Dark Witch (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #1)(80)

She smiled and meant it and, thinking rainbows, leaned over to kiss him.

“I’m starving.”

He didn’t think at all, but pulled her in again to kiss her until the image of her swaying on the ledge faded away. “I know a place not far that does a fine fish and chips. And Christ knows I could do with a pint.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Thanks,” she added.

“For what?”

“For showing me two amazing places, and for catching me before I fell.”

She looked back at the friary, at the black birds, at the rainbow. Her life had forever changed, she thought. But unlike her ancestor, she considered it a gift.


*


IN THE COZY KITCHEN WITH THE HOUND AT HER FEET AND a fire in the hearth, Iona told her cousins everything.

“A busy day for you,” Connor commented.

“And then some.”

“That would be three events, we’ll call them, in a single day.” Branna, her hair still bundled up from her workday, contemplated her tea. “But only the first involving Cabhan.”

“The last one, too,” Iona reminded her. “She felt him coming.”

“A vision of the past. Whether yours or another’s, still the past. I doubt he’d venture so far now.” Branna looked at Connor.

“Not now, no, and why should he? Tell me what you were feeling—before, during, after the vision came on you.”

“Before I’m not sure. I felt I’d been there before, like the abbey, but not . . . bright, not happy like that. It was dark and, well, sorrowful. I knew the layout, what things were, but I realize now it was her, our ancestor. I was thinking her thoughts, and some were pretty damn bitter. She knew she was dying, but more than death she hated passing the amulet, the power, the responsibility on to her granddaughter.

“I don’t remember going up the steps. It seemed I was just there. The old woman in bed, gray hair streaked with white. Her face gray, too, and shiny with fever. And the girl sitting beside her, bathing her face. Long red hair. Eimear—I think she called the young girl Eimear.”

“You don’t remember the Irish you spoke,” Connor prompted her.

“No, just what Boyle thought it meant, or what he understood of it. I remember sorrow and fear, then the light just bursting into the room. For an instant, a sense of power—just wild, huge. Like a, well, like a really excellent orgasm. Then it all went gray, and spinning. Dizzy, weak, disoriented, and when that passed, hungry.”

“The dizziness will ease after a time,” Connor told her. “It’s good you weren’t alone when you had your first. You weren’t expecting this then?” he asked Branna.

“Not yet, no. Not yet. I want to say she’s—you’re,” she corrected, and addressed Iona directly, “accelerating. I think it’s where you are, and who you’re with. We’re three together, so what you have is coming ripe more quickly than it might otherwise. It’s a good thing, this. You’ll be stronger, less vulnerable.”

“Should I expect any more surprises?”

“You’ll take them as they come.”

“Let’s backtrack a minute. The dream. Did Boyle and I share the dream because we were together?”

“The sex.” Connor leaned back, shot his legs out. “It’s a powerful link. Or can be.”

“So if I have sex with Boyle he can get dragged in with me? But it hurt him. His hand. The poison.”

“Which you tended to well. That’s good instinct.”

“But the next time it could be worse.”

“You take it as it comes,” Branna reminded her. “Cabhan hurt him, but Boyle hurt Cabhan as well. Cabhan felt the blow—a human blow and in a dream—and that’s interesting to me.”

“It was black, mixed in Boyle’s blood. I could see it. If it had spread before—”

“It didn’t,” Branna said briskly. “We deal with what is. You can’t cloud what is with what-if, and the emotions.”

“She loves him.” Connor rubbed a hand over Iona’s when she jolted. “Love clouds everything and shines through it as well.”

“I never said I . . . How do you know what I just figured out?”

“It’s coming through you so strong I can’t avoid seeing it.” He gave her hand another rub. “I don’t mean to peek through the door, but it’s wide open.”

“I haven’t said anything to him.” Couldn’t and shouldn’t, she thought, reminding herself of her vow to be patient. “I’m just sort of savoring it. I’ve wanted to feel this way for so long, tried to feel this way. And with Boyle I didn’t have to want or try. I just did.”

“That’s all well and good, and sure he’s one of the best men I know. But you can’t let what you have filter through the haze of love,” Branna warned.

“We have different ways of thinking on that,” Connor put in. “I think love only adds to the power. Where she is, yes,” he said to Branna. “And being with us. But I’m thinking what she feels is another reason she’s gaining so fast. How she knew the poison was in Boyle, and how she drew it out so clean, when she’d never done the like before.”