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ONE
“Newspaper says a road crew found another part of that poor woman out on Hutchinson Island.” Claire grabbed a towel and a spray bottle from the bar and moved from one table to another, misting each with a cleaner that smelled of mint before wiping them like she meant to purge them of original sin. Magh Meall, the bar she owned along with Peter’s father, Colin, would be opening soon for the evening. Claire’s petite frame buzzed from one task to the next. Her tight dark curls bounced as she sped through her pre-opening routine. I noticed a few stands of silver had worked their way into those curls of late. I felt certain that the graying was due to the stress of losing Peadar, her true son, and the threat of losing Peter, the changeling she had raised as her own—the changeling I had married.
“I wish you’d let me help,” I offered.
She responded by shaking her towel at me. “Sit.” It was a command. “I got this.” I had known Claire half my life, and I loved her with all my heart. I was proud to call her my mother-in-law. “They found a hand,” she said, returning to the macabre report. “Didn’t say which, but they are sure it’s from the same body.” Luckily I was past the stage of my pregnancy that would make the wholesome smell of the mint seem noxious. The image of a dismembered body was nearly enough to send me running to the ladies’ room; two weeks ago the scent of the cleaner would have tipped the scales.
Claire didn’t seem to take note of my discomfort. “Detective Cook and associates don’t seem to be making much headway.” She stopped mid-swipe and looked over her shoulder at me. “He hasn’t shared any interesting tidbits with you?”
No, Adam hadn’t shared anything with me. At least not intentionally. I had—without wanting to—picked up some images. Another wave of nausea threatened to whelm my resolve not to lose my lunch, and I fought to push it away. Outside of his screamingly nebulous impression of the woman’s description—probably middle-aged, definitely Caucasian—a few of his stray thoughts had also registered, the most horrible one being even though parts of the body had been showing up over the Savannah area for nearly two weeks, each part was still absolutely fresh when found. That the parts showed no decay or evidence of refrigeration hadn’t been made public knowledge. Still, it meant one of two things. Either the parts were being removed from a living woman. Or, whoever was behind the dismemberment knew a thing or two about magic. Regardless of which, Adam had been working surreptitiously with both Oliver and Iris to find this woman, another fact that had not found its way into Claire’s paper, and I wasn’t about to mention it.
Claire’s voice went a half octave higher, coming out a bit softer. “Or maybe he’s shared something with your uncle that’s filtered through to you.”
“Good lord, woman,” Colin said, giving his wife a playful swat on the behind as he passed her. His short but wiry body danced away from the swat of her towel. She glared at him, but her mock anger quickly melted into a different kind of heat as she fixed her gaze on her husband. A smile passed between them.
“I tell you, Mercy, I don’t understand this morbid fascination Claire has developed around this murder,” Colin said to me. “It’s the Celt in her, I’m sure of that.” His black eyes sparkled.
“Oh, that’s a fine thing coming from a Paddy such as yourself,” she said taking another swipe at him with her towel. This one connected with a sharp thwack. “I have no fascination, morose or otherwise. I simply want to know that the nutter behind all this will be put safely away,” she said, turning back to her work. “My heart goes out to this poor woman. No one deserves such a thing. I shudder to think that the choices she made, innocent or perilous, could lead to such a despicable end. Although I suppose even the little decisions you make can lead to disaster.”
“September questions every choice, till October chills the air.” Colin sang the words to a melody I did not recognize. “November swears the days grow not short, till dark December her lie lays bare.”
“Don’t make light of my feelings by quoting your maudlin poet.”
“Ah, my love.” The words came out in a warm timbre. “I’m not making light of your feelings, I’m trying to make your feelings light. Besides Mac an Fhailghigh is a fine poet,” he said with a wink at me. “Although admittedly he does suffer somewhat in translation.”
I could see the aura around Claire growing darker as she turned away and began cleaning another table. She had so many feelings, a knotted ball of hopes and fears, disappointments and angers, love and regret. I didn’t read her thoughts as much as I read frustration at failing to find a way to express them. I could almost see her suppressing the emotions that had started to surface. “Which choices do you question?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, dear?” She looked up at me, pretending she hadn’t understood my question as a way to buy herself more time.
“Which choices do you question?”
Her forehead creased and her jaw tightened, but only for a moment. She cast a guilty look at her husband.
“Go on, then,” he said to her. “I’d be interested in hearing your answer too.”
Claire licked her lips. “I have no regrets over choosing you, Mr. Tierney,” she said trying to adopt a playful tone, but then she shook her head. “I wouldn’t trade you for any other man, my love.” An earnestness now filled her voice. “It’s only sometimes I ask myself how our life might be different if we hadn’t come to America.”
“Coming to A
merica was our dream,” Colin said and raised his hands gesturing around the tavern as he turned. “This was our dream.”
“Of course. And I feel blessed every day to be here with you. Sharing the life we have. I just worry. I worry about the forces that have found us, that have taken root in our lives.” She turned quickly toward me. “I don’t mean you, my girl. I mean . . . the others. I fear for all they can take from us.” I knew when she said “us,” I had been included in the pronoun.
My hand fell protectively to my stomach. I wasn’t exactly sure who she meant by “the others.” There were so many “others” now, so many who wanted to do my family and me harm. The worst of all of them was my own mother, Emily Rose Taylor. Every time I thought of her name, I saw it as it appeared engraved on the tombstone at Bonaventure. The marker still stood there, the name and dates unchanged, but now I knew the grave lay empty.
Claire was right. Emily had nearly taken Peter from us, and it remained still very much in her power to do so. She knew he wasn’t human, that he was a Fae changeling. She also knew all it would take to steal him from us was to reveal this truth to him.
Unlike the child growing in me, Peter had no true footing in this world. The human child for whom he’d been exchanged had been returned to us. Sadly that return had come too late for a joyful reunion. Time moved at too great a differential between the world of the Fae and our own. The baby returned an elderly man; Claire and Colin’s true son now lay buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery.
I didn’t understand the reason for the exchange, but Claire and Colin’s biological son had taken Peter’s place in the world of the Fae, and Peter had taken that of the human child. The Fae who made the deal with Claire and Colin had warned them, the spell that bound him to our world was easily broken. Like waking from a dream, should Peter learn his true nature, the Fae spell would be undone. He’d have no choice but to return to his place of origin. Staying here would only drive him mad or kill him. And that was all the information she’d offered. Just a vague and useless warning. Not a single bit of advice we could use to protect him from learning the truth or fix the situation should the worst come to happen.
“The happiness we’ve built is so fragile,” Claire said. “I love you, my girl, and you know I love the baby you are carrying, but I wonder. I wonder if we had stayed in Dublin . . . or if we’d left Savannah while Peter was still small.” She looked at me. “Or if I hadn’t been such a fool and invited that foul magician and his entourage into our lives—”
“No.” I held up my hand to stop her. “I am convinced Emily knew long before you contacted Ryder. You were somehow led, maybe even spelled into doing so.” It was Emily who had turned Ryder into a collector, a person who could steal someone’s life force and convert it into magical energy. Emily’s consort, Josef, who also happened to be my own half brother through my father, had followed Ryder into this very bar, looking for all the world like Ryder’s devoted puppy. Later, Josef cut his master’s throat, offering him and the demon Ryder had drawn into himself in order to power Emily’s dark spell. At his end, Ryder was so high on drugs, I cannot say if he ever registered that he had been marked as a sacrifice all along.
Claire had asked me to take Peter’s secret to my grave, but that cat was already long out of the bag by the time she’d asked. And I was certain the line’s other anchors had also put two and two together, so Claire agreed it was best to bring my aunts and uncle into the know also. Aunt Iris had been researching tirelessly, trying to discover a loophole, a way to anchor my husband in this world, but witches had very little knowledge concerning Fae magic, and due to the recent conflict with the line’s other anchors, sources that might have once been forthcoming to her veiled inquiries had dried up. The best solution we’d been able to improvise was Ellen’s idea, so Uncle Oliver compelled Peter neither to hear nor see anything that might lead him to ascertain the truth about his link to the Fae. Still, we never spoke openly about the Fae.
Tucker Perry had financed Peter’s dream of starting his own construction firm, but Peter’s fledgling company hadn’t stood a chance without Tucker’s backing and connections, especially since Peter’s pride made him incapable of accepting financial or magical aid from me. I still had trouble processing that my mother had arranged Tucker’s murder for the sole purpose of bringing my Aunt Ellen pain. Another life Emily had ended, wasted, in the sole aim of stealing one more chance of happiness from her big sister.
And since Peter’s old boss was not one to forgive Peter’s attempt to become a competitor, there was no place for him on his old crew. So with our baby on the way, Peter had returned to working at Magh Meall, his parents’ bar, full-time. Even after his dream died on the vine, Peter carried on, his warm and wonderful smile always on his lips. He remained optimistic, sure now that we were together everything else in life would sort itself out, provided he maintained a positive attitude and backed his outlook with enough sweat.
