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Dorcas walked through the cats, who meowed and purred. Carrying the pail, Breen did her best not to step on any tails as she followed Dorcas to the red door.
Pausing, Dorcas tapped her knuckles on the door three times. “Tap three to welcome thee.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Dodging cats, Breen stepped through the red door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Breen would have called the cottage a dollhouse with its tiny rooms and small-scale furniture. And leaning toward Chucky, considering the dim light filtered through windows crowded with herbs hung for drying. Stones, bits of wood, books, and perching cats jammed the narrow sills.
More cats draped over chairs like living throws, curled on cushions, ribboned through rickety chair legs. Two sat on the thick, artfully painted mantel above the roaring fire like statues among the dozen half-burned candles, and more books.
Considering the sheer multitude of felines, Breen expected the tiny cottage to reek of them. Instead, it smelled of the herbs, the candles, dust, and surprisingly the orange blossoms smothering a potted tree no more than twelve inches high blooming fiercely on a shelf. Along with countless books.
“Set the pail there, just there.” Dorcas waded through the cats and into a kind of kitchen, where the squat black stove also blazed hot. “Didn’t I make biscuits fresh this morning for the company to come? Sure I didn’t know it would be ye, the O’Ceallaigh’s daughter. Sit now, sit, and we’ll have a cuppa and a chat.”
Where? was Breen’s first thought, but Dorcas wagged a finger at the cat curled on the cushion of one of the little wooden chairs. The orange tabby spilled out of it like water from a cup.
When Breen sat, the cat leaped on her lap, kneaded its way around a circle, then curled back to sleep.
“That one’s Rory, and a fine mouser he is for all he’d sleep both dayand night away. Good company, cats,” she continued as she measured out something from a jar into a squat brown pot and poured water from the steaming kettle into it. “I find in my advancing age they have more to say with sense than some on two legs. A kind word, a good stroke of the hand now and then, food when they need it, and we all go along fine as ye please.”
From another jar she took biscuits, nearly as brown as the teapot. They clinked like stones against the dark green plate.
“It’s a dog for ye, isn’t it then? A water spaniel. That’s what I hear.”
“Yes, I—”
“Dogs are fine companions as well, though they lack a cat’s independence. And slyness. I’m an admirer of slyness myself. Not much of that in ye, is there, Daughter? Take a lesson from the cat and find some, for it’s a fine tool, it is.”
Dorcas moved a teetering pile of books, and the cat sitting on it, from a table to the floor, and set the plate of biscuits down.
“Young Keegan came to see me not long ago.”
“Yes. He—”
“A demon in the god, he tells me—so ye say to him. So in ye as well. Ye’d find some slyness in that, if ye need it.”
She poured the tea into two red cups, carried them to the little table.
“Thank you. I was wondering—”
“I told young Keegan—oh, and there’s a handsome one, and I’ve seen handsome in my time. Yer father among them. Ah, such a voice he had as well. I’m told ye have that, for the singing. I’m an admirer of a good singing voice. The cats sing to me oft times. Ye there, Mary, give us a tune.”
A sleek black cat lifted her head from a cushion and sang. Yowled, Breen supposed, but she couldn’t deny it was tuneful and rather sweet.
When she laughed, Dorcas broke into a grin showing a strong set of teeth.
“If I get out my squeeze box—and there’s the beginning and end of my musical talents—the whole lot of them will have a go. That was fine, Mary, and thanks. Have a biscuit now, Daughter, and yer tea. Ye’re after learning what young Keegan hoped to learn.”
“He said you didn’t know for certain, but would research. I saw—”
“Aye, aye, ye saw the demon in him, and during a dark ritual, a sacrifice. Handsome is Odran as well—I laid my eyes on him more than once when Marg was taoiseach. But the handsome there is a lie. Not a mask, as a mask is for folly or a simple sort of deceit. His handsome is lies, like the rest of him. It hides the beast within.”
Breen’s throat tightened. “The demon?”
“Ah, ye fret over a beast in ye, a darkness, a creature of cruelty and lust for blood. Demons aren’t so simple as that, child, as none living are so simple. Ye’ve had blood on those pretty hands, from the healing, and from the battle as well. Did ye think to taste it? Did hunger for it stir in ye?”
