Haunting Beauty (21 page)

Edel turned back to the Book. Closing her eyes as if in prayer, she lowered her hand to the tooled black cover. For a moment nothing happened, and then the leather began to bubble like oil and her fingers began to sink into it. Danni was shaking so hard her teeth began to chatter.

Edel’s hand disappeared up to her wrist in the blackness of the Book. Slowly she opened her eyes again, and the deep chocolate irises had turned the same midnight shade as the leather cover. They gleamed and sparkled like polished obsidian. Edel threw back her head and screamed—like the banshee. Like the winds of hell.

Danni dropped the pot, knew it clanged to the ground as she clapped her hands over her ears, and shut her eyes tight, trying to block out that horrible sound, the gruesome sight of Edel’s hand immersed in the foulness of the Book. But her screams permeated the air, the walls, the moment. An endless shriek that she would hear for the rest of her life.

And then suddenly there was silence.

Afraid to look, afraid not to, Danni opened her eyes. Edel was gone. The Book was once more a mere object, unmoving on the table.

Fia and her mother shifted in place. Neither spoke. Neither searched for the missing girl. They just waited. Waited, as a gold clock on the mantle ticked away the seconds.

“Will she be back?” Fia asked.

The mother didn’t answer. She just stayed where she was, watching the second hand circle the large black numbers on the clock.

A minute went by. Then another and another. Fia’s shaking hands went to her mouth and covered it. Ten minutes, and still the mother hadn’t moved. Twenty and then thirty.

“She’s not coming back, is she?” Fia whispered.

Moving like a robot, the mother went to the Book, covered it in the canvas. Careful, Danni noted, not to touch it. Then she took it to the chest, stowed it, and locked the lid.

When she turned to Fia again, her face was hard and set. She stared at her remaining daughter for a long, troubling moment.

“Mum?” Fia said, and Danni felt her fear like cold and bony fingers clutching her throat.

“Tomorrow you’ll go and bring the little bitch back,” the mother said.

Chapter Seventeen

N
IALL’S boat, the
Guillemot
, waited at the dock for them as it had a thousand other mornings of Sean’s life. The boat was as much a part of his childhood as his family. His home.

It was a small skiff, rigged with poles and multiple lines for trolling. Weathered, but still seaworthy, it didn’t look like much—and to the average fisherman, it probably wasn’t. But Sean’s father had never been an average fisherman. If fishing could be considered an art, his father would have been a revered master. The moment he stepped on board, Niall knew exactly where to point his bow and go—he had a damned beacon in his head that rarely failed to hone in on his catch, no easy task on the waters around the Isle of Fennore.

For centuries the unpredictable current, the treacherous undertow, and mean riptide had been chewing up the unwary sailor and spitting out the remains. Long after mainland Ireland had been settled and warred over, the Isle of Fennore remained untouched by man. Not even the Vikings were able to reach the shores. Legend said the seamen who’d finally made it to Fennore had a sixth sense without which they, too, would have died trying. Sean believed it and understood his father possessed perhaps even a seventh sense when it came to the dangerous sea.

Before Sean’s mother and brother had died, before the disappearances of Fia MacGrath and her children, which came five years later, Niall was an admired man in Ballyfionúir. A sort of celebrity among fisherman. Sean’s mother had found that laughable. “Famous for the stink of the sea,” she’d snarl whenever someone would comment on it.

Time and distance seemed to have sharpened Sean’s memory of his father, but mellowed it as well. Being with Niall again was like meeting a distant relative. He was familiar, and yet he was very much a stranger. For all the years since Niall’s suicide, Sean had convinced himself that he hated his father. But now, standing beside Niall, Sean couldn’t pretend that was true anymore. He could see Niall through eyes untainted by the black-and-white judgment of youth, and what he found was that his father was just a man. A man trying to do his best to raise a son who would never forgive him his mistakes.

Since the moment Niall had walked through the kitchen door, the knot of feelings inside Sean had begun to unravel, stretching out into a longing. An aching sense of loss.

For twenty years Sean had believed he’d never see his father again—how could he? The man was dead. But here Niall was, moving aboard the
Guillemot
like he’d done in nearly every memory Sean had of him. It was impossible for Sean not to see this as a second chance. A chance to reconcile all his bitter feelings to the joy he felt now as he watched this gentle giant commune with the deck beneath his feet and the lapping waters of the ocean.

All the anger and hate Sean had locked inside himself for so many years, all the rage he’d directed at the memory of his father . . . it was time to reexamine it. To compare the man to the memory. Sean blamed his father for the deaths of his mum and little brother even though the Garda Siochana had called it accidental and cleared Niall of any responsibility. Sean had seen it happen, though. He’d stood on the fringes of the erupting violence and watched his worst nightmare become a terrible reality.

His mother had been drunk the afternoon she died, but that was nothing new. Usually Sean and his brother would come home from school to find her passed out beside an overflowing ashtray and an empty bottle of Connemara. But that afternoon she’d been awake and on a tear, ranting at Sean’s father, talking crazy like she so often did. Niall had tried to calm her, but she’d have none of it.

She’d charged Niall with a butcher knife in her hand, meaning to wound him if not kill him. But Sean’s little brother had tried to stop her, and the knife had found him first.

What came next was still a painful and jumbled blur to Sean. And yet parts of it played with excruciating slowness . . . the glint of light on the blade of the knife . . . his mother’s scathing shrieks of fury . . . the sickening, sweet smell of blood as it spread across the kitchen floor. . . .

It had been an accident, born of self-defense—that’s what the Gardai determined. But when it was all said and done, Sean’s mother
and
his little brother lay dead on the kitchen floor, and his father’s hands were stained with their blood.

For years following that day’s violence, Sean had played those hellish moments over in his head, turning them and twisting them until the outcome was different. Instead of standing frozen by fear, cowering, Sean’s imagination heroically thrust him into the middle of the conflict, where he saved both his mother and brother. Sometimes it would be his father who died instead. Often it would be Sean himself. He’d been filled with self-loathing for not protecting them, for being too cowardly, too stunned, to do
anything
but watch in horror as they died
.
His guilt and grief warped all the pain inside him, leaving Sean to slowly self-destruct, dreaming of death as absolution. And Sean made sure Niall felt every bitter moment of his anguish.

And then five years later, Niall had taken his own life in the cavern beneath the ruins where Danni’s mother had disappeared with her children. Niall had chosen death rather than face the authorities about murders Danni’s very existence proved he hadn’t committed. Was it because Sean had drained him of the will to live with his scorn, his accusations, and his hate? Had Niall simply succumbed to the temptation to end it all rather than face his only living son and look into his unforgiving eyes?

Sean hoped it wasn’t so, but he feared it was. He still remembered the morning after Fia and the children disappeared, when the authorities had come to see his grandmother. He’d awakened to voices downstairs and stumbled into the kitchen just as they’d told her about finding Niall dead in the cavern. Sean would never forget the raw agony in Nana’s sobs, nor the way the inspector looked right through him as they explained what Niall had done.

It was that day he’d stopped answering to Michael and become Sean. He hadn’t thought of it too deeply at the time, but now he saw it as a symbolic shedding of his old self—an attempt to leave behind his tormented past and become a different person—a new man from that point on. He hadn’t managed to do more than change his identity though. The damaged boy had continued to grow inside him.

Sean felt like he was torn in two now, as he watched Michael—himself—jump on board with the fluid grace of practice. Michael began to pull in the lines and prepare to cast off, but Sean could feel the burning, bitter emotions inside the boy. Michael’s sullen glances at his father added a bite to the morning, and Niall’s mute acceptance of his son’s resentment spoiled the fresh spray of salt and sea. Sean could see the pain in his father’s eyes, the bewildered hopeless-ness that lurked behind them as the
Guillemot
got underway.

“Ever been on a troller before, cousin?” Niall asked him as they pushed off from the dock.

“Once or twice.”

“Have you now? I hoped you weren’t a city boy. Mum couldn’t say much about you other than you were coming.”

Sean had wondered what Nana told Niall about them. Apparently, as little as possible. “I worked a boat that sailed out of Cobh,” Sean lied.

“Cobh? Very good. Then I’ll not need to hold your hand. I’ve got a fine spot in mind for us today. We’ll loop around to the north and catch them unaware.”

Niall’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, but still it transformed his face and made him look years younger. Sean felt a lump of emotion lodge in his chest at the sight. There’d been a time when Niall’s smile had been the sun that Sean and his brother rose to. He hadn’t realized how much the loss of it had clouded his world.

“Have you tried the western coves of late?” Sean asked casually, looking away.

“Not that I recall. The others fished it out a year or so back. I warned them about it, but the fools never listen. They find it plentiful and take until they’ve depleted every fecking fish in it. They’ve not the imagination to look elsewhere and give the poor scaly beasts a chance to replenish. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” Sean said.

“Not a feeling, is it?”

Sean paused, remembering the numerous times his father had queried him just so. Niall felt the fish, followed his instincts to where they led. When he’d been younger, Sean had developed a sense of it as well. He could feel them moving beneath the choppy waves, a shimmering force that called to him. But after losing both his mother and his younger brother, Sean had ceased to listen to that feeling and never shared it with his father again.

“Could be a feeling,” Sean answered now. “Could be they’ve come back to the coves.”

Niall narrowed his eyes. “Could be indeed. Could be we should check.”

Another flashing grin and Niall was adjusting his course and following the island’s curve to the west. Smiling, Sean turned away, only to stop when he caught Michael watching him with a canny and unsettling gleam in his eyes. He realized his younger self had felt the school of fishing growing and swarming in the cove as well.

Quietly Sean began to ready the lines and bait the hooks. There was a trick to it Sean had perfected years ago. Salmon had three senses—sight, smell, and what was known as lateral line response. For salmon to see bait they had to be right beside it, because their vision was poor and the waters often murky. They had a sharp sense of smell and might catch a whiff of the bait, but again, if it was at forty feet down and the salmon at fifty, he’d have to be right behind it to catch the scent.

The most important sense came from tiny hairlike projections on a salmon’s back and sides. The tips of each of them could pick up vibrations in the water, and it was this that the bait played to. If the bait just hung on the hook, it did no good. It had to be cut in a special way and mounted so that it quivered and spun, rolled and wiggled, tricking the salmon into thinking it was a wounded fish—supper waiting to be served. It pulled them like a magnet.

Michael watched him work for a moment before he came closer. “Where did you learn that?” he demanded.

Sean looked up and shrugged. He couldn’t remember who had taught him. He’d assumed it was Niall, but from Michael’s expression, he thought it might not be so. Michael pulled some bait from the cooler and tried to duplicate how Sean hooked it.

“Almost,” Sean told him, showing him how to twist it at the end. “It will squirm like a wounded minnow that way.”

Niall cut back the engine and slowed to a trolling speed when they reached the coves. Sean and Michael dropped in the lines one by one. He saw his father looking over his shoulder as they did it, a curious frown on his face.

“Something wrong?” Sean asked.

“Not a fecking thing,” Niall answered. “Doesn’t it look like you’ve been doing that your entire fecking life?”

Sean was saved from answering because his hunch had proven right and the salmon were everywhere. The day passed in a blur of slick silver fish and baited lines stretching out from the hull. It was soothing, the work, yet demanding enough to keep his thoughts occupied—to keep him from dwelling on just where the hell he was and how it could possibly have happened. By the time Niall turned the
Guillemot
home, Sean was exhausted, his face was burned, his body sore. He’d used muscles he’d forgotten he had and ached in places he hoped not to remember again. But his head felt clear—clearer than it had in as long as he could remember.

“I must confess, I expected you to be more bother than help, but it’s like you were born to it,” Niall told him as he shared a thermos of tea Colleen had packed. Michael sat on a pile of nets, brooding. His simmering antipathy was like a rancid stink in the air.

Niall went on, pleased with the weight in their hold and the drag of the current beneath the boat. “Sure and it’s rarely enough, what I catch each day. But I can only do what God made me capable of. I know fish.” Niall barked a laugh. “A good thing for a fecking fisherman to know, eh?”