Shadow Spell: Book Two of the Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy (10 page)

Gently, he eased his hands back so they could see the wound. The burn, raw and red now, was no larger than a woman’s fist.

“He’s cooler,” Meara said, stroking, stroking. “Clammy now, but cooler, and breathing steady.”

“There’s no black under it, no poison under it.” Iona looked from Branna to Fin and back for confirmation.

“No, it’s but a nasty burn now. I’ll finish it.” Branna put her hands over it, sighed. “Just a burn now, healing well.”

“This?” Boyle rushed in with the bottle.

“That’s it.” Fin took it, opening it for Branna to sniff.

“Yes, yes, that’s good. That’s perfect.” She turned up her hands for Fin to pour the balm into them.

“Here now,
mo chroi
.” She turned her hands over, gently, gently rubbed the balm on the burn—now pink, now shrinking.

As she rubbed, as she crooned, Connor’s eyes fluttered open. He found himself staring up into Meara’s pale face and teary eyes.

“What? Why am I on the floor? I hadn’t gotten drunk yet.” He reached up, brushed a tear from Meara’s cheek. “Don’t cry, darling.” He struggled to sit up, teetered a bit. “Well, here we all are, sitting on Fin’s kitchen floor. If we’re going to spin the bottle, I’d like to be the one to empty it first.”

“Water.” Boyle pushed it on him.

He drank like a camel, pushed it back. “I could do with stronger. My arm,” he remembered. “It was my arm. Looks fine now.”

And seeing Branna’s face, he opened his arms to her. “You tended me.”

“After you scared five lives out of me.” She held on tight, tight until she could trust herself. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you, but— Thanks.” He took the glass Boyle offered, drank. Winced. “Jesus, it’s brandy. Can’t a man get a whiskey?”

“It’s brandy for fainting,” Boyle insisted.

“I didn’t faint.” Both mortified and insulted, Connor pushed the glass back at Boyle. “I fell unconscious from my wounds, and that’s entirely different. I’d rather a whiskey.”

“I’ll get it.” Meara scrambled up as Iona leaned over, pressed a kiss to Connor’s cheek.

“Your color’s coming back. You were so pale, and so hot. Please don’t ever do that again.”

“I can promise to do my best never to repeat the experience.”

“What was the experience?” Branna demanded.

“I’ll tell you, all of it, but I swear on my life I’m starving. I don’t want to be accused of fainting again if I pass out from hunger. I’m light-headed with it, God’s truth.”

“I’ve a hunk of pork. Raw,” Fin began.

“You haven’t put any dinner on?” Branna pushed to her feet.

“I was thinking Boyle would cook it up, then Connor came in. We’ve been a bit busy with this and that since.”

“You can’t cook up pork in a fingersnap.”

Fin tried a smile. “You could.”

“Oh, save your shagging pork, and get me a platter.”

“That sort of thing’s in the—” Fin gestured toward the large dining area off the kitchen with its massive buffets and china cabinets and servers.

She marched in, yanked open a couple of drawers. And found a large Belleek platter. After moving a nice arrangement of hothouse lilies, she set the platter in the center of the table.

“It’s a frivolous use of power, but I can’t have my brother starving to death. And since I had already roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots tonight. So.”

She shot the fingers of both hands at the platter. And the air went redolent with the scents of roasted chicken and sage.

“Thank all the gods and goddesses.” With that, Connor dived straight in, ripped off a drumstick.

“Connor O’Dwyer!”

“Starving,” he said with his mouth full as Branna fisted her hands on her hips. “I’m serious about it. What’s everyone else eating?”

“Someone set the table, for God’s sake. I need to wash up.” She turned to Fin. “Have you a powder room?”

“I’ll show you.”

She’d never been in his home, he thought. Not once would she agree to cross the threshold. It had taken her brother’s need to have her step foot in it.

He showed her the powder room tucked tidily under the stairs.

“Let me see your hands.” She held herself very straight while the voices and good, easy laughter flowed from the kitchen.

He held them out, their backs up. With a sigh of impatience, she gripped them and turned them over.

Blistered palms, welts along his fingers.

“The balm will take care of it.”

“Stop.”

She laid her hands—her palms to his palms, her fingers to his fingers.

“I’m going to thank you. I know you don’t want or need thanks. I know he’s your brother as much as mine. The brother of your heart, your spirit. But he’s my blood, so I need to thank you.”

Tears trembled in her eyes again, a glimmer over the smoke. Then she willed them back and gone. “It was very bad, very bad indeed. I can’t be sure how much worse it might have been if you hadn’t done for him what you did.”

“I love him.”

“I know it.” She studied his hands, healed now, then gave them both a moment. She lifted his hands, pressed them to her lips. “I know it,” she said again, and slipped inside the powder room.

As deep and true as his love ran for Connor, it was a shadow beside what he felt for her. Accepting it, Fin walked back to the kitchen, watched his circle prepare for their first meal together in his home.

* * *

“WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL US?” BRANNA ASKED WHEN THEY’D
settled in with the food and Connor’s tale.

“I did—or tried. There was something different in the shadows, in the fog. It was . . . like being closed into a box, tight, so there was nothing else, not even sky. I don’t know how Roibeard heard me or got through unless he was already inside the box, so to speak. The stone Cabhan wore beat like a heart, and the beats of it came faster when I called the elements.”

“In tune with him?” Fin wondered. “Showing excitement, temper, fear?”

“I don’t think fear, as he thinks so little of me.”

“Bollocks.” Meara stabbed a carrot. “He was mind-fucking you so you’d think little of yourself.”

“She’s right on that,” Boyle agreed. “Trying to get under your skin, he was. Weaken your defenses. It’s a common enough tactic in a brawl.”

“I saw you brawl once.” Iona thought back, smiled. “You didn’t say much.”

“Because I was punching the stupid. But if you’re thinking your opponent’s got skills, maybe even better than yours, mind-fucking, as our Meara put it, it’s a good tactic.”

“What the bastard thinks of me either way isn’t something I worry myself about.” Content enough now, Connor shoveled in potatoes. “The lightning strike gave me a jolt, I confess.”

“He didn’t strike you because you have the amulet, and that’s protection,” Branna considered. “And because he wants what you have more than your death. He tried to undermine your confidence, and put bad feelings between you and me, between you and Fin.”

“He failed on all counts. And here’s the thing. When I struck at him, the stone glowed brighter, but then—I felt something burn—nothing like it came to be, but a quick burning. And the gem, it dimmed after that. Dimmed considerable just as I struck out again, just before he vanished, and the shadows with him.”

“What he did to you took considerable from him.” Branna ran her hand down Connor’s arm. “To close you in, then cause you harm, to, well, show off for you as well. It cost him.”

“If I’d been able to call you, if we’d all been there.”

“I don’t know,” Branna mused.

“We do know he wasn’t willing to risk it. He’s not ready to take us all on again, or hasn’t the balls for it.” Fin looked around the table. “And there’s a victory.”

“He wasn’t weak, I’ll tell you that. I could feel it pumping out of him. The dark, and the hunger of it. I didn’t see him strike, and would swear he never touched me. Yet, I felt that burn.”

“Neither your jacket or shirt were scorched. But your shirt?” Boyle gestured with his fork. “Smoke came through it from the burn on your arm. Yet you’re wearing it now, and there’s no mark on it.”

“That’s grand, as I’m fond of this shirt.”

“He stayed as a man,” Meara added. “Because he didn’t choose to use his power for the change? He needed all he had to hurt Connor. If Fin hadn’t kept it from spreading until Branna got here, it would’ve been far worse—is that right?”

“Much worse,” Branna confirmed.

“And worse, much worse, would have taken more from you—from the three. He’s studied you all your lives, one way or another, so surely he knew Branna would come, and she’d put all she had into healing Connor—that Iona would add what she could. But that much worse might’ve put Connor down for a day or two, depleted the three of you. He wanted that, risked that. But he didn’t count on Fin,” Meara explained.

“I was nearly here,” Connor pointed out. “He had to suss it out here’s where I’d come.”

Impatient, Branna shook her head. “He’s watched you, studied you, but he doesn’t understand Fin at all. Not at all. He can’t see beyond the blood shared between them. That I would be called and come, yes, but that Fin would take the pain, the risk, the burning to stop the spread? He doesn’t know you at all,” she said to Fin. “He never will. In the end, that might be his undoing.”

“He doesn’t understand family, and because he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t respect. He won’t win this,” Connor said, and helped himself to more potatoes.

* * *

AFTER THE MEAL AND THE CLEARING UP, CONNOR DROVE
Branna home, Meara with them.

“Will you be staying?” he asked Meara.

“No—unless you want me,” she said to Branna. “I know we’d planned a night of it.”

“Go sleep in your own bed. We’ll have our night of it, and wedding plans another time. Connor will drive you home.”

“I walked from the stables.” Meara leaned forward to look at Connor around Branna. “You could just drop me there.”

“I’ll drive you home. It’s late, and it’s an uneasy night at best.”

“I won’t argue with that.”

So he dropped Branna off, and waited for her to go inside, though he doubted Cabhan could manage so much as a poke with a sharp stick that night.

“She’ll want just you,” Meara said quietly.

“You’re never out of place with us.”

“No, but she’ll want just you tonight. I’ve never seen her so frightened. We’re all standing in the kitchen, with her just pulling the chicken from the oven, and laughing over something I can’t even recall. Then she went white as death. It was Fin calling her, though I don’t know what he said.”

Gathering herself, Meara paused a moment. “But she said only, ‘Connor’s hurt. At Fin’s.’ And she grabbed my arm. Iona grabbed the other. And I was flying. A blink, an hour, I couldn’t say. All these years I’ve known you and Branna, and I never knew the like of that. Next I know we’re in Fin’s kitchen, and you’re on the ground, paler even than Branna.

“I thought you were dead.”

“It takes more than a bit of black magick to do me.”

“Stop the lorry.”

“What? Ah, are you sick. I’m sorry.” He swung to the side of the road, stopped. “I shouldn’t be joking when—”

His words, his thoughts, the whole of his mind dropped into a void when she launched herself at him, chained her arms around him, and took his mouth like a madwoman.

Like a hot, mad, desperate woman.

Before he could act, react, think, she pulled back again.

“What— What was all that? And where’s it been?”

“I thought you were dead,” she repeated, and latched that hot, mad, desperate mouth to his again.

This time he acted, grabbing on to her, trying to shift her around so he could find a better hold, gain a better angle. All the while her taste pumped into him like a drug, one never sampled, one he wanted more of. All of.

“Meara. Let me—”

She jerked back again. “No. No. We’re not doing this. We can’t do this.”

“We already did.”

“Just that—” She waved her hands in the air. “That’s all of it.”

“Actually, there’s considerable more, if you’d just—”

“No.” She threw her arm out, slapped a hand to his chest to stop him. “Drive. Drive, drive, drive.”

“I’m driving.” He pulled back onto the road, realized he was as unsteady as he’d been after Cabhan’s attack. “We should have a talk about it.”

“We won’t be talking about it, as there’s nothing to talk about. I thought you were dead, and it’s got me shaken up more than I understood because I don’t want you dead.”

Because he could feel the chaos inside her roiling around, he tried for ease and calm to counter it. “Sure I’m glad you don’t, and glad I’m not. But—”

“There’s not a ‘but’ about it. And nothing more to it.”

She leaped out of the lorry almost before he pulled in front of her flat.

“Go home to Branna,” she ordered. “She needs you.”

If she hadn’t said the last, he’d have marched right up to her flat, pushed his way in if necessary. Then they’d have seen what they’d have seen.

But because she was right, he waited until she’d shut herself inside. Then he drove home, more puzzled than he’d ever been about a woman.

And more stirred by one than he could remember.

8

M
EARA TOLD HERSELF TO FORGET ABOUT IT. TO PUT IT
aside as a moment of insanity caused by extreme stress. It wasn’t every day, was it, your two good friends grabbed hold of you and took you flying so you winked out of one place, winked into another?

Where you looked at a man you’d cared for the whole of your life, and thought him dead?

Some women would have run screaming, she thought as she put her back into mucking stalls. Some would have fallen into hysterics.

All she’d done was kiss the man who wasn’t dead at all.

“I’ve kissed him before, haven’t I?” she muttered and pitched soiled hay into the barrow. “You can’t know someone almost from birth, run in the same pack all along, be best mates with his sister, and not. It’s nothing. It’s not a thing at all.”

Oh God.

She squeezed her eyes shut, leaned on her pitchfork.

Sure she’d kissed him before, and he her.

But not like that. Not like that, no. Not all hot and heavy with tongues and teeth and her heart racing.

What must he think? What did she think?

More, what the bloody, bleeding hell was she to do when next she saw him?

“Okay.” Iona stepped into the stall behind her, leaned on her own pitchfork. “I’ve given you thirty-two minutes, by my mark. That’s my limit. What’s going on?”

“Going on?” Flustered, Meara tugged the brim of her cap down lower, and tossed another scoop into the barrow. “I’m pitching horse shit, as you are.”

“Meara, you barely looked at me, much less spoke when we got here this morning. And you’re in here muttering under your breath. If I did something to piss you off—”

“No! Of course you didn’t.”

“I didn’t think so, but something’s got you muttering and hunching off with your eyes averted.”

“Maybe I’ve got my monthlies.”

“Maybe?”

“I couldn’t think fast enough if I’d been bitchy recently when I did have them. My mother—”

Iona jabbed a finger to stop her. “You didn’t think fast enough there either. When it’s your mother, you spew. You’re not spewing, you’re hiding.”

“I am not.” Insulted, Meara angled away. “I’m merely taking some time with my thoughts.”

“Is it about last night?”

Meara straightened up like a flag pole. “What about last night?”

“Connor. Black magickal burn.”

“Oh. Well, yes, of course. Of course, it’s that.”

Eyes narrowed in speculation, Iona circled her finger in the air. “And?”

“And? That should be enough for anyone. It would send most people into hospital with collapsed nerves.”

“You’re not most people.” Now Iona moved in closer, crowding the space. “What happened after you left Fin’s?”

“Why would anything happen?”

“There!” Iona pointed. “You looked at the ground. Something happened, and you’re evading.”

Why, oh why, was she such a miserable liar when it mattered? “I’m looking at the horse shit I’m not shoveling.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Oh, oh, that’s below the belt.” It was Meara’s turn to point an accusatory finger. “That sorrowful look, the little catch in your voice.”

“It is,” Iona admitted with a quick smile. “But it’s still true.”

Losing the battle, Meara leaned on her pitchfork again. “I don’t know what to say about it, or do about it.”

“That’s why you tell a friend. You’re close to Branna—and I don’t mean that below the belt. If you can talk to her, I’ll cover for you while you go over.”

“You would,” Meara said with a sigh. “I’ll need to talk to her, that’s clear enough. I’m not sure how. It might be better to talk to a cousin rather than a sister right off. Sort of like stepping-stones. It’s just that . . .”

She stepped to the opening of the stall, looked up, looked down to be sure Boyle, Mick, or any of the stable hands weren’t loitering nearby.

“It was scary, last night. And I was turned upside down right off at being whisked magickally from one kitchen to the next in a couple blinks of the eye.”

“You’d never flown before? Oh God, Meara, you had to be upside down. I guess I assumed Branna would have taken you now and then. For, well, fun.”

“It’s not that she won’t use power for a bit of fun now and then. But she’s pretty bloody responsible with it.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Then we’re there, where we weren’t, and Connor . . . In that first moment, I thought he was dead.”

“Oh, Meara.” Instinctively, Iona reached out to hug her. “I knew he wasn’t—that connection among the three—and I nearly lost it.”

“I thought I’d—we’d—lost
him
, and my head was already spinning, my guts twisted sideways. Then Branna and Fin working on him, and you as well. And I could do nothing.”

“That’s not true.” Iona pulled back, gave Meara a little shake. “It took us all. It took our circle, our family.”

“I felt useless all the same, but that’s not important. It was such a relief when he came back, and so much himself. And I thought I’d calmed and settled. But when he drove me home, it started rolling around inside me again, and before I knew it, before I could think straight, I told him to pull over.”

“Were you sick? I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, and he thought the same. But I went a bit mad, really. I just jumped him, right there in his lorry.”

Shock had Iona’s mouth falling open as she took a jerky step back. “You— You hit him?”

“No! Don’t be an idjit! I kissed him. And not at all like a brother or a friend, or someone you’re welcoming back from death.”

“Oh.” Iona drew the syllable out.

“Oh,” Meara echoed, doing a restless circle around the stall. “Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I pulled back. You’d think I’d’ve got my head back in place, but no, I did it all over again. And being a man, after all, he had no objections, and would’ve moved on from there if I hadn’t found my sanity again.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not really surprised. I thought there was something . . . but when I first got here this winter, I thought there was something between you and Boyle.”

“Oh Jesus.” Completely done, Meara covered her face with her hands.

“I know there wasn’t, ever, anything but family, friends. So I decided the something I thought I felt between you and Connor was the same.”

“It is! Of course it is. This was a result of trauma.”

“A coma’s a result of trauma. Making out in a truck—lorry—is a result of something else entirely.”

“It wasn’t making out, just a couple kisses.”

“Tongues?”

“Oh bloody hell.” She yanked off her cap, tossed it down, stomped on it.

“Does that help?” Iona wondered.

“No.” Disgusted, Meara grabbed the cap, beat it against her thigh. “How can I tell Branna I’ve been snogging her brother in his lorry on the side of the road like a horny teenager?”

“The same way you told me. What about—”

“Do the two of you intend to stand around all morning, or will you be hauling that manure out?” Boyle stepped to the opening, scowled at them.

“We’re nearly done,” Iona told him. “And we have something we have to discuss.”

“Discuss later, haul manure now.”

“Go away.”

“I’m the boss here.”

She merely stared at him until he shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked away.

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to him.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Mortified all over again, Meara shoveled more manure. “Connor will for certain. Men are worse than women about such matters.”

“What did you say to Connor? After.”

“I told him that was the end of it, and I wasn’t going to talk about it.”

“Right.” Iona managed to hold back the laugh, but not the toothy smile. “That’ll work.”

“We can’t have a mad, momentary impulse twisting things up. We’ve more important things to concern us, as a whole.”

Iona said nothing for a moment, then stepped over, gave Meara another hug. “I understand. I’ll go with you when you talk to Branna if you want.”

“Thanks for that, but it’s best I do it on my own.”

“Go this morning, get it off your mind. I’ll cover for you.”

“It would be good to get it out and gone, wouldn’t it?” And maybe her stomach would stop rolling around, she considered as she pressed a hand to it. “I’ll finish up here, then run over. Once it’s said, I can put it aside and concentrate on what needs doing without it nagging at me.”

“I’ll smooth it with Boyle.”

“Tell him I’ve my monthlies or some other female thing. It always shuts him up.”

“I’m aware,” Iona said with a laugh, and went back to her own stall.

* * *

DO IT QUICK, MEARA ORDERED HERSELF AS SHE STRODE
through the woods. Get it over. Branna would hardly be mad about it—more likely she’d laugh, and think it a fine joke.

That would be grand, and then she could think of it as a fine joke herself.

Imagine Meara Quinn lusting for Connor O’Dwyer. And she could admit there were little pockets of lust burning in uncomfortable places.

But a talk with Branna would quash all that, and things would be back as things should be.

Maybe she’d had a little twinge over him now and then through the years. What woman wouldn’t feel a twinge or two for the likes of Connor O’Dwyer?

The man made a picture, didn’t he? All long and lean and that curling mop of hair, that pretty face, that knowing grin. Add in his caring ways, for he had that as much as the pretty.

A temper to be sure, but less than hers by far. By a few thousand kilometers, truth be told. And a far happier, steadier outlook on life than most, including herself.

For all he’d faced the whole of his life, he kept that happy outlook, those caring ways. You mixed the power in, for it was an awesome thing to behold even for one who’d known and seen it all her life, and the full package of him packed a solid punch.

And he knew it well, used it well—on more than a fair share of females to her way of thinking.

Not that she held that against him. Why not pluck the flowers along the way?

For her, for sense and logic, she’d stick with being his friend rather than part of a bouquet.

She sighed, hunched her shoulders as the air chilled. She’d have to speak to him of it—foolish to tell herself otherwise. But after she’d told Branna and they’d had a good laugh over it.

She’d be able to talk to Connor, make it all a fine joke, after she told Branna.

She dug into her pocket for her gloves as the wind kicked up. And to think they’d called for a bright morning, she thought as clouds smothered the sun.

And she heard her name on the wind.

Pausing, she looked over in that direction, saw she stood at the big downed tree by the thick vines. By the place where beyond lay the ruins of Sorcha’s cabin, and the land that could slip in and out of time on Cabhan’s whim.

He’d never before called to her, bothered with her. Why would he? She had no power, was no threat. But he called now, and the voice that oozed seduction pulled at something inside her.

She knew the dangers, knew all the warnings and risks, yet found herself standing at the curtain of vines without realizing she’d walked to them. Found herself reaching.

She’d just have a look, just a quick look is all.

Her hand touched the vines, and a dreamy warmth came with the touch. Smiling, she started to part them while fog oozed through their tangles.

The hawk cried as it dove. It sliced a path along those vines so she stumbled back. Shuddered and shuddered with the fog swimming nearly to her knees.

Roibeard perched on the downed tree, looked at her with eyes bright and fierce.

“I was going in, have a look. Can you hear him as well? It’s my name he’s calling. I only want to see.”

When she reached out again, Roibeard spread his wings in warning. Behind her Branna’s hound let out a soft woof.

“Come with me if you like. Why don’t you come with me?”

Kathel caught the hem of her jacket in his teeth, pulled her back.

“Stop that now! What’s wrong with you? What’s . . . What’s wrong with
me
?” she murmured, swaying now, knees watery, head light.

“Bugger it.” She laid an unsteady hand on Kathel’s great head. “Good dog, smart and good. Let’s get away from here.” She looked back at Roibeard, and at the shadows dimming again as the sun struggled through the mists. “Let’s all get away from here.”

She kept her hand on the dog, walking fast while the hawk swooped and glided overhead. Never in her life was she so glad to see the woods behind her, and the home of the Dark Witch so close at hand.

She wasn’t ashamed to run, or to fling herself, just ahead of the hound, breathless into Branna’s workshop.

In the act of pouring something that smelled of sugar biscuits from vat to bottle, Branna looked up. Immediately set the pot aside.

“What is it? You’re shaking. Here, here, come by the fire.”

“He called me,” Meara managed as Branna rushed around the work counter. “He called my name.”

“Cabhan.” Wrapping an arm around Meara, Branna pulled her to the fire, eased her down into a chair. “At the stables?”

“No, no, the woods. I was coming here. At the place—outside Sorcha’s place. Branna, he called me, and I was going. I wanted to go in, go to him. I wanted it.”