Emerald Isle (A Stacy Justice Mystery)

by Annino, Barbra

  “There’s been a breach. One of the treasures is missing.”

  Birdie couldn’t believe her ears. “Surely you don’t mean what I think you mean.”

  Aedon said, “Yes, Birdie. One of the four treasures. I don’t have to tell you how serious this is. Especially being so close to Samhain.”

  And my daughter’s hearing.

  “Which one is gone?”

  Aedon said, “Best not to discuss it here. Go home and get on a secure line. I will call back.”

  With that, Aedon faded from view and the young cashier’s face was restored. He stood there blinking for a moment, looked around as if he couldn’t recall where he was. Birdie smiled at him and commented on the weather, and the boy shook off his stunned state. He rang up the groceries in silence. Birdie rushed to the parking lot, piled her purchases into the car, and sped off toward the house, hoping upon hope that the missing relic wouldn’t impact her daughter’s return.

  Chapter 4

  I took Thor for a long walk on a hiking trail before dropping him back at the cottage. I didn’t have time to look up “Web of Weird” in the Blessed Book, but I made a to-do list and scribbled it on there along with cleanse sword before rituals and write dedication spell. All that had to wait, though, because I had no intention of being late for my pampering date with Cinnamon.

  I slid into a parking spot on Main Street, eight minutes to eleven. The spa was playing soft flute music filtered through the sound of lapping waves as I entered. The woman who greeted me wore a brown smock and peach lipstick. She handed me a form to fill out and escorted me into a dimly lit room that smelled like lavender and grapefruit. A round table filled with bowls of fresh fruit, spring water, carafes, and assorted teas sat to my left, and two lush, vine-printed chairs stood to my right. The woman told me to make myself comfortable as I waited for my cousin.

  Cinnamon arrived a few minutes later, while I was sipping a cup of steaming peppermint tea. She was only four months pregnant, so there wasn’t a visible bump to her belly, but her face glowed with the aura of motherhood. She held a small gold and blue–wrapped package tied with a glittery ribbon as she came into the room. I stood up to hug her, and she handed me the box.

  “What’s this?” I asked. It was light as air.

  “That’s from Gramps. I stopped by his place this morning, and he said he wasn’t sure if he was going to make your dinner tonight. He wanted to be sure you got your present.”

  “But he already gave me my present.”

  A couple of weeks ago, Gramps presented all of us—Cinnamon, Birdie, Lolly, Fiona, and me—with the newest cell phones. He’d gotten us a family plan and all the phones were connected to each other, complete with the latest technology, including face-to-face chat.

  “I think that was just a Gramps thing. You know how he likes to do for us, especially when it comes to gadgets. This”—she tapped the box—“is just for you.”

  “Must be the heirloom my father mentioned in his note.”

  A few months back, I had discovered a note written by my father talking about some mysterious family heirloom I was to open my thirtieth year. It was kept in a lockbox, along with some incriminating papers my father had gone to great lengths to hide before his death in order to protect me. I had turned the box over to the police—or, rather, the chief of police, Leo. The papers contained key evidence in a murder investigation. Leo told me about the gift inside the box. My father had written in the note that he planned to give it to Gramps for safekeeping, but he was killed before he got the chance. So I asked Leo to do just that.

  There was a card fastened to the ribbon. I flipped it open. It read, in a script I did not recognize: For Stacy Justice. When the time is right.

  I put the present inside my coat pocket and told Cinnamon I’d open it later. Then we each sank into an oversized chair and waited for our day of pampering to begin.

  Birdie sideswiped a mailbox halfway from the grocery store to her house. She wasn’t a woman to run from her mistakes, but she didn’t have time to make restitution at the moment.

  Her brain fired off thoughts in rapid succession. Which of the four treasures gifted by the Tuatha Dé Danann was missing? Any of them would spell absolute disaster, not only for her people, but for the entire globe, should it be obtained by one whose heart was less than honorable. All of them had great power to protect, sustain, and defend, but also to destroy.

  Surely it wasn’t the Stone of Destiny. That was standing proud at Tara, and it hadn’t spoken to a king in years.

  Could it be the Spear of Victory, which promised conquest for any warrior who wielded it? Or was it the Sword of Light, from which no enemy could flee?

  Birdie skidded her car into the driveway, threw it into park, and didn’t bother to collect the bags as she hopped from the vehicle. She charged up the steps and twisted the antique handle, but it was locked. She rang the bell and pounded on the door, and after a moment, her older sister, Lolly, answered.

  Lolly’s lipstick was a golden coral, and she had used it on her cheeks, eyelids, chin, and nose. She blinked twice and said, “No vacancies.” Then she slammed the door and locked it.

  Birdie cursed herself for not spiking her sister’s tea at breakfast. She ran around to the back door, found the spare key beneath the gargoyle, and slipped into the kitchen.

  “Sisters!” She was out of breath by then. She leaned against the counter for a rest before she called them again.

  “Sisters!”

  She could smell a cake baking in the oven; the aroma of tart apples and warm allspice lingered near the stove. The Green Man mask was on the apothecary table, already anointed from the looks of it for the ceremony this afternoon. It was common to call on the spirit of the forest to thank him for the abundance of the harvest and wish him a peaceful slumber as the earth crept into hibernation for the winter.

  Birdie wondered, given the conversation she’d just had, if they would have time to perform the traditional rituals the Geraghtys usually carried out on Mabon.

  The back door opened a moment later, and Fiona stepped through the threshold, a basket of tomatoes and fresh herbs on her arm. She stopped short when she saw Birdie and said, “Oh, my. Birdie, are you all right? You look as if you’ve been in a footrace.”

  Fiona never had that problem. The middle Geraghty Girl always looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. It was her most ethereal gift.

  “Something has happened,” Birdie said. “We need a strong elixir for Lolly. She must be at her sharpest.”

  Fiona didn’t need to be told twice. She reached into the cupboard for a bottle of twelve-year-aged Jameson Reserve—the most powerful medicine to bring Lolly back to reality—and poured a shot.

  Birdie called for her older sister, and Lolly came shuffling into the kitchen, her tangerine ball gown on backward.

  “Take care of Lolly and then meet me in my quarters,” Birdie told Fiona.

  Birdie rushed up the back stairs and into her bedroom. She went straight to the scrying mirror. It was flashing, indicating three calls had been missed. While the mirror recorded all conversations, it was not equipped to retain messages. Birdie wondered if that technology existed in newer models. She went to her closet and pulled out the surprise she had made for her granddaughter—a small broom fashioned from the same twigs and branches as the first one Birdie herself had made. Which meant it also had materials from her mother’s broom, her grandmother’s, and her great-grandmother’s. All three living Geraghty Girls had charged the piece she held in her hands, but it also held the power of centuries of witches.

  It was to be a special surprise—the only surprise of the day—for Anastasia.

  But the gods so often have other plans.

  Fiona and a freshly coiffed Lolly came into Birdie’s bedroom then and shut the door behind them, both looking concerned.

  Fiona said, “Birdie, what’s happened? What is it?”

  Birdie paced as she spoke. “Aedon O’Neil contact
ed me. He said that one of the treasures is missing.”

  Fiona gasped.

  Lolly sat on Birdie’s bed.

  “That is all I know for now. I’m about to call him.” She looked from Lolly to Fiona. “Are you ready?”

  Fiona said, “Are you? There’s a lot of history between you two. Should we leave?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That was a lifetime ago.” Birdie shifted her mirror forty-five degrees to the right, the angle programmed to dial Aedon’s mirror directly. Then she waited.

  Soon, the mirror sparked and sputtered, and in a flash of blinding light, Aedon O’Neil’s handsome face appeared. He was seated at a long, carved table, surrounded by the rest of the council. Birdie could tell by the stonework, the oil paintings, and the light fixtures that they were in the forum room of the castle.

  “Birdie, thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Now, as I mentioned before, one of the four hallows gifted to Ireland by the Tuatha Dé Danann has gone missing, specifically, the Cauldron of Bounty. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what happened the last time the cauldron was stolen.”

  Indeed, Birdie needed no reminding. The Great Famine was the reason her family had been forced to leave the Old World and come to America. So many of her people had suffered. Countless lives lost.

  “Of course not.”

  Aedon nodded. “With the new year approaching and the veil so close to the transparent time, we feel it is of the utmost importance the cauldron be retrieved before Samhain.”

  Samhain, the day when this world and the Otherworld meet. The cauldron had a dual power and was also known as the Cauldron of Rebirth. In the early times, it had been a great source of resurrection and had breathed new life into many a fallen warrior.

  In these times, that power could be very, very dangerous in the wrong hands.

  “Do you suspect dark arts at play?” Birdie asked.

  Aedon said, “Nothing is off the table at this point. We simply don’t know.” He looked at his council members briefly before returning to face Birdie. “We’re contacting you, Birdie, because of the splendid job your granddaughter did in protecting the secret of the Book of Ballymote. We’ll be calling on the Warrior and the Guardian as well.”

  Birdie kept her poker face, but inside, she was screaming. Not a quest right now. Not with her daughter’s hearing so close.

  “I have long known that she was the Seeker of Justice, despite protests of her nomination,” Birdie said.

  Aedon flicked his eyes to the left. To someone offscreen. “Yes, well, she certainly proved she has all the makings of a Seeker, but a true Seeker shall not be declared until he or she has reached full power, and even then, only on the old soil. It isn’t as simple as confirming a Guardian or Warrior. There is much more power at stake where a Seeker is concerned.”

  Birdie shot a fiery look at her old friend. “She was declared, Aedon, months past, for the very task you mentioned not a fairy’s breath ago.”

  “You and I both know that was a desperate, temporary situation. But she can still prove to be the Seeker. All she has to do is recover the cauldron. I understand her birthday is this very day. Has she performed a dedication?”

  “Tonight she will.”

  “Good. And with twenty-nine years of your training, I’m sure, she’s more than prepared. We would like her to leave as soon as possible.” Aedon smiled.

  Birdie didn’t flinch. “She will recover the cauldron, Aedon, on one condition.”

  Aedon looked at Birdie. “We don’t make deals, Birdie.”

  “You will if you want the cauldron back.”

  Aedon sighed. “Always so stubborn. Go on.”

  “Upon its return, you release my daughter and officially coronate my granddaughter as the Seeker of the age.”

  Aedon looked around the table. There seemed to be no objections. “All in favor, say aye.”

  Birdie heard several ayes.

  “Opposed?”

  “Nay.”

  Aedon looked past the screen to someone out of the camera’s eye.

  Birdie didn’t have to see her. She’d know that icy voice anywhere.

  “What is your protest, Tallulah?” Aedon asked.

  “Stacy Justice is no more Seeker than I am Pirate Queen,” Tallulah said.

  That slithering snake. Birdie cleared her throat. “Aedon, I have the right to face the protestor.”

  Aedon’s mirror shifted, and Tabby’s face came into the camera’s trajectory. She looked like a broken vase glued back together poorly. She was wearing a red satin hat the size of a toboggan.

  “My grandson, too, has all the makings of a Seeker,” Tallulah said. “I assert that he be allowed to search for the treasure as well. Whoever recovers it first shall be known as the true Seeker.”

  Birdie’s anger took control of her voice. “You’re on, Tabby.”

  Aedon looked at Birdie. “This is unusual, but perhaps an effective strategy.”

  He consulted with the rest of the council, and Birdie saw a sea of heads bob up and down. Her adrenaline had dissipated some, but she didn’t dare waver. She was a Geraghty, after all. And Geraghtys showed no fear.

  As the council agreed that two would be better than one for this mission, and Aedon’s gavel slammed against the oak surface of the table, Tallulah shot Birdie a sinister smile.

  Birdie spun the frame and cut the connection. She stood there, staring at the black mirror for a heartbeat or two.

  Silently, she asked, Dear Danu, what have I done?

  Chapter 5

  Birdie turned to face her sisters.

  Lolly simply stared at her, mouth agape, but Fiona was incensed. She crossed over to Birdie and said, “Do you have any idea what you have done?”

  Birdie straightened out her skirt. She couldn’t turn back now. “I have secured my daughter’s freedom.”

  “At what cost, Brighid?”

  Fiona never addressed Birdie by her full name, and it made her blanch.

  “Stacy’s training is not complete. She isn’t ready,” Fiona said.

  Birdie said, “All she needs is to rededicate herself. The rest will fall into place.”

  Fiona shook her head. “No, Birdie. I respect your role as the matriarch of this family, but you have gone too far this time. You must call Aedon back and say it cannot be done. Tell him that she hasn’t been training for twenty-nine years. She hasn’t even been training half the years he thinks she has! He will understand.”

  Birdie knew Fiona had a point. A part of her wanted to retract her declaration, but another part—the slice of her soul that had known from the moment she laid eyes on her that Anastasia was born for bigger things, that the girl was part of something more important than all of them—couldn’t leave the fate of the cauldron in anyone else’s hands.

  “And what if she doesn’t go, Fiona, then what? The cauldron could be lost to the ages if the only one seeking it is that idiot grandson of Tallulah’s. And then what will become of Ireland? Of the world?”

  Fiona planted her hands on her curvy hips and said, “Is that what this is about? Tallulah and that ridiculous feud? Release it, Birdie. It was a lifetime ago.”

  Birdie shouted, “This has nothing to do with what happened at the Academy.”

  “Of course it does. You want to live through your granddaughter, Brighid. You’re not thinking of the bigger picture,” Fiona fired back.

  Birdie slammed her hand on her desk. “That is all I’m thinking of. I want my girls back, both of them, safe and sound. Can’t you understand that?”

  “And in your desperate desire to reunite your family, you have put both of their lives in danger, Sister. What happens if the girl fails? Do you know what the council will do if you don’t live up to your end of the deal? They may not set her mother free. And she will only blame herself!”

  “Geraghtys do not fail,” Birdie said.

  “You did,” Fiona shot back.

  The two sisters stood face-to-face, heat radiating off
them in angry waves.

  Behind them, Lolly bellowed, “Enough of this!”

  Birdie and Fiona turned to face Lolly.

  She said, “I will not have this bickering today of all days. You are upsetting the woodland sprites and the earth deities. My great-niece is about to celebrate a very special birthday, and I won’t have the two of you spoiling it with your nonsense. I am still the oldest in this family, and I can knock you both on your keisters.” Lolly wagged a finger from Birdie to Fiona.

  They each stepped back a foot.

  “Now sit,” Lolly ordered.

  Birdie sat at her desk, and Fiona took a chair near the door.

  “This is what’s going to happen.” Lolly paced as she spoke. “The three of us are going to perform all the rituals and spells for the holiday alone. We are going to tell Stacy that we thought she could utilize the extra time to prepare her spell and that she needn’t arrive until just before dinner, whereupon I will present her with the beautiful maiden’s dress I fashioned. Then we are all going to sit down and have a lovely dinner with Stacy and her friends. After the dinner guests have gone, Stacy will perform her dedication spell, and only then will we tell her what the council has proposed.”

  Birdie and Fiona exchanged a glance.

  “And then what?” Fiona asked.

  Lolly crossed her arms. “And then we let the girl decide.”

  Five hours later, I was plucked, painted, washed, dried, and styled. I felt absolutely amazing, but I was also sleepy. I kissed Cinnamon good-bye, thanked her for the much-needed gift, and hopped in the car to go home.

  Thor was waiting by the door when I opened it. He ran out to accost the shrubs and I went to grab the Blessed Book. I set it on the counter next to my list and flipped through the pages, but couldn’t find anything on “Web of Weird.”

  My phone signaled there were messages waiting, so I hit the button to retrieve them while still turning the pages of the book.

  There was a “happy birthday” voice mail from my sweetheart, Chance, with a promise to be on time for dinner, a message from Lolly telling me that she and her sisters would handle the traditional festivities, and that I should just arrive at five thirty to open gifts (yes! I really didn’t want to ruin my manicure by digging in the garden), and an apology from Gramps explaining that he had a business dinner he couldn’t postpone and asking if he could take me out for breakfast in the morning.