What part of Ireland is your family from?
Kildare. It’s the home of the great Goddess Brighid. That’s who Birdie was named after. I’m going there someday.
Cool. And what did you say your ancestors were called?
Druids.
By the time we were in high school, Chance knew all about the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Goddess Danu. He knew about the battles fought and won on the Hill of Tara, where mortals and gods came together to protect the island, her gifts, and especially her secrets.
My secrets now.
Of course when my father died—when my prediction couldn’t save his life—I left all of that behind. I refused my teachings, refused my training, refused my very heritage. But that had all changed now. It took fifteen years and some absurdly difficult lessons that I swore one day to write a book about, but I’ve come around to acceptance. Now, I could confidently call myself a witch. And a pretty good one too. In fact, the powers that be even gave me a promotion recently.
As the formally appointed Seeker of Justice, sworn to uphold sacred laws and protect ancient treasures at all costs, it was my duty, and truth be told, my honor, to abide by the Celtic order of a secret society known as the Council, of which my grandmother Birdie was now a cabinet member.
It took a long time for me to accept this position that I was born into—this calling, as my grandmother would say. A long time and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Literally.
But now that I had, I was lying to the only person I’d ever fully trusted. And even though I knew it was for his own safety, it was still a wretched feeling.
Secrets had ripped my family apart. I prayed they wouldn’t do the same to my relationship with the love of my life.
I tucked the locket back into its safe spot and turned to head for a shower. I had to be at the newspaper office in forty-five minutes and I still hadn’t fed Thor, my Great Dane familiar.
There was a soft glow emanating from the clear glass window on the “sauna” door when I looked up. The lightbulb had been engaged. I grabbed a towel off a nearby hook, punched in the security code for the small room, and slipped inside. The mirror on the wall was what controlled the signal to the light. I walked over to it, flipped it around, and faced the smooth black surface of the scrying mirror.
This was my connection to the Council. This was where I would be informed of any breach in security or urgent assignments. I checked it every morning, always hoping for good news.
My mother’s freckled face appeared instantly. “Hello, sweetheart.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“I thought I’d try to reach you before you shuffled off to work.”
My mother, who had been recently freed by the Council after spending fourteen years in exile for killing a man in my defense, would not stop calling me. She felt guilty, I thought, because she hadn’t returned home with me to Amethyst, Illinois, the tiny tourist town where we were both raised. Yule was just two months away, however, and she was planning to come then, possibly even look for a house or move in with my grandmother and the aunts, but she had “a few things to take care of first.” She said it with a flicker of unease too. At the time, I thought it was residual stress from everything she and I had been through, both of us nearly losing our lives, but it was there every time she spoke to me. When I pressed her on it the last time we chatted, she insisted it was “nothing to worry about.”
Which, in my family, usually meant there was a whole lot to worry about, so I tucked it in the back of my mind, waiting for the right time—and if necessary, the right spell—to convince her to tell me what it was that had her on edge.
“Mom, you don’t have to call me every five minutes. Honestly, I’m doing fine.”
My last mission, which involved locating an ancient treasure, didn’t exactly go as planned. I was hurt badly, but I recovered quickly.
“Are you sure? Because even though I don’t receive the visions about you that I used to, I had the most powerful feeling that something wasn’t right not minutes ago.” She leaned in closer, her green eyes darkening as she examined my face.
I flitted my eyes away. “All good. Just preparing for Samhain.”
Samhain was the pagan new year that some call All Hallows Eve.
“Oh really?” She crossed her arms, her brow furrowed. Her hair was floating just over her shoulders in a wavy, fresh style. She must have just had it done. “So how’s that nice young man of yours?” she asked.
Dammit. She had the uncanny ability to extract my emotions like a surgeon taking out an appendix. My face contorted against my will.
“Aha!” She slapped her manicured hand on a table. “I knew it. What’s the trouble?”
I chewed at a nail. “There’s no trouble, Mom. It’s just…you know.”
Her face flashed with a hint of sadness, then resurrected itself into a stone statue. “You can’t tell him, Stacy. We talked about this.”
“He knows everything else, Mom, why can’t I tell him this?”
She sighed, gave me a long, concerned look. “Look, sweetheart, I know it’s difficult for you. I know you love him. But you know as well as I do that it’s for his own good you keep this one thing from him. Do you think I told your father everything?”
I hadn’t thought of that. Dad was always so easygoing, I just assumed he knew everything about her when I was little. Now, of course, those childhood illusions were shattered.
She went on. “There are people who would kill for the secrets we keep. And some, as you well know, will come looking for you to thwart any mission you’re assigned. Do you really want them to come after Chance? Or his family?”
She was right. It was selfish to wish that everything could be like it had always been. To think that I would ever have a normal life with Chance, despite the fact that there was a huge part of me that wanted nothing more than that. But this was my life now. This was the path I had chosen.
“Sometimes we keep secrets from the ones we love to protect them,” my mother said gently.
“Is that what you’re doing?” I asked.
She stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I wiped my face with the towel and said, “I know something’s been bothering you. I’ve known since we left Ireland. Don’t think I won’t find out, Mom.”
“Don’t you have enough on your plate without looking for trouble where there is none?” she snapped.
“Deny all you want, but if it’s in the Blessed Book, you can be sure I’ll find it.”
The Blessed Book was a written history of our family’s theology. It contained pages filled with the names of my ancestors and gods, lists of the ancient high kings, stories of legends, recipes, references, spells, charms, and even predictions for future generations. Some of it was hard to decipher without Birdie’s help. After all, it was her mother, my great-grandmother, who compiled it. It belonged to me now.
“So how’s your cousin Cinnamon?” my mother asked.
“Nice segue.”
“I thought so.”
She really wanted to keep this from me, whatever it was, and I didn’t have time to argue about it. “Still pregnant and ornery as ever. We have a pool going to see how long and how many doctors she goes through in the delivery room before she completely snaps and takes matters into her own hands.”
Mom grinned. “Put me down for twenty. I say four doctors in half an hour.”
I heard Thor, my Great Dane familiar, bark. It was loud, penetrating as if he had trained his vocal cords to my thought waves.
Which, I decided, was exactly what he had done. I couldn’t hear Thor, or anything for that matter, in this room. Chance had designed it to be virtually soundproof.
“Mom, I have to go. Gotta get ready for work.”
“All right. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
&
nbsp; I disconnected the call, stepped out of the room, and grabbed the tranquilizer gun. Thor barked once more. Urgently.
I was about to power down the laptop that still had the front security camera engaged when, on the monitor, I spotted a Star Trek baseball hat bobbing across the porch railing.
Chapter 3
“It can’t be,” I whispered.
I ducked through the opening that led from the Seeker’s Den to my bedroom and bolted out the front door, my tranquilizer gun tucked inside the back of my yoga pants.
Thor was right behind me, his muscular legs pumping fast, his massive black and tan head darting this way and that.
We covered the perimeter of the cottage, even checked in the bushes. We found no one.
But I knew that hat. And it didn’t belong to a human.
“Pickle!” I hissed, careful to say his name just the one time. If I said it three times in a row it would surely summon him, although I didn’t think my cottage was on a leyline, which is how he would travel here. The woods behind the Geraghty Girls’ House—the bed-and-breakfast owned and operated by Birdie and her sisters—was most certainly linked to the realm of the Fae, however.
This, I learned all too well on my twenty-ninth birthday some weeks ago. That was the day I officially blossomed into a true Geraghty. A true witch.
I looked at Thor. He sat, ears perked and alert, one pointed forward, the other to the side listening for the slightest rustle.
“Anything?” I asked.
Thor harrumphed, frustrated that he didn’t catch his target.
I crossed my arms, scanning the woods for signs of a fluorescent green light, a clear indicator that the fairies have come.
Again, nothing.
“Maybe we imagined it,” I said to Thor. “It’s getting close to Samhain. The veil between the worlds is thinning. Maybe it was just an energy surge. A crossed wire that picked up on their realm.”
Thor cocked his head toward me.
“I know.” I scratched behind his ear and looked back toward the woods once more. “Even as I said it, I didn’t believe it.”
But if it was Pickle I saw on the monitor, what was he doing here? What danger had he come to warn me about?
Because I had to say, I could have gone an entire lifetime without seeing Danu and the Morrigan again.
I showered and dressed in jeans, a purple sweater, and boots as quickly as possible, trying not to think of the Otherworld, or the Web of Wyrd, as I had since learned it was called, and prayed that I wouldn’t wake up in a freaking birdcage tomorrow.
Yeah, those Celtic goddesses could be real whacknuts. They loved messing with humans. I wouldn’t recommend mouthing off to one, as they desperately lack anything resembling a sense of humor. They’re like the mean girls of the divine.
I tossed my work laptop into a bag along with a yogurt for me and some roast chicken and mashed potatoes for Thor, and we were on our way to the newspaper.
The office of the paper was only a few blocks away so we usually walked, but I was running late, so we drove through the fall morning sunshine down to Main Street.
There were a lot of cars parked along the street for a Monday morning, but fall was the busiest season for tourists. Many of the hotels, restaurants, inns, and bed-and-breakfasts were booked solid in October. In fact, though we were a town of just a few thousand, most years a million visitors passed through our neck of the woods. Amethyst, you see, was one of the gems of the Midwest. Perched on the corners of three states—Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin—it wasn’t pancake-flat like so much of the heartland. Rather, it was hilly and lush, with gorgeous bluffs, the occasional waterfall, the mighty Mississippi, rolling green pastures, and a quaint Main Street filled with restored buildings that seemed to have sprung straight from a Dickens novel. It was an old steamboat and mining town, and it had seen its share of hardships as well as triumphs, including the nine Civil War generals and one president the locals were proud to claim as their own.
While business was excellent for the economy, it was hell on parking. The paper had a small parking lot, but overflow from the nearby lodging facilities often spilled into it. I finally squeezed my car into a spot after three loops around, and Thor and I headed inside.
Monday morning meetings were my partner Derek’s idea. Personally, I hated meetings. I thought if you were adult enough to hold down a job then you were adult enough to work unsupervised. Besides, there were only five employees total, so anyone who needed to discuss an assignment could just walk across the hall, tap the person on the shoulder, and, well, discuss it. But Derek liked to think of himself as a young entrepreneur and he read in Forbes or somewhere that business meetings were a doorway to success.
Or maybe he saw that on a cat poster; I couldn’t be sure.
Anyway, since I was responsible for getting him shot at once and I still felt bad about it, I didn’t give him too much trouble when it came to business decisions, aside from the fact that I was the controlling partner of the Amethyst Globe.
The minute I walked into the conference room, I was smacked with an overwhelming perfume even a prostitute would find tacky.
“Well, it’s about damn time you showed up,” said a high-pitched, irritating voice.
So actually, there was one decision Derek made that I would never get used to, and there was a strong possibility it would be my only defense against a murder rap.
“Monique, lovely to see you as always. I guess this means there’s a pole somewhere missing its stripper?” I unclipped Thor’s leash and he sauntered down the hall to the water fountain and helped himself to a drink.
Derek licked his lips. “Um, ladies.”
Monique snorted and winked one false blue eyelash at me. “Well, if I was a stripper, you could bet that I’d be on time.”
“On time, on a lap, on your back,” I said.
Iris, our gossip columnist, stifled a laugh.
Monique shot the grandmotherly woman a glare and Iris quickly pretended to read her notes.
“You know, I’m not sure, but I think that’s sexual harassment.” Monique stood and pointed a bright red talon at me. Her white blouse was unbuttoned so low, I was afraid one of her implants would jump out and dance across the table.
“Really? Because if anyone should know, it’s you,” I said.
Thor came back into the room, his huge jowls sopping wet, and shook his head, showering Monique with spittle.
“Ew!” She spun to face the dog, shaking her hands free of the slime. Her leather miniskirt didn’t shift with her and we all saw more of Monique than anyone should before breakfast.
Thor sat, innocently blinking at her. I was so proud.
“And that damn dog! Why do you let him drink from the fountain? It’s disgusting!” She ran her fingers through her hair.
“Well, to be fair, we let you drink from it.”
Monique stepped forward aggressively as if she were about to strike.
I raised one hand. “You better think long and hard before you make your next move, Lolita.”
Monique paused, shifted her eyes away.
Derek said, “Okay, that’s enough.”
I slammed my hand on the desk and both Gladys, the research assistant, and Iris jumped. “It is enough.” I pointed at Monique. “I am your boss, so you better damn well treat me with respect if you want to keep your job. This arrangement was supposed to be temporary, if you recall.”
Derek had hired Monique right before I left for Ireland and I warned both of them then that her sex column—don’t even get me started on what a stupid idea that was for our conservative town—would be on a trial basis only.
Unfortunately, I didn’t bank on our small hamlet being full of sex-starved geriatrics with adult toy collections and fetishes that would make Hugh Hefner blush. Needless to say, the column was gaining popularity.
> Monique slithered over to Derek, wrapped a hand around his shoulder. “Oh, I hardly think that will be a problem.”
I looked at her sternly as she smirked, her red lipstick thick as maraschino cherries. “What are you talking about?”
Monique feigned a “golly, gee, I don’t know” look and sucked on one finger. I was about five seconds away from chopping it off at the knuckle.
I shot darts at Derek with my stare. “What is she talking about?”
Derek straightened his shirt, fiddled with his cuffs, but wouldn’t look at me when he spoke. “I believe she means the new contract.”
Stunned didn’t even come close to what I was feeling at that moment. No, I think rage would better describe it.
“Office. Now.” I said through gritted teeth.
Derek protested. “We’re not done with the mee—”
I slid over the desk, grabbed my young partner by the ear, and dragged him through the door, down the hallway, and into the room with the title “Office of the Managing Editor” etched in the glass door.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” he stammered.
I slammed the door shut behind him and whirled around.
Derek’s chocolate-colored cheeks had a touch of red in them. “Damn, woman, how could you do that in front of the crew?” He rubbed his ear with his neatly manicured fingers. “That wasn’t very professional.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” I was flabbergasted. “I’m not being professional? You give that walking petri dish a contract without consulting me and I’m the one who’s disrespecting you?”
“It was when you were away. I forgot to tell you.” He kicked at a loose thread in the carpet.
“Are you sleeping with her?”
Derek looked up. “What? No.”
I tossed my hands in the air. “Then why? Why in the name of all that is sanitary would you give the person I most loathe in the world a permanent position?”
Obsidian Curse (A Stacy Justice Mystery Book Five) Page 2
