HauntingBeauty







Chapter Thirty-six


THE door slammed behind Sean, leaving Danni standing alone in the tiny cottage. Alone again, she thought. Her destiny.
She wanted to go after him, to beg him to understand, to come back and spend the last hours they had together. But she knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. Because she didn’t want these to be their last hours. And she wasn’t going to stand by while fate stole her hopes and dreams once more.
She didn’t know what had catapulted her to this time and place. Perhaps it was the Book of Fennore. Perhaps it was Danni. Whatever the reason, she refused to waste the chance to make a difference. To make everything different. If Colleen could be trusted, she’d made this journey before, but hadn’t managed to change the course of history on her previous attempts. She refused to fail again.
The twins said the Book was gone. That it moved, and a part of her suspected that the motion they sensed was actually Danni whisking it through time.
There was no doubt in Danni’s mind her father had been using it before then. His sudden wealth . . . the strange look in his eyes . . . the tension she sensed when he was near . . . the fear she’d seen in her mother. How many times had he put his hands on that sinister black cover and wielded its power? How many pieces of his soul had he surrendered to it? A handful? Or all of it? Was there anything left of the man Cathán had been before the Book of Fennore had called him? Before it began whispering in his ear as it had with Danni and Sean tonight?
Danni was certain it had been Cathán she’d seen in Arizona, Cathán she’d seen at Fia’s house in the vision, when she’d watched Edel use the Book. And she’d seen him today, when she’d gone for the Book herself. Somehow he’d figured out how to travel through time. He’d done intentionally what Danni and Sean had done by accident. She shouldn’t be so surprised—he shared the same blood that made her unique, didn’t he?
She wished she understood how the Book worked or how history was impacted by it. She’d traveled back in time and stolen it, but returned to a world much as it had been when she’d left it. She and Sean were still here in Ballyfionúir, and her memories were unaltered. The change she’d made in the past by taking the Book of Fennore didn’t appear to have rippled forward with any significance.
What did that mean where her father was concerned? It stood to reason that he “acquired” the Book of Fennore sometime after the night she’d seen Edel use it. But today she’d gone back to a point before that and stolen it. That meant it wouldn’t be there later, when he went for it himself . . . didn’t it? Would the impact of what she’d done only come into play from this point forward? She didn’t know, couldn’t wrap her head around it at all. Couldn’t even conceive how she’d reached a place where she was thinking about the abstract concept of changing the past.
However it worked, Cathán had seen her at Edel’s house, and for all his faults, Danni didn’t think he was a stupid man. He would make the connection and know that Danni had the Book of Fennore. Perhaps the Book itself had told him.
She’d brought the Book here, not realizing what she’d invited into her home. Now that she knew, she understood that she couldn’t use it near anyone she loved. She couldn’t trust it, couldn’t trust herself around it. What she needed to do now was get back to the cavern and use the Book there, before her father could stop her.
As frightening as the thought of it was, Danni was determined to go through with it. She would force herself to hold it and pray with all of her heart for salvation—for Sean, for her mother and brother, for herself. She would plead with that voice in her head, bargain her life if that’s what it took.
Danni swallowed hard, remembering the vision, with the blood that had seeped out of the Book and how when Edel touched the cover, it had oozed like sludge, sucking Edel’s hand deep into its midst.

Don’t think about it.

But she couldn’t stop the memory of the Book’s dark and terrifying odor, the strange, jarring hum she’d felt to her bones, or the blood that seeped from its open pages.
None of it mattered, though. She would use it to change the events of this night, at any cost.