HauntingBeauty







Chapter Nineteen

“WHY should he care who my fucking father is?” Sean snarled as they walked away. “What did he say to you? Do I need to go back and teach him some manners?”
“No,” Danni said hastily, catching the anger glinting in Sean’s eyes. “He was very polite and nice.”
Sean made a derogatory sound. He looked tired and dirty, and his face was flushed from the wind and sun, though there’d been a layer of clouds for most of the day. She wondered at that—at his burning under the watery rays. He’d been a spirit until yesterday morning and his skin hadn’t seen the sun since . . .
It boggled her mind, thinking of that, of them really being here, twenty years ago. Meeting themselves in a parallel time before their lives would be changed forever. It was the stuff of movies and science fiction novels.
“I’m to believe he didn’t say a thing about me, then?”
“He wanted to know how long we’d been married.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But earlier when Fia told him my last name, he just got . . . curious I guess. It seemed to set him off. Are there bad feelings between your family and his . . . mine?”
Sean glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “You could say that.”
“But you said my father sent you to get me.”
“I never did.”
“You certainly implied it, and you know that’s what I thought. That’s as good as a lie.” When Sean didn’t answer, only continued to walk with his eyes staring stiffly at the ground, Danni asked quietly, “Is anything you told me true?”
He stopped in the middle of the path and faced her, taking her shoulders roughly between his big hands. “I came for you,” he said, but his tone made it clear he wasn’t happy about it. “That much was true.”
She swallowed hard, feeling anger and betrayal mix into her confusion. A part of her reasoned that Sean couldn’t be expected to tell the whole truth about why he came to her house that morning. Chances were good that he didn’t know himself.
But she couldn’t deal with the lies—not from Sean. They were in this together, and she needed to know that she could trust him. Depend on him.

He’s a ghost, Danni. And your being here is impossible . . .

She shook her head. Impossible had become quite the norm lately.
“I came for you,” he repeated, this time with less anger.
The grip he had on her shoulders eased, and his fingers moved in a gentle caress. It would be easy to let it go, to lean against the solid warmth of his broad chest, let those strong arms wrap around her. But Danni knew better than anyone that easy rarely meant good.
She pulled out of his hands and started walking again. “Well, next time you come for someone, make it someone else,” she retorted over her shoulder.
He mumbled a response she didn’t have to hear to understand. He was pissed off again. Well, so was she. Fueled by her righteous anger, she kept walking. After a moment, he fell in step beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have been more honest about why I wanted you to come home. The years after your mother disappeared with you and your bother were not . . . pleasant. Most people loved Fia and hated my father for what they thought he’d done. Since he wasn’t around to face them, I became his stand-in.”
“But you didn’t do anything. And you were just a boy.”
“A surly one with a pissy outlook on life. It wasn’t hard to hate me, too.”
Danni looked at him from the corner of her eye, knowing this must have been how he’d interpreted his existence in Ballyfionúir after his death. Friends and neighbors had turned their backs to him, not because they hated him, but because they couldn’t see him. And the few that sensed his presence mostly feared him. What a sad and lonely existence it must have been for him. He didn’t know he was a spirit; he only knew that he was outcast.
Not for the first time she wondered what he would say, what he would do if she were to give up her own secrets and tell him the truth. Would he believe her if she told him he was a ghost—or at least had been a ghost when he’d shown up on her doorstep? Of course not. But what if he did believe her? What if telling him pushed him to accept that he was dead? What if all he needed was to acknowledge the fact to make the transition from spirit to the beyond? Would he still be here with her, or would he simply vanish like a drop of water into an ocean? There was no way to know, and she was too much of a coward to risk it. To risk him leaving her here, alone.
She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “It’s been a long day,” she said.
“Aye, that it has,” he agreed, accepting her peace offering with a tight smile.
“Did you learn anything? Any clues about how we got here?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I spent the day with my father who’s been dead for twenty years. I learned that I was a stupid boy.”
She waited for him to say more about that, but he didn’t. He just kept walking, hands shoved in his pockets now, eyes turned to the ground beneath his feet.
“What about you?” he asked, not looking up. “Did you learn anything?”
“Maybe,” she said. “What do you know about the Book of Fennore?”
That did draw his attention. He finally glanced up, surprised. “No more than anyone knows of it.”
“Very enlightening,” she said, feeling her frustration rise again. “Could you be a little more forthcoming?”
He let out an exasperated breath. “It’s a legend. No one’s ever seen it, but that doesn’t stop people from believing in it all the same. I would guess the same people believe in leprechauns as well.”
“And probably time travel, too?” she said sweetly.
He gave a conceding shrug. “You have a point. Why are you bringing it up? What do you know of it?”
“It was supposed to have powers. Magical powers,” she said.
“So do fairies, if it’s fantasy you’re wanting.”
“I don’t appreciate the sarcasm, Sean. Something brought us here and it wasn’t a 747. We are a walking paradox right now. You get that? You had breakfast with yourself, remember. If you have a reasonable explanation for how that could happen, I’m all ears.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t think so,” she muttered.
“What is it you’re thinking about the Book of Fennore?” he asked.
She thought of quipping back with his own “no more than anyone else,” but managed to refrain. She didn’t want to fight—she was too tired for it. But her temper didn’t seem to understand that.
“Well, I think it’s real, for one.” She waited for him to deny it, but he didn’t.
Instead he gave a sharp nod and reluctantly said, “When I was a boy, I heard it had been found.”
“Here?”
He nodded. “There were rumors about it the night you disappeared.”
“I read that on the Internet. Do you believe it?”
“It’s not something I ever wanted to believe. If it is real, it’s a terrible thing, the Book. Worse than any evil ever born. We grew up fearing it—fearing whoever might use it, like a boogeyman.”
Danni swallowed and looked away. “When I mentioned it to my . . . to Fia she acted . . . strange. Not frightened as much as . . . uneasy. I don’t know how to explain it. But I thought, if it wasn’t a myth—if it really existed, this would be the place for it, right? This is where the legend put it, in Ballyfionúir. And if it was here before then . . .”
“Then what?”
“Well then, maybe it had something to do with us being here now. I know it sounds nuts, but this is nuts, Sean, and we’re not going to find a rational explanation for how we just lived through a day that happened twenty years ago.”
“All right, so say it is true and we’re here because of the Book of Fennore. What then? Are you thinking we might find it?”
She shot him a look, seeking out any sign of mockery in his eyes. He held his hands up. “I swear, an honest question is all it is. You want to find it and use it, is that the way of it?”
“Maybe.”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” he said.
“Especially when we have so many other choices.”
“Even if we have no other choices.”
His tone was so serious she glanced at him and stumbled. He caught her arm, keeping her from falling. When she tried to pull away, he kept his hand on her, holding her still.
“For every tale told about the Book of Fennore, there is a lesson of doom surrounding it. For every voice that says it’s just a myth, there is the fear that it’s real. Do I believe it exists? Yes. Does it scare me to say it? More than you know. Can you understand that, Danni?”
She nodded.
“It cannot be used.”
She knew that, too. She’d seen it, hadn’t she? The black seeping into Edel’s eyes, turning them into sparkling pits of pitch. Whatever had happened to her when she’d touched the Book, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t right. And it most certainly wasn’t natural.
“What if it’s been used already, Sean? What if it brought us here?”
He didn’t answer, but his face paled and his grip on her arm tightened.
“I get that it’s not a good thing, Sean. But if you’re thinking we should just sit around and wait to see if it plans to send us back, then I have to tell you, I’m not thrilled with that plan.”
“It cannot be used,” he repeated, stoically. He took a deep breath, released her arm. The chilly air rushed in where his warmth had been, and goose bumps traveled over her skin.
“We could argue about it all day,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter, does it, when neither of us knows where it is anyway. The only way we’d find it is if it wanted us to. That’s what the legends say. It chooses you, not the other way around. You can look for it all you want, but I for one would rather be a living paradox than a tool for the Book of Fennore.”
The hard cold tone made Danni shiver. She rubbed her arms and nodded. Taking this as agreement, Sean started walking again. Slowly Danni followed.
“My fa—Niall tells me there’s a cottage that Nana has rented for us,” he said, shortening his stride to hers.
“How do you think she knew we were coming?” Danni asked.
“The woman is a mystery. She always has been. Better to ask the sun why it rises.”
“My necklace,” Danni said. “Where did she get it?”
He gave her another sideways glance. “Why?”
“My . . . father said it was old.”
“I told you it was a family heirloom. That generally means old.”
“You said it was a charm. To keep me safe. Safe from what, Sean? That one you didn’t answer.”
And he didn’t answer now. Looking straight ahead, he kept walking.
“Okay, how about this one. If it’s a family heirloom meant for me, why did your grandmother have it?”
“I’ve no idea.”
She watched him, looking for a sign of another lie, but he was either a great actor, or he really didn’t know. “Do you know what it is, this charm?”
He glanced at where it rested against her chest and then away. “The Spiral of Life,” he said.
Perhaps it was the bland tone of his deep and smoky voice or maybe it was the chill breeze, but the words hit her with a physical force. Her father had said life, death, and rebirth, and she’d thought it interesting. But walking beside Sean, Spiral of Life took on a whole new meaning. She swallowed hard. “Colleen knew we were coming,” she said, returning to the topic.
“Aye.”
“Do you think she knows more than that? Like what happens next?”
“Do you?” he asked, looking at her from the corner of his eye.
She shrugged, but she felt guilt crowding in. She’d blasted him for lying, yet wasn’t she doing the same? Withholding information because she was scared of being left alone?
“I don’t know the first thing about what your grandmother does or doesn’t know.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” he responded flatly. He stopped, pulling her to a halt as well. “I’m asking, do you know what happens next?”
“How could I?” she asked.
She felt his gaze on her, but kept her face averted, refusing to let him see deeper than the surface. He’d asked her the same question last night, in her kitchen, before . . . before they’d fallen through a hole in time. But she didn’t know what happened next, only that it ended with Sean and his father dead and Danni’s family shattered.
She lifted her chin and steeled herself to meet his eyes, presented a blank expression she could only hope hid the turmoil behind it. Sean continued to stare, and she saw something move in his steady look. A doubt, a suspicion.
“Why did your grandmother send you to get me?” Danni asked softly, deflecting those prying sea green eyes with a counterattack.
He let out a deep, harsh breath. “I can’t tell you the why of it, Danni. I don’t know it myself.”
“Does it have to do with Niall? With your father?”
It was a shot in the dark, but it hit. Sean shoved his hands back in his pockets and scowled.
“Does it, Sean?”
“Why should it?”
“I don’t know . . . it’s just a feeling. You—I mean, Michael—I see how you used to act around your father. When you were young, you looked at him like you hated him and it seems . . . more serious than just teenage angst. Like you had a reason. I know what you said about how you were treated after Niall killed himself, but that hasn’t happened yet—I mean, not in this time we’re in now.”
Sean didn’t say anything, but he held himself stiff and away.
“Talk to me, Sean. Help me understand what’s going on here.”
He let out a pent-up breath, shook his head as if trying to deny what needed to be said. Then, finally, he spoke. “Do you know why—when your mother disappeared with you and your brother—do you know why the people of Ballyfionúir were so quick to say it was murder and so eager to condemn my father, a fisherman who’d lived here peacefully his entire life?”
“I thought it was because my father saw him do it. . . .”
“Sure and they’d believe a man who’s never done an honest day’s work over one of their own?”
“But the evidence . . .”
“Not enough to convict him, dead or no. They’d have done it if they could.”
“Then why?”
“Because they all thought he’d gotten away with it once before—when he killed my mother. He’d already taken the life of his own wife. It was barely a stretch to think of him taking another man’s.”
“Your father killed . . . ?”
“Yes, it’s what I’m telling you.” In his anger, in his grief, emotion dragged out his lilting words into a long, painful softening of consonants and sharpening of vowels. “You want to know why I hated him at fourteen? Well, there is your answer. He killed my mother when I was nine. I saw him do it with my own eyes, though even now I can’t tell you how it happened. They called it an accident. Maybe it was—I don’t fucking know. But who do you think suffers for a thing Danni? Not just him who did the deed. Not just him. If my grandmother brought us here—which I don’t know to be the way of it—but if she did her reason wouldn’t have been my father.”
Danni stared into Sean’s eyes, looked into a sea of churning and conflicting hurts and rages, confused memories and blurred facts. She saw in that tempest the young child who wanted to believe in his father, and she saw the grown Sean, who’d lived his life as a ghost because of the same man. It was tearing him apart, the warring emotions.
“I don’t know what the fucking hell we’re doing here Danni. You think it’s for a reason? Well, I can’t see it that way. I can’t see how we’ll make a damned bit of difference no matter what we do. The past can’t be changed. Surely you know it’s the truth?”
And with that, he walked away from her.