Haunting Beauty (37 page)

And there it was. The Book of Fennore.

It was wrapped in canvas as she’d seen before, but still she had to brace herself to touch it. Carefully she hefted the thick Book from the chest, concentrating on its mass, making it real in both worlds. She didn’t let herself think beyond the moment, the task, but she couldn’t ignore the tremor that traveled from the Book through her body. As if it was excited to see her. As if it had been waiting.

She set the Book on the floor, closed the coffer, and relocked it. As she lifted it again, she heard voices outside and a moment later a key turning and the front door opening. She turned, hurrying now though a rational part of her insisted they wouldn’t see her. But they might see the Book. That was real, regardless of the fact that she held it. It might call to them in the same way it called to Danni now.

She raced to the corner where she’d hid that first time just as the three women came into the room.

“I won’t do it,” Edel was saying. “And don’t try to send Fia. It will kill her.”

“You will do it, if I wish it so,” Edel’s mother snapped.

“Be careful what you wish for, mother,” Edel said softly.

Danni held her breath when they walked right past where she huddled in the shadowed corner. The threesome wore different clothes than when she’d seen them the first time. A different night, then. Had Danni managed to come before Edel used the Book, before the Book devoured the last of her sanity and took her away?

The mother looked like she might argue with her eldest daughter, but instead ordered Edel to start the fire while she made tea. Fia hovered in the room, looking like she didn’t know what her purpose in this, or anything, might be.

“You won’t let her send me, will you, Edel?” Fia asked when their mother had gone into the kitchen.

Edel looked up, her eyes sparkling strangely but not with that maniacal sheen they’d had before. Edel shook her head, expression sad and resigned.

“I will do all I can, Fia. But my time is coming to an end. Can you not see that?”

Fia’s eyes became luminous with unshed tears. “You haven’t used it so much, have you?”

“It doesna matter. Each time I put my hand in the blackness, it takes from me. I’ve not much left.”

Fia went to her knees beside her sister and held her. But it was Edel who gave comfort.

“Shhh, my darling Fia. I will protect you if . . .” She trailed off and suddenly lifted her head to scan the room. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” Fia asked, looking around as well.

Edel rose and circled the room with Fia following like a puppy. Her eyes flitted to the corner where Danni stood, lingered for a long, frightening moment and then moved on.

“What do you hear?” Fia asked.

Suddenly Edel gasped. Danni followed her widened eyes to the window where a man stood just on the other side of the glass, looking in at them. He was there for just a moment before he jumped back, but Danni saw him and so did Edel.

The man’s eyes had been hard and gleaming, malevolent and aggressive. There’d been a man at the window the first time Danni had been there, too. He hadn’t seen Danni then, but this time . . .

This time they hadn’t just seen each other. This time there’d been recognition for both of them.

The man at the window was Danni’s father, Cathán MacGrath.

“What is it? What did you see?” Fia asked, moving forward to peer out at the falling rain. As before, he moved away so quickly he might have vanished into thin air.

Another jolt of fear shot through Danni. She hadn’t been imagining him in Arizona, she realized. It hadn’t been a man who
looked
like her father she’d seen. It
was
her father.

But how was he doing it? The same way Danni did? And why was he there—now and then?

Why else
, a voice in her head responded.
He’s looking for the Book.

Something else hit Danni at that moment. She remembered the psychic who’d been waiting for her that day when she’d seen her dad . . . The girl had spoken of a spirit—one all the psychics could see hovering around Danni. Danni had assumed it was Sean, but the girl had said that it . . . Danni frowned, trying to recall the psychic’s exact words. She’d said that Danni was running away, and in running, she would destroy herself. And then she’d said the spirit wanted that. It made him happy.

“What did you see?” Fia asked again, panic in her voice now. “There’s nothing there, Edel.”

“You’re right. It’s nothing but my imagination playing tricks tonight. Would you get the fire going for me?”

Nodding uncertainly, Fia knelt at the hearth and continued where Edel had left off.

Edel stayed by the window a moment more, and then she slowly turned and met Danni’s eyes. They stared at one another for a long, long time, leaving Danni with no doubt that Edel could see her.

“I will stand with you if Mum tries to make you go again,” Fia was saying as she added what looked like mud bricks to the fire.

“Do not worry yourself about the Book, sister,” Edel said, still looking at Danni. “I think it will not be a problem, for either of us.”

Danni’s skin felt clammy as she clutched the heavy Book to her chest. Her heart banged so hard against her ribs, she feared it might seize up and stop altogether.

Smiling with confusion and relief, Fia looked over her shoulder at her sister, but her gaze snagged at the corner and she froze. In slow motion, Danni saw Fia’s hands cover her mouth, her eyes widen with fear and surprise as a scream filled her lungs.

Turn
, Danni shouted silently in her head, willing the air to turn and get her out of there.
Turn!

And it did. It turned with a hiss that blurred Fia’s features, the room, the darkness. It whisked Danni out on the other side with a force that slammed her head back against the stone wall of the castle cornice.

Danni was panting, covered in a cold and clammy sweat. Her heart still hammered away and she was trembling—just like the Book she clutched in her hands. She stared at it, hating it even as she rejoiced in its presence. She’d done it. She’d brought back the Book of Fennore.

Chapter Thirty-two

L
ONG afternoon shadows had gathered in the little house while Sean waited for Danni to come home. They’d had a good morning on the
Guillemot
and had docked before noon with a full hold and high spirits. Sean had hurried back to the cottage to find Danni. He needed to talk to her, to make up for his cold abandonment this morning. He wanted nothing more than to hold her and tell her he was sorry.

But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the MacGrath house either. When he’d gone looking for her, Bronagh told him in no uncertain terms that Danni had left already. Bronagh was vague about when and abrupt about where Danni had gone. Something had happened, but he hadn’t a clue what it was.

He’d checked with Nana after that, but she had no information to give except to tell him to go home. Wait if necessary. So he had. He’d gone back to the little cottage where they’d slept last night, hoping she’d returned. But all that waited for him were four walls, the bed they’d made love in, and the resounding certainty that all was not right.

He’d been sitting in the kitchen for hours, drinking tea then whiskey while the minutes crept by. About an hour ago, he heard scratching at the front door and opened it to find Danni’s little dog on the other side. Bean looked at him with hopeful eyes and then disappointment. The way the day had begun, Sean fully expected the dog to bite him, but she only followed him inside. Apparently willing to let bygones be bygones in this foreign land, Bean now lay balanced on the arm of his chair, and Sean absently stroked her silky head. He was sure the dog felt his anxiety—shared it most likely.

He knew he’d hurt Danni this morning when he’d shut her out. But he’d been stunned by what had happened, too shocked by it to talk. He’d needed the time alone to process. Surely she understood that.

But as the minutes stretched into an hour, then another, Sean began to doubt. To worry. When he finally heard footsteps on the porch, he wanted to jump to his feet and yank open the door.

Bean lifted her head when Danni walked in, but obeyed the pressure of Sean’s hand and remained silent and still. Sean didn’t move either. Instead he sat quietly, sipping his whiskey and tea. Watching.

She moved slowly—stiff limbed and quiet as she shut the door behind her. She held her jacket in a bundle clutched to her chest and moved like it held great weight. Without looking around, she headed for the curtained-off bedroom and opened the top drawer in the battered dresser. She stuffed the jacket inside it as she pulled out some clean clothes and headed for the bathroom.

“Where have you been?” he asked, his voice deceptively soft. Only the slightest tremor hinted at a fury that had gathered inside him as he watched. It surprised him but it felt good, too. Now that she was here, the overwhelming tide of fear, of worry, that something had happened to her, crashed over him. It was anger born of desperation—he recognized that even as it consumed him.

He’d been afraid she’d gone on one of her visions and left him behind. Alone. Terrified that she wouldn’t come back.

He wanted to grab her, hold her, and never let her go. He wanted to tell her he loved her. That life without her wouldn’t be worth living. He wanted to marry her, grow old with her, take his last breath in her arms. But his frustration, his undeniable sense that everything he wanted was about to be lost, twisted inside him. And what came out was anger—inexplicable and unrelenting. Anger at himself, at the conspiracy of fate that had brought him to this point.

Danni spun around at the sound of his voice. She looked small and frail, as delicate as the petals of white bramble blooming on the hillsides. The shadows cast dark circles around her eyes and turned her into a shaft of pale light in the gloom. Her gaze settled on Bean and a whisper of a smile curved her mouth. The dog she was glad to see.

“Where have you been?” he demanded again.

“I went to the house—”

He cut her off before she could finish. “
I
went to the house. They told me you’d left. That was hours ago.”

“Oh. I went for a walk.”

He stood so suddenly his chair rocked backward. Bean jumped down and scurried to her mistress. Danni knelt and stroked the little dog with gentle fingers.

Sean’s simmering emotions came to a boil, thickening the stew of his conflicted anger. “And was it to the moon you walked, Danni? Is that what kept you for hours without being seen?”

“No,” she said softly, straightening. “I was down at the cavern. At the ruins.”

The ruins?
He stared at her open-mouthed. “Do you know how old the castle is? Do you have any fucking idea how dangerous it is beneath it?”

Mute, she nodded.
Grand. She’ d known and gone anyway.

He could see the gleam of those huge gray eyes, but not the expression in them. Not what she was thinking. What were those luminous eyes hiding?

“What were you doing down there?” he asked, striving for calm, knowing this rage wasn’t reasonable, wasn’t rational. Feeling as if something were goading him but not understanding what it could be. In his whole life he’d never been tempted to use force on a woman, but Danni drove him always to the edge of the unknown.

“I was thinking,” she said softly, then turned her back on him and resumed her course to the tiny bathroom in much the way he’d done that morning. But he couldn’t let her go as calmly as she had him.

“Thinking?” he repeated, his voice rising despite his intentions. He tried to control it, tried to trap it like the wild beast it was. But he couldn’t. “For fucking hours? Did it not occur to you that I might be a bit concerned about your whereabouts?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, but she was at the bathroom door now and he could see she meant to close it. To close him out.

“You’ll answer me, by God,” he shouted. “I want to know what the bloody hell you were doing. Who were you with?”

And there it was, what he’d been too frightened of to even admit. Last night she’d come inside and told him she couldn’t sleep. Told him she’d been alone. But he’d been sure he’d heard voices, certain she was lying. . . . And here it was again, the same lie. And just like his mother had before him, he feared she’d been with another. The very idea of Danni—
his
Danni—being with another man, cut Sean to the bone. He didn’t believe it, and yet he couldn’t control the torch of anguish burning inside him.

Danni stared at him, her back suddenly ramrod straight, her shoulders stiff. Her rigid posture somehow an answer to his question. She hadn’t been alone but she wouldn’t tell him who she was with. It was there in the defiant tilt of her chin, the hard line of her mouth. Every nerve in his body shrieked with confusion and jealousy and fury, egging him on when confusion insisted he stop.

“You are not to go
anywhere
,” he said between clenched teeth, “with
anyone
without my knowing. Do you hear me Danni?”

She took jerky steps forward, moving like a zombie in the old horror films he remembered from his childhood. “I will go where and with whomever I please, Sean. Don’t
you
presume this farce of a marriage gives you any right to tell me what I can and cannot do.”

It felt as if she’d struck him, and he could only stand there, speechless, as she spun back around and stalked to the bathroom. The door slammed and he heard the lock turn.

She might as well have doused him in petrol and struck a match. His vision clouded for a moment then snapped with clarity. The water came on and he heard her moving about, stripping her clothes. Why had she gone directly to the shower? What did she mean to wash from her skin?

Nothing
, sanity urged.
You’re behaving like a lunatic
, it insisted.

And it was right. He knew it was right. But a voice seemed to be whispering in his head, assuring him that his rage was justified.
She’s lying to you
, it said.