He eyed it with disgust and pulled out his phone. A text from Sara let him know they’d landed. She still had the two-hour drive back to Cedar City from Charlotte, but she was at least back in the country.
For the first time since he’d walked through the front door, he felt a little hope rising.
I’m at my father’s house. Let me know when you get home and I’ll come see you.
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and set about cleaning up the muck from the floor.
After another hour or so, he’d gotten the kitchen under control and had moved on to the little half bathroom by the back door. The whole room was disgusting, smelling of old piss and vomit. Charlie probably hadn’t bothered to go upstairs to the bedroom and full bath there for months.
He threw a full bucket of soapy water into the bathroom to wash out as much as he could, and then wiped down the floors and toilet with a wet rag, making a note to get more cleaning supplies. The tidier the house got, the more Ridley considered keeping it, but that stench would have to go.
“Hello?”
A voice cut through his thoughts, and he dropped his rag into the toilet in surprise.
“Sara?” he called back. “What are you doing here?”
She appeared in the bathroom doorway and looked down on him, cleaning up his father’s crusty shit. God, he hadn’t wanted her to see this at all.
“I texted back and let you know I’d come to you,” she said. “Mom was home waiting for us, so I made an excuse to leave and see Audrey instead of you coming over.”
Ridley stood and reached for a hug, but then remembered his disgusting gloves. He looked down at them and back up at her face, which was crumpled in confusion.
“Your hair,” she breathed. “It’s all gone.”
She hadn’t yet realized that Charlie was nowhere around. She hadn’t yet realized that Ridley hadn’t told her everything while she was gone.
“Yeah.” He almost rubbed the back of his neck before remembering what they were covered in.
“It looks great.”
Her simple words spread warmth his chest, clapping a bandage over a gaping wound he’d struggled to ignore.
He shook his hands once, hard, and flung the gloves to the floor. “I know I’m a little gross right now. Can I get a kiss and we’ll hug later?”
“Of course. You never have to ask for a kiss.”
She leaned into the little room and caught his lips with hers. As much as he wanted to just melt into her and revel in the fact that she was home and back by his side, he pulled away after only a brief brush against her mouth.
“Call for Blue,” he suggested. “He’s here in the house somewhere. You can love on him while I get cleaned up enough for that hug.”
She nodded and turned away, her voice ringing through the house as she searched for the dog. Ridley realized he really liked the sound. The walls were less dingy and the floors not so creaky when Sara was around.
After washing his hands and face, he ventured out to the front porch and found Sara running through the yard with Blue hot on her heels. She looked over when the door slammed shut behind him.
“So, where’s your dad?”
Ridley felt all the joy at seeing her again seep out through his toes. He still hadn’t told her. She should have known by now. He should have trusted her.
“He, uh… He died last week.” The words were forced, hesitant. Still foreign and beyond comprehension.
“Oh, my God.” Sara halted, and the dog crashed into the backs of her knees, pitching her forward.
He’d have laughed at the sight if he wasn’t so miserable.
“Last week?” Sara picked herself up and dusted her knees off. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her hand wrapped around her throat, and she stared into the distance.
“We talked after it happened, didn’t we?” Her voice was stone.
“Yeah, I guess we did. Did you, uh.” He glanced pointedly at her neck, still covered by her slim fingers.
“It hurt really bad the morning I woke up there,” she said, still no emotion in her voice. “But I couldn’t have, could I? I was three thousand miles away.”
“Well, no one really knows when he died. He stopped showing up at the liquor store for his daily bottle of whiskey, and the owner got concerned. May not have been the same day.”
“But maybe it was.” She sat down hard on the first step up to the porch. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Ridley wanted to sit next to her, but he could tell by her posture that she wasn’t ready for that. Her back was rigid and shoulders set. He’d really messed this one up.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. Ridley scrubbed his face with both hands and sat down on the top step. She was within reach but miles away. “You sounded so excited every time we talked. I didn’t want to mess up your vacation. And, to be honest, I didn’t even know how to feel about it. I still don’t.”
She stared straight ahead. “I’d have talked it through with you. Or just listened. That’s what couples do, Ridley.”
“I don’t know how to be part of a couple, Sara.” Her shoulder was right there. He could touch it, if he wanted. He could reach out, pull her closer, and fix the whole mess with an embrace.
But he didn’t. His hand lay like rubber on his thigh, refusing to obey his brain.
“Yeah. I guess not.”
She patted the dog’s head once and then stood. Without a glance behind, she started walking toward her little car.
“Are you leaving?” he called after her.
She still didn’t turn. “I have to think, Ridley. I spent the last week believing we were really in this thing together.”
Finally, she turned, and he saw her red-rimmed eyes and the tears sliding down her cheeks. Still, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t stop her from leaving him, just like everyone else had.
“I’m sorry about your dad. I just need to—” She lifted her hands in a shrug and dropped them again. The sound of them slapping against her thighs was the last thing he heard before she got in the car and started the engine.
“I don’t know,” Sara wailed.
Audrey, who’d answered the panicked phone call and driven straight to Sara’s house to meet her, stared up from the bed with a helpless expression.
“I just left him there.” Sara continued. “Maybe I don’t know how to be in a couple, either.”
“To be fair,” her friend said, “you both had a very eventful week. Some time to digest everything could only help.”
Sara plopped down on the be next to Audrey and sighed. “You’re probably right. Jesus, Audrey, you wouldn’t believe the time I had in Ireland. We found so much stuff. It’ll just take us years to translate it all, but that’s okay.”
The box of photographs from the cave lay on her desk, ready for her to finish transcribing the last of her share. From the letters they’d already discovered, the girls had found the names of the families they sang for, as well as the name Cliodhna, but not much else. At least she knew for sure they’d found the right stones.
Though the visit from the Cailleach while they were there had pretty much convinced Sara anyway that they were on the right track.
She didn’t want to think of any of that now. She just wanted to know what she should have—could have—done for Ridley instead of walking away. She pulled out her phone to text him or call him, something or anything, but then realized it was almost midnight. She’d walked away six hours ago and hadn’t heard a word from him since.
How he must have been hurting. To lose his father, and then for her to just leave him there on the porch because of her selfish pride.
But they were a couple, right? Had she been silly to believe there was something serious between them? Couple shared things with each other, especially something as big as a parent dying.
“Sara?” Her mother called from the other side of the door.
She stood to open it, but her mom walked in without wait
ing for an invitation. Sara’s eyes darted to the collection of research on her cork board and back to her mother.
“I’ve hardly seen you since you got back…” Mom’s voice trailed off as her gaze followed Sara’s to the extensive family tree and Ridley’s name circled by a heart and a big question mark.
“What the hell?”
“Uh-oh,” Audrey muttered under her breath.
Understatement, Sara thought.
“What is this, Sara? Is this what you went to Ireland for? I told your father you’d come back with these twisted notions.” Her mother’s voice rose with every word until she screamed. “Sean! Get in here.”
Mom stalked across the room to the desk in the corner and plucked at one of the pages. She glanced at it and tossed it to the floor before snatching another. Push pins flew and papers fluttered as she ripped everything away, barely stopping to look before ripping into more.
“You’ve got your grandmother’s insanity. Look at this shit.” Her mother turned to see Dad in the doorway. “This is ridiculous, Sean. How could you encourage this? She can’t go to college like this. We need to get her help.”
“Stop, Mom,” Sara shouted. “Stop it. This stuff is important. I’m trying to figure out how to—”
Her muscles locked; her voice froze.
Oh, not now, she thought. No, no, no.
Her mother hadn’t stopped yanking her research from the walls. Didn’t stop, even as Sara’s feet left the carpet and she hovered over them. Something did catch her mother’s attention, though. Perhaps the shadow of Sara growing, rising on the wall in front of her. Maybe it was the panicked breathing as Sara worked to keep her jaws clenched together.
“What the hell?” her mother said again, this time gaping at her daughter, who hung suspended by invisible strings.
Sara clapped a hand over her mouth, fighting the Cailleach. Fighting the curse.
She would not scream. Not tonight. Not ever again.
But Brenna was right. The Cailleach was stronger this time. Stronger than Sara had ever felt her. The force dragged her over the bed and out the bedroom door. She could hear the pounding steps of her parents and Audrey behind her as she flew down the steps toward the front door.
She flung the front door open with the full force of the Cailleach’s power, and then she was gone. Lost in the night, somewhere in the forests of Cedar City. The last thing she saw was her mother’s pale face in the moonlight, staring up from the front porch.
Sara kept her hand over her mouth for the entire flight. There was only one place she could be going. Ridley. Tonight was his night. She’d left him without a word, and now she’d have to watch him die.
Through the trees she flew, branches catching the bottoms of her bare feet. She was still dressed in her shorts and tank top so there was no fluttering nightgown to get caught. That only sped her journey.
The unseen hand dropped her with a thud from twenty feet in the air. Before she could register the pain in her ankle, she was jerked upright again. The moon overhead illuminated the landscape, and she finally saw where she’d stopped.
A graveyard. Charlie O’Neill’s grave. Maybe it wasn’t Ridley’s turn after all.
She was just here to finish a job.
Unseen fingers plucked Sara’s hand from her mouth. She didn’t resist. Charlie was already dead. It was now her time to lament his passing. She didn’t fight the power that tilted her head back, and when it came time to shriek, her mouth was already open wide.
18
When the Cailleach dropped her in a heap in the back yard several hours later, Sara stood and wiped the dirt and grass from her knees and elbows. A feeling of completeness filled her for some reason. Of a satisfying end. Maybe that’s what happened when a life ended as it should have and not short or violently. Maybe some of her shrieks would be fulfilling in a way and not so horrifying.
“So, it’s actually true.”
Her mother’s voice from the back deck dragged her from her thoughts.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Don’t bother asking,” Sara groused. True to form, her mom had passed up concern and dived straight into the issue.
“Are you hurt?” Mom asked.
“I’ll live.” Sara tested her ankle. She could walk, but with a significant limp.
“I just can’t believe it,” her mom continued. “But it has to be true. I watched you fly away, like—”
Sara glanced over and saw her mom holding a hand over her mouth. The other arm wrapped across her stomach, like she was trying to hold everything together. For one minute, Sara saw everything through her mother’s eyes, discovering that there really were things that went bump—or shriek—in the night.
“Yeah, bit of a shock, isn’t it? Come on. Gran gives me strong tea and chocolate after a fright. It can help.”
Sara climbed the wooden steps up to the deck where her mother waited. She stopped long enough to give her mom a brief hug before leading her into the house. Her father and Audrey waited at the kitchen table, waiting. A mug of tea sat before each of the four chairs.
Her father was his mother’s son, all right. Tea and little chocolate cookies, ready to chase away the heebie-jeebies.
Mom sat next to Dad and just stared. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
Sara dunked a cookie into the steaming cup and shoved it into her mouth. “Me neither.”
Crumbs flying everywhere brought her mother back around in a snap. With narrowed eyes, her mom handed over a napkin. “Really, Sara. Don’t talk with food in your mouth.”
Sara sighed. “Can’t expect everything to change overnight, I guess.”
In fits and starts, she and her father explained what they could and tried to fill in the holes where they didn’t yet have answers.
“The good thing about tonight, I guess, is that the Cailleach will be weaker after possessing me. That should buy even more time for Ridley.”
“Ridley O’Neill? That drunk’s kid.”
“That drunk is dead,” Sara said flatly. “And Ridley is nothing like him.”
“Still, probably wouldn’t stop the world spinning if you shrieked for that one, too.” Her mother sniffed, her nose high in the air, before taking another sip of tea.
Dad, Audrey, and Sara all stared at each other, wondering if now was the time. Sara stuck out her lip and nodded.
“While we’re on the subject of Ridley, I should probably let you know that I’ve been seeing him this summer.”
The mug of tea in her mother’s hand crashed to the table. “Absolutely not. Under no circumstances—”
“Ah, give it a rest, Michelle. He’s a good kid.” Dad stood and looked at the clock. “It’s almost three in the morning. I’d rather save this verbal lashing for tomorrow, wouldn’t you?”
“This isn’t over.” Sara’s mom wasn’t quite done grasping for some sort of control wherever she could get it.
Sara, wondering if there was even still a relationship with Ridley for her to fight about, said, “Yeah, it is.”
Sara glanced at her phone yet again. Both her parents had mercy that morning after such a late night, and she’d slept through breakfast. Maybe he’d come to the diner, and she’d missed him. But if he’d come to see her and she wasn’t there, he’d have called, right?
He hadn’t come in for dinner after work, either. He had to know she’d be there at some point in the day, but he hadn’t come in, and he hadn’t called.
She could just call him. Apologize for not knowing the right thing to say. For making his hurt about her. For walking away when he needed someone the most.
But she didn’t. What if he didn’t want to hear it? Was Ridley’s absence his way of letting her know it was over before they even had a chance to begin?
With a low growl in her throat, Sara flipped off the lights and locked the front door. During her walk through the diner, she looked around one last time for anything she might have forgotten. Satisfied, she grabbed the last bag of trash and backed through th
e side door. With a grunt, she tossed it over the edge of the dumpster and then wiped her hands on her apron.
“Hello, Sara.”
A voice called from the darkness only a few feet away.
Her blood froze. She didn’t have her gun. Of course she didn’t. It was still in the glove box of her car, next to a box of equally useless bullets. The Cailleach would be useless, too, after making her shriek the night before. Sealgair must have known somehow.
He stepped from the shadows, his pale face the only thing she could see amid the dark clothing and black hat. He had her cornered. The best she could do was try to throw him off his game.
“O’Brien?”
He smiled without humor and grabbed her arm at the elbow. “Someone’s been studying. Won’t help you on this test, though.”
She thrust her elbow into his ribs and met with resistance. Did he have on a Kevlar vest? Of course he did. He’d seen her gun. She kicked at his legs instead as he dragged her to the waiting car and pushed her through the door into the backseat.
Sara couldn’t let him get that door closed. She kicked again and again, like riding a bicycle. The door bounced off her foot and back into Sealgair, but he only smiled. He was going to let her tire herself out.
Sara cursed herself for not calling Ridley and kicked again. For telling her dad he didn’t need to wait for her. Kick. For never making up with Kristen. Kick. For all the loose ends she’d left. Kick.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Her legs had turned to jelly.
“Ye see, your kind is the reason my family has lived in fear for centuries. It’s my job to kill you. I’ve trained for it since I was a lad, and you’ve managed to give me the slip quite a few times. I won’t make any mistakes this time.” Sealgair flung himself into the car and flattened her against the seat with his body.
She felt the prick of a needle at her neck, and the last thing she remembered before her world went dark was the door closing in her face.
Shriek: Legend of the Bean Sídhe Page 19
