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I made myself a cup of decaffeinated tea, and headed out to the garden to greet the sun. I suddenly realized that my psychic headcount hadn’t marked Emmet as present. Maybe he had taken off early this morning, or perhaps he hadn’t come home last night, either. Emmet was a full-grown golem, though, so I had no doubt he could take care of himself for one night. Or maybe someone else had taken care of him. I felt an odd and unwelcome twinge of jealousy at the thought that some other woman might have welcomed him into her bed. I pushed the feeling away and told myself that it would be the best thing for all of us if Emmet moved on. But then another thought hit me. Maybe Claire had scared him off? No. That was unlikely.
Again I felt anger and misplaced jealousy toward the faceless and most assuredly imaginary woman who had seduced him. “Get a grip,” I said to myself. I truly did love Peter. I forced myself to look at this possessiveness I’d begun to feel toward Emmet. Was I just being protective of him? In spite of all the years of knowledge and experience lent to him by the witches who had created him and his manly body, he was somehow still an innocent. I wanted to go along with that rationalization, but then my more honest side spoke the truth. This jealousy I felt truly had nothing to do with Emmet or his emotional well-being . . .
I might have learned that I was not the odd woman out when it came to magic, and Peter had never failed to make me feel beautiful and special, but I still struggled with a poor self-image. Emmet’s declaration of love had flattered me, bolstering the unhealthy side of my ego. I could follow these emotions where they might lead me and break Peter’s heart—again—ruining my life, and both of theirs, just to feed an emotional black hole. Or I could own up to the fact that I still had a lot of growing up to do. I sighed. Self-awareness sucked. I thought about what my mother had done . . . how she’d had an affair with Ellen’s husband. Maybe that choice had sprung from a similar place?
My thoughts drifted from my mother to Peter’s mom. I was worried about Claire. I had no idea what had set her off against Emmet. Perhaps Claire herself had a strong enough psychic ability to sense his otherworldliness? But that didn’t explain the history she seemed to think she had with the golem, who she thought his people were, or, most importantly, what had happened to Peter’s brother, the son she had turned over to them for safekeeping. I felt certain of one thing: It was a pure fiction that the old man was some long-lost Great-Uncle Peadar. This man, this “dried-up husk,” as Claire had called him, was somehow Claire’s son and Peter’s brother. Logically, I couldn’t account for how Peter’s brother could be older than his parents, nor could I imagine the circumstances that had inspired Claire and big Colin to give up their boy, but there was no question that Claire believed him to be her long-lost son. “Peadar,” the name of the missing uncle, was only a convenient label to hang on the body that had been found. Something for Detective Cook to chew on.
After Claire and I had returned to the bar, Colin came and whisked her upstairs to their living quarters. She hadn’t made another appearance. I had joined Peter behind the bar, and we’d worked together until last call. “This is nice,” Peter had commented at one point, his mismatched eyes, right blue and left green, misty with drink. I knew without asking what he meant by “this,” and part of me agreed. Even so, the revelation that the Tierneys—a family I had always thought of as being the most normal family in the world—had been touched by some form of magic was making me ask the same questions Emmet had raised. How could it be that Peter was never bothered by my family’s magic, and now by my magic, for that matter, when most normal people were at least a little unsettled by it?
The sound of a car pulling into our drive pulled me from my thoughts. A door opened and softly closed, and then the car reversed back onto the road. High heels moving cautiously across stone told me one of my aunts had returned.
Iris’s eyes widened, and she stopped in her tracks, clutching her purse to her chest, when she registered my presence in the garden. In spite of her air of guilty surprise, she looked radiant in the rosy hues of early daylight. I knew it meant I was both a hypocrite and a liar, but I realized in that instant I’d never speak to her about Connor. I couldn’t bring my heart to do it. I couldn’t risk the fragile renaissance I was witnessing any more than I could rip the wings off a butterfly. I would take this secret to my grave. I made this decision in the full knowledge that my own weakness would make it a heck of a lot harder for me to judge either of my aunts. I raised my cup. “Morning.”
“Good morning.” She gave me a smile that tottered between embarrassment and hubris. “I guess this old girl still has it in her,” she said just in time for Oliver to arrive, shirtless and wearing baggy sweatpants, a mug of steaming coffee in hand.
“Well, she sure did last night,” he said with a smirk, “and by the looks of you, all night long too.”
“Oliver,” we gasped in unison, and he let loose with a full-throated laugh. He came over to the table and joined me.
“When do you close on your new house, again?” Iris asked before shaking her head and going inside. In spite of her embarrassment, there was a sly and satisfied look on her face.
“Surprised you are home,” I said.
“And why do you say that?” He held his mug in both hands and leaned in as if I were about to tell him the juiciest of secrets.
“Well, you know. After last night. You and Cook. I mean Adam.”
He feigned a look of shock. “Well, my dear, we don’t all have the alley cat morals of your Aunt Iris.”
“You’d better not let her hear you say that,” I said.
“Point taken.” He took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair.
He grinned. “We danced a little. Drank way too much. Talked a little. Then I walked home. I was in no shape to drive, I’ll tell you that.”
“Wait, that’s it?”
“We are having lunch today,” he said. “I want to take our time and make sure this is right. We were kids . . . before. I don’t want to rush things. I want to go slowly and enjoy it.”
“You, Oliver Taylor, want to take things slowly?”
“Is that so unbelievable?”
“Yes. Who are you, and what have you done with my real uncle?” He blew me a very wet raspberry in response. A question rose to my mind. “How is it that Adam doesn’t react poorly to your magic?”
Oliver raised his eyebrows and frowned at the same time, considering the question. “He did at first, when we were young, back when we first met. But I suggested that he not ‘react poorly to it,’ as you so quaintly put it.”
“You compelled him?”
Oliver nodded. “Yeah, but that was the one and only time. I owned up to him that I had done it, and I promised us both I’d never suggest anything to him again.” He took a sip of coffee and then looked at me over the rim of his mug. “Adam is worried about you, you know?”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“?‘Gut feeling,’ he says. Peadar Tierney showing up with a hole punched through him. You’ve been acting all cagey around him, he says. Don’t worry; I didn’t say anything about the old guy.”
“Is it hard for you, keeping secrets from Adam?” I found myself piling up secrets in my relationship with Peter: my mother’s return, the truth about Maisie, the incident with Peadar, Emmet throwing himself at my feet, my liking that Emmet had thrown himself at my feet.
