She kissed him.
Her arms wound around his neck, and she clung to him. It hadn’t been what he thought would happen.
But he was glad.
When she finally set his mouth free, she smiled. “Can we do that again?” she asked. “I liked it.”
He laughed. “You’re not horrified by what I just did to you, Avalon?”
She shook her head.
“That was an adventure. I loved it. I want to know what makes you, you.”
He was calm. “Did I hurt you?”
“Yes, but I liked it. Don’t tell anyone.”
He laughed. “I won’t. Your secret is safe with me,” he teased, brushing some blonde hair from her cheek. “I’m sorry I’m a lecherous old man.”
She whispered in his ear.
His mouth opened.
“Where did you see that?” he asked.
“In your head. That’s next. I want to do that a lot.”
Jesus.
What had he done?
She was going to be the death of him…
In bed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Detective’s Office
B ishop was having no luck with any of the missing person reports. Not one person was showing up on social media. It was beginning to be hopeless—for them and her. It looked like all of the women who had disappeared were going to indeed turn up dead.
That sucked.
Adare definitely had an issue that no one seemed to notice before now.
“Lucian needs to sell that place and fast,” she muttered.
Laird didn’t disagree.
He was on the internet searching Maribel O’Sullivan, and he’d been taken to a site that confused him.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to a picture on his desktop.
Bishop crossed the room and stared at it.
“Isn’t that Brianna’s ring?” she asked. “The one you married her with?”
He nodded.
“It’s Polly’s. It’s called the mistress ring. Apparently, he bought it for Maribel, but it ended up on Polly’s finger.”
They all knew why.
Daddy REALLY liked his daughter.
“Well, that’s something I’m betting the jeweler didn’t tell you before you picked it out,” stated Bishop.
“Yeah, she neglected to tell me that part. I wanted old. I didn’t want haunted or cursed. There’s a huge difference.” It was freaking him out that fate had a hand in all of this. His dog took off, he met the woman of his dreams, she was picked to die, he married her, and now…
Jaysus!
Oracle wasn’t kidding when she said fate was in control.
“So, inadvertently, you gave a dead woman’s ring to a woman who is picked to be killed. Why her?”
He wasn’t sure.
If he knew that, then maybe he could save her and himself. That was his goal. While fate had switched, he didn’t trust it not to switch back.
“Could Brianna be related?”
Bishop wasn’t sure. “Are her parents Irish?”
He nodded.
“Everything happens for a reason. Maybe we need to look into that.”
He Googled Polly O’Sullivan.”
Her portrait came up on the screen, and she was, indeed, wearing the ring.
That wasn’t it.
He wanted to be sick.
“Uh oh,” said Bishop. “It looks like Sir Lawrence isn’t the only one who was reincarnated.”
Laird couldn’t believe it.
Polly and Brianna…they looked the same.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She looks just like her. She has the same aqua eyes.”
Laird was sick. “What happened to Polly?” he asked, staring at his wife’s face in the artwork.
“We don’t know. She escaped. She had to have if the bloodlines continued. Sir Lawrence disappeared.”
Laird needed to know. “Google him for me. I want to see him.”
Bishop took the keyboard and did just that. “There’s only one picture known to exist.”
“Let me see it.”
She clicked on it.
It was his face. He stood up and backed away. He couldn’t believe it. He looked just like him.
And now it made sense.
This was why he was going to die.
“Laird,” Bishop began.
He shook his head. “That can’t be a coincidence. We both have the eyes,” he whispered. “Somehow, I’m related to this mess. Somehow, I’m related to Brianna.”
Bishop wanted to calm him down, but the phone on his desk rang. “Detective Maguire.”
He listened.
“I’ll be right there.”
When he hung up, Bishop was waiting. “What?”
“I have another body without a heart. Moira MacDonald was just found in her home dead by her mother.”
“Is it related?” she asked.
“Her heart is missing, so I’m going to say yes.”
“We’d better go,” Bishop offered. “Hey, Laird, you have to shake this off. You have to stop thinking that this is more than a coincidence.”
He stared at her. “You know it’s more.”
She tried.
“We know it’s weird. Let’s just handle this, and tonight, we’ll fix it.”
He didn’t know how it could be fixed. He looked like the man who’d sacrificed his woman, slept with his child, and killed countless people.
How did one handle that?
All Laird knew was that the shit was going to hit the fan at some point.
He could feel it.
* * * O R A C L E * * *
Library
Something wasn’t adding up. As Brianna flipped through the book, information wasn’t matching what was in Brian Higgin’s dissertation.
It was way off.
“Your paper is confusing me,” she said, reading a page. “You have in here that Sir Lawrence was someone who helped everyone around him.”
“Yes, I have a copy of a journal. He gave money to all the peasants around him. He wanted their farms to succeed. He was a philanthropist.”
“But he killed people and cut out their hearts.”
The man looked at her. “That’s what is said, but there has never been any proof of that.”
“He let his mistress die.”
Brian sat down and began telling her everything he knew. “His mistress, Maribel, had been tried as a witch on the island. She came here, and she continued her witchcraft. She was a vengeful and wicked woman who loved casting love spells. It’s said that’s how she caught Sir Lawrence Keane.”
She weighed his words.
The only problem was that’s not what Maribel, the dead woman, had said. She told them it was Sir Lawrence.
“Did she do it?” Brianna asked.
“No one knows. The only person who would know would be him. He let her be hanged, and he never stopped it. I have to imagine there’s a reason why, don’t you? Maybe that’s the only way the evil would die.”
Brianna’s skin was crawling.
What if he wasn’t the one doing the deed?
What if it had been Maribel all along?
What if he’d loved her, but he knew she needed to die?
“Where did Polly go?” she asked.
“She disappeared. When she left, she was carrying a child. Right after she went missing, Sir Lawrence did too. They were never heard from again.”
Nate and Avalon entered the room.
“We found another name,” Avalon said, entering the room holding Nate’s hand.
“Who?” asked the man.
“Maribel had one sister. Her name was Marissa. She was also on that island when they were tried for witchcraft,” Nate offered.
“And?”
“She came back with Maribel, and they lived together. She was the reason they had the witch trials. She was said to be truly wicked.” Avalon offered.
They listened.
“Her sister was accused of black m
agick. She was accused of killing people, cutting out their hearts and...”
Nate let that hang in the air.
Brianna got it.
“We need to get back to the house. Something is going on and I think it’s all about lies,” she said, grabbing the papers.
“Lies?” Nate asked.
“Yeah, as in the spirits aren’t telling the truth.”
That didn’t sound good at all.
“Brian, William, when we figure this out, you need to write the book. I think it’s going to be a wild ride!”
The men were grinning.
“We’ll keep digging. If we find anything, we’ll let you know, okay?”
They watched them leave.
“What is going on?” Brian asked.
“I don’t know,” William said, closing his books. “Americans are odd.”
Yeah, he agreed with that.
* * * O R A C L E * * *
Moira MacDonald’s
Home
When they got there, the place was insane. There were neighbors there, sheep, and even a wailing mother who had found her child dead in her house.
Laird went into Garda mode, trying to calm everyone down so he could get to the bottom of it. He began asking questions, and no one had a clue what the hell had gone on.
Inside, Timothy Murphy, the coroner, had beaten him to the scene.
That was new.
“What do we have, Tim?” he asked.
“Moira lost her heart just like the other ones. You have a hell of a mess here. There’s going to be an inquest by the commissioner.”
Yeah, he was aware.
“What can you tell me?”
“She was stabbed, her throat was slashed, and she was abused. Look at the bite marks on her arms.”
“Someone bit her?” he asked.
“Yeah, it looks like someone wanted a snack.”
He was appalled.
What the bloody hell was going on in Adare?
“The heart is gone, right?”
“Yes. Do you want to do the notify or me?” he asked.
Laird really didn’t want to do it, but it was kind of his job. “I’ll do it. Is she married?” he asked.
“Not anymore. She’d divorced.”
He got out his notepad.
“Who is the ex?”
“Lance Keane.”
He dropped his pen. “What?”
“Lance Keane is the ex. He’s a banker in town. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar at work. Didn’t you hear the gossip?”
“No, I don’t listen to it.”
Timothy laughed. “You should. You can learn a lot about a town by paying attention.”
He wasn’t listening anymore. The man’s last name was stuck in his head.
Keane?
As in Lawrence Keane?
Yeah, there was no freaking way this was a coincidence.
“Can you do the notify? I have something I have to do,” he said, walking out the door.
“Uh, sure. I’m not doing anything,” he muttered.
Laird found Bishop. “We have to go.”
He looked worried. “What’s going on, Laird?” she asked, touching his arm.
“I want to be close to Brianna. Something is coming. The static is going crazy.”
That was all he had to say. Bishop was accustomed to Lucian and Avalon saying the same thing, and it was generally right before the shit hit the fan.
So, she followed him to the car, and all the while, she was studying him. He was agitated, and not in a normal person kind of way. This went deeper.
MUCH deeper.
“What has you freaked out?” she asked.
“It turns out that the woman inside, Moira, had been married.”
“To who?”
“Lance Keane.”
She stared at him. “We had better get to him. He’s likely going to be next.”
He wasn’t the only one who thought it. They’d found a descendant. Now they needed to figure out who was doing the killing, and soon.
“This is bad,” she said.
He was well aware.
Death was coming.
Soon.
* * * O R A C L E * * *
Graymoor
When they arrived, Nate, Avalon, and Brianna were just getting there. The sun had disappeared, and there were storm clouds all around Graymoor.
It made the place look ominous, and like the mouth of hell was about to open up.
It was freaky.
“We found some things out,” Bishop stated, as the wind began picking up. “We had better get inside,” she said, as the trees all around the estate began moving in the wind.
No one argued there.
They raced for the house just getting inside before the sky opened, and it began pouring.
“What did you learn?” Avalon asked, as the family met them in the foyer.
Laird wanted to be sick. “Brianna looks like Polly,” he blurted, “and I look like Lawrence.”
There.
He said it.
Brianna stared at him.
“I also inadvertently bought you that ring, and it was Maribel’s, but ended up with Polly. It’s called the mistress ring. I don’t think it’s because Maribel was his mistress, but their child was.”
She stared at it.
Wow.
She didn’t know what to say. It didn’t mean she didn’t love her ring, but she was trying to figure out what it all meant.
“Bri?” he asked.
She finally spoke, “If this was his token to her, he had to really care about her.”
“I’m not ashamed to say I’m freaked out,” he said. “I look like a killer.”
Brianna touched his hand. “Before you lose it, and assume, I found out some things too. Avalon and Nate found a huge piece of this.”
“What?”
He needed something.
Laird was feeling queasy.
“Maribel was a twin. Her sister, Marissa, was the reason Ireland had the witch trials.”
She let that sink in.
“Really?”
Nate continued, “Yes, and we think that there is so much more to this. We’ve been taking the word of a dead woman in a haunted yard, but what if Maribel has been lying? What if when Avalon saw ‘Polly’ it was trickery?”
The house shook.
They all stopped moving as a cold wind entered the area. The door wasn’t open, but a chill filled the air.
Molly growled.
“What do we do?” Laird asked.
Nate couldn’t believe he was going to say this, but it looked like Avalon was going to get that walk around the estate after all.
Shit!
Avalon could hear the chatter. “We have to go out to the field. We have to find out the truth. This is all tied together.”
The house shook again in anger.
Brianna took her husband’s hand. “We’ll face it together. If all this is because you and I look like them, then we face it and end it together.”
He loved her bravery.
He loved her strength.
Together, they headed out the door. It was pouring outside, and they were getting soaked. To anyone driving by, they had to look like a bunch of lunatics, but they were bringing this to the dead for resolution.
Maybe, it would help them find the killers.
As they walked toward that hideous tree, behind them, the team followed with Avalon scanning the area.
“She’s ahead of you. I can see her,” she said, holding Lucian’s hand, not Nathaniel’s.
They all looked at her.
There was nothing there.
“I see the trace of her aura. She’s there. Talk to her.”
Well, that was new.
Brianna went for it. She trusted the people behind her. “Maribel!” she called.
The tree creaked.
“We know the truth,” Brianna yelled into the storm. “We know about Marissa, and how you bot
h killed all those people, not Lawrence!”
The tree shook in fury.
“Lawrence took Polly to escape you. The two of you were evil!” Brianna said, continuing to push it.
Could this backfire?
Hell yes.
The woman materialized to everyone who had psychic ability. Lucian and Avalon stood there, holding hands, Brianna and Laird did the same.
Everyone else just waited in the rain.
“I gave him a child! Then he took that child as his mistress! He was mine, and he didn’t keep his promise! He laid with both of us, and I gave him his heir!” she wailed.
The ground actually tremored.
They took a step back as the tendrils on the tree moved toward them.
A second body crawled from the ground. It looked just like Maribel. They held hands, mimicking the actions of the four psychics standing there.
The rain let up, but the lightning kept crashing around them.
“He mocks us!” Maribel said, pointing at Laird. “He still lives and with her by his side!”
They could see that the two women were not all there, mentally. In death, they were trapped and that anger and hate had grown.
It had created the dark mire surrounding the land. This place had been all about death and evil.
Created by THEM not Sir Lawrence Keane. They were painting history with their own deeds.
“He’s back, and he needs to stop. He’s evil!”
She pointed at Laird.
“He’s not Lawrence,” Brianna said, moving in front of her husband.
“We did everything to get him to love me. My sister and I wanted to share him. We prayed to Carman, we did spells, and he fell in love with his child. He fell in love with POLLY!”
The ground shook.
Brianna and Laird moved closer to Avalon. She was humming with energy.
“They had children! They laid in sin, and now they’re back,” Maribel said, pointing at Brianna. “That’s my ring! He gave it to my child, but it should have been mine! I gave him everything. I gave him spells to make his land prosper. My sister gave him magick to make his cattle stay healthy. We made him powerful, and he left us for my child!”
Oracle Haunting (The Phoenix Files Book 4) Page 39