I freeze.
That wasn’t there before. Remnants of St. Patrick’s Day’s transportation magic?
Like the one left in Christmas.
If they know clovers get left behind when they use transportation magic, then they know they left at least one when they fled Christmas after installing the device on our Merry Measure.
So whoever it was—Loch or Malachy—they know they left a clue behind.
Itwashidden, and no one noticed it until I did, so maybe they took that risk. Or maybe they tried to cover their tracks when they left, but missed one clover… just bad luck.
I yank my eyes away from the clover patch, but Loch hasn’t noticed my fixation on it.
He grunts in exasperation. “I told you to leave,” he says, back in English.
“I left the room,” I say. In Irish.
His eyes go wide, round and horrified.
“I wanted to know if he…” I switch back to English, then fumble. “If I needed to come back in.”
I watch his mind work, rolling through the conversation, trying to figure out if he said anything I shouldn’t have heard. But I stay in the doorway and I’m only lividfor himand he seems to realize that with a shattering, slow blink.
“Why would you’ve come back in?” he asks.
“To help you,” I answer stupidly.
Loch’s wonder goes to suspicion. “You do na seem surprised by what you heard. Siobhán. She told you about Malachy?”
“Don’t be mad at her for it. But yes.”
Loch cups his hands over his face and scrubs, hard, trying to wipe away the past few minutes.
“Are you gonna move?” He waves at how I’m taking up the whole doorway.
I step out into the hall.
Loch doesn’t leave, though. He studies my face. Looks up at the ceiling with another sigh, but this one seems self-deprecating.
“Get drunk with me,” he orders the space above my head.
My mouth pops open. “I—”
He cuts around me to head up the hall.
I watch him get a few feet ahead. Tautness is strung through his shoulders.
“That was na a question, Coffee Shop,” he calls back.
I follow.
Chapter Nine
Loch winds through the castle, back down past the dining room, and into a long, silent kitchen. The whole middle is taken up by a rectangular butcher block island, pots hanging over it that glint polished copper when he flicks on a light. Every inch of space has the same ancient feeling as the rest of the castle, only this room is hung with centuries of food prep, spices in the air, flour worked into the smoothed wooden surfaces and the terracotta floor tiles and the wall-sized fireplace at one end.
Loch crosses to that fireplace and crouches in front of a cupboard near it. Bottles clink as he rummages through its contents.
“If you pull out more whiskey, I’m leaving right now,” I say.
