”

“Agreed.”

She started toward the door. “I’ll go ask Miss Ronan for one.”

“No, wait! We should probably do this without notice.”

“Ahhh. Gotcha.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “I know. We can go old school. There are candles in the top desk drawer and a lighter too.”

I opened the drawer. “Probably kept for this very purpose.” I pulled two candles out along with a lighter and closed the drawer. I passed Anna the candles and ignited both. After putting the lighter in my front pocket, I took a candle from her. “I’ll go in first.”

The floor of the passage was only an inch or so below the level of the floor of the room. We were on the second story of the structure, so it made sense the floor was wooden. The passage was narrow, but there was enough room for a full-grown man to walk upright.

“Wait,” I said, squeezing past her to examine the closing mechanism on the panel we had just come through. “If we get closed in, I want to see how it works.”

“How could we get closed in?” Her voice wavered a bit.

“We’re on Dòchas. Anything is possible.” The wall lever pulled up on a tongue-type lock, but the second latch was simply a safety catch that could be lifted with a finger. I pulled down on the lever from the back of the door and the tongue moved. It appeared impossible to be locked in or out. “It appears we can’t be trapped.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, I suppose.” She struck out ahead of me.

“Wait, Anna. Could you please tie your hair back?” I pointed to her candle. “The flame.”

She handed me her candle. “Good idea. Like you said, ‘this is Dòchas.’”

After tying her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck, she took her candle back.

“My freaky great-grandfather probably had these passages built so that he could cheat on his wife or spy on the servants,” she said.

The passage took a sharp turn to the right. Anna stopped at a door similar to the one in her uncle’s room. “This would be one of the bedrooms for guests. Mallory and Suz stayed in the blue room and Nicky in the green.”

The demon in me roused a bit at the mention of his name. “Nicholas would’ve preferred to have stayed in your room.”

She arched a brow. “No doubt. But I was with you, so it wasn’t an issue.”

“Would it have been an issue?”

“Not for me.” She grinned. “Are you jealous?”

“Occasionally.” I pushed up on the lever behind the door and the tongue slipped out. I flipped the second catch and the panel swung inward.

“Yep. This is the blue room,” Anna said.

I peeked over her shoulder to find a room with wooden paneling and blue curtains and bedding. I pulled the door closed and it latched automatically.

“We don’t even need to look in this one,” she said, passing another door. “It’s the green room. If there’s a secret door to my room, I’m going to freak completely out.”

“Get ready to freak,” I said. “I have a feeling every room has a secret passage.”

I was correct. We swung the panel open to find Deirdre sound asleep on Anna’s bed, iPad on her chest.

“I want this sealed off,” she said, pulling the door closed.

“It might come in handy.” I examined a perfectly round hole in a floorboard. “You never know when you need to sneak out.”

“I just don’t want someone getting in.”

“I think we can fix that.” I stuck my finger in and pulled up on the hole and found it to be a trapdoor with a ladder descending into darkness below us. The air that gusted up smelled of ocean brine.

“Ugh. It smells like something dead.” She touched my shoulder. “What if there
is
something dead down there?”

“Then perhaps we’ll have discharged our duty and the Bean Sidhes will stop tormenting us.”

Anna shivered and crouched down next to me and peered into the dark hole. “I’m scared.”

“Kiss me.”

“What? This is not a time to make out, Liam. It’s a time to freak out.”

“I need you to kiss me.” I touched my lips to hers. “It makes me remember why we’re doing this. It makes me willing to go down there even though I’m scared.” I held my candle out to my side to be sure it wouldn’t do any harm and kissed her again, more fully this time. She stretched far away, tipping her candle on its side, letting wax drip on the boards. When a pool of wax had formed, she placed the candle end into it, effectively making a candleholder. After glldecandle ouing my candle in a similar manner, she returned to where I crouched at the opening to the tunnel below. With a gentle shove, she forced me off balance and pushed me until I was on my back.

She hovered over me until my breaths came in quick gasps. Unable to stand it any longer, I pulled her down to where our bodies and lips and tongues met and I felt anything but fear. Everything but fear.

* * *

Muireann had watched the female’s house for a glimpse of her Liam, but he had remained inside since he arrived just before sunset. Maybe he was going to stay the night . . . with
her.
She ducked under the water and swam farther north. She needed to head to the Na Fir Ghorm’s caves to listen in on their meeting.

Something moved at the base of the cliff. Nose and eyes above water, she got close enough to tell it was a female human. It was Brigid Ronan coming out of a cave in the cliff under the house.

Muireann’s heart almost stopped when she saw that Brigid Ronan met a Na Fir Ghorm who was just off the end of a boulder where the water was deeper.

She was afraid to get any closer. After last night, another slipup could mean the destruction of her pod. From too far away to hear, she watched as Brigid Ronan said something, nodded, then walked away from the Na Fir Ghorm toward the cliff cave entrance.

* * *

Anna tied her hair up again and grinned as she pulled the candle loose from its wax holder. “You’re right. I’m not afraid anymore.”

I took a deep breath, certain when I sat up, I’d be too dizzy to walk. She pulled the other candle out of the wax, keeping it upright, and held it out to me.

“I’ll go first,” she said, stepping down onto the ladder.

It was probably just as well that she went first because it took me a bit longer. Climbing down a ladder with a candle in my only hand was no easy task, and by this time, the candle was less than half of its original length. My feet hit dirt at the bottom.

“This’ll be a lot more interesting,” Anna said. “I’m not as familiar with some of the rooms downstairs.”

The path split in three directions. We took the left branch of the tunnel. The first room was the dining room.

“This should be the library,” she said, outside the second door.

I pulled the lever and entered the most amazing room I’d ever seen. Anna flipped on a light and I gasped. From floor to ceiling the entire space was lined with books. I’d never imagined such a place. Were there a heaven, I was certain it would look like this.

“We can come back in the morning,” Anna said.

“Wait.” I noticed that the books were organized by author. Hugo was at eye level. I blew out my candle and pulled out a book.
Les Misérables, Volume III.
“Anna. How . . .” I checked Tennyson. Sure enough, a book was missing. Likewise with Shakespeare and Poe.

“My books came from here. How did my mother get them?”

“Maybe she took them. She worked here.”

I opened the volume of Hugo and something slipped out. Anna leaned down to pick it up. She blew out her candle and unfolded the piece of paper.

“It’s another one of Uncle Frank’s portraits,” she said. “The woman is gorgeous. I have no idea who she is, though.”

The woman who stared back at me from the small piece of folded canvas made me shiver. It was as if she wore suffering on the surface of her dark eyes. Draped over her shoulders was a spotted fur wrap and in the bottom-right corner were the now-familiar letters FMR. I put the folded portrait in my back pocket and returned the Hugo volume to the shelf.

“Ready?” Anna asked, holding out both of our candles. I pulled out the lighter and lit them.

“Ready.”

The next room was the one in which we had discovered MacFarley with Deirdre, followed by several more small chambers similarly appointed. The second-to-last door was a bit different. It didn’t have the second latch and there were oil stains down the back of the door as if it had been lubricated frequently. Whoever used it had wanted a silent entrance—perhaps to sneak up on someone sleeping or unaware.