by A. S. Green
By then she was dead.
Branna breathed out as if she had more bad news. “I don’t want to sugar coat this.”
“Branna,” Cormac warned.
“I don’t believe your mother died of drugs, or even of withdrawal from your old man. Your aunt and uncle… The people who said they were your aunt and uncle… They’re members of the Black Castle.”
Meghan sucked in a breath. It was something she had already come to understand, but hearing it said so bluntly was shocking. That picture by their door. The same one Riley had in the office… She wished she could rip the image off her back.
“They killed her mum?” Cormac asked.
Branna nodded solemnly. “Or one of their associates did. My question to you,” she said, turning to Meghan with suddenly narrowed eyes, all sympathy gone, “is which one of your halves is dominant, and did they induct you into their sick assembly?”
“Meghan just killed the one I’ve been tracking,” Cormac said, his voice low, angry, and defensive.
“What?” she asked, her head whipping from Cormac to Meghan, then back again.
“I got myself trapped,” Cormac explained, leaning in against the table.
Another wave of nausea hit Meghan’s stomach as she remembered seeing him chained to the chair. It wasn’t natural for such a large, muscular man to be laid powerless so easily—merely by a little salt, a little iron…
“How?” Branna asked sounding incredulous.
Meghan’s stomach twisted even tighter as Cormac’s story unfolded, particularly when he described the events she’d not been there for. She thought she’d lose it when he described the knife at her own throat, the trickle of blood… God, she hadn’t known she’d been cut. Her hand raised involuntarily to her throat.
“Then Meghan tilted, popped up by the fireplace, grabbed the poker and swung. He dropped like a stone.”
“How do you know it was the same one you were hunting?” Branna asked.
“I got a rash as soon as I got close to him,” Meghan said, and then her eyes went wide and she slapped her hand to her forehead. “The incense! He was burning incense in the rental office. The smoke must have been in his hair…his clothes… That’s what I’m allergic to.” It made sense. Just like she told the doctor, the last time she’d been affected was Christmas Eve mass with her fucking aunt and uncle. The church had been thick with incense.
“That’s possible,” Branna said. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
“No doubt,” Cormac said grimly.
“They’ll find out,” Branna said. “They’ll know you’ve struck back, and they’ll send more to the North Shore.” Then her face went ashen. “They’ll target the cú sídhe.”
“We’ll be ready this time,” he said, sounding resolved.
“Cormac, you have to go home,” Branna said, clutching his arm.
“You’d like that wouldn’t ye,” he said, and his tone was so thick with sarcasm that Meghan got the strong impression they’d had an argument about this before.
“You need a safe place where you can lie low for a while.”
Cormac’s face took on a look of pure incredulity. “Ye really want to call my home a safe place? My parents—”
“Cormac,” Branna pleaded. “Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t go home.”
“I’ll give ye two,” he growled. “For one, if the tables are going to turn and I’m the one being tracked, the last place I want to lead them to is my home. Another reason, if they send more, it’s just more opportunity to settle the score. I’m not running from that opportunity.”
“I think it’s important you go home now,” Branna said, her voice going uncharacteristically soft.
Meghan watched as the blood drained from Cormac’s face and his mouth went grim. “Why?” he asked. “What aren’t ye telling me?”
“Nothing,” Branna said. “It’s just that— Cormac, I insist.”
“Ye insist,” he repeated.
The cynicism was so thick Meghan felt sure, if she could throw it, it would stick to the walls. But that didn’t mean Branna was wrong. Meghan didn’t like ganging up on Cormac—especially with Branna, whom she still wasn’t too sure about—but she wouldn’t mind finding a private place to at least process the last couple hours. She felt so bombarded, she might explode.
“Maybe she’s right,” Meghan said, and both Cormac’s and Branna’s heads swung toward her. “There are already more of them in the area. At least, I think so. You saw my sketch pad, Cormac. I saw Riley in a diner the same day I ran into you. He wasn’t alone. He was with a group of people, and they were close. I get that you’d like the opportunity to go after them, but… I really could use a quiet place to get my head on straight. It’s not like we can go back to the cottage.”
Cormac stared at her for a long second as if he was making a mental pros and cons list. “I haven’t been back to my house in a very long time.”
“Then maybe it’s about time you go,” she said. “I know it must be hard to think about, and I realize it won’t bring your family back, but it’s still your home. You’re lucky to have it.”
Cormac shifted his weight, and she could feel the tension rolling off him. She needed something to break it, which was why she blurted out, “Besides, after being away, the dust bunnies have to be terrible.”
Branna folded her arms.
“Nothing against bunnies,” Meghan added quickly.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Branna muttered.
“All right,” Cormac said as if he hadn’t heard any of that last part. “If you’re sure.”
“Unbelievable,” Branna muttered. “I suggest it, and it’s idiocy. She suggests it, and it’s sheer wisdom.”
Cormac sent Branna a look that would have straightened Meghan’s hair. “What can I say?” he asked. “A cú sídhe never denies his anamchara.”
Meghan’s chest squeezed at the word, still unable to grasp it. She was a halfling. The fated mate to a cú sídhe.
Branna’s head jerked back in surprise. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Cormac exhaled a short burst of air through his nose that both confirmed and expressed his own surprise at the situation.
“Damn it, Cormac,” Branna said, still sounding annoyed. “I knew there was something going on with you. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
Meghan let her attention slide to other things. Like who she was; who her mother was; and why her father really left. Was she the same lonely girl she’d been last week? Had she ever been? Did she really know herself at all?
She didn’t know what it all meant, or where tomorrow would find her. But even if she ended up dead by the end of the month, she knew her time with Cormac would be worth it. And if she could have a hand in bringing him home, giving that back to him after all he’d lost…. She hoped he’d think she was worth it, too.
Chapter Eighteen
CORMAC
It was late. The sky was dark, but the moon was bright and looking larger than normal. Cormac stood just inside the gate on the stone walkway in front of his childhood home with his mate by his side. A mate he still had not mated, as the hound perpetually reminded him. What would his father have thought of that?
He couldn’t think about that now. He had vowed, half a century ago, never to return until he had avenged his family—a head for a head—and though the most imminent threat had fallen, he could not claim the kill as his own.
How could he break his vow, go inside when it had not yet been fulfilled? His hands balled into fists. “I shouldn’t have come. This was a mistake.”
“If that’s true,” Meghan said, her face lifted in awe toward the turret, “it’s a very large mistake, now isn’t it?”
He turned to her in surprise. “You’re able to see it?”
She looked up at him in confusion. “Is there some reason why I shouldn’t?”
“Apparently not.” The house’s exterior was charmed to make it invisible to pádraigs, but apparently it d
idn’t work on halflings.
Though it hurt to look, Cormac tried to see the large three-storied Victorian manor as Meghan did: that being, for the first time. Its façade was local red sandstone, and its other three sides built of brick. The roof was green slate and the numerous multi-shaped windows reflected the moonlight.
The porch ran across the entire front of the house then wrapped around the side, and its ceiling created a second-story porch with a wrought-iron balustrade. The last time he’d been on it, he had played marbles with his youngest brother, Madigan.
Cormac gave her a descriptive tour from the front yard. “A library and four large bedrooms upstairs, each with their own baths. As you enter the front door, there’s a sitting room to the right, my mum’s music room to the left, then the hallway and staircase straight ahead. The hall leads to the dining-room and…the kitchen.”
The kitchen.
Grief clenched his heart as the memory of his parents’ slaughter weakened his knees. A rain drop hit him on the cheek, then another on his hand.
“Are we going in?” Meghan asked. “Or were you being serious before?”
A few more drops pelted his face in rapid succession, so he exhaled in surrender and took her hand. Together they strode up the porch steps. He took a key from his pocket and silently opened the front door.
It was dark inside, and he caught his shoulder on a coat hook that hadn’t been there before, but otherwise he didn’t need the lights to know his way through the foyer, past the sitting room on the right.
Muscle memory took him to the top of the stairs. At the top, the hallway ran both left and right. He turned right down the shorter hallway that led to his old bedroom and pushed open the door.
Only then did he flip on a light. He pulled Meghan inside and closed the door gently behind them.
Meghan gasped—he wasn’t sure why, maybe at the size?—and then she began to explore the room. It was exactly as he’d left it half a century ago, a tomb of his past like so many other rooms in the house.
On the far side, the queen-sized canopy bed faced the fireplace, which was on the same wall as the door. To his left was the large wardrobe where he used to store, not clothes, but all his treasures as a kid. On the wall to his right were two front-facing windows with diamond-patterned muntins. Thick woven rugs covered the hardwood floor.
It felt odd having Meghan in his space. Fuck, it was odd for him being in his room. But to watch her explore—the way she touched the faded wallpaper, then the notched moldings on the fireplace mantel—it was strangely erotic. Or perhaps, he had pushed his restraint so far, she could sneeze and it would make him hard.
“You have a fireplace in your bedroom.”
“There are six fireplaces in the house.” One in each bedroom, one in the library, and one in the dining room.
“Nobody has a fireplace in their bedroom.”
“Meghan, that conclusion is a bit odd under the circumstances.”
“Cormac, the circumstances themselves are odd, don’t you think? Give me a break on logic for a hot second, okay?”
“Okay.”
She stood in front of the fireplace and took one of the framed photographs from the mantle. He knew what it was without moving closer: a black and white print, crinkled from being carried around in a wallet before finally being placed in its frame. It was of his parents in Victorian clothes and looking at each other lovingly.
His mother’s black hair hung nearly to her waist. His father cupped her cheek in his hand.
“This man looks a lot like you,” she said. “Are they your great-great-grandparents? Is that where your money comes from because—judging by this place—I can tell they had money. Railroad baron, or something?”
“Nothing like that. My da was a gambler, and a good one. That’s a picture of him—of both my parents. Conan and Siobhan MacConall.”
Meghan’s expression went blank, and he could see her holding her breath. She was obviously pretending very hard not to be affected by that knowledge.
“You’re immortal,” she whispered.
“No,” Cormac said. “If that were the case, they wouldn’t be dead. The sídhe age at a normal rate until we hit maturity, then things plateau. As soon as I was of age, I left home to avenge my family. That was fifty years ago.”
“I see,” she said, and she took long steady breaths before asking, “So, how long could you live? If nothing interfered, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Hundreds of years certainly.”
“And halflings?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
He watched as she carefully replaced the photo on the mantel, then took down a group shot that was taken in the late fifties. It was of himself and his three younger brothers—each of them in tiny wool suits. They all posed smugly, acting like the invincible cú sídhe they already believed themselves to be—well, maybe not Madigan. He was still a baby.
“That’s you, isn’t it,” she said, pointing him out. “You said you were the oldest, but I could tell even without knowing that. You’ve got the same intense eyes, and the same small scar by the corner of your mouth.”
Cormac didn’t look at his face in the photo. Rather, he focused on his arms, which were wrapped around Madigan and holding him in his lap. Cormac could still feel him, and it was like a kick to the gut.
“When I was a kid,” she said, “I used to imagine what it would be like to have brothers and sisters, someone to tease, and someone to tease you right back. Did you and your brothers have nicknames for each other? Lots of inside jokes, I bet.”
“Some.”
She turned toward him, and there were tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“Maybe it would help if you did.”
A muscle spasmed in his jaw. “I doubt it.”
“Have you talked to Branna about it?”
“Branna?”
“Yeah. I can’t quite figure you two out. You’re like friends, but also…not.”
Well, that summed it up nicely. “I don’t have to talk to Branna about it. She was here for it.”
“What?” Meghan looked dumbfounded.
At first, Cormac didn’t understand her confusion. But then, thinking back, Branna probably hadn’t given any indication of their shared experience. At least not in Meghan’s presence. Cormac took a deep breath and dove in.
“The first time I saw her, she was right there.” He jerked his head toward his bedroom window. “Waking me, warning me of danger. She told me to get my brothers and hide.
“So we hid in a cupboard downstairs and listened as the Black Castle invaded our home and cut our parents’ throats, right where they stood in the kitchen.”
Meghan visibly shivered.
“The second time I saw Branna was on the lakeshore, five years later. There had been a rumor of a herd of nuckelavee coming in from Scotland and moving through the Great Lakes. The cú sídhe who were eighteen years old and older were called out to guard the shoreline. My brothers were all too young, but Madigan secretly followed me.”
He stopped to catch his breath which was getting shallow.
“Branna warned me that it was a trap. The Black Castle had planted the rumor to call us out. By the time I saw Madigan, his head was rolling across the ground. I did nothing to save him, either.”
Meghan’s gaze dipped to Madigan’s face in the photograph. “You loved him.”
“I loved all of them,” he said solemnly. Then he inhaled deeply. “The next time I saw Branna—”
“That’s enough,” she said. “I get it.”
“I don’t think ye do.”
“No. You’re right. I don’t. Not exactly, anyway. I don’t know what to think, what to feel. Except…somehow…I feel responsible.”
“Why would you feel responsible. It all happened before ye were even born.”
“I lived among these people. I could have�
��I should have…”
“What? Taken them out with a fireplace poker?”
Meghan’s face went ghostly white. “You’re making a joke?”
“Too soon?” If she was going to stay with him, she was going to have to get used to gore and violence. They were the only constants in his life.
“I don’t know. I’ve seen a lot, Cormac, but nothing like this.”
Cormac took her hand and squeezed it. “Tell me about the douchebag.”
She looked up at him, and her eyebrows drew together. “Who?”
“The guy who was taking ye to Canada. That’s what ye call him.”
“What about this conversation would make you suddenly want to know about him?”
“Because I know he pissed ye off and forced ye into a bad situation, but so have I, so there’s no telling what names ye call me behind my back. What I want to know is, did ye like him? Do ye wish ye were with him, and that you’d never got out of his car?”
“No. I don’t wish I was with him. What kind of question—”
“Then I’ll ask it this way. Are ye happy to be with me? Or do ye regret coming this far?”
“No. I don’t regret it. I won’t lie and say I’m not freaked out by the last three days, but I am…glad…to be here with you. You’re the only one I want guiding me through everything I have to figure out. I’m glad not to be alone anymore, and I’m glad I can make it so you’re not alone anymore either.”
“You’re not alone, Meghan. You won’t ever be that again.”
“Really?” she asked. “Is that what you want?”
“Oh, I want,” he said. By Danu, did he want.
Chapter Nineteen
MEGHAN
Meghan had more than glimpsed into Cormac’s world, and as weird and dangerous as it might be, she wanted more. Actually, insane as it all was, she wanted a whole helluva lot more.
Cormac stalked forward, his eyes locked on hers, and she knew what was coming. The tension between them had been growing for days, and last night…. Last night had been both tantalizing and terrifying.
She didn’t want to admit it before, she thought it made her some kind of freak, but the simmering energy of the hell hound lurking behind Cormac’s eyes secretly thrilled her. She wondered now if it was because she was a halfling.