Shadow Spell (9 page)

And, Connor thought, she would never come to him again. “Do you want to see her hunt?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Just let her know she can. Do you not talk to the birds, Ms. Stanley?”

“Megan, and yes, I do.” Now her smile turned speculative as she studied Connor. “It's not something I admit to most. All right, Sally—she'll stay Sally—hunt.”

The hawk rose, circled high. Connor began to walk the field with Megan, following the flight.

“So what brought you to Ireland, and to Clare?” he asked her.

“An attempt to save a marriage, which it didn't. But I think it saved me, and I'm happy with that. So it's just me and Bruno—and now Sally.”

“Bruno?”

“My dog. Sweet little mutt who showed up at my door a couple years ago. Mangy, limping, half starved. We adopted each other. He's used to hawks. He doesn't bother my neighbor's.

“A dog's an asset on a hunt. Not that she needs one.” As he spoke, Sally dove—a bullet from a gun. As talons flashed, Megan let out a little hiss.

“Gets me every time. It's what they do, need to do. God or the world or whatever you believe in made them to hunt and feed. But I always feel a little sorry about it. It took some time for me to stop being squeamish about feeding them during molting, but I got over that. Have you always lived in Mayo?”

“Always, yes.”

They exchanged some small talk—weather, hawking, a pub in Ennis he knew well—while Sally feasted on the small rabbit she'd taken down.

“I'm half in love with her already.” Megan lifted her arm, and the hawk responded, flying over to land. “Some of that's just excitement and anticipation, but I think we'll make that match you spoke of. Will you let me have her?”

“You made arrangements with Fin,” Connor began.

“Yeah, I did, but he said it would be up to you.”

“She's yours already, Megan.” He looked from the hawk to the woman. “Else she wouldn't have come to you after her feed. You'll want to take her home.”

“Yes, yes. I brought everything, with my fingers crossed for luck. I nearly brought Bruno but thought they should get acquainted before a car trip.”

She looked at Sally, laughed. “I have a hawk.”

“And she has you.”

“And she has me. And I think she'll always have you, so would you mind if I took a picture of you with her?”

“Ah, sure if you're wanting.”

“My camera's in my car.” She transferred Sally to Connor, dashed back to her car. And returned with a very substantial Nikon.

“That's quite the camera.”

“And I'm good with it. Go to my website and see for yourself. I'm going to take a couple, okay?” she continued as she checked setting and light. “Just relax—I don't want a studied pose. We'll have the young Irish god with Sally, queen of the falcons.”

And when Connor laughed, she took three shots, fast.

“Perfect. Just one more with you looking at her.”

Obliging, he looked at Sally.
You'll be happy with her,
he told the hawk.
She's been waiting for you.

“Great. Thanks.” She slung the camera around her neck. “I'll email you the best of them if you want.”

“Sure I'd like that very much.” He dug out one of the business cards he'd remembered to stick in his back pocket.

“And here's one of mine. My website's on it. And I wrote my personal email on the back when I got my camera. In case you have any questions or follow-ups about . . . Sally.”

“That's grand.” He slipped it into his pocket.

Shortly, after helping Megan settle Sally in her container for the trip, Connor climbed back in his lorry.

“That's grand? That's all you have to say about it?” He cast his eyes to heaven as he drove. “What's come over you, O'Dwyer? The woman was gorgeous, single, clever, and a keen hawker. And she gave you an open door a kilometer wide. But did you walk through it? You didn't, no. ‘That's grand' is all you said, and let that open door sit there.”

Was it simply distraction, the burden of what he knew would have to be done, and the not knowing when it could or would be done? But it had always been there, hadn't it, in the back of all? And had never interfered with his romantic maneuverings.

Had it all changed so much after the solstice? He knew he'd never known fear as sharp as when he'd seen Boyle's hands burning, seen Iona on the ground bruised and bloody. When he'd known the lives of all of them depended on all of them.

Ah well, he thought, perhaps it was best to stay unentangled from those romantic maneuvers for a bit longer. No reason at all he couldn't walk through that open door at a later date.

But for now, he needed to swing by the big stables, let Fin know the deal was done. Then his sister expected him, as this was, at least in theory, his free day.

He stopped at the stables where Fin made his home in the fancy stone house with a hot tub big as a pond on the back terrace and a room on the second floor where he kept magickal weapons, books, and everything else a witch might need—especially one determined to destroy a dark sorcerer of his own blood.

Beside it stood the garage with the apartment over it where Boyle lived—and where Iona would. And the barn for the horses—some for breeding, some for use at the working stables not far off.

Some of the horses cropped in the paddock beyond the one set for jumping practice and lessons.

He spotted Meara, which surprised him, leading one out.

He hopped down from the lorry to greet Bugs, the cheerful mutt who made the barn his home, then hailed her.

“I'd hoped to see Fin, but didn't expect to see you.”

“I'm fetching Rufus. Caesar was on the slate for guides today, but Iona says he's got a bit of a strain—left foreleg.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“She says not.” She looped Rufus's reins around the fence. “But we agreed to give him a bit of rest and keep an eye. Fin's round and about somewhere. I thought this was your free day.”

“It is, but I had to meet a customer over at Mulligan's farm. She bought Sally—one from the brood we had last spring.”

“And you're a bit sulky over it.”

“I'm not sulky.”

“A bit,” Meara said, and bent to give Bugs a scratch. “It's hard to raise a living thing, connect and bond with it, then give it to another. But you can't keep them all.”

“I know it”—though he wished otherwise—“and it's a good match. Sally took to her right off, I could see it.”

“She?”

“A Yank, moved here a few years ago, and intends to stay—even after her husband, now her former husband, moved back.”

Meara's lips curved; her eyebrows lifted. “A looker, is she?”

“She is. Why?”

“No why, just I could hear it in your voice. Living hereabouts?”

“No, down in Clare. Still squeamish over the hunt, but a good hand and heart with the hawk. I thought I'd let Fin know we made the deal, then I'm off to home to work with Branna, as I promised.”

“I'm off as well.” She unlooped the reins. “Since you'll talk to Branna before I do, tell her Iona's after a trip to Galway City to look for a wedding dress, and soon.”

“That's months off yet.”

“Only six, and a bride wants to find her dress before she digs into the rest of it.”

“Will they live there, do you think?”

Meara paused in the act of mounting, glanced toward Boyle's rooms over the garage. “Where else? I don't see them trying to squeeze the pair of them into Iona's room at the cottage for the long term.”

He realized he'd miss her—or more them as it was now. Talk over breakfast, conversation before bed whenever the two of them stayed at the cottage.

“Boyle's place is bigger than a single room, but sure it's not big when you add children.”

“You're jumping some steps ahead,” Meara observed.

“Not for the likes of Boyle and Iona.” Idly, he stroked the horse as he studied what Fin had built for himself—and for others as well. “They'll want a house of their own, won't they, not a couple of rooms over a garage.”

“I hadn't thought of it. They'll figure it.” She swung onto Rufus. “For now she's thinking bridal dresses and bouquets, as she should be. There's Fin now, with Aine.”

She studied the beautiful white filly Fin led out of the barn. “Soon to be a bride herself when we breed her with Alastar.”

“No white dress and bouquet for her.”

“But she'll get the stud, and for some of us that's fine and enough.”

She rode off on Connor's laugh. And he watched her nudge Rufus into a lope as smooth as butter before walking over to meet Fin.

His friend crouched down to give Bugs a rub, smiling as the dog wagged everywhere and made growls in his throat.

Talking to the dog, Connor knew, as he himself did with hawks, Iona with horses, Branna with hounds. Whatever ran in Fin's blood meant he could talk to all.

“Has he complaints then?” Connor wondered.

“He's only hoping I didn't forget this.” Fin reached in the pocket of his leather coat for a little dog biscuit. Bugs sat, stared up with soulful eyes.

“You're a fine boy and there's your reward.”

Bugs took it delicately before trotting off in triumph.

“Takes little to please him,” Connor commented.

“Well, he loves his life and would choose no other. A man would be lucky to feel the same.”

“Are you lucky, Fin?”

“Some days. But it takes more than a hard biscuit and a bed in a barn to content me. But then, I have more,” he added and stroked Aine's throat.

“Sure she's the most beautiful filly I've seen in my life.”

“And knows it well. But then modesty in a beautiful female's usually of the false sort. I'm after riding her over, letting her and Alastar gander at each other. So how did you find Megan?”

“Another beauty for certain. They took to each other, her and Sally. She gave me the payment on the spot.”

“I thought they would.” He nodded, didn't glance at the check Connor handed him, just shoved it in his pocket. “She'll be back for another in a month or two.”

Now Connor smiled. “I thought the same.”

“And you? Will you be traveling to Clare to visit them?”

“It crossed my mind. I think no, and can only think I think no because there's too much else crossing my mind.” Connor shoved fingers through his breeze-tossed hair. “I wake each morning thinking of it, and him. I never used to.”

“We hurt him, but he hurt us as well. We nearly didn't get through to Iona in time. None of us will be forgetting that. For all we had together, it wasn't enough. He won't forget that.”

“We'll have more next round. I'm going to work with Branna.” Lightly, he laid a hand on Fin's arm. “You should come with me.”

“Not today. She won't want me round today when she's thinking it'll just be the two of you together.”

“Branna won't let her feelings get in the way of what must be done.”

“That's God's truth,” Fin agreed, and swung himself into the saddle. He let Aine dance a bit. “We have to live, Connor. Despite it, because of it, around it, through it. We have to live as best we can.”

“You think he'll beat us?”

“I don't. No, he won't beat you.”

Deliberately, Connor slid a hand onto Aine's bridle, looked into Fin's stormy green eyes. “Us. It's us, Fin, and will always be us.”

Fin nodded. “He won't win. But before the battle, and bitter and bloody it's bound to be, we have to live. I might choose another life if I could, but I'll make the most of the one I have. I'll come to the cottage soon.”

He let Aine have her head, thundered away.

With his mood mixed and unsteady, Connor drove straight to the cottage. The light filtered through the windows of Branna's workshop, bounced over the colored bottles she displayed that held her creams and lotions, serums and potions. Her collection of mortars and pestles, her tools, the candles and plants she set about were all arranged just so.

And Kathel sprawled in front of her work counter like a guard while she sat at it, her nose in the thick book he knew to have been Sorcha's.

The fire in the hearth simmered, as did something in a pot on her work stove.

Another beauty, he thought—it seemed he was surrounded by them—with her dark hair pulled back from her face, her sweater rolled up at the sleeves. Her eyes, gray as the smoke puffing from the chimney, lifted to his.

“There you are. I thought you'd be here long before this. Half the day's gone.”

“I had things to see to, as I told you clear enough.”

Her brows lifted. “What's bitten your arse?”

“At the moment, you are.”

No, his mood wasn't mixed, he realized. It had tipped over to foul. He stalked to the jar on the counter beside the stove. There were always biscuits, and he was slightly mollified to find the soft, chewy ones she rolled in cinnamon and sugar.

“I'm here when I could get here. I had the hawk sale to deal with.”

“Was it a favorite of yours— Never mind, they all are. You have to be realistic, Connor.”

“I'm bloody realistic. I sold the hawk, and the buyer was beautiful, available, and interested. I'm bloody realistic enough to know I had to come back here for you and this, else I'd be having myself a good shag.”

“If a shag's so bleeding important, go get it done.” Eyes narrowed, she fired right back at him. “I'd rather work alone than with you pacing about horny and bitter.”

“It's that it
wasn't
so bleeding important, hasn't been so bleeding important since before the solstice that worries me.” He stuffed one cookie in his mouth, wagged the other in the air.