Reluctantly Charmed (31 page)

“A clear case of foot-in-mouth disease?”

He shook his head. “You must think I’m an awful eejit, Kate.”

“You definitely have your moments.” I raised my eyebrows, noticing how his whole body had turned toward mine. All that was separating us now was Percy.

A shout came from within the house. “Long Hugh, would you ever carve up that pig? We’re starving!”

“On its way,” Hugh shouted. “I’d better get carving,” he said quietly to me. “Poor old Percy. He does look delicious, though.” He winked at me before putting his head down and raising his knife.

My heart fluttered, and finally I admitted to myself that I was attracted to Hugh. The truth was, he was gorgeous. There was something sweet about him, and he could cook, and I knew there were muscles under that shirt.

I went and sat at the table, deciding to stay for dinner and maybe a chance to talk to him again. I had that bubbling feeling
of expectancy, those butterflies of attraction, where every look and every gesture might mean something. The way Hugh smiled and looked around the party—was he looking to catch my eye? I felt my back straighten and flicked my hair, wanting to look my best in case his gaze rested on me. Meanwhile, Aisling kept dealing out the cocktails.

Percy was finally served up to much cheering and delight, and the table congratulated Hugh on his cooking.

He bashfully waved away their praise. “Percy did the work, not me.” He raised his glass. “To Percy.”

The table raised their glasses, and everyone oinked as cheers. We all tucked in, and I watched as Hugh clambered into his seat and did his best to fold his long legs in under the table. He smiled to himself, reaching for a plate and some bread. I wondered if he’d look toward me. I felt myself preening. But his gaze didn’t budge from the food in front of him.

“Yoo-hoo!” A strong Galway accent echoed from the house. “Only me!” A tall, glamorous blonde in high heels, red lipstick, and Chanel No. 5 teetered into the back garden, balancing a Marks & Spencer’s lemon meringue pie on her false nails. “Hope I’ve made it in time for dessert,” she said before air-kissing Aisling. She made a beeline for Hugh, planted her lips on his cheek, shimmied in to sit beside him, and placed her hand on his knee. “Hugh, so sorry I’m late,” she cooed.

Hugh looked around the table and then back to his plate.

He had a girlfriend. Of course he had a girlfriend. I should have guessed he had a girlfriend. And a glamorous one at that, a gorgeous blonde. I didn’t care, of course I didn’t care. Only I did. Goddammit, I cared.

I didn’t stay much longer after that. Disappointment doesn’t need to be extended into extra time. I made my excuses to
Aisling and crept down the side of the house, avoiding Hugh at all costs.

I gave myself a stern talking-to on the bike ride home. I was repeating all my previous mistakes. I hadn’t learned anything from the Jim debacle. I had wasted so much time on him, and I was not going to do that again. Realistically, Hugh Delaney wasn’t even attracted to me. He had said as much with the “natural” comment to Marjorie. The fact that I was finding myself attracted to him was my own fault and had nothing to do with him. He hadn’t done anything to encourage me. He’d apologized to me for being rude—that was only a mannerly thing to do—and he’d asked my advice about the logos because he was confused, not because he fancied me. Anything I felt had all been in my head. He didn’t feel anything. He was attached. I was being really foolish—I needed a reality check. The last thing I wanted in my already complicated life was a romantic complication. Men caused too much heartache and disappointment, and right now I had enough disappointment in my life. I needed to be on my own. To focus on who Kate McDaid was. To focus on witches and fairies, and to sort out my real-life mess, not the fantasy mess I was concocting in my own head. Decision made. Game over.

25

“W
hy would I talk to you?” The scrawny teenager hopped off the wall. He extended himself to his full height and stretched like a stick of chewing gum. Dylan—probably named after Matt, not Thomas—was wearing a gray cotton tracksuit, hood up like the grim reaper, and had the distracting habit of putting his two hands down the front of his trousers.

I was due to get the sixth Step the next day. My head was still fuzzy from the dinner with Hugh, and I was trying my best to concentrate on my Red Hag fact-finding mission. I hadn’t heard from Maura—she might have given up on her own Red Hag mission and gone back to Dublin.

“You don’t have to.” I rummaged in my handbag and produced a can of Dutch Gold lager. I cracked it open and watched the head fizz over. With a slight grimace I took a sip. He eyed me enviously.

“Do you want one?”

Martin had told me where the teenagers usually hung out at night. At a wall. Like all teenage walls, it was the site of drinking, smoking, snogging, bragging, and mitching off school—you know, the skills that will set them up for life. Four equally scrawny boys and two girls watched me suspiciously from the wall.

“I’ve got another six of these in my bag.”

“So.”

“Tell me what you know about the Red Hag and they’re yours.” All those years of watching cop shows had helped me embrace my inner chief superintendent.

“I don’t want your cans. I can just nick them off me da.” He started to laugh, wobbling his neck. The rest of the group knew to laugh with him.

“I’m just trying to find out some information on the Red Hag. If you help me, maybe I can help you. Maybe I could get your picture in the paper? Would you like that?”

“Sure, then the guards’ll know where I am.” The group erupted into laughter.

This felt like a dead end.

“I’m just looking for some information. What do they say about her here? What’s the local legend? The old ruin—was that her house?” I was looking desperate, I knew, letting my guard down in front of teenagers.

“I’m not telling you nothing or she’ll come back and put a spell on me. Whooooo-hooooo.” He waved his hands around.

“Is that what they say here? That she’ll put a spell on you?”

He was mocking me. I sighed and kicked the ground with my ballet pumps, which were looking tired after four days in Knocknamee.

“I’ll go.” I turned around and walked three steps before looking back at them. “Oh, here, keep the bloody cans. I don’t know how you drink this stuff. It’s disgusting.” I pulled the sixpack out of my bag and handed it to a small girl with pink stripes at the front of her fringe.

“Thanks.”

Defeated, I walked back to my bike.

I heard a shout. “I’m going to see if she has any cigarettes.” There was a scamper of feet. The girl with the pink stripes raced up behind me. I turned. Her brown eyes darted around uneasily. “There’s an old cottage about two minutes up the road on the left. I’ll see you around the back at the shed in ten minutes.”

I breathed in sharply.

“Do you have any cigarettes?”

I shook my head.

“Ah, well. Ten minutes, yeah. And keep quiet about it.”

I nodded, agreeing to whatever this fourteen-year-old wanted.

Ten minutes later, I was outside a cowshed, huddled around the neon glow of my mobile phone.

The girl was Nessa. “Dylan won’t tell you any of this stuff because he doesn’t know it. He wouldn’t let on, though.” She’d found a cigarette and was sucking on it furiously.

“Is that why you wanted to meet me here? Away from him?”

“Ah, no, it’s just easier, you know. Not worth the hassle. My granny told me all about her, the Red Hag. She used to sing creepy songs about her, and when I was bad, Granny would say the Red Hag was going to come and get me. But you, I know you.” She pointed at me. “I read the papers. I’ve seen you. They wouldn’t know, Dylan and them, they wouldn’t read the papers. But you, they call you a witch, or a what? A ‘spiritual guru.’ I can’t remember all the stuff, but that’s right, isn’t it? Is that why you want to know about the Red Hag? Are you trying to find her spell book or something?” She laughed a smoky wheeze.

“No, I’m related to her. I just want to find out more about her.”

“Jesus Christ. Is that those Steps? The fairy Steps? Holy God.”
She produced another cigarette and lit it off the end of her first. “Father O’Brien’ll go mental.”

“I’m just trying to find out about a dead relative.”

“It’s mad. You’re famous and everything.”

“Hmm.”

“And you’re here in Knocknamee.”

“Hmmmm.”

“There’s no grave. Did you know that?”

“Yeah, I’d heard . . . What else do you know about her?”

“Only bits, you know, that you’d hear in school and stuff. She was really bad, like, really bad.” Nessa looked at me. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. She was a very distant relative.”

“They say she put spells on everyone. That whole family, the O’Donnells, they all walk with a limp, and they say it’s because of her. That they wouldn’t pay her for a cure, so she cursed the whole family . . .” She exhaled dramatically. “Forever.”

“Is that what she did? Cured people?” I inched forward excitedly.

“No. She was evil. She didn’t help people.”

“She wasn’t evil. She was just a bit of a mad old woman,” I said, unsure why I was defending this very distant relative.

“No. She was evil. Once she stopped all the cows in the town from producing any milk until she got money. All of them, and back then, like, people didn’t have stuff, you know, didn’t have money. They needed milk and stuff. To live, like.”

“Did she live in that old ruin where you and Dylan wrote your names?”

“I’m sorry about that, I am. I should never have gone out with him. He said he’d treat me like a princess. Like hell he did. All I ever got out of him was a pack of cigarettes. One pack. Not worth it.”

I nodded in agreement. Dylan hadn’t seemed worth it.

“But, yeah, that’s where she lived. Looking out over everyone like Lady Muck. Casting spells from her castle. She still haunts the place.”

“You don’t believe in fairies, do you?” I had to ask.

“Nah, it’s a load of shite.”

I sighed with relief. What a sensible young girl.

“But I still wouldn’t step into a fairy fort. Dylan did. He says he slept a night in one for a dare, and look at the state of him now. His face has been riddled with acne ever since.”

I nodded.

“I’ve heard worse things about the fairies, like, a lot worse than acne. They can be really mean. My granny’s sister was struck dumb by them. Couldn’t talk or nothing. It was because she blocked a fairy path or something. I wouldn’t mess with them.”

“But you don’t believe in them?”

“No. But you never know.”

I sighed. This was exhausting.

“Do you know anything else about the Red Hag?”

“She’d red hair, ginger, like you. That’s why they called her the Red Hag. And the auld ones, sometimes they say they hear her singing to the sea, out on An Trá Bhán, and it means a boat is going to sink. But that’s a load of shite, because boats never sink out this way.”

“Is there anything else? Do you know anything else about her?” I was grasping at straws.

Nessa shook her head.

“Thanks for your help.”

She looked at me shyly. “Can I have your autograph?”

I reluctantly scribbled my name on the back of her cigarette pack.

“Do you, like, go out with that guy from Red Horizon? He’s massive, he is.”

“Jim? I know him, yeah.”

“God, he’s gorgeous. Is he a great kisser? I’d say he’s a great kisser. He’d buy you more than a pack of cigarettes, I’d say.”

I shook my head, unsure how to answer, wondering if Dylan wasn’t such a bad catch after all.

26

S
tep number six came by FedEx to Knocknamee. I was in the B and B, sipping on a cup of milky tea and wiping chocolate HobNob crumbs off my jeans when it turned up.

Seamus MacMurphy had called earlier that morning and told me to expect it. I’d planned to do what I’d done for the last five Steps: read it and post it on spacemonkeys.com. But then I read it and my heart dropped.

Step Six

Rise up and dance and swing and howl

and hoot and drink and play,

Knock back the whiskey, redden your cheeks

and cavort from night to day,

Take hand in hand and twirl around,

your joy will grow more joy,

Tell a joke and play a trick on every man and boy.

Let your doings be full of goodness,

and happy and merry and free,

May your heart swell at the sound

of the fiddle and the slap of every knee,

The world has so much to offer,

with the good times laid within,

If it goes unused we’ll be watching,

and believe it is a sin.

So rise up and dance and swing and howl

and hoot and drink and play,

We fold you up in these wise words

from our lair in Knocknamee,

Live by the essence of what we give,

and our faces you will see,

Listen with care to the next one coming,

we can unite for eternity.

Knocknamee. Why did they have to mention Knocknamee? Why now? Knocknamee was obviously such a special place to the fairies, but I’d never have thought they’d want to publicize their relationship with it.