Scintillate (16 page)

I stepped back. Blinked.

Giovanni nodded curtly to Finn as he passed us and tramped through the glass doors leading to the visitors center. His silver aura disappeared into the crowd.

“It’s my own fault the lads are swarming, really,” Finn said with a soft nibble to my bottom lip. “Leaving you alone like that. I don’t know what those flippin’
eejits
in your town were thinking, but to the wider world you are enchanting.”

“It’s not like that,” I said. “What you heard him say was soooo out of context.” The memory of the physical charge between Giovanni and me rushed through my body. I flicked it away. “We just have a lot in common.”

“I’ll bet.”

I stopped Finn in the parking lot and turned to face him. “You know, I don’t give my heart to just anybody. Your accusing me of being fickle is an insult.”

He nodded. I was warmed by the sight of his love, tinged with a little bit of insecurity. It was easy to forgive his jealousy when I could
see
his attachment to me, his fear of losing me. I wished he could see my attachment to him. I wished he could see how silver strands of energy from my body coiled and reached for his heart. I ran my fingers over the outline of his jaw and then behind his neck, pulling his mouth to mine. He kissed softly at first, almost reluctantly, until I bit his bottom lip and opened my mouth to a deeper kiss. His fingers dug into the small of my back.

The kiss was everything true, a claiming and a declaration.

Mine.

Yes. Yours.

Thirty

A

t the hostel, Finn parked the car and offered to walk me in. The lobby was relatively empty but for a twenty-something couple on a dingy couch, looking at something on their phone. I fished my key from my pocket and turned to say good-bye to Finn. There was everything but good-bye in his eyes.

“Food?”

I laughed. “We just ate!”

Finn drifted into my atmosphere, nibbled my bottom lip, and whispered, “Dessert?” in a voice as dark and tempting as chocolate.

“I could go for something sweet,” I answered with a mock air of indifference, while my heart beat double time.

He kissed me again and sucked my bottom lip into his mouth just slightly. “So could I,” he growled.

I snagged his hand and led him to my room.

Our impatient kisses delayed us at my door. Neither of us could suspend our need to close the gap, emotional and physical, between us. The bold girl I liked so much rose up in me again. I held Finn’s narrow face between my hands and kissed him hard. His hands clutched the small of my back, gathering my jacket in his fists as he pulled me against him. Being pinned to the door by Finn’s body was as heady as being pinned underneath him in my room that night back home. A small shred of me knew that unlocking the door and taking Finn into my room was reckless.

Freedom is its own kind of open door.

I fumbled the key into the hole, and we tumbled inside, wrapped in each other.

Cold hit me. A breeze that had nothing to do with air vents or open windows. The chill ran over my back like a bank of white clouds.

I slipped from Finn’s grasp.

“What is it?”

Nothing seemed out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but perhaps I was looking with the wrong sense. I reached out with my subtle body, my aura. There was a ghost of energy in the room that hadn’t been there that morning, the residual fingerprint of someone else’s energy, lingering malice. I could feel them as if I’d walked through the vapor of their aura.

“Something’s
off
in here,” I said, unable to fully explain it to Finn. “I don’t feel safe.”

His eyes scanned the place for anything out of the ordinary. His chest expanded and fell with a testing breath. “I can’t say why, exactly, but this place
does
have a bad vibe,” Finn said.

I scrambled around the room, gathering my things, throwing one article after the other into my suitcase and shoving it closed while Finn watched me with a disconcerted expression.

“It reminds me of when my uncle Clancy took me to visit my grandmother in the hospital. We stood over her bed, and I swear I felt it when her spirit left her body. There was…a drift in the currents of the room.”

I shuddered. “Spoken like a true sailor.”

He crossed the floor, gathering me in the warmth of his arms, into the cocoon of his heartbeat. “If you don’t feel safe here, luv, you shouldn’t stay.”

“Hence, the packing.” I slung my duffel over my shoulder, plans formulating in my head. “Giovanni will let me stay with him until we figure out what to do.”

Finn’s eyes widened. A touch of anger and protectiveness flared from him and wrapped me in an unwelcome cloak of dull green and lifeless yellow. “That wasn’t my first notion,” he said. “You want to stay with some tosser you barely know rather than with me?”

“I—honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could stay with you.”

I thought of Ina Doyle. I wasn’t welcome in her son’s life, so how would she like me being in their home? “What about your mother? Do you really think it will be okay? For just a night or two? Just until I can figure out what’s next?”

“I’ll call Uncle Clancy. I’m supposed to drive him home when the pub closes. We can pick him up, and he’ll drive with us to my house. He’s got a way with my mother.” When he held the sides of my face, I gripped his forearms. Our eyes locked. “I don’t know what’s got you so spooked, but I don’t ever want to see fear in your eyes like I see right now. Let me take care of you.”

He didn’t say what I’m sure we both thought.
Let me take care of you…until our time is up.

Thirty-One

A

bout thirty minutes out of Dublin, the lights of the city gave way to dark country roads with occasional roundabouts and road signs written in both Irish and English. Finn, Clancy, and I rode in silence. I sat dazed, looking out the windows. Two things were definitely in abundance in Ireland: rock walls and pubs.

Finn had called ahead and told his mother I’d found myself in some very unsavory lodgings and that he’d invited me to stay with them. Uncle Clancy took the phone and spoke of how they had to help. After all, I was a young girl on my own.

We slowed, then pulled into a driveway with an enormous wrought-iron gate. A large iron sun adorned the top. “
Ag éirí grian mainéar
,” Finn said. “Rising Sun Manor.” The gate opened to a long, winding, uphill drive lined with dense trees and brush. I had an irrational flash of fear when the imposing iron gates swung closed behind us.

My father must be sick with worry by now,
I thought, then tried my best to unthink it. I had to focus on my mother for the short time I’d be in Ireland, for the short time I’d be free to find her. I didn’t know how my dad did it all those years. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live the rest of my days with the pendulum of unanswered questions swinging through my heart.

Finally, Finn’s house came into view, stately and impressive. Like a summer cottage for royalty. Maybe that explained Finn’s mother’s disapproval. Perhaps I wasn’t good enough for her son. I never imagined Finn living like this. The spiked hair, tattoos, and leather straps on his wrist. The guitar and the blues. The way one penetrating look from him could shoot fire through me. He had the same tame fury simmering inside him as his country: cool green on the outside, intensity underneath. Finn’s fingers tapped a silent, restless tune on my thigh. His face was an impassive mask as we drove up to what Dun would gleefully call the O’LottaDough Mansion.

I realized there was so much I didn’t know about Finn Doyle. But I could
see
that he had a good heart, and that allowed me to disregard Giovanni’s paranoid warning. I knew what I knew. Finn was good inside and, right now, I was grateful for the refuge he could provide.

Clancy explained that the house had been built on a site where a castle once stood, but it had burned down centuries ago, leaving remnants of a cracked stone foundation and a tall circular building with a peaked roof. They had used the shell of stone, incorporating it and the tower into the home now known as Rising Sun Manor.

“Is that the ocean I hear?” I asked as we stepped out of the car onto a pea-gravel driveway. I hadn’t realized we were so close to the coast.

“It is,” Finn said. “I was born with sea air in my lungs and salt in my hair.” He pointed to an old stone tower looming above us. “That was once a lighthouse.”

We walked up the massive steps to the main house that splayed out like an open hand and through the wooden double doors. Finn set my bag at the foot of the staircase and pulled me forward. “C’mon. I want to show you around.”

“Don’t be long,” Ina warned after she greeted us icily in the foyer. “We’ll have dessert in the library,” she added, casting a sideways look at me, “and get to know one another.”

“I could get swallowed up in a house like this,” I told Finn as he led me from room to room, through doorways and long corridors. “How many people live here?”

“Just my folks and me,” Finn said. “Uncle Clancy lives in the old stable house on the far end of the property.”

“Seems like a lot of house for three people.”

“Aye, but you can be alone even when everyone’s home,” he said with a wink, pulling me into a hug behind a tall bureau.

“You never mentioned all this.”

“Not something you go crowing about, is it? It’s more than we need, aye. But my mother inherited it. The land has been in our family forever.”

We took a dizzying route through the house, a blur of smooth polished wood, darkly spiritual paintings of angels and death. One particular black-and-white print arrested my attention. Two figures seemed to be standing upon the clouds, gazing heavenward at a swirling, spiraling mass of angels. “That’s beautiful,” I said, particularly entranced by the spiral design.

“It’s a scene from
Paradiso
, from the
Divine Comedy
.” Like the couple in the painting, we stared upward at the ethereal art. “C’mon. You ready for the meet and greet?” Finn asked, a hint of teasing in his voice.

Personally, I could have skipped the whole “getting to know each other” session with his mom. Ina Doyle didn’t want to know me. Her mind was already made up.

“I love this room,” I said when we walked into the library. It was moody in the best way. High walls covered in gray fabric wallpaper and polished black furniture with gray-and-black damask. Ebony bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. The dark colors could have made the room dreary, but it wasn’t. It was heaven. A wide bank of windows overlooked the moonlit ocean. A fire blazed and crackled in the large fireplace.

Finn’s mother’s bookshelves could have competed with Faye’s at Say Chi’s. Apparently Ina was interested in all manner of metaphysical topics: auras, occults, chakras, psychic phenomena. I desperately wished to kneel down and riffle through the pages. Judging by the number of New Age bookstores in the world, and the number of websites online, many people were interested in this stuff. Still, I was shocked by the coincidence. Who’d have thought Ina and I would have something like this in common?

I picked up a book on auras and rested it in my hand while I paused to remember what Ina had said to me in the park.
There’s something about you.
At the time, I had taken it as an insult, a judgment of my appearance or some other deficiency. Now, I wondered if she could see more, and it unsettled me.

Finn and I sat together on a gray velvet chaise. “So, what do your parents think about your coming alone to Ireland?” Ina asked, handing me a mug of tea and a tiny plate of shortbread.

“I was born here,” I said. “This trip was, uh, long overdue.”

She wasn’t satisfied. “But to come alone, at your age?”

Finn shifted next to me. “I traveled to America alone.”

“Regretfully, yes,” she said, smoothing her hair, which she’d pulled into a tight chignon. “Though you were
somewhat
looked after, Griffin could have done a much better job of it. Who is looking after Cora?”

“I am.” We both said at the same time. I giggled. It was a weary giggle that threatened to turn into a fit of inappropriate hysterics. I pinched the flesh next to my thumb.

“What do your parents do?” Ina asked.

“My father is a scientist.”

She nodded, eyebrows up, perhaps impressed. “And your mother?”

“She is…was…researching…” I took a deep breath and blew it out while she looked at me expectantly. “My mom’s been out of my life for a long time.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Ina said. The smallest hint of a rose amid her thorns.

“Cora’s exhausted, Mom. Can we interrogate her tomorrow?” Finn stood and helped me to my feet. “I’ll show her to her room.”

Ina nodded curtly when I thanked her for letting me stay. Her stare pressed against my back as I left the library.

My guest room was in the old lighthouse tower. “You’re not going to lock me up in the tall, tall tower and throw away the key, are you?” I said, craning my neck to look up at the spiral staircase curling into the soaring ceiling like the inside of a seashell.

Finn kissed my fingertips. “If it’ll keep you from leaving, luv.”

We climbed the many steps circling the tower. Every so often, there’d be a rectangular pane of window above a stone sill, upon which burned a small votive candle. It was a nice touch, and surprising that Ina would do that for my arrival. My hand ran across the bumpy stone as we ascended, around and around, until we reached a door so aged and weathered it looked like it had been scrubbed with sand and bleached by the sun. It creaked when Finn pushed it open.

Broad, whitewashed beams arched across the ceiling. A stone-framed church window stood at one end with a circular pane above and three gothic points below. The walls were painted a calming shade of lavender, and a large white bed rested under the open window, where billowy grape-colored fabric rustled in the night breeze.

“Okay,” I said with my hand over my mouth. “You can throw away the key.”

“Want to know a secret?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“This is where I learned to play the guitar. Instead of doing my homework, I’d sneak up here where no one could hear me and teach myself to play.”

“I love that. Want to know a secret?”

“Give it to me.”

“I’m scared I’ll find out nothing about what happened to my mother.”

He nodded sympathetically.

“And I’m scared I will.”

“Sleep,
críona
. We’ll plan and plot in the morning.” I received a very gentlemanly but conflicted hug. Then he left me in the room alone.

I washed my face in the little white basin next to the bed, slipped on my tank top and a pair of girly boxers Janelle had given me for Christmas, and climbed into the soft bed. It was weird to think Finn was somewhere in this sprawling house, maybe lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, too. Would he dare a visit with me in the night?

Yeah. He would.

That thought alone made it hard to fall asleep. But finally, I did.

I dreamed. My mother called out to me from underwater, and I tried to shine the massive spotlight from the lighthouse down on the ocean to find her, but it wouldn’t budge. That dream reel switched to me running through a busy airport. The man with the white aura followed me. I kept trying to convince security he wanted to hurt me, but they didn’t believe me. I ran through the airport and lost him by walking among a crowd of Red Hat ladies.

On the plane, a man sat down next to me, his tall body filling the space. He put his hand on my wrist. Laid it there, almost soothing. Heat swarmed over my skin. Instantly, the tugging started. An invisible knife lashed at my chest, opening it for my aura to be ripped from my body.

The air was sucked out of the atmosphere. I gasped for breath, tried to lift my hand to cover myself like I had before, but he pressed my wrist down hard. I couldn’t yell. I couldn’t move through the heavy air surrounding my numb body. I could do nothing but stare into his eyes and silently beg him not to kill me.

My silver aura flashed in angry lightning strikes, objecting as it left my body to be swallowed up in his expanding white aura. My head fell back and somehow I screamed.

I opened my eyes as his aura exploded in a blast of white.

My depleted energy snapped back into my body. The shadow of Finn’s mother leaned over me, but my eyes still burned with the white flash of my dream, bathing her in its ghost.

“You were screaming,” she whispered, with her hand on my wrist. “Bad dream?”

I couldn’t nod or answer. Weighted down, limbs heavy.

Ina’s fingers slipped from my skin, and she backed away. “
Codladh sámh.
Sleep well. I’m sorry.”