Neve shook her head. “Sadly, I’ve no more drive to fight than a wee chicken.”
They’d made it all the way to a black iron gate that blocked the tunnel’s exit out of the ruins. Aini put a hand against the wall.
Her eyes went blank.
Thane began to take her arm, but held himself back. She was having a vision and he wasn’t sure touching her was a good plan or not. What did it feel like to see things like that? Her lips moved once, twice. It was strange how Thane had once thought of sixth-sensers as people he would never understand. He didn’t really understand Aini now, but he had realized such people were so much more than only their extended abilities. Aini was who she was, and then she was a sixth-senser. It didn’t define her; the sense added another facet.
She gasped. Her knees gave out.
Thane caught her as she looked at him, her eyes alert again.
Neve and Myles hovered.
“Was it Angus Bethune again?” Neve bit her lip and pushed a fallen lock of Aini’s hair behind her friend’s ear.
Aini stood and brushed herself off. “It was a man in armor. He was choking on smoke…fighting someone he knew.” She pressed her hands against her cheeks and inhaled deeply. “I need to get out of here.”
Neve pointed to a spot on the wall. “There’s a bit of metal embedded here. Must’ve belonged to some long ago Protestant or Catholic fighter.” She shook her head as they hurried from the tunnel. “You are a wonder, Aini.”
Cold air blasted through the passage.
Words slipped, barely audible, over Thane’s ears.
“Ghost,” he whispered, very glad he wasn’t a Ghost Talker.
Myles whistled and looked around, wide-eyed. He looked a bit green around the gills. “I’m beginning to be a believer.”
Neve smacked his arm. “Hush. Don’t speak of it.”
“Ghost or no ghost,” Aini said, “let’s go.”
Neve crossed herself and hurried after her.
Then a real voice, not a ghost’s, trailed through the tunnel.
Thane’s heart tripped and he snagged Myles’s arm. “Grab a girl. Let’s see that snogging you’ve been going on about.” He pulled Aini to him and gave Neve a gentle shove toward Myles. “Apologies, girls. But we’re about to be caught.”
Myles stuttered but eventually got out, “Ah. Gotcha.” He laid a kiss on Neve.
Aini’s eyes widened as Thane drew her face close to his. He dragged his mouth along her soft neck and was pleased to see chill bumps bloom along her skin.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly, making Thane feel like he was floating and he never, ever wanted to come back down to earth.
The stranger’s voice said, “That’s exactly what I wondered, lass.”
It was a woman.
Squinting, Thane could only see her tall outline with the last of the late summer sunset behind in shades of blood and rust. Pulling away from Aini, he kept to a bend in the tunnel that the overhead lights didn’t quite reach.
Aini spun, her cheeks going a bonnie shade of deep red. She looked to Thane, then to Myles and Neve, who weren’t snogging, but stood very close together.
“Oh,” Aini said, recovering. “We were…it was…”
Myles smoothed his shirt with big movements. “Just having some fun, miss. We’ll move on.”
“Come with me, please.” Waving a hand, the woman started toward the entrance. She wore a black government uniform with red stripes down the sleeves.
They emerged into the dusk. Purple and blue battled for chunks of sky above the tombstones and the bones of the old cathedral and castle.
The gaunt-faced woman took out a walkie talkie and turned a knob. She was maybe fifty, fifty-five. “I’ll have to report you. I am sorry.”
Her nails were long and very red and gave Thane an idea.
Giving Aini a loaded look, Thane let go of her arm and approached the ruins guard. Aini immediately missed the warmth of his touch. This evening had been pointless. Frustrating. Longing for a shower, for a solution to all of this, for something other than wandering around and failing her father, she wiped her filthy hands on her leggings. She put a hand to her throat, wanting to feel the spot where Thane’s mouth had been.
“Ah, now lass,” Thane said to the guard in a sugary, deep voice.
Aini’s insides melted.
Neve’s mouth fell open.
“You don’t have to tell anyone we were here, do you?” Thane strengthened his West Scots accent, and the guard smiled, which completely changed her face into something far more manageable. “We weren’t doing any harm.” He looked up at her through his black lashes. Two gorgeous dimples appeared in his cheeks as he smiled and angled his body toward her.
Aini pushed her sleeves up, suddenly very warm. That voice he was using…it was like a sixth-sense ability of its own.
“I bet,” Thane went on, “that not so long ago, you yourself enjoyed similar activities.”
Smiling, the guard pulled at the collar of her unattractive uniform. “Well, that’s none of your business.” A laugh pealed out of her throat.
Thane put a hand on his well-built chest and dipped his head, hanging a thumb on his trousers and looking like the most gorgeous thing in the universe. Those tattoos. Those glasses. Aini blew out a breath. Those arms. She knew she was being pathetic, but still. Still.
“Aye. Course not,” he said. “But if you let us go, just this once, maybe we’ll see you at the pub up the way later on tonight.”
The guard’s face lightened. “Oh?” She shook herself slightly and cleared her throat. “That’s not, that’s nothing I can…” She waved a hand. “Just go.” An easy smile poured over her mouth then. “Go on, the lot of you. I was young once too.”
Thane took her hand and kissed it slowly, his head bent like a knight.
Aini’s heart clattered around like a broken mixer. It wasn’t the most fun thing knowing she could’ve been conned by Thane too. Beauty was a powerful possession. Neve said Aini had it. Even if Aini could be convinced of that, she had no idea how to wield it like a weapon as Thane did. Thane, the Heart Bender, Drool Maker, Thought Swayer. She rolled her eyes at herself and almost laughed. What a sixth sense that would be.
“Thank you,” Thane said, straightening.
He gave the rest of them a quick nod, and they were off, trotting back toward the truck before the guard could change her mind.
“Thane,” Myles said as they climbed the fence. “You are my hero. In fact,” he dug in his pocket, “I have twenty quid. Do you want it? I’ll give you anything. I fully support the usage of male sexiness in times of need. And you, my friend, are a master of the art.”
Thane glared at him and hopped off the pavement. “Shut your gob.” He kept glancing down the road and at the painfully untended garden beside the truck.
“What are you looking for?” Aini asked, but he didn’t answer as they made it to the truck and waved to Dodie.
Dodie pointed at a pub across the street. “Why don’t we go in there and eat before heading home?”
The door opened, and happy music danced out along with the smell of something smoky and pleasant. Aini’s stomach growled.
Thane opened the truck door. “We should go.”
Dodie was already getting out, and Neve and Myles crossed the road.
Aini had failed and they had to eat. “Just for a quick meal. I have a headache and I want to get back to safety too, but…” She held out a hand toward the intoxicating drumming of a bodhran and a set of pipes’ lilting tune.
Thane shut the truck door but didn’t smile as he followed them to the pub.
Aini hoped the music would help her think.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A REEL AND A STRAMASH
IN THE PUB, THREE stag heads large enough to impress Thane, who’d grown up surrounded by wildlife, decorated a wood-paneled wall. With their proud racks, the dead creatures presided over a group of musicians taking a drinking break. Tables of
locals and tourists crowded around a dance floor. A man—with a nose that looked like it’d been broken several times—poured drinks for the patrons. The place smelled like everything had been doused in old ale and frying oil. Nabbing a seat facing the door, Thane sat at the closest table.
Myles dragged a chair out, making a racket. “I need a drink.”
“You never drink.” Aini peered around the room.
“Well, I need to start sometime, don’t I? It fits my whole licentious behavior thing.”
Neve sat beside him and put her purse on the table. “Don’t let your idea of yourself rule you.”
Myles blinked. “That was very wise, Neve. I…think I’ll take your advice. I tried beer once and it really is pretty disgusting.”
“I used to smoke,” Thane admitted. “It was a stupid habit.”
Dodie took a chair between Myles and Thane.
Smiling, Neve pulled a stick of something from her purse and slicked it over her mouth. Her lips looked no different. “But don’t stop me when I order a whisky.”
“A whisky?” Myles asked.
“I’m Scottish. It’s like apple juice to us.”
Thane nodded approval, and Dodie said, “Aye.”
Thane snorted. That’d be the only thing a Campbell and a Dionadair rebel could easily agree on.
“Don’t drink too much.” Aini sat beside Neve. “We need to stay alert. Owen warned that we are being watched.”
Cringing a little, Thane waved the server over. If he had to be miserable, he could at least do it on a full stomach.
Aini’s phone rang. “…right. No, we didn’t. Okay.” Pocketing the phone, she scanned the pub with wary eyes. “Owen says we should go back to the townhouse for the rest of the night,” she whispered across the table. “He says it will keep…certain people from wondering what we’re up to.”
The man with the bent nose appeared with a notepad to take their order.
“What’s that smoked haddock soup you’re always wishing you had?” Myles asked Thane.
Thane pushed his glasses up. “Cullen Skink.”
“That is not a good name for something you want to put in your mouth.”
“Suppose not. But I’d have thought green was not a good color for your melon either.” Thane pointed at Myles’s hair.
“Shows what you know.”
“You’re the envy of mold spores everywhere, colonial.”
Myles started to frown, but then laughed loudly, startling a bonnie, older woman at the next table.
Everyone ordered, and Thane sat back and kept an eye on the door.
The musicians began puttering around. A bald man drummed a round, skin bodhran with a small stick. A woman wearing a yellow snochterdicter as a headband perched a fiddle on her shoulder, made the instrument whine twice, and turned the small knobs at the end of the fingerboard to tune it. Another member of the group, a man with ears far larger than God should’ve given him, strummed a guitar. Then they started a reel.
“The Riverside Rant,” Neve said.
“My sister likes this one,” Dodie said.
Everyone looked at him.
“Hey,” the man said. “If we’re going to be around each other, might as well be civil.”
“It’s not that,” Aini said. “I just didn’t realize you cared much for conversation.”
Myles glared at him. “I’d like it better if you kept quiet.”
“Get over it, pal. This is a war we’re in. When you don’t seem to be on my side, I’m going to plow you down. When you’re with me, I’ll do all to keep you standing.”
Myles threw Dodie one last mean look, then turned his attention to the music, pretending Dodie wasn’t there.
Following the rhythm, Myles banged his knuckles lightly on the table. Neve smiled and watched the fiddler like she’d never seen one before. Aini’s delicate fingers moved and curled an inch above the table in some imagined pattern.
“Did you ever think of being a dancer like your mother?” Thane asked.
The server handed him a hot crockery bowl. Aini took her own bowl of the same soup he’d ordered.
“No. I love being at home. The candy making business suits me.” She smiled like a memory had touched her.
“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he said quietly.
Myles made up lyrics to go with the band’s music. Neve laughed and spilled a little of her whisky.
Aini looked at Thane, the corner of her mouth tucked up. “You didn’t. I just remembered having competitions with Mother to see who could spin the fastest without growing dizzy.” She frowned. “I’ve always been angry with her. For the divorce, for leaving Father. Even when we were having fun and getting along, there was a part of me that stayed angry. She’d see it sometimes when I snapped at her or chose Father over her, but she never said anything. She could’ve told me. I might’ve been on her side. I wouldn’t have blamed her when I missed Father. I might’ve understood when she was demanding with him about petty things. She was hurt by all this too.”
“Are you angry with your father?”
She swallowed. “I should be, I guess. But no. I know who he is, in spite of the secret part of his past. My life is so different from what I thought it was. I was blind. Even though he’s still an amazing person, Father isn’t the innocent I thought he was. And Mother wasn’t the cold, bitter person I’d believed her to be.”
The whisky fuzzed Thane’s thoughts, and a memory of his recurring dream blinked through his mind. His fingerprint, and the feeling of falling and rushing forward. How his skin turned black. He wished he could call his mother, check on her. Beg her to go to Great Uncle Rabbie’s for some invented reason until he figured everything out. He knew something bad was headed his way if he continued on like this, riding the line between his clan’s demands and this girl’s needs—his heart’s needs.
The music had pulled in couples from around the tavern. The people lined up, crossed their arms, and walked circles around those next to them.
“Even I know this one. Strip the Willow,” Myles said. He lifted his soup bowl with both hands, downed what remained, and pushed away from the table. He held a hand out to Neve. “Care to take me for a spin?”
Neve shot the rest of her drink. “I believe I do. Or the whisky does. But I’m not of a mind to argue it just now.”
They walked to the start of the lineup. Myles linked his arm in Neve’s and tugged her around, stopping at the second couple and dropping his hold on her. She took up the next man’s arm. Myles wiggled his eyebrows at a portly woman and shimmied. Thane sighed, jealous of his easy nature and more jealous of his ability to shrug off his troubled childhood. Why couldn’t Thane throw off what he’d been born to? Why did it feel like his childhood, his family, grew over him like unbreakable vines, tight and tightening still?
Aini dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “We should dance, too. I feel terrible. I can’t think. A good reel will help.”
Thane didn’t feel like dancing. Not even a little. But that smile she was giving him…
“All right,” he said, standing. He nodded at Dodie, who kept his seat and chewed a toothpick.
Snagging Aini’s hand, Thane pulled her into the reel. They both knew the steps, their feet and hands turning and moving in time.
A look of surprise showed on Aini’s glowing face. “You’re a great dancer. I mean, club dancing is one thing, but this?”
“I’ve all sorts of yet undiscovered talents,” he said.
She missed a beat, then continued.
He tore his gaze from her curving neck and soft-looking face. “I’m sorry. That sounded…” he stuttered.
Spinning once under his arm, she came up against him. Her chin tilted. Her mouth was so close. “It’s the whisky, isn’t it?”
“It washes a person’s manners clean away.” A strangled laugh came out of him.
She grinned like a devil, and they joined everyone in making a circle, surrounding one dancer. The man in the center did an
impressive jig, then returned to the edges of the crowd.
Thane gave Aini a little shove to the middle. She eyed him, grinned again, and began to dance. Taking the hem of her dress, she moved slowly, toe, toe, heel, heel, following the slow driving beat. The musicians, by now on their feet with the rest, built their tempo, challenging her. She moved her feet behind and in front of one another, moving faster and faster, spinning every fourth time, and giving a great leap at every one of the violin’s high notes. Eyes closed, she became a piece of the music.
Thane couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Her arms were lines of low and high, her fingers moving beautifully, and her feet punching staccato drum beats on the wooden planks of the floor. She began to spin, round and round, like a top.
The song came to an end and the room erupted into applause. She opened her coffee eyes, a lock of sweat-wet hair over her face and a real smile stretching her lips.
Aini MacGregor was definitely going to be the death of him.
Here he was gawking at her when they had a true storm coming down on them any minute. Rebels. Kingsmen who he had to avoid to protect his cover. Lewis in Nathair’s hands.
The dancing broke into a mess of blethering and couples goofing around. Thane and the others headed to the bar to get water. Thane wiped his face with his sleeve, then peeled his lightweight sweater off. He’d left the bag of chemicals and candy under a cot at the Dionadair barn, so wearing only a T-shirt wouldn’t be a problem. There was nothing that needed hidden.
As he leaned on a wood post waiting for Aini to order, a couple of guys started mouthing off at the barkeep. They downed another shot of whisky and said something pure awful about the keep’s mother.
Though the keep went about his job, this show of patience wouldn’t last. The lads should’ve kept their tongues, considering the size of the keep and the look on the man’s face. He didn’t look like one to take it in stride, not with that cricket bat he had stored near the cash register. The only sport that bat had seen was the kind that ended in blood and bruised ribs.
The pub door opened.
The Edinburgh Seer: Edinburgh Seer Book One Page 18