Inked Magic (31 page)

“You pretty sure there’ll be no repercussions to you?”

“As long as her brother keeps quiet.”

“Skirting the edge there, letting an FBI agent get a hook into you even if it’s to keep his sister out of trouble. Might be better to put aside your pride and do a face-to-face with Eamon. Guy like that could bring pressure to bear on a lot of different fronts. The two of you joining forces could be unbeatable.”

“No.”

“Your call. Your woman.” Sean took a drink. “Or at least, half your woman.”

Cathal bridled at the casual taunt. “Start investigating Eamon.”

“Looking for leverage to keep him away from her?” Sean laughed. “Who’d have guessed you’d pay top dollar to consult me, then be so resistant to taking my advice.”

“Just do the work I hire you to do.”

“Sir. Yes sir.” His gaze flicked to the empty beer bottle in Cathal’s hand. “You staying for the rest of the game? Or going back to your club?”

Curiosity about Sean’s past got the better of him. The certainty that Sean wouldn’t be able to resist saying more about the relationship he’d been in made Cathal say, “I’m staying.”

“Beer’s in the fridge, help yourself. I only serve clients.”

T
here was no prelude to the dream. It filled Etaín’s mind, surging into her and becoming her reality as though it were liquid and the force of it, the weight of it easily knocked aside any barrier erected against it.

Caitlyn. The image came with trapped horror and irreconcilable guilt, with drugged haziness and emotional sickness.

A scream welled up inside her, primal and terrified and hopeless.
No!

She was aware of the heavy breathing above her. The grunting. The pain between her legs that came with having another one of them on top of her. Jordão she thought, by the smell of his hair, doing to her what Adam was doing to Caitlyn.

The bed spun, turning the pictures on the walls into a kaleidoscope. Her vision blurred and when it cleared again, the boy named Mason had taken Adam’s place above Caitlyn.

I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry
, she screamed silently.

And her scream blended into a boy’s, into yelling. Confusion. Panic.

The weight on top of her disappeared but the bed still shook violently. Caitlyn flailing. Thumping. Writhing naked next to her then going completely still, drooling blood and spit so close that if she
could make her arm work she could reach out and close Caitlyn’s mouth for her.

There was the sound of gagging. The smell of pee and shit.

An arm reached down wearing a Rolex. Jordão. His fingers pressed to Caitlyn’s throat.

Alive. Alive. Alive.

The words were underwater. Hazy but she heard them.

Get help. Get help. Get help.

Was that her or one of the boys? She couldn’t tell if her mouth moved.

But then she knew it did. Fingers pushed between her lips and she tried to turn her head.

“Come on Brianna, open up.”

She sobbed at the sound of Adam’s voice. Sobbed again as he forced her jaw open then closed it, holding it shut.

She choked and coughed on something lodged at the back of her throat. Welcomed the darkness when it came, falling into it with the sensation of tears dripping from her eyes.

My fault. My fault. My fault.

There was nothing until she woke in a hospital room.

“Caitlyn!” she screamed, her first thought. “Caitlyn!”

She tried to climb out of bed but a heavy-bodied nurse was there to restrain her. “Caitlyn!”

“Hush, now. Hush, Brianna.”

Images pressed in on her, like segments of a terrible, horrible dream. It couldn’t have happened. Not Adam. No. None of it was real.

She struggled against the nurse’s restraint again. “Let me up!” she screamed, thrashing violently, trying to bite and claw until she noticed the soreness between her thighs.

The first sob felt as though her chest had burst open delivering it. Guilt poured in, panic.

“Where’s Caitlyn?” A whimpered question instead of a screamed one.

“Hush. Don’t think about your friend now. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“I want to see Caitlyn! I want to see Caitlyn!”

She screamed it. Bucking. Wild with emotion. Caitlyn’s face, blood on a gold comforter, flashing through her mind with every movement.

Above her the nurse yelled for help and suddenly the room was filled with other people. She fought harder as they held her down.

“She’s ripped the catheter out,” one of them said.

“Let me see Caitlyn. I just want to see Caitlyn.”

“Stop, Brianna,” her father was there, laying a hand on her forehead. “I’m here. I’m right here with you.”

Another sob ripped through her. She couldn’t face him.

A scream came from deep inside her. It erupted, piercing the air.

Another welled up as tubing was placed around her arm and a man stepped forward with a syringe. “No!”

He pushed a needle into her arm. “Rest now. Rest is what you need.”

“Please. Please. Just tell me where Caitlyn is.”

“Let’s take care of you now.”

The fight went out of her, suppressed by waves of sleepiness. Helplessness.

Hopelessness.

Get help. Get help. Get help.

Are you crazy?
Jordão’s voice.
They die of an overdose. Too bad. So sad. Shit happens.

She was conscious of tears rolling down her cheeks. Caitlyn was dead. That’s why they wouldn’t answer her question. That’s why they wouldn’t tell her where Caitlyn was.

So sad. So sad. So sad.

Her fault. This was all her fault.

She curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest.

She wanted to die. The pain would go away then. It would all go away and she’d be with Mom and Brian and Caitlyn.

Etaín woke shivering, sweating. Her knees pressed to her chest as grief and guilt crushed her into the mattress. Something terrible had happened. Something she was responsible for.

She felt deathly ill, chilled to the core despite the fire at her back. Her thoughts were fuzzy though she recognized she’d experienced this before, a high that had veered into a dangerous, nightmare crash.

Confusion swamped her. Disbelief. Anger. She hadn’t touched drugs since the captain had her locked in a cell.

Bands of steel tightened around her chest at the memory of it. She struggled to breathe, struggled to escape until finally the sound of Eamon saying her name penetrated, allowing dissociation, providing the separation from stolen reality and
self
she needed.

She realized she was shaking, her teeth chattering, but still she forced her arms from around her legs, her knees away from her chest. “Let me up.”

Panic gathered when he continued to imprison her. Only sheer determination kept her from becoming wild, violent as Brianna had been. “I have to draw.”

Eamon bit off a refusal, fighting his worry for her and his anger at Cathal for asking this of her. “Stay in bed. I’ll get your things.”

He cursed silently. Hating to leave her even to pad across the room to the desk where the tablet and box of colored pencils brought from her bike waited. Hating, too, that he couldn’t immediately take her in his arms and warm her as he had when she first arrived at Aesirs, pouring magic tied to fire into her and restoring what had been depleted.

He gathered the supplies and turned, jaw clenching at seeing her sitting, huddled in blankets. The shivering had stopped though she continued to look ill.

A surge of violence welled up inside him. True fear wasn’t an emotion he often experienced and yet he’d felt it as she dreamed and seemed to fade away as if she approached death.

If Cathal were here . . .

In that moment it didn’t matter that he’d allowed this to play
out and seen the advantages of it. He didn’t think he could tolerate Etaín seeing Cathal much longer, not unless the relationship was made a permanent one, with all the obligations that would entail for Cathal.

Eamon reached the bed, handing her the drawing supplies. “Don’t think you can send me away,” he said, taking up a position behind her then lifting her onto his lap.

He needed to understand this, to see how her gift manifested so he could help her control it. Survive it. He needed to offer what comfort he could through the touch of skin to skin.

She didn’t resist, only picked out a colored pencil and applied it to the blank white of the paper, unconsciously pulling on his magic as images flowed across each page. Each of her strokes sure, her hand steady, her attention complete.

Nothing existed for her other than her drawing. Not him. Not her surroundings.

Anger toward Cathal disappeared with the disturbing retelling of a terrible story. She was a talented artist, capturing not only the physical details but the sense of violation. Guilt. Anguish and horror.

Elf or human, had what happened to Brianna and Caitlyn been done to someone who called him Lord, he would have used any means at his disposal to find and punish those responsible.

When she finally closed the sketch pad there was no relief in the gesture. Pushing it aside, along with the case of pencils, she pulled her knees to her chest again, wrapping her arms around her legs.

Eamon accommodated the shift in position, his arms settling on top of hers, hugging her to him. His mouth delivering comfort as he kissed her shoulder and neck.

Etaín relaxed into him, grateful for his presence and his touch. Usually she needed a shower to rebuild mental walls. Usually she puked when she first woke.

This was much better.

His heat was like the warm lap of ocean waters onto a beach. Soothing, taking away all evidence of what had passed across the sand in a gentle restoring of her defenses.

“Brianna Dunne’s memories?”

“Yes.”

A measure of dread returned to mar the peacefulness. Though the barrier against the memories was in place, awareness that they weren’t complete remained. She knew she had an ending but no beginning, understood the beginning was of equal importance.

She couldn’t suppress the shiver that came with the prospect of returning to Denis’s house. She’d never had to touch a victim twice, never felt so physically sick after doing it as she had with Brianna.

“I need to see her again.”

She felt the sudden rigidness of his muscles. Heard threads of ice in a smooth-flowing voice when he said, “There’s more?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come with you.” Implacable will set against an impossibility.

Etaín didn’t confront him directly. “If you do, Denis will insist on being in the room with us.”

She felt the telltale spasm where his cheek touched her neck and it brought a smile despite what they were talking about.
Lord
Eamon’s plans thwarted.

“Tell me how you took her memories, Etaín. Tell me if using your gift always affects you this way.”

His arms tightened on her painfully for an instant, not threat but conveyed worry. “There was a point when I thought you might slip into death.”

“Brianna wants to die.”

“Tell me how you took her memories,” he repeated.

She hesitated, old caution surfacing before being dismissed. “I took them the same way I always do. I touched the eyes to her skin and asked her to show me what happened.”

“But you didn’t see it when you were with her.” Not a hard thing for him to guess.

“No. I never do. The memories come later, in a dream that seems real. Like it’s happening to me.”

The muscles in his arms flexed against hers. “And the sickness? The weakness?”

“Usually it doesn’t last. I puke my guts out twice, right after I take the memories and right after I live through them, then I’m okay . . .”

She almost didn’t add the rest of it, then thought about the mirror demonstration and realized there was probably nothing she could tell him that would seem crazy. “Well, I’m okay after a shower. Usually that’s what it takes to lock the memories away. I know they’re there, but I don’t revisit them because there’s always a chance if I do I’ll relive them.”

She couldn’t suppress a tremor at remembering what had happened when the captain scared her straight at sixteen. “Reliving the memories is like being trapped in a looping horror film. I can’t alter
anything
in them. Not what happens, not the thoughts or feelings, or even what was said, everything remains exactly the same.”

“But something was different this time?” There was only the barest hint of a question in his voice.

She used humor against her fear at where the changes in her gift might ultimately lead. “I didn’t throw up this morning for a start. The Italian dinner was great, but I’m happy not to have seen it again in a less palatable form.”

He answered with a bite to her shoulder and another painful tightening of his arms. “Did Brianna resist?”

“No. She was unconscious and heavily drugged when I touched her.”

“There’s a sense of guilt in the pictures you drew.”

Etaín glanced at the sketchbook and shivered. But the touch of his skin to hers and his presence at her back gave her the strength to open the door to Brianna’s reality just long enough to say, “She blames herself for what happened.”