The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) (16 page)

The grasses shivered, rustling in the wind. Glenna pulled away, shaking her head. “I can’t take that risk.”

IT WOULD HELP,
Tara thought, if she knew what she was looking for. Sitting on the floor in Glenna’s bedroom, she blew out a breath. She’d been here for hours: searching drawers and cabinets, checking for loose floorboards, rummaging under sofas and chairs, digging through her friend’s closet.

She wasn’t a stranger to secrets. She’d learned, during her first marriage, how to hide things so her husband couldn’t find them—wads of cash, fake ID’s, plane tickets to escape to another country. She’d made mistakes at first, and had been punished for them. But she’d gotten better at it after a while. She’d learned that sometimes the most obvious place was the best place to hide something.

She stood, empty-handed, and walked back to the bookshelves lining the walls behind Glenna’s bed. They were filled with ancient myths and legends, books of spells and magic, tales of enchantments and romance. She’d already combed through them once, but something kept nagging her to go back. She ran her hands over the leather-bound volumes, tracing the loopy gold calligraphy along the spines. On the bottom shelf, a collection of black Moleskine sketchbooks took up half the shelf.

She slid one out, then another, dropping them onto the scarlet comforter draped over the queen-sized bed. Maybe there was something in one of Glenna’s sketches that would give her a clue. She reached for the last one, frowning at the weight of it. It was the same size and shape as the others, but it felt at least a pound heavier than it looked. She nudged the other sketchbooks aside and edged her hip onto the bed.

A strand of red ribbon peeked out of the top of the pages and she eased it free. It was frayed at the ends, even though the book itself looked fairly new. She ran it through her fingers, noting the threadbare stitches in the material. A movement of curtains caught her eye and she glanced up, but it was only a puff of wind.

She settled back onto the bed, opening the heavy volume. Most of the pages were blank, save a few unfinished sketches of stone circles and moonlit paths. She flipped through the rest of the book, pausing when she spotted the hidden flap tucked into the back cover. She peeled it open and eased out a well-worn, topographic map. She unfolded it carefully and saw that it was a map of a mountain range. There were dozens of spots circled, many of them with a red x slashed through them.

Glenna was searching for something. But what? And where?

Tara froze when the spine retracted, cracking in her hands. The binding quivered. A hot, dry wind gusted in through the open window. Silver necklaces dangling from antique drawer handles clinked and jangled. Tara’s heart pounded as the wind caught the pages, blowing them out like a fan. They yellowed before her eyes, crinkling and stiffening with age. They made a dry scraping sound like dead leaves skittering over a city street in the fall.

The leather creaked and stretched in her palms as the pages—blank before—filled with ancient Gaelic letters scrawled in black ink. Her dark hair blew into her eyes as the wind teased the pages open to a rough sketch of a bush with long black thorns and delicate white flowers. Her hand shook as she brushed a finger over the word,
draighean
, under the fading black-and-white sketch.

Every candle in the room lit. Smoke curled up from the wicks. Tara gasped when the window slammed shut and sparks shot out from the cracks in the floorboards. She scrambled to her feet as the curtains ignited, the flames twisting toward her, cutting off her path to the door.

S
am knelt, brushing a hand over the scorched earth. “What happened here?”

Glenna balled up the topographic map, crumpling it in her hands. The rugged peaks of the Twelve Bens rose behind them and the Tooreen Bogs stretched out to the sea as she stood inside the crumbling stone circle, known only to a few pagan communities in the area. “My mother.”

Sam pushed slowly back to his feet. “The blackthorn?”

Glenna nodded. “I’ve been searching for this spot for years. I’ve found nearly every stone circle hidden in these mountains, but this is one of the few I hadn’t seen. I thought if there was any blackthorn left, it might be able to help us.” A sparrowhawk cried in the distance. “I always knew it was a shot in the dark. But I had to try.”

“Are you sure this is the place?”

“This is the place.” Glenna pressed her palm to a cool stone. She could sense the energy, the undercurrents of magic hidden deep within the ritual circle. “I’ve seen it a dozen times in my dreams.”

“And this blackthorn…” Sam said slowly as he walked to her. “It holds the truth in its bark?”

Glenna nodded. “If you throw a blackthorn branch into a fire on Imbolc, the true story will be told in the smoke.” Her gaze dropped to the blackened soil. “But Moira got rid of it, and made sure none would ever grow again.”

Sam stepped inside the circle and Glenna watched him tense. He may not have magic, but his intuition ran deeper than any man she’d ever known. She could tell that he felt things, smelled things that didn’t belong here. He reached out, brushing a hand over one of the stones. Whispers and voices danced over the wind.

He jerked his hand back. “What was that?”

A gust rushed over the mountainside, whipping Glenna’s ponytail over her shoulder. The tall grasses bent, the wind whistling through their brittle stalks. Sam’s eyes locked on hers—clear, sharp and full of questions. “What happened in this place?”

Glenna held out her hand and he walked slowly to her. It was time for Sam to find out exactly who they were dealing with. Her fingers curled around his wide palm and she let the rush of power flow into him. He stood his ground, but she could feel every muscle in his body tighten as the air shifted and the sky changed from blue to vivid red.

Grass sprang up beneath their feet, where scorched earth used to be. A brush fire crackled by one of the stones, and in the middle of the circle a man and a woman lay together, their bodies linked in ecstasy, their bare flesh glistening with sweat. Sam gripped Glenna’s hand as the image wavered and shifted. The couple was standing now, and the man reached for his clothes balled up beside the fire. He looked back at the woman with hatred in his eyes. “
I will find her. Wherever she is. I will never stop looking for her. You cannot get away with this.”

The woman shrieked when he turned and strode away from her. The knife, a flash of silver slicing through the red dawn, caught him in the back of his neck. The man crumpled and the woman’s eyes, dark brown only moments ago, glinted green-gold as she pulled the blade free. Her lover’s blood covered her hands as he fell, lifeless, to the ground.

Glenna released Sam’s hand and stepped away from the stone. The vision that had haunted her since she was a teenager disappeared and the green grass turned black again under their feet. The wind died and the sky transformed back to a brilliant blue.

Sam’s eyes lifted to hers. His chest rose and fell, his breathing labored as the last tremors of her power coursed through his veins. “Was that Moira?”

Glenna nodded. “Her appearance changed as her magic grew.”

“Who was the man that she killed?”

Glenna looked back at the ground, where the image of the fallen man still burned in the backs of her eyes. “My father.”

SMOKE FILLED THE
room. The fire crackled and grew. Tara coughed, covering her mouth with her shirt. She staggered to the window, smashing Glenna’s lamp into the glass. It shattered, but the hole wasn’t big enough for her to climb through. She looked back at the door. It was covered in flames.

The blaze streaked from the curtains to the bookshelves. Tara struggled to breathe as smoke clogged her lungs. Her vision blurred and wavered. The heat of the room became unbearable as she reached blindly over the rug for the spell book.

Her fingers curled over the leather spine, but the ancient pages ignited in her hand. She cried out as the flames grazed her skin. She dropped the book, grabbing a potted plant with both hands and hurling it at the window. More glass broke off and the gap was just wide enough for her to fit through.

Her eyes burned as she crawled through the smoke to the window. The jagged glass sliced into her palms as she fit her shoulders through the narrow opening and pushed her way out. Her jeans tore, ripping down her thighs where the shards bit into the seam. But she climbed out, wrenching away from the glass as her palms met the hot dry soil under Glenna’s window.

She stumbled away from the house in a tumble of bloody gashes and burns. The heat of the flames chased her from the cottage until she fell, crawling on her hands and knees toward the open fields. She buried her face in the brown moss, covering her ears as the thatched roof caught fire. A thick stream of black smoke coiled high into the air.

LIAM SAT BACK,
rubbing his eyes. He’d been staring at the computer since dawn. But he still didn’t have a clue why his mother would re-shelve the white selkie legend with the mermaid books. It didn’t make any sense. He glanced up when the door swung open and Caitlin walked into the cottage, her troubled blue eyes locking on his.

Owen trailed in after her and Liam pushed back from the cluttered table when he saw the wet clothes plastered to his son’s body. “What happened?”

“I tripped,” Owen mumbled. “It was an accident.”

Liam stood, worry creasing his brow. “I thought you were at the pub reading with Brennan?”