by Lena Loneson
Why hadn’t he told her he was leaving?
He was freezing. The towel wasn’t large enough. Not only had the water grown cold, but the air had too. Goose bumps rose on his arms. Eamon yanked the hotel robe from its hook, tearing the loop of fabric it had hung from. He wrapped it around himself, enveloping his body in the warmth. He was just tired, that was all. Too tired to store body heat.
Even if he wanted more from Nora, he would be gone soon. He didn’t intend ever to come back to Tullamore.
The sudden temperature drop in the bathroom reminded him of that moment in the lift when he’d heard Keelin’s voice, and he thought of walking along the beach, looking out at the ocean where she’d lost her life, thinking of their times together. It hadn’t been comforting. It had only reminded him of what he’d lost.
Perhaps he could find love again, but it wouldn’t be here. Not with a woman who was apparently destined to throw herself in the ocean.
Eamon laughed bitterly, the sound echoing eerily off the bathroom walls. Of course he’d only fall for women with a propensity for drowning.
He’d tell Nora tomorrow. He owed it to her to make it clear that he didn’t want more than sex.
A draft blew at his robe. He pulled it tighter. “What, the castle ghosts again? Haunting the shower now? Seems a bit mundane, doesn’t it?” He spoke out loud to the empty room. “It’s no business of yours who I choose not to fall in love with.” Eamon wouldn’t say he believed in ghosts, but certainly growing up in Ireland with parents as superstitious as his own had been meant he was never able to completely shut his mind to the thought.
The bathroom was so cold. Fine, the spirits didn’t want him making final decisions in the middle of the night. That was fair. He’d sleep and think about it in the morning.
Chapter Thirteen
The dream came upon him almost immediately. At first he thought it was another nightmare of Keelin drowning, because it began with only sound. He was accustomed to dreams of the wind howling, the waves roaring as he staggered on the deck of the boat they’d taken on that fateful sunset cruise.
But he wasn’t on a boat this time. In darkness, he heard the water, then he fell straight into it. The cold, roiling waves turned him upside down. He heard a woman calling his name, saw her shadowy figure beneath the waves—how could he hear her underwater? Dream logic, he supposed.
He reached out, and touched her hand. Eamon twined his fingers with hers, yelling at her to hold on, that he was coming for her. When he grasped her hand, he realized it was Nora, the webbing between her fingers a dead giveaway.
Her hand was ripped from his.
Chapter Fourteen
He woke to hear her screaming in his ears, but when he reached out to seek the woman in bed beside him, there was no one there. The room was pitch-black. No moonlight streamed in from the window and no flames flickered in the fireplace. Not even a bedside alarm clock gave him something to see by. He must’ve thrown his robe on top of it, blacking it out so he could get some sleep.
The room fell quiet again. The imaginary screaming stopped. He sat up, tossing the duvet aside and instantly regretted it. The room was freezing. Was he sure she hadn’t been there with him?
“Nora?” he called into the darkness.
It wasn’t her voice that replied.
Eamon.
It was the voice from the lift again. Keelin’s voice.
His earlier joking thoughts of castle ghosts didn’t seem so amusing now. If spirits were real, then had the dream been a prophecy? Was Nora going to drown in front of his eyes, just like Keelin?
He couldn’t let that happen.
Reaching out blindly, he touched the lamp on the bedside table, turning its switch. Pale-yellow light illuminated the room. Did he see a shadow darting out of the light, against the wall?
“Keelin?” he asked in barely a whisper, his lips moving in a quiet breath. He couldn’t quite speak her name out loud.
Follow.
It was her voice. Bell-like and young, as if they were still innocent newlyweds. As if the world hadn’t ripped her from him. Was it merely in his head? Or was she actually speaking to him, a spirit from beyond?
If it could happen anywhere, it would be at Tullamore. No one knew that better than he, collector of the castle’s tales.
“Follow you where?” It was a stupid question. There was only one way to go—out the door of his hotel room, unless he wanted to jump several stories out the window.
Follow. The voice was smaller this time, farther away.
“I’m coming, Keelin,” he said. It was her, there was no question of it. He knew her voice more intimately than anyone else’s, even his own family’s, his parents having died before Eamon had met his wife. Keelin had been everything to him. Though he made casual friends wherever he went, like Áiné, Tullamore’s owner, he’d never gotten too close to anyone. He knew all too well what it was like to lose everything.
He shoved his feet into slippers and walked to the hotel room door in his pajamas, turning the ornate knob slowly, carefully, wondering what he’d see on the other side.
What monsters did he expect? Nothing could scare him more than that dream—his nightmare was Nora drowning, not an attack by some mystical beast.
He padded out into the hall. It was the same hall he’d entered by, nothing unusual—Tullamore’s beautiful, simple, torch-inspired lamps on the walls, the lush rug and wallpaper in jewel tones.
Follow.
He closed the door behind him.
“Where are you taking me?”
There was no response. He walked cautiously down the hallway. “Keelin, can I see you? Will you show yourself?” If she could speak to him, why couldn’t he see her? What were the rules of ghosts, anyway? He picked up his pace.
He turned a corner and came to a fork in the hallway, not knowing which way to turn. “Where are you?”
Foll—
Her voice was so distant and quiet now that he didn’t even catch the end of the word. It came from the left. He took off down that branch of the hall at a dead sprint, knowing now where she was leading him—the place he’d first heard her voice, not recognizing it for what it was, as he’d been preoccupied with carrying a soaked Nora. The lift.
“I’m coming, Keelin.” He moved faster, sliding in his slippers on the carpeted floor as he sped down the hallway toward his goal. The down button on the lift glowed with a soft yellow light, waiting for him. He wrenched open the doors, hearing the gating squeal as it moved, and entered the lift.
It felt like passing into a balloon as it popped, some invisible membrane giving way before him. The air was electric, static slapping against his skin. The light-red hairs on his arms stood up, tingling. He ran a hand down one arm and tiny sparks flew between his fingers and the skin of his arm. He closed the lift door and the feeling grew stronger.
The air stank of ozone. The lift was smaller than he’d realized. He could stretch out his arms and touch both sides at the same time. The Victorian styling made it seem fragile. How up-to-date was the lift mechanism? Dread seeped through him. He sucked in a breath. Where was she? “Keelin?” he called, panting. “Keelin, I want to see you.”
I’m here. Her voice was stronger here, and confident. Eamon felt her presence. He could see her in his mind’s eye, her lips cherry red, painted for their wedding day, the white lace of her veil billowing around her face.
The white made him think of Nora, her cotton dress stark against the darkness of the sea. A cold hand gripped at his heart. How could he think of Nora now, when he was in the presence of the one he truly loved, the only one he would ever fully love? It was a betrayal.
“I’m sorry, Keelin.”
Eamon.
He’d forgotten the way she said his name. The way it escaped her mouth in a whisper. The warmth of the vowel sounds.
Eamon, my love. No apologies.
“But I need you to know. I love you. I don’t—” He was going to say, I don’t love her. Bu
t would he be telling the truth? It would be worse to lie to his wife.
Love is not finite. It is not selfish.
“I know.” But he didn’t know. What was she saying? That he could love her and Nora? It wasn’t possible. When he was with Nora, he forgot Keelin. He couldn’t do that again. “I won’t forget you.”
Never. Nor I you.
The static pricking at his skin grew stronger. It was overwhelming.
You did not forget me. You never will. You simply let me go for a moment. Let me go, Eamon.
“No.” That was impossible. Even if he fell for Nora completely, even if he married her—which was a ridiculous thing to fantasize about with a woman he’d just met—Eamon knew that on his wedding day Keelin would still be with him. He could let her go momentarily, but she would always be there.
Yes.
That was what she meant, he realized. Love is not finite.
You want her.
“Yes.” He let himself admit it out loud. Would it hurt Keelin? Did ghosts have emotions?
You love her.
“I don’t know. But I—” What did he feel for Nora? Terror at the idea of her being pulled beneath the waves. But also a sense of possibility. What did he feel for Nora? He wanted to find out. “I’d like to try.”
Remember your dream.
The lights in the lift went out. This time Eamon wasn’t afraid. He knew he wasn’t alone, just as he hadn’t been alone since he’d set foot on the grounds of Tullamore. He stood still, blinking into the darkness. Slowly the darkness lifted as if it were merely a black fog covering his eyes, an ash cloud like the one preventing him from flying home. But there was no color. He saw movement in shades of gray. And he wasn’t seeing the inside of the lift anymore, though he could still feel it under his feet and knew that he hadn’t moved. His vision was taking him down a hallway of Tullamore.
The hallway, in shades of gray, was different from the one he’d run through to get to the lift. It looked familiar but the lamps on the walls were an older art deco style. Looking down without actually moving his head, Eamon saw that the rugs were boldly patterned. His memory replaced the grays with color—greens and oranges, colors he remembered from twenty years before, when he had stayed there with Keelin on his wedding night, and when he’d visited Tullamore before their marriage, writing his first major travel article.
He turned the corner and saw a woman standing by a griffin sculpture that he’d seen the night before, outside The Cave. The beast was carved from stone. The woman wore her hair in a loose braid down to her waist. She was clad in a shawl and thick skirts and carried a bag slung over her shoulder that puffed out at the sides. Something about her seemed familiar, but he couldn’t see her face from here. She was poking at the griffin’s head, twisting something at its feet until the half-lion, half-bird creature turned. If this hadn’t been a dream—or a vision or whatever it was—he imagined it would have made a loud scraping sound, stone against stone. As it was, he heard only silence.
As she reached into her bag, the woman turned her head and he saw her face. At first he didn’t recognize her, she looked so different—young, her face unlined—and the lack of color in the scene gave him few clues. But the worry in her eyes was identical to that in the eyes of the woman he’d met in the pink cottage—she was Mary Catherine, Nora’s mother.
The object in her hands was black. Not just sapped of color, but black enough that he knew it would have been black in full Technicolor—like a raven’s wing or Nora’s hair.
It did resemble hair. Or rather, fur. A furred shawl?
Or an animal pelt. A seal’s pelt.
With a furtive glance behind her, the woman slipped the selkie’s pelt into a crevice in the griffin statue’s body. Even from halfway down the hall, Eamon could see that her hands were shaking. When she closed the secret compartment, she brushed her hands frantically on her skirts, as if trying to rub away any vestige of the pelt that could have been left on her.
Eamon took a step forward, wanting to speak to her. Could he speak to a woman in a vision shown to him by a ghost in a haunted lift? He didn’t know but he would try. He wanted to ask…what was the pelt? Was it truly from a selkie? Did such creatures as selkies exist? If so, what else? Griffins, as majestic and dangerous as the creature carved in stone before him?
Had the pelt belonged to Nora’s father?
He opened his mouth. No sound came out. When he blinked, his vision exploded into color—the gray walls, the griffin sculpture, the monochrome woman were all gone. He was standing in the lift once more. Yellow light streamed from overhead. The silver caging on the doors reflected his shocked face back at him—glimpses of burnt-orange hair, the red plaid pajama bottoms and black T-shirt he’d worn to bed.
“Keelin?” His tongue was dry in his mouth. He croaked out her name again. “Keelin?” He swished spit around in his mouth, trying to moisten it. “What did you show me, Keelin?”
She didn’t respond.
Eamon ran a hand down his bare arm. The hairs no longer stood on end. The air smelled vaguely stale, as enclosed spaces like the lift were wont to do. It didn’t crackle with static.
She was gone. Was this the last time he would speak to his wife?
He shook his head. He wouldn’t think like that. Here at Tullamore, it seemed as if anything were possible. Elevators were haunted, mysterious women appeared on the beach and the pelts of magical creatures were secreted in stone statues.
He pressed the button for the basement, letting the lift take him down. When the doors opened, he spoke quietly. “I love you.” He didn’t look back.
The hallway he stepped into was present-day Tullamore once more, but similar enough to the one in his…vision? Flashback? Was it still called a flashback if it wasn’t his own memory? He took the turns confidently with no backtracking or stumbling in his slippers, passing no one this late at night. Even The Cave would be closed.
The griffin statue appeared just as he remembered it from his vision, the gray stone cool beneath his hand. He traced its beak with his fingers, running them up and across the delicate feathers carved on its head and wings. The beast’s hindquarters were those of a lion, with its tail ending in a tuft. The sculpture had been put together in sections, and he could see the lines where the different pieces joined together.
How long had it been here? Was the griffin part of the original castle, with the secret compartment used for hundreds of years? How had Mary Catherine known it was there? Eamon supposed there must be a note in a history book somewhere. Or perhaps he was wrong and the piece was new, something commissioned when the castle had reopened as a hotel. He would have to ask Áiné.
He moved his hands carefully, twisting the griffin’s head and sliding its body aside to reach the secrets hidden within. The stone moved ponderously but more smoothly than he’d guessed from the vision. Stone scraped against stone but it was quieter than he’d imagined.
It was too dark to see into the hidden compartment. Too bad he hadn’t brought a flashlight. Ghosts, it seemed, weren’t big on forewarning. Would the pelt still be there? Had it ever been there in the first place? He was sure the encounter with Keelin in the lift had been real, that she had been real, but the vision itself could have been a dream or hallucination.
He was stalling. Okay. On the count of three, he would reach his hand into the dark, cavernous hole in the ancient sculpture.
Nah, he’d lose his nerve while counting. Before he could fully think it through, Eamon plunged his hand into the griffin. Ouch. His knuckles scraped against the stone. He reached in farther, then met softness. Fur.
A grin leaped unbidden to his mouth. It was real! He wrapped his fingers around the fur and tugged. It came out of the sculpture in his hand. He shook the dust from the fur, gray clumps of it tumbling from the pelt, floating softly through the air. He sneezed.
The fur was as black as he’d imagined and softer than he could have possibly guessed. It was beautiful. Eamon couldn’t stop smil
ing, the wonder as he touched it growing, warming the depths of his gut.
It was real. That meant everything was real—the stories his parents had told him when he was a young lad, Keelin’s presence, her soul still living after death and encouraging him to live his life with Nora. Magic, mystery, myth—everything he’d written about Tullamore and the other places he’d visited over the decades.
He thought back to the Tullamore-specific stories—werewolves and djinns, faeries and time travel, ghosts and vampires. Were they all real?
Selkies. The stories about Nora were true. She wasn’t suicidal. She wasn’t crazy. She had selkie blood in her veins and the sea was calling her home. The woman he was falling for was as magical as the rest of it.
He was holding an honest-to-goodness selkie pelt in his hands. Had it belonged to Nora’s father? Had Mary Catherine hidden it to keep him with her, chained to shore by his inability to swim home? Eamon frowned. If he’d never found his pelt, then where had he gone? Drowned?
That didn’t bode well for Nora. He didn’t like that thought at all.
He needed to know more. His information about selkies and the Connelly family had come from half-drunk villagers at the pub. They’d been helpful, but rumor shouldn’t be trusted.
He yawned, his jaw popping. Bed was sadly not on the radar now. A quick stop back in his room to grab his netbook computer, then a visit to the hotel’s library would yield some answers, he hoped. He knew from research earlier in the week that it was chock-full of books of the history of Donegal County and more arcane tomes detailing stories of Irish myth and magic.
Eamon glanced down at the sculpture. It had closed on its own, the cold gray stone hiding any evidence of secrets.
Chapter Fifteen
Tullamore library’s window gave him the perfect view of a gorgeous orange sunrise. He was too tired to enjoy it. Eamon sat slumped in an oversized armchair, musty books with yellowing pages that stank of old cheese piled on the wooden table in front of him.
