Dark Enchantment (9 page)

A European double-ring and a woman answered. “Operator. May I help you?”

“Please, I need an ambulance.” The controlled calm in Arianna’s voice was a façade, strictly for Granny’s benefit. “Hurry, please.”

Okay, they’ll want an address.
Her eyes were scouring the room for a piece of mail...
anything
…when she remembered the slip of paper that had gotten her here.
Now, what did I do with the thing? Oh, yeah. Jeans back pocket.

“Emergency services.”

After a quick explanation of the circumstances, Arianna read the address off the crumpled paper she smoothed obsessively. Tucking the paper back into her pocket, she stroked Granny’s pale brow while answering the dispatcher’s questions. “Yes, but her respiration’s labored…. Conscious, yes, but her color is ashen, a terrible shade of gray—bluish gray.... Her—her lips and nail beds, too. And she’s in a lot of pain—Oh, for God’s sake! Just get an ambulance over here,” she finally snapped. “The woman’s having a heart attack, and you’re playing twenty questions.”

After hanging up, she leaned over and kissed Granny’s cold and clammy forehead. “Rest now, sweetheart. Help’s on the way. Do you want me to call anyone for you? Your son or daughter?”

A rasp escaped lips the color of blue marble. “Conor. And me grandson, Caleb.”
Caleb?
“Me bag.”

“Okay, shhh now, I’ll take care of it.” Fingers trailing absently up and down the thin, age-spotted arm, Arianna searched the room for a purse. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Spotting a leather patchwork handbag on the counter beside a bowl of fruit, she got up and found a small, blue address book in a zippered pocket inside.

She called the number listed for Conor, and a woman answered. “McColgan’s.”

“Hello, this is...um...may I speak to Conor O’Clery, please?”

Silence. And then, “Conor’s not in at the moment.” Her tone was stiff, proprietary. “He’s expected back shortly. Who will I tell him phoned?”

“This is.... Just tell him his mother’s taken ill at home. An ambulance should be here any minute.”
Please, God!
“He can try calling here when he gets back, but—”

“I’ll have him ring the hospital straight away,” the girl interrupted and hung up.

Arianna stared in puzzlement at the receiver, while reaching up to massage her throbbing left temple with her other hand. Sparing Granny a worried glance, Arianna noted that she was lying deathly still, eyes closed, purple lips pinched with pain. Stretching the phone cord over her reclining form, Arianna knelt again beside her.

She dialed the number for Caleb. Surname: MacNamara.
Small world.
Whispering, “Pick up, pick up,” she bit back a groan when the call went automatically into voice mail. She waited impatiently as the deep, all-too-familiar voice recited a perfunctory message. “Caleb, this is Arianna — um, from last night. I...uh...there’s been an emergency. It’s Mrs.—uh…your grandmother. An ambulance is already on the way here, so I guess you should go straight to the hospital.” Her photographic memory coming in handy, she recited her new cell number and hung up.

On the off chance that Conor or Caleb might drop by here before checking their voice mail, Arianna dug a pen and notepad out of the purse in her lap. Scribbling a message, she added her address and phone number, and left the note propped conspicuously in the center of the table.

As she gently chafed Granny’s chilled hand between her own, a longcase clock in the sitting room chimed the hour of three. The sound faded into the soulful wail of a siren.
Thank God.
Strange, how she had always dreaded that sound, because it meant someone was in trouble. Today, however, it conveyed something else entirely: That help was on the way.

Chapter Nine

H
is grandmother.
That explained everything, Arianna decided as she thumbed through a magazine in the emergency room at Ennis General. With a sigh, she tossed the out-of-date publication onto a plastic table molded to the chair on her left. Resting her head against the puke green wall behind her, she realized she was shell-shocked. Understandable, given the way the missing pieces of her life had come flying back together like an explosion in reverse.

Still reeling from the midwife’s disclosure, Arianna took the time to consider her childhood superhero, Caleb. Her magical mystery man.

Yeah, right.
This whole thing would almost be funny if it wasn’t so darned pathetic. Tara had nailed it when she suggested Arianna seek counseling to resolve the emotional issues surrounding her dreams. The whole thing was rather anticlimactic really. The discovery that her nocturnal lover hadn’t been planted in the garden of her dreams through some mystical connection after all. It was clear now that the seed germinating his appearance in her psyche had been grounded in reality. Planted in her mind in early childhood, when she had spent time with him at his grandmother’s townhouse.

It was a seed then watered and fertilized by the imagination of a grieving child.

She glanced at her watch. “Where is Caleb, anyway?” Hopefully Conor was here, at least. Idiotic hospital policy forbade anyone but immediate family from going back to be with Granny. And no one should have to die alone.
Not like Da had done.

Before that mournful notion could lead her further down the road to despair, she heard the sound of a deep, resonant voice with a sexy Irish accent.
Caleb
. He was standing at the reception desk, his expression tight and grim. Shoulders bunched, he was conversing animatedly with a slight, balding man sporting wire-rimmed spectacles, who was stubbornly shaking his head.

“Casualty’s chockablock right now,” he was saying, “so we’re allowing only one family member back with each patient. As her son’s with her now….” All at once, the man’s eyes seemed to glaze over, become vacant. “Of course, sir,” he said politely. “No worries. You can go on back to see her now.”

As if Caleb had sensed Arianna’s steady regard, his head pivoted on his shoulders. A dark, enigmatic gaze locked onto hers. His green eyes glittered with the remnant of something that trailed shivers over her flesh. Consciously resisting the urge to scrub at her arms, she dropped her eyes and experienced an actual physical release as she broke the unearthly connection.

All testosterone and raw masculinity, Caleb stalked toward her in a pair of worn blue jeans that creased strategically with every step.
Damn
.

“How did you know...to ring me?” he asked, looking down at her.

Arianna stood. “Granny was lucid after it happened. Asked me to call you and Conor.”

His brows raised. “Granny?”

“She said it was what I used to call her when I was small.” She gave her head a quick shake. “Not important right now. Is there any news? I followed the ambulance over in my car, but they wouldn’t let me go into the examining room because I’m not family.”

The double-doors leading back to the treatment rooms swung open, and an attractive man, mid-to-late forties, came walking through. He nodded at Caleb, his gaze sliding over to Arianna and back again, then he disappeared through a door marked
Admissions
.

“My uncle, Conor. Mother’s brother,” Caleb explained, then his brows furrowed. “You look drained. You should go on home. Nothing more you can do here. I’ll give you a shout when there’s word.”

“I’m staying until I know she’s out of danger.”

His eyes widened at her fervency, then, with a
‘have it your way’
shrug, he was gone.

The round, black clock on the wall ticked away the interminable minutes.
Fifteen
. She went to the restroom. Two doors, one marked
MNA,
one marked
FIR.
Thankful for the silhouettes etched on the doors, she picked
MNA.

Thirty-five minutes.
A trip to the Coke machine for a bottle of water.

Back in the waiting room, she checked in again with the desk. The nurse picked up the telephone, dialed and spoke with someone. “The crisis has passed and the patient’s stable,” she informed Arianna. “But she’s being admitting to HDU due to her age.”

“HDU?”

“High Dependency Unit,” the nurse explained. “For patients who don’t require ICU, but need more support than an ordinary hospital ward.”

“And visiting?”

“Restricted to families only at this time.”

Arianna’s cell phone rang and she excused herself. “Hello.”

“Caleb here. Just wanted you to know Granny’s suffered a minor heart attack.”

“That’s what I thought. And the prognosis?”

“Very good.”

Arianna suddenly felt as wrung out as a wet dishrag. “Thank God.”

“And thank
you
,” Caleb said softly, his tone low and intense. “Had you not been there when it happened, not responded so quickly….”

Right. And, if not for the strain of being forced to relive my mother’s death….

“I remembered how much I loved her,” Arianna murmured, more to herself than to Caleb. When he began to question the remark, she cut him off. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. I need to go for a run. I’ve got the mother of all migraines trying to kick in and physical activity always seems to head them off.”

Not to mention that the fresh sea air would help rid her of the sickening medicinal odor coating her lungs and clinging like a film to her hair and clothes.

The silence on the other end of the line stretched on for so long she thought she had offended him—
again.
Or maybe they had been disconnected. “Caleb?”

“Feel better, luv,” he murmured finally. Strange. The words had no sooner left his lips than the headache lifted. “Caleb, what—?”

The line disconnected before she could finish posing a ridiculous question.
Probably just as well.

* * *

Less than half an hour later Arianna passed through the gates of the Cliffs of Moher visitors centre. Her shoulders hunched inside her fleece-lined jacket, her eyes were watering from the raw nose-numbing bite of the November wind. Since it was officially off-season, a string of gift shops built into the hillside to her right were closed and boarded up.

With the breathtaking view of the ocean in front of her, Arianna mounted the concrete steps to the right. Perched on a windswept headland at the top of the steps was a nineteenth century round tower. Now locked up and abandoned, according to the tourist guide, OBrien’s Tower had recently served as a souvenir shop, where a two-euro coin granted visitors passage up a rusted winding staircase to a lookout point on the roof.

A stone barrier lined the seven-hundred-foot cliffs that plunged to the thundering North Atlantic below. Arianna stared out at the horizon. Sky and sea came together in a majestic panorama of deep and aching blue. Seagulls screeched and swooped, gliding on the wind currents, while an oystercatcher skimmed the briny deep in search of a late day snack.

“It’s beautiful, Da,” Arianna whispered into the damp sea air, as if in a prayer. “I understand now why you would have wanted your ashes scattered here.”

From her unique vantagepoint, she could see clearly the coast below. Spotting no beach area suitable for jogging, she tore herself away from the mesmerizing view and headed back to the car. She would drive further up the coastal road toward Liscannor until she found somewhere to run.

As if the route was mapped out in her head, she turned right at a sign pointing the way to Hags Head. Bumping along through a rock quarry, she found the place she was looking for: a golden apron of incandescent sand embraced by towering bluffs.

After parking, she picked her way down a pebbly, bracken-covered path. Already, she could feel the sea’s primordial magic at work, purging the tension coiled tightly in her neck and shoulders. White-capped waves beckoned her to the ocean side with graceful hands. The ebb and flow of the breaking tide beguiled her, promised a catharsis for her restless soul.

Had her mother had experienced a similar allure on this lonely stretch of sand? Was this the place a young woman with everything to live for had waded into the sea? Where she had drowned herself while her husband played a fiddle, her child lay sleeping on a blanket in the sand?

All at once, a mournful wailing arose from the sea. A haunted moaning, it sounded like a woman mourning an inconsolable loss. The sound made Arianna’s heart gallop, left her weak in the knees. Being visited by the spirit of her loving father was one thing, she thought. But by the ghost of her suicidal mother?
No, thank you very much.

There was a sudden movement in the water about a hundred feet offshore, where a small herd of seals were sunning themselves on a large boulder. As she looked on, one of the seals opened its mouth and let out that same howling sound.

“Okay, enough with the doom and gloom already,” Arianna scolded herself. She scrubbed at her arms, telling herself that the chill in her bones was solely the result of the plunge in temperature from the approach of dusk.

Desperate for a run, she sank into a series of stretches and deep-knee bends, pushing her recalcitrant muscles into a punishing warm-up. She took off in a sprint, the pounding of her feet against the hard-packed sand muffled by the wind in her ears. The gusts pushed her along with the impression of flying.

Only about five-thirty and already the sun was going down, Arianna thought. The fiery disk plunged into the ocean, splashing the horizon with transcendental hues of copper and vermilion. At the first ambivalent glimmer of the moon, she decided it was time to turn around. Slowing her pace, she turned in a long wide arc, heading back in the direction she had come from. Endorphins pumping, she was beginning to feel like her old self again. Strong, healthy. Complete.

With a
whoop
, she shoved two clenched fists in the air and spun around in a happy dance in celebration of her oneness with this moonstruck land of her birth.

Head thrown back, she caught sight of something high up on the cliffs. A mirage, she thought at first, a trick of the failing light pitted against the encroaching darkness. An illusion created by the shifting shadows of dusk as the last rays of the dying sun reflected off the incoming mists.

Pushing sweaty, tangled strands of hair out of eyes, Arianna blinked several times. But the medieval castle sprawled along the verge of the craggy cliffs remained steadfastly in place. “Wow,” she murmured, grinning. “How incredibly cool is that?”

Towers and crenellated walls rose from a jagged jut of rock like an artist’s rendition in a child’s faerie tale. Almost mythical in its grandeur, the imposing stone fortress was guarded by the sea at its back, its perimeter secured by battlements built into an outer bawn.

Castles had always fascinated her. Not surprising, she supposed, given the content of her dreams. Tragic, she thought, that time and political unrest had left so many in ruins. Captivated by the parapets intact after so many centuries, she felt a deep sense of satisfaction that this one appeared to have remained in its original state.

“Probably a five-star hotel,” she muttered cynically, saddened by the possibility of the commercialization of yet another vital piece of Irish history.

Heated from her run, she took off her jacket and looped the arms around her waist. Surveying the property, she spotted a fifth-storey window facing the edge of the sandstone escarpment. “
The
fifth-storey window,” she added, knowing the thought was irrational.

Because there was no way she could know the precise dimensions of the room behind that darkened window. No way she could picture the height of its vaulted ceiling, the texture of its silk-lined walls. She couldn’t describe how the room was furnished, the heavy mahogany pieces standing stoically on plush Turkish rugs.

Neither was there any way on earth she could have sketched, from memory, the Celtic knot pattern of the draperies overhanging the mile-wide platform bed facing that outer wall.

Arianna rolled her shoulders. The sense of déjà vu she dismissed as a knee-jerk reaction to seeing her first Irish castle. Undoubtedly, she would have experienced the same rush of recognition at any of the hundreds of such heritage sites strewn across this ancient land.

“But I wouldn’t have seen
you
.” She directed her remark to the distant form of a man, a dark silhouette etched in the gloaming.
Caleb
. He was leaning forward, arms crossed over his knee, foot lodged against a stone abutment. Lord of all he surveyed.

It occurred to her then that he was…what? Three...four hundred feet above her? Too far from her to be able to discern his features. And yet, she would have known him anywhere.

Just as he had recognized her.

His gaze potent, caressing it seemed, he was studying her. His hand raised and she expected a friendly wave, but the trajectory of his finger continued upward. He was pointing something out to her in the sky. Suddenly a sonic boom reverberated off the cliffs and peaks that closed the area off from the east.

Arianna sniffed the air.
Ozone….
As she identified the subtle odor, an electrical charge spiked the tiny hairs on her arms and legs like millions of ants scattering all over her body.

Her gaze flew back to Caleb and she stared in horrified fascination. On the very tip of his upraised finger, a bolt of sizzling blue fire danced
en pointe
a macabre ballet that forged his body into a human lightning rod.

Knuckles crammed against her lips, Arianna strangled on a scream and staggered backwards. Their eyes locked, his electrified and sparking a galvanized green, as he flung his hand downward in what she assumed to be an attempt to dislodge the fireball.

“Jesus...
God
!” she cried out as the rolling, hissing mass of electricity came hurtling directly at her. Scrambling backward, she landed on her butt in the sand, a deafening, high-pitched whistle ringing in her ears. Arms thrown over her head, she rolled into a tight, tiny ball only seconds before an ungodly explosion shook the ground.