The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) (8 page)

Brennan shook his head. “These waters are a sanctuary. They are protected space for the selkies. As long as they stay inside the boundaries, they’re safe.”

“What happens if they try to leave?”

“The mermaids will kill any selkie who tries to leave the boundaries. It’s the only way they can ensure that they maintain control, and that everything stays balanced.”

Owen’s gaze fell to the book. He thought back to the years he’d spent underwater with Nuala. He remembered how they’d lived in that empty white palace, surrounded by tall locked gates. He remembered how sometimes they would hide for days in one room, and she wouldn’t let him come out. “It was really dangerous for Nuala and me to be banished from the safe haven, wasn’t it?”

“Aye.” Brennan said quietly. “I’m amazed you survived as long as you did.”

“HEY,” CAITLIN WHISPERED
as soon as the kitchen door swung shut behind Fiona. “What’s going on with you? You hardly said two words the whole time she was out here.”

“It’s nothing.” Glenna picked up a napkin, wiping at a nonexistent spot on the bar. “I guess I’m curious…why isn’t Owen reading selkie stories? The legends of our islands, our culture? He should be reading those, not mermaid stories.”

“Is that all?” Caitlin said, gathering up her magazines. “I don’t care what story he reads as long as he’s reading.”

Glenna turned, catching a glimpse of Owen out of the corner of her eye. Caitlin’s hands stilled on the magazines when she saw the look on her friend’s face. “Glenna,” Caitlin said quietly. “Is there some reason he shouldn’t be reading that book?”

“Of course, not.” Glenna lifted a shoulder lightly. “Owen should read whatever book he wants.”

T
he working class neighborhoods on the outskirts of Dublin were a jumble of gray stone buildings and winding streets. Remnants of Christmas still clung to some of the homes; tattered garlands drooped from metal railings and dried-out trees lay across the gritty sidewalk, waiting for the weekly trash pickup.

Sam pulled onto a narrow street and parked, cutting the engine. He took in the squat row house at the end of the block. Green shoots sprouted out of the tidy beds flanking a brick stoop and a stack of colorful pots leaned against a bag of soil.

Someone was hoping to get a jump start on spring.

Unfolding himself from the car, Sam ignored the dog barking at him from behind a barred window of one of the neighboring houses. He strode up to the cherry red door and rapped lightly.

“Mr. Holt.” Eileen McKenna said, her smile warm and friendly as she opened the door. “You’re right on time.” She dusted her hands on a pink flower-printed apron tied around her ample waist. “I just pulled a batch of lemon cookies out of the oven.”

“How did you know lemon cookies were my favorite?” Sam asked. The laugh lines around Eileen’s eyes deepened as he shook her hand. Her skin felt smooth and papery, like a grandmother’s should. “Please, call me Sam.”

“Alright, Sam.” She waved him inside. “I’m sorry it took us so long to get back to you. We never expected to be gone so long.”

Sam scrubbed the soles of his boots over the welcome mat and ducked under the doorway, eyeing the brochures, souvenirs and chocolates spread out on the coffee table. “Belgium?”

She nodded. “Tom’s been wanting to go for years.” She looked over her shoulder, her green eyes twinkling. “My husband has a weakness for Belgian beers.”

“Let me guess…” Sam held up a basket of truffles. “You have a weakness for their chocolate?”

“Guilty as charged.” She grinned, nodding toward the spiral staircase and the faint sound of a radio announcing a local sports game. “But don’t tell Tom that half of those aren’t actually gifts for anyone.”

Sam chuckled as he followed her through a cozy sitting room with a plaid sofa and a worn armchair. A small TV was propped up in the corner. The front windows were open and he could hear the cars passing by on the street.

“How do you take your tea?” Eileen asked.

Sam leaned against the doorway of a kitchen that smelled of melted butter and sugar. “Black. And I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.”

She poured tea into two mugs and added a dollop of cream to hers. She handed him the darker mug and snagged a spatula from the drawer beside the oven. “To be honest, Sam,” she said, transferring cookies from the baking sheet to a platter. “I’m glad you called.”

“Really?” Sam paused in the act of blowing on the steam floating out of the mug. “Why is that?”

She gestured for him to open the back door and led him out to a rickety metal table painted a cheerful apple green in the back garden. She set the cookies down and settled into the chair opposite him. “I’ve thought about Brigid a lot over the years. I’m surprised you’re the first detective to ask me about her.”

Sam nodded for her to go on.

“Brigid was part of the cleaning crew at the college,” Eileen began. “She used to come into the library after hours to dust the books. I know it sounds silly—dusting the books. But the library at Trinity College is one of Ireland’s finest museums. It’s a celebration of our literary culture and heritage. Some of the books go back thousands of years.”

“It’s an impressive place,” Sam admitted.

“Aye,” Eileen smiled, straightening her shoulders with pride. “I took care to keep it that way for the twenty years I managed it.” Sliding the platter toward him, she waited until Sam took a cookie. “Part of my job was to oversee the cleaning crew. Most of the girls were quiet, hard-working. There wasn’t much to manage, really.”

Eileen leaned back in her chair, cradling her tea in both hands. “But there was something about Brigid that worried me. I suspected things were not good at home. Every now and then, she’d show up with a fresh bruise on her face. And, despite protests from the other girls, sometimes she would bring her children with her to work.”

“Was that allowed?” Sam asked.

“No,” Eileen admitted. “But in her case, I let the rules slide a bit. Her two boys were very well behaved. They played quietly in the corner while she cleaned. And I spied bruises on them a time or two. I figured they were safer in the library than they were at home.”

Sam thought about the neighborhood where Liam and Dominic had grown up, and imagined their drunk father stumbling home from the bars late at night. No wonder Brigid had brought them into work with her. “How long was she an employee?”

“Less than a year.” Eileen broke off half of a cookie and nibbled on the edge. “But it was long enough for me to get to know her. One night, she didn’t show up for her shift and didn’t bother to call. When she didn’t come in the next night, or the night after that, I tried to track her down, but no one seemed to know who she was or where she lived.”

“Didn’t she have to give an address on her employment form?”

“Yes. But it was a fake one. When I went to check, it was an address of a music shop in Bray. I asked the shop owner and the neighbors who lived around the shop. But they didn’t know her. No one had ever seen a woman by the description I gave.”

“What else did you do to track her down?”

“I went to the local hospitals.” She looked up, her expression sober. “I thought…with the bruises and all, maybe there’d been an
incident
.” She swallowed a sip of tea, and looked away. “But no one had checked in under that name.”

Sam nodded. He’d done some searching too, hacking into the hospital records of every emergency room in this area. But no one named Brigid O’Sullivan had checked into a Dublin hospital in the winter of 1988.

“After a while, I went to the garda and filed a missing person’s report. I was really worried. But they didn’t take it seriously. They said her family would have come in, if something was really wrong. I tried to explain that maybe her husband wasn’t such a nice man, but things were…different in Ireland back then. Domestic disputes were usually treated as a matter between a husband and wife and the garda didn’t want to get in the middle of it.”

Sam tapped his fingers over his mug. He was familiar with the situation. It wasn’t that different in America still, to this day. It sure hadn’t been any different for Tara. He studied Eileen across the table. She had done some digging. He was impressed with how hard she’d tried to find Brigid. It was her missing person’s report that first caught his attention when he hacked into the Dublin police files. But a person without proper resources and without the help of the garda could only get so far. “What did the other women in the cleaning crew say?” Sam asked. “Didn’t they know where she lived?”

Eileen shook her head. “They were glad she was gone.”

“Why?”

Eileen wiped her sugar-dusted fingers on her apron. “Well, besides the fact that they thought she got special treatment, they blamed her for the disappearing books.”

“The disappearing…books?”

“Yes.” The corner of Eileen’s mouth tilted up. “Soon after Brigid started working there, the librarians would come into work in the morning and find that some of the books from the lower shelves were missing.” She sent Sam a look over her mug. “You have to understand that every book in the library is shelved with incredible attention to detail according to the topic and time period. This process can take weeks, sometimes months, of extensive research.”

Sam nodded. “Of course.”

“You can imagine how the librarians felt when their system was…compromised. First, they accused the cleaning crew of stealing, but then they started to find the books shelved in other places. To the librarians, that was almost as bad as stealing and they wanted to fire the entire cleaning staff. But the other girls came to me together and told me it was Brigid. They’d seen her moving books at night without telling anyone. Naturally, being the manager, I confronted her about it.”

“And…?”

Eileen paused to take a sip of her tea. “She said she was moving them to their proper place.”

Sam’s brows shot up.

“I know,” Eileen said. “You can imagine how I felt when she said that. It was my job to oversee the proper cataloging and organizing of the books. But Brigid was adamant that the books she moved were shelved in the wrong place and she had corrected the mistake.”

“Was she right?”

“Well, you see. That’s what’s so strange about all this. When I looked into it, I realized she was right. In every case, some small detail had been overlooked and the book belonged exactly where she put it.”

“Did she explain why she’d moved each book?”

“No. She never had an explanation. And she couldn’t possibly have known without access to the information we had in our archives. She wasn’t even a very good reader. But she had some sort of strange sixth sense about it.”

Eileen paused as a siren screamed to life a few streets away. She waited for it to die down. “In every case except for one. There was one book—a story about selkies.” She glanced up. “You’re familiar with them?”

Sam snagged another cookie off the plate as the skin on the back of his neck started to prickle. “Yes.”

“Well, there was an old fairy tale—a legend about a white selkie. She insisted it belonged in the section with the mermaids.”

Sam paused, the cookie halfway to his mouth.
Mermaids?

“You see,” Eileen went on, “the selkie stories are in one section—under
Irish
mythology. The mermaid stories are in a different section—under
general
mythology. You’d think those sections would be close to each other, but they’re not. The Irish have a lot of pride for their
own
culture and legends. And while we respect the legends and myths of the world, we’d rather put our own on special display in our country’s premier literary museum.”