Haunting Embrace (27 page)

“What’s not possible?” he asked softly.

“I dreamed about a woman last night, before you got here. She wore white and had silvery hair. She carried that comb. I thought it was my subconscious spitting out the conversation I’d had with Kyle—”

“What conversation with Kyle?” If possible his tone dropped in degrees and his words became hardened missiles. She realized her blunder too late.

“After you and Mickey left, Kyle came here to talk to me.”

Even the room seemed chilly now, but she forced herself to go on.

“He told me a little about the legend of the Book of Fennore and the woman—the White Fennore. I thought talking about her had caused the dream. But I cut myself on the comb in the dream, and then when I woke up, I could still feel the blood on my hands. But there was no blood on the sheets. I must have been still asleep and dreaming. I told myself I imagined it.”

“And what did you tell Kyle in this little heart-to-heart the two of you had?”

Not a modicum of emotion tinted the words and not a trace of it danced on the air. Yet Meaghan felt his anger, his hurt, his sense of
betrayal
.

“I didn’t tell him anything—anything important.” She paused, knowing he wouldn’t like what she said next but needing to be honest, to show him her sincerity. “I didn’t tell him who you are, Áedán, only that no one could see you before.”

A flare of fury darkened his eyes and then disappeared just as quickly.

“I had to,” she continued. “They’d talked among themselves. They all agreed you weren’t with us when we were prisoners. They thought you were lying.”

“And did
Kyle
tell you who he is?
What
he is?”

“What do you mean?”

Again he studied her, examining every nuance of her expression, seeking something she didn’t understand.

“He is a Keeper, Meaghan. His purpose, his
calling
is to find the Book of Fennore and keep it safe from humanity.”

“Yes, he did tell me that,” she said, trying to understand why this seemed to enrage him. “That means we want the same thing, right? We want it found. We want Cathán stopped.”

“Do we?”

Meaghan stilled, frightened by the simple question and the frigid tone with which he’d delivered it.

“You can’t want it back, Áedán. You can’t want to return to it.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I want.”

But an unguarded look had flashed across his face, and in it, Meaghan read something ugly. Suddenly broken fragments of scattered memories began to fit together in her mind and form an image.

“Last night,” she said low, sure, but praying she had it wrong. “You came here for the pendant, didn’t you?”

“You’re not safe carrying it around in your pocket.”

“You mean
it’s
not safe, don’t you? You didn’t come to protect me. You came to take it.”

The truth glittered in the green and golden hues, so harsh, so vivid that it rocked her.

“Fecking Christ,” she muttered. “I am such an
idiot
. What was all this?” She waved a hand at the love nest they’d made on the floor. “You fecking seduced me so you could steal it?”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs just as a polite knock rapped the front door and echoed through the quiet house. An instant later, they heard the door open.

I have found you. . . .

Meaghan froze. The voice came from inside her head and filled it to the point that she heard nothing else. Vaguely she was aware that Colleen had greeted someone, and male voices answered with a pitch of anger and a touch of panic.

But she heard only the voice within.

Did you think to escape? Did you think to leave me?

Her eyes locked with Áedán’s, and she saw his face pale. He pushed away from her and backed into the corner, seeming unaware of what he did. She didn’t need her empathic abilities to get what he felt. Terror—the kind that made animals flee blindly into danger—tightened his mouth and turned the skin white at the corners. His eyes widened, the pupils dilating until they swallowed the green and made him look sightless. He began to shake.

As much as the voice had terrified her, the sight of this big implacable man
trembling
snapped Meaghan from whatever spell had been cast.

“Áedán,” she said, approaching him like she would a wild animal caught in a snare.

I will punish you! I will imprison YOU!

The voice rebounded inside her with triumph and malicious joy. It pressed against her ears from the inside out, threatening to rupture the fine membranes. Tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision. She swiped them away.

Áedán’s eyes had become glassy and blood trickled from his nose. His entire body shuddered, as if he’d been plugged into a socket pumped with a thousand amps of electricity.

All the hurt and anger she’d felt still rattled within her. He’d come back for the pendant, not to see her. Not to be sure Cathán hadn’t found a way to hurt her, but
for the pendant.
She couldn’t let herself pretend otherwise. But she couldn’t stop the hand that reached out for Áedán, the need to calm his fears.

“Áedán,” she said in a soft, soft voice. She took his face between her palms. His skin felt cold and the quaking seemed to come from his very bones. “Sssshhhh,” she crooned, pulling him into her arms, hearing the voice echoing all around them.

IwillhaveyouIwillpunishIwillimprisonPUNISHIMPRISONPUN-ISH.

Was it talking to Meaghan? Or did it speak to Áedán?

He shook his head, as if in answer to her silent question. His eyes were completely black now. No iris, no whites, no beautiful greens and golds. Shock swelled with superstitious fear and washed over her as she stared into them.

“Brio—I mean, Mr. MacGrath,” Colleen said from the front door, surprise evident in her lilting tones.

Moving like his limbs were made of wood, Áedán pulled away from Meaghan. He used the wall as a brace to stand and move to the door.

As if called
. As if
summoned
.

Meaghan scrambled after him, fumbling to button up her dress. She grabbed his arm and stopped him before he stepped out. What she saw marking his forearm almost chased every other thought away. Spirals, thin and shadowy, so faint they were almost invisible, seemed to be embedded just below the surface of his skin. Three spirals, stacked one on the other in an endless line. No beginning, no end, the marking began just below the heel of his hand and stretched across the blue veins of his wrist for several inches. She brushed a thumb over it, expecting to feel a ridge, but the skin was smooth.

Áedán tugged, still trying to get away.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” she whispered harshly.

He looked at her with those midnight eyes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

“Áedán? What’s wrong with you?” She took his face between her palms again, turned it away from the door, pulled him down until he was nose to nose with her. “Áedán, look at me. Hear me. Whatever that voice is, don’t listen. Just listen to me.”

She moved her lips to his ear. “I know you can hear me,” she said. “Think about last night. Think about my touch, my mouth. Everywhere you felt it.”

His hands went to her waist and gripped her convulsively.

“That’s right,” she said. “Hear me. Feel me.”

She kissed the sensitive skin of his throat, nipped at his earlobe, found his mouth with hers. She kissed him like life and death depended on the touch of their lips, the brush of their tongues. His hands tightened, and then he pulled her against him, his grip painful. The shudders wracking his body eased, and she sighed into his mouth, giving him her breath, feeling him take it in and make it his own.

By degrees she knew the black wall of his terror faded to gray and then silver. It thinned until only a membrane held him by sticky threads.

“Look at me,” she said, pulling back.

Slowly he opened his eyes. She could see green again, shifting with golden flecks and shadowed hues. She held his face until she was sure he saw her, until she was certain he heard her.

“Who am I?”

“Mine,” he said thickly, as if speaking were something he’d not done in a million years.

Reluctantly a part of her admitted that might be true, but it was not the answer she wanted. “Try again. Who am I?”

She formed the syllables of her name with her lips as he spoke.

“Mine.”

“Meagh-
an
,” she sounded out for him.

“Meaghan,” he said at last. But his eyes were hot and they still said
mine
.

“It’s barely dawn,” she heard Colleen say from the other room. “What are you doing here, Mr. MacGrath? And who’s that with you?”

“Thank God,” she heard the man who’d been there last night answer. “I feared. Christ in heaven, I feared—”

“Good morning to you, Mrs. Ballagh,” a second man spoke. “’Tis Francis Murray, here. May we come in?”

Meaghan stepped away from Áedán, though he didn’t let her go. Turning in the circle of his hands, she crept to the kitchen doorway with him following, still holding her. She peered out past the door frame. From this vantage, she could see a slice of the sitting room but nothing beyond. Áedán felt like a furnace at her back, and Meaghan struggled to focus on Colleen and her guests when he stood so close.

“Come in?” Colleen repeated as if the words were unknown to her. “You want to come in? Well, I suppose you can, but my Mickey isn’t awake yet,” she said.

“He’s home then?” Brion MacGrath asked with a sharp edge to his voice.

Colleen said nothing. Meaghan remembered hearing Mickey in the house last night and then his leaving, which had filled her with relief.

“Is Mickey at home, Colleen?” Brion MacGrath asked again, gentling his voice now, as if he asked something of the most delicate matter. Given the circumstances of Colleen’s relationship with Mickey and the fight that the entire town had witnessed last night, Meaghan supposed the question could be construed as sensitive in nature.

“No, he’s not home,” Colleen confessed.

“Mrs. Ballagh,” the other man said. “Perhaps you should have a seat.”

“A seat?” Colleen said blankly. “Why? I’ve just gotten up. I need to feed young Niall before he puts on a fuss for us.”

“It will just take a moment,” Francis said.

Meaghan sensed Colleen’s hesitation before she moved into sight. Dressed, she held Niall in her arms and her face was flushed, her eyes uncertain. Brion MacGrath—the big man who’d been there the night before—followed behind her. Next came a smaller, fussy-looking man with a thin, long face and sad, dark eyes. That had to be Francis. Meaghan thought he looked familiar, and then realized with a start that she knew—or would one day—his grandson, Frankie Murray.

Áedán leaned closer to look past her, keeping out of sight of the people in the front room. Colleen perched nervously on one of the straight-back chairs set before the worn sofa, her back to the kitchen. Brion and Francis sat awkwardly across from her.

“Do you know where Mickey is?” Brion asked, earning a surprised look from Francis.

Colleen shook her head. “I’m sure you heard we had a bit of a run-in last night, him and me. I’ll wager the tongues are wagging even this early.”

“I heard he and the man he’s got working for him had a go at it, as well,” Brion said in a careful tone.

The first alarm bell went off in Meaghan’s head, but she couldn’t see the danger that it warned of. Something wasn’t right here, though. Of that much she was certain.

“Mr. Brady was defending me,” Colleen said softly. “He wasn’t having a go with Mickey, only trying to throw water on the fire.”

Brion bristled at this, and Meaghan knew instinctively that he resented any man but himself defending Colleen. Would he rather that Mickey plunged his knife into Colleen than have Áedán come between her and her fecked-up husband?

“When was the last time you saw your husband, Colleen?” Brion asked.

The slur had been slight, and yet Meaghan heard the derision in his tone when he said
husband.
She knew what he thought of Mickey Ballagh as a husband, and she couldn’t agree more. Grandfather or not, on his best day, he was a drunken sod. If what she’d seen last night was true, his best days were long gone, and the thing Mickey Ballagh had become defied description.

Colleen gave a quick glance over her shoulder, as if she sensed her granddaughter lurking in the shadows, watching and listening, and had heard the silent condemnation of the man who would one day be her grandfather. Meaghan didn’t think they’d been seen, though. The sun had barely risen and the low slant of its rays streaming through the window in the front room cast the doorway where she stood in darkness.

Sighing, Colleen looked down at the baby in her arms. Meaghan saw shame hunching her shoulders and wanted to burst into the room and tell her she had nothing to be ashamed about.

“Mickey did not come home last night,” she said at last. “He’d been at the bottle more than a bit.”

“He was powerful drunk,” Francis said. “I saw him at the pub. Didn’t even recognize me he was so stinkin’ full of it.”

Brion cast the other man a disparaging glance.

“I’m just saying, he was sodden—”

“We understand,” Brion said. “He’d a lot to drink.”

“More than—”

“And he didn’t come home,” Brion said forcefully, at last shutting the skinny man’s mouth.

“It’s not uncommon,” Colleen said in a small voice. “For him to sleep on
The Angel
, I mean. And not come home. He does it often.”

This seemed to please Brion greatly, but he fought to keep the smug look off his face.

“We’ve some hard news for you, Mrs. Ballagh,” Francis said with a nervous glance at Brion. “Brace yourself, ma’am.”

Colleen’s head snapped up. Meaghan couldn’t see Colleen’s eyes, but she knew her grandmother studied Francis’s long face before shifting her attention to Brion’s. Meaghan caught the glimpse of remorse and glee, shame and satisfaction, all muted by the mask Brion tried to hide behind.

“Mickey is dead, Colleen,” Brion said softly.