Haunting Embrace (21 page)

She pulled away a bit and repeated her question. “How did you do it?”

How indeed? Whatever power he’d felt had been sapped by the effort. His return to normalcy had come with a crash and left him feeling hollow and somehow . . . used.

Behind them, Hoyt O’Shea appeared and knelt beside Mickey’s unconscious body. As if some bell only fishermen could hear had been rung, others trickled in to join the small group. He wondered if they’d been watching all along. Had they seen Áedán fling Mickey into the air with his thoughts? If so, would they have attributed the unbelievable to their faulty eyesight or poor vantage point? Humans were always willing to explain away what they couldn’t understand.

Regardless of what they thought, the fact remained that their coming eliminated any chance Áedán had to finish Mickey off. He dared not kill the man, not with so many witnesses.

“Drunk again, was he?” Hoyt asked with a scowl. “Maybe now you’ll think better of my offer.”

Mute, Áedán nodded. It seemed the thing to do, and he was in no shape to respond otherwise. Keeping one arm around Meaghan, he rubbed his thumb over the fingertips of his free hand.

He’d called the power of the Book. It had been right there, within his reach, and he’d used it. The pendant had created the bridge he’d needed. Even now he could feel it humming through Meaghan’s pocket where her hip pressed against his thigh. Could he do it again if he tried? He’d thought his Druid powers long dead, but now he wondered.. . .

Mickey moaned and his eyes fluttered open. “What happened?” he asked as he squinted from one face to another. It sounded like his own voice, but Áedán saw that the eyes still gleamed flatly and sparkled with that soulless light.

“You picked a fight with our Áedán,” Hoyt told him. “You’re piss-faced, Ballagh. Again.”

Mickey blinked his eyes guilelessly, but Áedán saw the sly gleam within them. “Of course I’m drunk, you fecking wanker. And don’t I plan to get drunker?”

A man who docked his ship near
The Angel
let out a hoot of laughter. “Come on then, you mean old lunatic,” he said. “I’ll buy you the first round.”

“And I’ll let you,” Mickey answered, grabbing the offered hand and rising to his feet. He cast a look over his shoulder at Áedán as he sauntered off toward the Pier House. In that look, Áedán saw the threat he didn’t need to voice.

Mickey would be back. And when he came, he would leave a bloody trail in his wake.

Áedán didn’t want to follow them. He wanted to get Meaghan alone and strip her of the pendant that had given him his power back, if only for a moment. He wanted to test his theory that the power he’d called could be summoned again. But Meaghan watched him warily now, and he needed to think things through first. He didn’t understand why he’d never suspected the power it held. In all his time as the nameless entity trapped within the Book of Fennore, he’d never sensed the pendant. Never heard its call. So why did Cathán?

He eyed Meaghan as the answer formed in his thoughts.
Elan
.
She
had to be the conduit that connected them all. Elan had used the pendant to lock him away in the cursed Book. She’d made him her prisoner. She’d made him her slave.

Did Elan’s spirit move inside Meaghan with a purpose? Were his worst fears about to come true? Elan returning to play out her role as history repeated itself and she condemned him once more to the Book of Fennore?

“What’s wrong, Áedán?” Meaghan asked. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“What way?”

“Like I’m a stranger.”

“I’m not,” he lied. “I’m just shaken.” Admitting to the human reaction galled, but it did the trick on Meaghan. She nodded and he continued before she could question him further. “Go get Colleen and lock yourself inside. I need to see where Mickey goes next. Don’t worry, I won’t let him come back here.”

He would kill Mickey before he let him hurt either of the women or the child.

Meaghan nodded again, but her brows had pulled in a frown and her blue eyes looked shadowed and concerned.

Even with all his suspicions, seeing her troubled pulled at something inside him. Áedán could not leave her so anxious. “I won’t let him hurt you. I promise.”

Áedán would not make the same promise for himself, though. Elan, the White Fennore, had betrayed him once before. No matter how complex and confusing his feelings were for Meaghan, he would not allow it again.

Chapter Fifteen

N
UMB, Meaghan did as Áedán asked. She made her way through the messy kitchen and out the front door. Her legs moved automatically, but her mind remained locked in that moment when Mickey—Cathán—whoever it was that lived behind those cold eyes, had reached for her.

She didn’t know why she’d pulled the pendant from her pocket, why she’d thought it could protect her. The action had been like an instinct—the automatic step back from a snarling dog or the flinch from a hand raised to strike. She hadn’t even been aware of what she did until she saw it dangling before her, jewels glimmering, silver and gold flashing.

And then . . . And then she’d felt as if an invisible shield had surrounded her. No, not that. It was as if she’d stepped into someone else’s skin. She felt the power crackling around them, and she’d pulled it to her and then amplified it, turning it into something that lit the horizon like a sunrise, made her squint and wince against the fierce glow. The feeling had grown, becoming brighter, hotter, deeper until it melted down to a mercurial substance. It covered her from head to toe, inside out.

She still felt it inside her now, flowing in her bloodstream and speeding her pulse.

Drawing in a deep breath, Meaghan tried to compose herself. Áedán had told her to get Colleen and return home, lock the doors, and wait. He’d promised to keep Mickey away, though he hadn’t explained how he meant to do it. She’d have to trust him.

Enid answered at the first knock, and soon Colleen stepped outside with a sleeping baby in her arms. The time with Enid had done Colleen good, and the color had returned to her face, though she still looked shell-shocked and unsteady on her feet. Exhaustion painted dark circles beneath her eyes and made her appear much more fragile than Meaghan knew her to be.

“Áedán said we should go back to the house. He’ll keep Mickey away.”

Colleen nodded. “It won’t matter. He’s like a match—strikes hot and burns out. The drink wipes his memory. By now, he’s forgotten it happened.”

Colleen sounded very certain, but Meaghan couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

As they made their way up the walk to Colleen’s front door, a soft male voice calling her name stopped Meaghan. Instantly alert, she turned to the deserted road that trailed off in the opposite direction.

“Meaghan,” the man repeated, and she saw a familiar shape standing in the shadows.

“Kyle?” she said. “Is that you?”

He stepped forward until the light from the porch illuminated him. “Is everything all right, Meaghan?”

All right? Was he serious? Things were about as far from all right as possible.

“Oh, everything is grand, Kyle. My cousin and I were about to go inside and have some stew. Will you join us?”

Colleen looked surprised by the invitation, but she didn’t protest. Silent and stoic, she led the way into the cottage, and Meaghan wondered what went on behind her façade of calm. Her grandmother was like the misted Irish hills in the gloom—mysterious, unfathomable, and inconsolably bleak.

Kyle followed silently. He didn’t need to be told that things in the Ballagh household were not right. He was a smart man, and after nodding when Meaghan introduced him, he took Meaghan’s lead, exchanging meaningless chitchat as they cleaned the broken crockery and splattered mess. While he wiped the floor, Meaghan pulled the rubbish bin from beneath the sink and slipped out the back door.

“I’ll take that for you,” he called.

“No worries, Kyle. I’ve got it.”

She wanted a moment alone. She still had the pendant in her pocket, and in light of what had happened earlier, it seemed foolish and dangerous to keep carrying it around.

When she’d come back from the lighthouse earlier, she’d seen a pile of discarded, rusty tackle leaning haphazardly against the side of the house. Now she hurried toward it. In the glow coming from the porch light, she found a tin can in the heap that held old hooks and pulled it free. A brief burst of images assaulted her as she pried the lid open and dumped the hooks out: Mickey, sitting in a dark room next to the still, gray body of a woman. He sobbed, crying silent, painful tears as, nearby, an infant squalled angrily. Startled, she almost dropped the can.

Quickly she stuffed the black pouch with the pendant inside it into the tin, feeling it scream in protest. It took a surprising strength of will to replace the lid and hide it beneath the mound of debris. Once it was done, the hum silenced and the sickness in her stomach eased.

Quickly, she dumped the garbage into the receptacle in back before returning to the kitchen. Colleen had put the baby to bed and now scooped three bowls of stew from her pot. They sat to eat like this was a normal meal, and Colleen bent her head in prayer. Kyle seemed faintly startled by the act, and Meaghan wondered if she’d been mistaken about the clergy attire she’d thought he’d been wearing the first time she’d seen him when they’d been trapped inside the world of Fennore. She wanted to ask but didn’t know how.

Instead, she concentrated on the food Colleen had prepared. The stew smelled delicious, and her empty stomach thanked her for taking the time to feed it, but Meaghan doubted that any of them really tasted what they methodically chewed and swallowed.

Kyle brimmed with curiosity. Meaghan could see it in his warm, hazel eyes, but for some reason, she couldn’t feel it in the air around her. She didn’t know if her ability had been burned out by the intense emotions the pendant and Áedán had spurred or if sealing off the pendant had somehow affected her senses. It might be both or neither. If Kyle had once been a man of the church, perhaps he’d learned a calming of spirit in his studies that made him soothing to be around, the polar opposite of the tempestuous storm of emotions she felt when with Áedán. Whatever the cause, Kyle remained closed off.

She caught him watching her with a quizzical expression, but like Meaghan, he asked none of the questions she knew he wanted answered. When they finished eating, Meaghan stood.

“You go on upstairs and try to sleep, Colleen,” she said softly. “I’ll clean the kitchen.”

Colleen started to protest but Meaghan cut her off. “I insist.”

“All right then. Thank you. Before I go, let me show you where you’ll sleep tonight. It’s not much, be warned.”

While Kyle pretended extreme interest in his last bite of stew, Meaghan followed Colleen through a door off the kitchen. Bigger than a pantry and smaller than a bedroom, it was about seven feet long and six feet across. In the future, it would become a combination of a mudroom and laundry room, with hooks above a bench for hanging rain jackets before sitting to take off muddy Wellies. A deep utility sink for washing up and counters for folding clothes would be added later. Now it was bare but for a set of crudely crafted shelves in a corner and an old cot shoved against the wall.

It seemed that Mickey and Colleen barely scratched out a living and had no surpluses to store. Among a few large pots on the shelves stood an ancient-looking washbasin with a wringer screwed to its top and scrub board sitting inside it. Colleen had neatly arranged her broom and mop, bucket and detergents beside the door. She cleared her throat as Meaghan took it all in.

“Tell me, granddaughter,” she said with a tired smile. “Will I always be stuffing my company into the closets?”

Meaghan shook her head. “Someday you’ll have two spare rooms and you’ll grouse that they don’t stay empty long enough. You are loved by everyone, Nana, and you have many visitors.”

“Everyone, is it?”

Meaghan shook her head. “Well, I guess that would be an exaggeration. You do tend to piss people off, but it’s one of the things
I
love about you.”

“That I’m contrary?”

“Of course. Who wants to be fecking agreeable?”

Meaghan grinned at the astonished look on Colleen’s face.

“I know that you feel trapped right now and that things with Mickey . . . they aren’t right. But this will not be forever. Long after he’s gone, you’ll be around to greet the day.”

“Drinks himself into an early grave, does he?”

“Hit by a tram, drunk.”

“Are you serious?” Colleen asked with wide eyes.

“No—I’ve no idea how he goes. But it doesn’t matter what happens to Mickey, Nana. Only what happens to you.”

Colleen blinked rapidly and then looked away. Giving Meaghan a small, tight hug, she wearily made her way upstairs, where Niall once again slept safely in his cradle. In Meaghan’s time, there would be three rooms up there, but now there was only one, built under the slope of the steepled ceiling. She hoped Mickey hit his head on it each time he staggered into bed, but that thought brought more angst over his possible return. Áedán had said he wouldn’t let Mickey come back here, but what if he couldn’t stop him?

Mickey had spoken in Cathán’s voice. He’d meant to kill her to get the pendant. And those eyes . . . Mickey was not a kind man, not a good man. But his eyes had been human. What she’d seen in their dark depths tonight, had not.

Before Colleen reached the second floor, Meaghan called softly, “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll lock up before I go to sleep.”

Colleen gave a low, grim laugh. “Sure and I wish you luck with that. The back door hasn’t a lock that works. Mickey keeps saying he’ll fix it, but he never has.”

Meaghan shook her head at that dire news, but she supposed a mere lock wouldn’t keep Mickey Ballagh out if he wanted in anyway.

“I still can’t understand what happened,” Colleen said, pausing at the top of the stairs to look down. “He’s never acted so violent like he did tonight, and I’ve never let my temper loose like that either.”

“No one could blame you, Colleen,” Meaghan said. “Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll figure things out in the morning.”