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I give his leg a squeeze. “I’m trying to make sense of the Father Colm hell beast. Why would the real soul of Father Colm want to hurt you?”
Sionnach sits straighter in the seat. Dashboard lights reflect off the sheen of his unshed tears. “The man I knew would rather burn for eternity than lay a finger on another.”
My gut says he’s not coming clean about everything. “You asked him for forgiveness.”
“What else would you have me do with a priest pointing a finger at my heart?”
I crush his fingers between mine. “Don’t keep truths from me.”
His eyes flash. “I can’t swear it was Father Colm, so talking of him gets us nowhere.”
I chew my lip. “Is it possible when the Veil burned, it allowed inmates of hell to bust out?” I can’t imagine the monster was from anywhere else.
He scratches the cleft in his chin with a thumbnail. “Let’s put the notion to Pwyll.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
Sionnach bounces our joined hands against his knee. “Someone save my sanity.” He exhales with a groan. “Fine. Send your bucket back down the well if you must.”
“My grandmother? Where do you think she might be?”
He stiffens. “When we finish.”
The longing for Máthair expands inside me. “What if we don’t finish?”
He releases my hand and grips the wheel. “My life is a pile of promises with cracks and ruined edges. I’m trying to sweep that away to see if there’s any part of me still worth a speck of value under the rubble.”
His hand clamps my thigh. There’s raw power in his grip. He’s not hurting me. It’s as if he’s holding on to keep from falling.
“If I think of failure or broken promises, I’ll lose the bit of courage still lingering in my bones. Movin’ ahead is my only way.” His hand darts around my back and, with a jerk, he pulls me closer. “I’m begging you to understand why I can’t talk of such things.”
The all too familiar niggle he’s parceling out rations instead of real information nags at me, but I’m too weary to battle. Instead, I lean in and kiss his cheek. “I do.”
His face breaks into a smile as we close in on Leap Castle.
The first sign something’s off is the clog of cars stuffed into every driveway on the road near the castle. It’s two o’clock in the morning. Any event should be buttoned down for the night and the place deserted.
We reach the old gate lodge. I brace for impact as Sionnach screeches into the scant space between a news van and a Garda car that looks far too small for the rental. I wonder how many time-bending visits it took him to master driving.
Beyond the trees, the top of the castle is bathed in a shock of light. The short road to the entrance swarms with a sea of onlookers, buzzing like an agitated wasp’s nest. I feel as if I’m home in Times Square where electronic billboards turn night into day.
With a death grip on each other’s fingers, we weave through the crowd. The underlying pulse of this place sets my teeth on edge. Too many people. Too much friction.
The castle’s triple gothic arched front entrance is familiar even though in the present, pock marks and cracks mar its stony surface. Before it, the press interviews a cluster of priests decked out in vestments as grand as an Easter sunrise mass. Angry voices and waving signs rise from the crowd.
The Elemental Curses You!
Bring back our ghost.
Druids welcome here.
Cliques with opposing viewpoints pack in around the press, jamming the circular drive between castle and surrounding stone walls with bodies. They raise hands to the skies, chanting to their chosen deity.
Sionnach crushes my hand to paste. Sweat mashes curls to his forehead. The shadows under his brow remind me of Pwyll’s bottomless eye cavities. He snatches the upper arm of the closest reporter and spins the man none to gently toward us. “Why’s the place as mad as a box of frogs?”
“The Fathers,” he nods at the group of priests. “They’ve gone and exorcised the Elemental. All hell is breaking loose because of it.” He jerks a thumb off to the side. “You’ve got ghost hunters over there, cursing the priests.” The man distances himself from Sion and points to another group of people on their knees. “And that lot’s trying to call the ghostly feller back.” He moves away, keeping a wary eye on us, not sure which throng of zealots we belong to.
I grew up with priests as objects of comfort and guidance. The collective intensity on the faces of this brethren with their billowing sleeves raised to the heavens is damn terrifying. Poor harmless Pwyll.
