Haunting Beauty (20 page)

“Ew,” Fia laughed, waving a hand in front of her nose. “You’re ripe as a pig.”

He grinned, unabashed. “And the master of the hurling match,” he proclaimed proudly.

Feeling her fixed stare, his eyes shifted to Danni. Flushing, she shut her mouth and tried to pretend like she hadn’t been gawking, but he’d obviously caught her in the act. For a moment he simply studied her, his expression thoughtful. Danni held her breath, wondering what he saw in her. A part of her begged for recognition. The pain of being here with her parents but still being alone—a stranger—went too deep to bear.

“Who is this?” he asked.

Of course he hadn’t recognized her—no more than her mother had. She couldn’t really have seen him in Arizona—no matter how much he and that man resembled one another. As for any familial recognition, he’d have to be insane to make the leap from kitchen help to time travel daughter.

“This is Danni Ballagh,” Fia answered. “She’s helping me with the costumes. Danni, this disreputable character is my husband, Cathán MacGrath.”

“Ballagh?” he asked, and the glittering eyes narrowed. “A relation?”

“Not to me, but to Niall,” Fia said, confusing Danni.

“Is that so?” Cathán asked. “You’re related to Niall, then?”

“Yes. Sean, my h-husband, is a second cousin I believe.”

Cathán frowned. “Who is his father?”

Danni didn’t have a clue, and his sudden scowl confused her even more.

“Don’t interrogate the girl, Cathán,” Fia said, saving Danni. “She’s a great help. They just arrived from America.”

Cathán turned that unhappy look to his wife. “Don’t say it like they’ve come from fucking heaven.”

“I didn’t,” she protested.

His sigh held a host of feelings—sorrow, hurt, disappointment, hope. He looked down for a moment, and then he lifted his face again. The smile was back on, filled with chagrin for his words. “No, just me being jealous I suppose. What can a poor Irish lad offer to a beautiful lass who yearns for America?”

Fia’s forced laugh was beginning to feel like nails on a chalkboard. Danni wondered if she was the only one who noticed.

“Why, his heart, of course, my love,” Fia murmured, looking down.

There was something needy in the way Cathán gazed at Fia, begging for it to be true. When Sean had told Danni the story of her mother disappearing, he’d said that some suspected marital discord between her parents. Clearly, her father adored her mother, but what was the weird vibe she picked up from Fia?

“Are you almost done, then?” Cathán asked. “I want you to myself for a bit before the children are home again.”

Embarrassed, Danni began to fold the costume and beat a hasty retreat, but Fia halted her. “I am sorry, Cathán, but I must finish these before the party. I haven’t the time just now.”

“No?” he said, and there was a wistful note in his voice.

Danni wanted to snatch the horse costume from Fia’s hands and insist she go with him, give him the few moments he so obviously longed for. There was shadowed sadness in Cathán’s bright blue eyes, and something else. Something Danni didn’t understand.

“And look at the time,” Fia went on. “I’ll be off for the children at half three anyway.

He let out a deep breath and shrugged. “That’s it, then. There’s nothing left for me but to shower away the pig smell, I suppose.”

“’Tis the lye soap I’m fearing you’ll need. A layer of skin may be required to rid it.”

“And willing I’d be to give it if you’d come along and wash my unreachables,” he countered.

“Cathán,” Fia exclaimed with shock, giving Danni an embarrassed glance. Cathán’s laughter held no apology as it followed him out of the room.

Chapter Sixteen

L
ATER that afternoon, Danni was in the kitchen scrubbing what seemed a thousand pots and pans. The day had passed without a sense of time. It seemed to loop and swirl back on itself, stretching the moments of a lapsed hour into the slow tick of an entire day. It should have been weeks ago that she woke up naked in bed with Sean, his skin like hot satin down her back. The memory of his kisses, the power of his lovemaking as fresh in her mind as the morning chill in the air.

She turned on the faucet and pulled the spray nozzle over the deep sink to rinse the pot she’d just washed. The sound of water against the stainless steel reminded her of rain pelting against windows. There were no showers today, but as she rinsed the soap from the steel, the hollow patter of it came with scent and damp chill. Pausing with the pot still in her hands, she shut off the water and looked out the window over the sink. Sunshine spilled brightly over the garden and the valley beyond.

It wasn’t raining, but she still heard the drops pelting the window and roof. Frowning, she looked around. It wasn’t rain, no water was running, so what was making the sound?

Even as the question formed, she felt it.... The air. It was changing, thickening, pressing outward. She had only an instant to catch her breath before, like a puff of steam from a hissing iron, it turned.

Without warning she found herself outside in the dark of night. She stood on a cobbled street among stately homes set back behind ornamental gates. Long drives curved up to massive front doors. Porch lights glowed like beacons in the gloom. Above, a cast-iron sky rode low and heavy. Not a star twinkled, not a beam broke the churning layer of clouds.

Danni still held the pot she’d been rinsing, and she looked at it stupidly, as baffled by its presence here as she was by her own. There’d been no time to prepare—no way to know what she should have prepared for.

A light came on in the house ahead of her. It spilled a yellow beacon out to where she stood.

With no conscious decision made, she followed it. The streaming rain made crossing over the cobblestones treacherous and blurred her vision. She slipped and skidded up the drive, clutching the pot in one hand and waving the other for balance. She reached the house and pushed through the bushes to a window, where sheer curtains gave her a hazy view inside.

The room was large but crowded with heavy furniture. It seemed that every inch of wall had a table or chest pushed up against it or a massive painting hanging in the gap. Not one, but two sofas sat in front of a crackling fire with a heavy coffee table in between. Matching chairs of rich leather flanked them.

There were expensive candy dishes and figurines on the surfaces, some still in boxes, and shopping bags strewn on the floor. As if the occupants had just returned from making their purchases.

It took only a moment to realize where she was. Her mother had brought Danni here when she’d shown her the Book of Fennore in the vision. Danni leaned closer and peered through the window at the pine coffer pushed against the wall.

Just then three women entered the room. The first was older and portly, wearing too much makeup and jewelry. It hung from her earlobes, dangled around her throat, and glittered on every finger. The other two were both young and slender, dressed in jeans and sweaters.

The eldest girl looked to be nineteen, maybe twenty. She wore ghoulish makeup with dark lines circling her eyes and garish pink lipstick on her mouth. The younger girl might have been seventeen. She was soft and curvy, a golden blonde with pale skin. She wore no makeup—she didn’t need to. There was a quiet beauty about her, a serenity that seemed to glow from within.

She looked up and Danni swallowed hard. It was Fia. Her mother—her mother at seventeen . . .

The many lamps in the room cast the older woman’s face in bright illumination, giving her prominent brow and deep-set eyes a sinister look as she stalked the room, fingering the things she saw with a possessive hunger. The girls watched her warily. They were uneasy. Danni could feel it. The absolute quiet in the room was unnatural, and it only served to magnify the disturbing atmosphere.

Danni was inside now, though she had no recollection of moving, of crossing through a threshold to enter the room. She simply found herself in the corner, dripping on the floor behind the group of women.

“It’s time,” the older woman said to no one in particular.

“Mum, no,” Fia said. “Not tonight.”

Fia’s mother ignored her. She went to the coffer, unlocked it using a key she wore around her neck, and lifted something out. Danni braced herself, knowing what it was even before she saw the canvas wrapping.

The Book of Fennore.

Danni waited for the vibration, for the sickness that would spew from the evil thing once the canvas was removed. Fia’s mother didn’t hesitate to unveil the dreadful thing. She laid it bare and gazed upon it with a cold smile. The black of its cover seemed to gleam while absorbing any light that touched it. But it didn’t move, didn’t open as it had in Danni’s vision before.

“Edel,” the mother said, snapping her fingers at the older girl.

“Yes, Mum.”

The reluctance with which the girl approached made Danni’s stomach knot tight. Edel shuffled to her mother’s side and turned. Danni stared into her face, noting the deep chocolate brown of her hair. Her eyes were the same rich color. They sparkled brightly in the muted light.

Against her will, Danni’s feet shuffled closer. There was something strange about those eyes, something . . . Edel looked up then, as if she’d seen Danni stir. For a long, chilling moment their gazes locked.

Danni tried to recoil but she couldn’t move now. Not an inch. Not a muscle. She could only stare back into something so cold, so bottomless it seemed to plunge for eternity. She managed to suck in a deep gulp of air and let it out. Her breath turned to frosty mist before her.

Those eyes, they weren’t human.

“Come on now,” the mother urged. “I’ll not be changing my mind no matter how long you dally.”

The icy, eerie eyes shifted and Danni slumped with relief.

“It won’t fucking work,” Edel snarled at her mother.

“Not with that surly attitude it won’t.”

Edel bared her teeth and snapped them together with a sharp click. Her mother sprang back a step. “Are you afraid Mum? Afraid of what I’ve become? You should be. Fia is, aren’t you sister?”

“I’ve a mind to throw you on the street and let you beggar yourself,” the mother said sharply.

“Fecking Christ, and who will do your bidding, then? Fia? Look at her? She’s scairt.”

Both of them turned to glare at Fia, stone-still as she perched on the edge of her seat. She looked small and lost, her big eyes swallowing her face. She was shaking her head, her lips moving silently. Her entire body trembled.

Edel made a sound of disgust.

“You’ll go because I say you’ll go,” the mother warned, drawing herself to her full height.

“I’ll go because
I’ve
a mind to leave this stinking hovel. I won’t be coming back with the bacon, mum. I won’t fucking be coming back at all.”

The look of horror on the mother’s face made Danni want to turn and run. She clutched the pot she held over her chest, like a shield.

Edel stepped forward deliberately, staring her mother in the eye as she’d done with Danni. Mesmerizing her with the deadly intent in their depths. Slowly Edel lifted her hand, holding it spread above the black cover of the Book. A smile teased her lips, a ghastly grin of terrible pleasure.

“I’ve a mind to see someplace new, haven’t I? Someplace where it never rains, where there’s sun all the fecking time.”

California . . .
Fia said she had a sister who lived in California . . .

“There’s no such place,” the mother snarled. “Now you do as I say, and no coming back without the money. All of it this time. You do that and you’ll not have to go again.”

The look on Edel’s face made Fia gasp and Danni stumble back. She closed her eyes tight against it, not wanting to see what happened next. Not wanting to know why Edel’s eyes were those of a monster.

Danni felt the hum before she heard it. Low and terrible it rose like a sonic boom, rattling the windowpanes, shaking her to the bone. “No,” Danni whispered, eyes snapping open again, having to look no matter how she dreaded it.

Edel’s hand hovered above the cover, and the Book began to jerk against the table. It rumbled and quaked, as if preparing to jump up to meet her flesh.

“No,” Danni shouted this time.

The sound of her voice seemed to echo all around her. Edel’s head turned and her gaze skimmed the room.

She’d heard it.

“No,” Danni said again, though now she was unsure if it was a plea or a denial.

Edel’s face pulled tight in a scowl as she peered from corner to corner. “Someone’s here,” she said.

The mother swung around and took in the room. “Go check the kitchen,” she ordered Fia. Fia scurried to do as she’d been told. A few moments later she was back.

“There’s no one. I checked upstairs as well.”

Edel continued to flit her gaze around the room. Danni felt it slice over her and move on without pause. Then suddenly Edel stopped and stared at the window. Like puppets, Danni, the mother, and Fia all turned and looked, too.

There was a man standing on the other side. The rain, the darkness, the shock, all masked his face so he appeared as nothing more than a pale orb with dark blotches for features. He stepped back, disappearing before they could focus. The mother rushed to the window then to the door where she yanked it open and stepped onto the porch. Enraged, she let forth a string of crude and violent curses.

“He’s gone,” she said when she came back.

But who was he?

“Who was it?” Fia echoed Danni’s thought with a tremulous voice.

“The fucking devil,” Edel said. “Coming for the rest of my soul.” Fia’s eyes grew larger still and she made a sound of fear. “Watch and learn, little sister. Your soul is next.”

The humming had receded but now it flared again like a stanza in an overture. It grew in size and volume, becoming a thrumming harmony that shredded Danni’s will, churned her thoughts, and tormented her senses. She gripped the pot so hard her fingers ached. The need to run, to hide, to
escape
became overpowering but still she stood. Still she watched.