Sara’s mug clanked against the saucer as she set it down too hard in her excitement. “I did! Fiona is Niamh’s granddaughter. She’s on Facebook, so I sent her a friend request.”
“That’s…lovely.”
“She did say something about the spirit needing strength for when it possesses us. Maybe I know more when the spirit is stronger?”
“I suppose that could be true.” Gran nodded and picked up another cookie.
A cat landed in Sara’s lap without preamble, catching its balance with claws on skin so as not to tumble back to the floor. Sara let out a hiss of surprise and pain and fought the urge to shove the animal away.
“I tried to get more information from her, but she’s obsessed with the guy who’s hunting us.”
“Oh, yes, Sealgair. He’s very handsome, isn’t he?” Gran’s eyes filled with new life, and her thin lips stretched into a grin.
Sara marveled for a moment at the sound of the word, nothing at all like Seal-gare, as she’d thought, and then pictured the carved cheekbones and black eyes before swallowing hard. Of course he was. Scary handsome. And also just scary.
“Sure. But how would you know? Did…Shel-a-geer visit old banshees, too?”
“Very good,” Gran said with a smile. “It’s the old Irish word for hunter. And I’d say there’s probably a pretty strong family resemblance.”
Family? Ohhh. The Sealgair thing must have passed from generation to generation, too. Sara took the piece of chocolate her grandmother offered and unwrapped, lost in thought.
“So, this banshee thing is passed from grandmother to granddaughter,” she started.
“Not necessarily.” Gran struggled with the foil on her own candy.
Sara started to take the chocolate from the twisted fingers and remove the wrapper, but she somehow knew her grandmother wouldn’t appreciate the help. For a few moments, she forgot the conversation and instead mentally willed those aging fingers to grasp the edges. The chocolate came free, and Sara sighed.
“Wait. What do you mean ‘not necessarily’? You said it could skip generations. Would it skip two if there weren’t enough years between grandmother and granddaughter?”
In North Carolina, that was a definite possibility. She’d heard of a twenty-eight-year-old grandmother before. If the banshee grandmother still had a lot of years in her for shrieking, maybe the great-granddaughter took up the job later.
“Well, I suppose that could happen.” Gran nodded and reached for another chocolate.
Sara sucked in a breath and considered unwrapping all the candies before leaving. Silence stretched as the old woman struggled. In all fairness, the Irish chocolate was worth the work. Creamier, sweeter, and infinitely more chocolaty than anything that could be found in America. And who was she to deny her grandmother such a simple pleasure?
“What was I saying?” The chocolate popped into Gran’s mouth, and she hummed. “Oh, yes. There really is no rhyme or reason to which girl is chosen from each generation, I suppose. Sometimes it’s a daughter, sometimes a granddaughter. Sometimes it’s a great-grandniece, and sometimes it’s a distant cousin four times removed. However long the spirit needs to rest so she can kill again.”
Just my luck, Sara thought. Of all my cousins, it had to be me. “But Dad said you knew it would be me when I was born.”
“I had a feeling it would be you. Come to think of it, it was more than a feeling. We just know when we meet others like us.”
Like that creepy, familiar sensation she’d had when first seeing Sealgair. Did that mean…
“Is he one of us?” she yelped.
The teakettle whistled, and both women jumped. Gran scraped her chair back and chuckled.
“I forgot I put the kettle on. Milk and sugar?”
Sara hummed, her thoughts already back to that skitter of fear that had scaled her spine at the movie marathon. Beautiful, yes. He was absolutely gorgeous and probably lethal.
“So, is he one of us? Is that why I thought he was familiar when I saw him last month?”
“I don’t think he’s from a banshee family, no. That feeling of knowing him isn’t because of that. I think it’s maybe a survival mechanism. Like the shiver ye get the first time you see a snake or a black widow spider.”
Sara sipped at her tea and winced when the sugar hit her teeth. Damn, her grandmother liked it sweet. “So, another hunter tried to kill you, then?”
“Oh, yes. But he was so lovely that I almost wanted to let him.”
A laugh ripped through Sara’s chest. Her grandmother sounded like Kristen. Maybe after the ripples of fear went away, she could let Sealgair close enough to appreciate his beauty. Invite him to plunge in the knife just so she could stare into those deep, dark eyes…
Sara shook herself and slapped at her grandmother’s hand. “That’s just terrible. So, obviously you lived. How did you convince him not to kill you?”
Maybe she could try the same trick. Was there a spell she didn’t know about? Some kind of voodoo curse she could put on the guy?
“We moved here. That stopped him.”
Hope fled. Sara sighed. Well, that wouldn’t work now. If Sealgair had managed to find her once, he’d find her anywhere. The internet made hiding impossible. Plus, her mom would never give up being mayor to move to Antarctica or wherever.
“I’m sure he tried, but America is just too big. And we moved here to North Carolina. Mam didn’t think anyone would look for me here. She was right, too. Didn’t keep me from looking over my shoulder for years. Didn’t take a full breath until the day you were born, and I knew my years of shrieking were done.”
Glad I could take some of the stress off your shoulders, Sara griped to herself. She knew what her grandmother meant, though. No one would wish this on another person. Except Fiona, maybe. That girl was messed up.
Instead of getting upset, Sara decided to finish her tea while looking through more old photos. Her favorites were those of Aine and Jack, her greaser husband. Sara’s grandfather. They’d been such a striking couple, her with long, red waves contrasting Jack’s dark good looks. Sara’s dad looked a lot like his father, and Sara still saw her own face stare back from photos of Aine. Amazing how history kept repeating.
“Did your parents hate him?” Sara traced a finger over Jack’s face.
“Oh, my Da wasn’t pleased at all, but he didn’t say much. Jack made a good enough living. More than we lived on in Ireland, anyway. Not that it was hard to make more money here. We’d likely have died if we’d stayed in Kilcoole.”
Ridley’s run-down shack sounded good enough to Sara, but her mother would never go for it. If Michelle Donovan had any idea where Sara’s head was sometimes, she’d have a legitimate heart attack. The mayor’s daughter did not fall in love with the town drunk’s kid.
Sara was still daydreaming about Ridley thirty minutes later as she walked down the quiet streets of Burnsville. When he appeared in front of her, she thought maybe she’d conjured him just by thinking about him so hard.
Ridley didn’t see her as he stepped out of a loud bar into the sunshine. He was too busy searching his pockets for something. Out came sunglasses, a cigarette, and a lighter.
Sara rolled her eyes. Those cigarettes wouldn’t have time to kill him. She would shriek in the middle of the night, and he’d probably crash his motorcycle or choke on a chicken bone.
Maybe she could warn him? If he knew he was going to die soon, maybe he’d try harder to drive safely around the mountain roads. He might even crush out that cigarette before kissing her…uh, thanking her.
Without realizing it, Sara had followed Ridley down the block to where his motorcycle stood at the curb. He turned and grabbed his helmet, and then he froze. Eyes flickered sideways; his whole head whipped around.
“Diner Girl? What the hell are you doing here?” Ridley looked surprised and pissed, neither of which marred the perfection of his face.
Oh, God, the mortification at being caught. Even worse, Sara prob
ably had that lost puppy look on her face—the one that begged him to pet her or even just to notice. Sara shrugged and peered into the shop window across the street, like she might convince him she needed an antique ceramic planter, or whatever they sold there, instead of just a glance from him.
He smirked and followed her gaze to Jackson’s Antiques and Gifts. “You’re a long way from home. Does your father know where you are?”
Finally, Sara felt something more than embarrassment. Irritation roared through her veins, sending shockwaves of anger to the very tips of her fingers.
“I’m an adult. I don’t need my father’s permission to leave the house.”
For all the rage inside her, the words were tame and delivered with little fire. At least her voice didn’t shake, but that didn’t matter. Ridley huffed out a laugh and shook his head, no doubt thinking what a cute little girl she was.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But seriously. Are you going to tell me it’s a coincidence that we’re both here, an hour from Cedar City, on the same day, at the same time, in the very same spot?”
Sara clamped her lips shut, afraid the strangest truth would spill out as she tried to defend herself. She would be stupid enough to explain her visit to her grandmother. Also, he was kind of right. She was stalking him. Not for the reasons he probably thought—okay, so some of the reasons were exactly what he thought. He was gorgeous, even when scowling and treating her like a child.
“I’m only three years younger than you. That’s not a lot.” The words burst forth before she could stop them or even realize they were the wrong answer to his question.
He had her so twisted inside, with his flashing blue eyes filled with amusement at her expense, and his crazy-full lips curved in a kind smile. He must have had people staring at him all the time, because he took her stalking activities just a little too well.
“I know you are, Sara.”
Her heart skipped about four beats when he said her name. She wore a name tag at the diner, but why would he have ever had a reason to look at it? She forced her gaze up to meet his, and the humor there had changed to something softer, full of understanding and something like pity.
She hated that look.
“You’re a sweet girl, but three years between us is more like ten. Your father treats you like a princess, and your mom’s the mayor, and you think skipping school with your friends is the worst thing you could do. I’ve never had what you have, and I hope like hell you never get anything that I got.”
His warm hand closed over her shoulder and squeezed gently. Remorse filled the air, but it wasn’t enough to change his mind, just as Sara’s outright shame wasn’t enough to change hers. For just a moment, she forgot the real reason he was irritated and focused only on the fact that they’d just had a relationship—a full relationship, complete with awkward glances, learning names, sharing hopes and fears, and then deciding it just wouldn’t work—all within the shortest five minutes of her life.
With another sad smile, he pushed her away and turned to go. “I won’t see you again, will I?”
Since she couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, she didn’t say anything. He was almost to the end of the block, giving her one last wave goodbye, when she finally remembered why she’d followed him around Burnsville in the first place.
“Someone wants you dead.” Sara blurted the words too loudly and cringed as they bounced off the concrete buildings.
He threw his head back and laughed, amusement easing the hard lines around his eyes and jaw. “Just one person? Damn, I’m not doing things right. I’ve got a reputation to protect.”
7
Ridley rolled his eyes again behind the windscreen on his helmet. Every time he remembered Sara’s last words, he damn near groaned. If he’d needed the reminder that the three-year age difference between them was too much, she’d given it. Giving some attention-grabbing reason for following him around. Who would even believe such a thing? Even at eighteen, she was still just too childish. At least she hadn’t pretended to faint in front of him, the way one girl had in high school.
Ugh. High school. Somehow, he’d made it to graduation night, but it hadn’t been easy. While he’d dealt with his drunk father and a nearly full-time job on top of his studies, the rest of his classmates went to football games, snuck away to parties, and giggled over the phone at night. Oh, he remembered.
Sara was just like those giggling girls—the ones who’d called at midnight and hung up without saying a word. There’d always been laughter in the background as one egged on another. Once they’d all discovered what a loser he really was, the calls had stopped. But Sara, well, she’d never stopped staring. And her friends definitely giggled.
She wasn’t fifteen anymore, that was for sure. She might have acted like it sometimes, but the rest of her had grown up. If he let himself, he could imagine his hand on the swell of her hip, one smooth leg wrapped around his. Rough fingers wrapped through the silky brown strands of her hair as he covered her mouth with his—
“Fuck!”
A dark shadow streaked across the road, and Ridley jerked the handlebars to avoid a collision. The front tire caught a patch of gravel and skittered the bike sideways a few feet. Heart pounding and pulse crashing in his ears, Ridley slowed to a stop on the right shoulder about twenty feet later. Arms and legs shook as he swung a leg over the bike and struggled with the kickstand. Trembling fingers tugged at the strap of his helmet until he managed drag it over his head.
The only thought in his head the whole time was Sara yelling after him, “Someone wants you dead.”
He stared down at the gravel, her warning echoing over and over. Someone wanted to kill him? Did they wait on the side of the road for him to drive by and then risk their own life to do the deed?
Ridley whipped around, sure he’d see the would-be murderer waiting to finish the job, but there was no one. Not one soul joined him there on that curving road between Burnsville and Cedar City. He let out a long, slow breath and turned back to his motorcycle. For years, he’d loved it, but now twice in the course of two weeks he cursed its existence. If he’d gone over, if that dark shadow had accomplished its goal, he really could have died. At the very least, he’d have been banged up pretty bad.
With a shrug, Ridley grabbed up his helmet and lifted it. Just before he pulled it down over his ears, a sound snagged his attention. A whimper, maybe. Almost like a baby’s cry.
The helmet froze in midair. Ridley cocked his head and listened again. The whimper drifted across the road again, less like a baby and more like a…puppy, maybe. Ridley set his helmet on the seat of his old bike and glanced both ways for coming traffic. The twisting mountain road was silent, so he crossed to the crux of the curve and slipped down the embankment toward the woods.
There, just at the bottom of the steep hill, was a little pup, twisted and bony with hunger. Where bones jutted almost through the skin, his blue-gray fur was worn through. Across his little snout, black electric tape held the jaws clamped shut. The next whine seemed a miracle, as the tape strained against the force of the little dog’s breath. He shouldn’t have been able to make a sound.
Ridley leapt toward the gangly puppy, no more than a year old, but the sudden movement scared the little guy. Thick underbrush swallowed the dog, but Ridley crashed through after him. Without working jaws, the dog wasn’t a danger to anyone. Ridley could snatch him up and pull him to safety without worrying about a dangerous bite.
With fingers buried in the scruff of its neck, Ridley dragged the little dog back up to the road where the land was a little flatter and daylight filtered through the trees. As his captive whimpered and struggled, Ridley’s heart broke a little. Someone had really done a number on this defenseless creature. The paws were huge on legs little more than toothpicks. Ribs were visible through patchy and scruffy fur. What color he did have was that of smoke, the shadow he’d seen while on his bike.
“Hey boy,” he whispered, rubbing a hand over the sm
ooth fur on the dog’s head. “Let’s get this tape off, okay?”
His soothing tone reached the animal, who calmed immediately. Ridley dug around in the bag on the side of his bike and snagged a box cutter. The little guy would have to stand absolutely still, but Ridley didn’t think there would be a problem.
Just a few moments later, the tape had been slashed down both sides of the pup’s mouth. A pink tongue peeked between the black plastic, almost in a smile. The bastard who’d dumped the dog must not have been gone for long. The tape had been tight enough to cut off circulation, but there were no signs of damage. Ridley had come along at just the right time.
“Hey, buddy. That’s not so bad now, is it?” Careful fingers worked at the rest of the tape, slowly pulling to keep what little fur remained from sticking and ripping out. The poor guy had been through enough already. When the last was gone, he set the puppy back on the ground and backed away.
No way would the dog make it out there in the woods alone. He needed a vet’s attention and, maybe more importantly, a bath and a meal. Ridley didn’t think Dobbins would appreciate a dog in his bathtub, and anyway, he had no way to get the pup there.
“Shit, kid,” he muttered. “I’m as homeless as you are. What are we gonna do with you?”
Almost as if in answer, the sound of a car engine cut through the forest. Ridley picked up the puppy and stepped back to make sure a passing vehicle didn’t hit them. A small blue Honda appeared around the curve, headlights skimming over Ridley and his new friend in spite of the late afternoon sunshine. Brakes squealed as the driver skidded to a stop on the side of the road just in front of Ridley’s bike.
The driver flung the door open and tumbled out of the seat, all brown curls and pink shirt. Jesus. It was Sara. Because of course it was.
“You okay?” she called as she jogged toward him, long legs covering plenty of ground in a hurry.
Ridley sighed and nodded before setting the dog back down on the grass. The pup leaned into his leg, bones pressing through the rough denim of Ridley’s jeans.
Shriek: Legend of the Bean Sídhe Page 8
