HauntingBeauty
Chapter Thirty
DANNI couldn’t say how much time passed before a sound pulled her from sleep. She opened her eyes, wincing as her muscles protested. Gingerly she turned her head and looked around. There were footsteps coming from the narrow stairway leading up into the castle ruins. Shifting so she could watch the doorway, Danni listened.
The shuffling went on for some time, and she had the sense of someone moving back and forth from one landing to another. The steps down were slow and labored, then they’d stop, turn, and go up again with a lighter gait. Then the process would repeat. Danni scooted from her hiding place to investigate further when a flashlight beam bounced from the doorway, making her crouch down again. A moment later, Fia MacGrath appeared, hauling a duffle bag. She set it on the ledge near the pool and then went back up the stairs. A few minutes passed and she returned with another. When she’d finished, two duffle bags and one suitcase were stacked beside the water. Fia stared at them for a long moment.
She looked small, defenseless, and utterly spent. Danni thought of the look on her face when she’d come into the kitchen. There’d been curiosity and fear. Anger and hurt and resignation, but there’d been something else—confirmation. Then conviction. Resolution. Whatever Fia had seen, whatever she’d assumed, it had pushed her to a decision.
Danni closed her eyes at the ultimate irony. Wasn’t it a cruel twist of fate that in trying to save her family, Danni had inadvertently become the catalyst to make Fia run.
Colleen’s words came to her then. I can only say I made it worse. Is that what Danni was doing now? Making it worse? Yet Colleen was convinced that Danni could put it all right . . . that she could do whatever she put her mind to.
“Jaysus fecking Christ,” she muttered.
What no one was telling her was how—how did she make her mind do what her heart so wanted? She certainly hadn’t been successful at that when she’d tried this morning. No matter how desperately she’d wished she could stop the horrible events from unfurling, the result had been the same. It would take something more than just Danni wanting to make a difference. Obviously she couldn’t do it alone. She needed the Book of Fennore.
It will take a piece of your soul, the twins had told her.
But wasn’t her soul a small price to pay if it meant saving Sean? Because what would life be without him? In a few short days, he’d come to mean that much to her. She loved him, as stupid, as inconvenient as it was, she loved Sean Ballagh and she would do whatever it took to save him.
Even if it takes that part that makes you human? a voice in her head taunted, and Danni immediately pictured her father’s eyes . . . that faceted glitter . . . the cold promise, I’ ll kill you before I let you have it.
And she believed him.
Unaware of Danni’s presence, Fia scooted the bags to the wall where the deep shadows concealed them. With a nervous glance around, she hurried back up the stairs. Danni waited until the footsteps faded before following.
The winding staircase was worn and crumbling. In some places the steps had disintegrated altogether, forcing her to test each foot-hold and circumvent gaps. The walls around her were moldering and slick and the passageway was so dark she could barely make out her feet. The higher she climbed, the more complete the surrounding blackness.
She began to feel panicky, frightened by the feeling of being swaddled, wrapped so tightly in the blanket of darkness that she couldn’t breathe. The sensation built until she feared she could go no further, and then it gradually eased until she could see her hands moving in the pitch-black like small white birds fluttering beside her. Then, finally, light up ahead. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
She emerged on a walkway high up on the keep’s ruined wall. A parapet once lined the walk, but most of it had succumbed to time and elements and tumbled down to the sea, leaving it exposed to the harsh wind. Forty feet away, the walk connected to another tower—Fia’s obvious destination.
Steeling herself, she began to cross the walkway, keeping center and moving forward as the wind buffeted her body. The view was magnificent, and she couldn’t help her glance at the never-ending paddocks, the tiny village tucked in the haven between the hills, and the sea beyond. Moving white caps and crashing power gave a sense of forever endlessly rolling on.
She reached the tower out of breath and passed into the dubious shelter of its walls, nearly screaming when Fia stepped in her path and demanded, “And why are you following me?”
“I’m not,” Danni sputtered, but she obviously was. “I just wanted to see where the stairs led.”
“Now you have. What else were you wanting to see?”
“Nothing.”
Fia crossed her arms over her ribs, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. She was frightened, Danni realized. Frightened of Danni.
“I won’t tell anyone that you’re leaving,” Danni said softly. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Isn’t it? Enlighten me then on your true reasons for being in my house. For following me. I know it’s not my husband you’re after. I’d be sorry he troubled you, but it was good to see you bloody his fecking mouth.” Fia snorted with derisive amusement. “You’ve more courage than I. But there’s a reason you’re here. What would that be?”
Another long minute of silence followed as Danni tried to answer that. I’m here to change my past, probably wouldn’t inspire Fia’s confidence.
As if hearing the thought, Fia made another scornful sound and turned away. Panicked, Danni realized she intended to leave.
“Wait—I . . . there’s something I need to tell you.”
Fia paused, but she didn’t turn around. “About my husband? Don’t trouble yourself about that. Sure it is that I know him already.”
“No, it’s about tonight,” Danni said.
“What do you think you know about tonight?” Fia asked.
“He’ll catch you,” Danni said. “And when he does, he will hurt you and the people you love.”
Fia watched her with steady eyes. She didn’t ask how Danni knew. But she didn’t walk away either. “He already hurts us.”
“But by the time tonight is over, Niall and Michael will both be dead and your family will be scattered.”
“Perhaps that’s one way of it,” she said calmly. “Perhaps not.”
Danni took a deep breath and reminded herself that Fia didn’t know who Danni really was. Why should Fia believe anything she said? “Just listen to me, whatever you have planned for tonight, don’t do it. Don’t go.”
“Don’t go?” Fia repeated incredulously. “Is it certain you are that not going will change anything? You seem to know what will happen if I do go, but what if I do not? What then, Mrs. Ballagh? What would happen then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Aye, you don’t. Let me tell you what I know. Forever it’s been like this—two paths ahead of me. I’ve seen them clear enough without having to be told. On one side I risk everything I want, everything I’ve hoped for my entire life. And on the other, I risk the only thing that matters to me—my children. I hoped I was wrong, but I know now I’m not. He’s found the Book and he uses it, even now. If I don’t get away, he will use the children against me. He’ll take them from me and he will use them for his own purposes. In whatever way he must—do you understand me? As for me, I will disappear and never be found. Either way. Same fate, different place.”
The weight of her words, the finality in her tone, slumped Danni’s shoulders forward. Same fate, different place.
“As for Niall, he knows the risks—I’ve not sugarcoated what will happen to him, for his fate is tied to my own. Should he have the power to do it, my husband will wipe Niall and his children from the earth. He knows this as well.”
“So you’ve convinced yourself there are only the two choices? Run away or do nothing? What about standing your ground and fighting him?”
“Fight him? Have you looked into his eyes? Have you seen what lives inside him? A fight with Cathán would be a fight to death. Who is it you think will survive that battle? Me? My children? Are you really such a fool?”
“But there has to be something you can do.”
“No one would be happier than myself if that were true.” Fia frowned as she studied Danni’s face, considering. “I feel as if I should know you,” she said. “And yet I know we’ve not met before. Why is it you’re familiar?”
Because I’m your daughter . . . .
As if she’d heard the words, Fia’s eyes widened and her face blanched to a deathly white. “Jaysus,” she breathed, staring at Danni.
A small spark of hope flared inside Danni. Her mother had finally realized who Danni was. But just as quickly, the hope died. It wasn’t recognition Danni saw in Fia’s expression. It was horror.
“It was you that night, wasn’t it?” Fia breathed. “It was you I saw in the corner of my mother’s house. . . . But how? It was so long ago. . . .”
She was talking about that night when she’d watched Fia’s sister use the Book of Fennore. Danni knew it without question.
“That night, in the shadows,” Fia went on. “You came for the Book. It was you who took it.”
Frowning, Danni shook her head. She hadn’t taken the Book. She’d never even touched it. “The Book of Fennore?”
Fia stumbled back, head shaking as she spoke. “How did you do it?” she said. “Why would you take it? You know not what it is. What it can do. You’re a fool if you think to use it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t take . . .”
But Fia was already turning, hurrying through the open passageway and racing down a different flight of stairs to the ground below. Danni looked out of the tall narrow window and saw her exit the ruins with a furtive glance and quicken to the house, moving like the devil was on her heels.
Danni covered her face with her hands. What had she meant? She’d seen Danni when the vision had taken her to Fia’s house the night her sister had used the Book of Fennore and disappeared, but why would she think Danni had taken it? She hadn’t even touched it.
Yet.
The word was in her head before she’d even thought it. And what did that mean? That sometime before tonight Danni would go to the house again, only this time she’d bring the Book back with her?
The very idea made her blood run cold and her legs tremble. Slowly she leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor. She hadn’t been able to change the outcome in the vision of Sean’s parents, but she had been able to take Sean with her. And if Colleen was to be believed, it was Danni who’d brought them both to the Ballyfionúir of their past. But Danni still didn’t know how she’d done it.
Whatever it is you put your mind to, Colleen had said.
She’d also told Danni to use the Book if that’s what she thought she should do.
Dammit, was it? Was using the Book of Fennore the answer?
And assuming she could go to where she’d last seen it, was she even capable of bringing the Book out of the vision? She’d taken Sean with her, but could she do the same with an object? Something like the Book of Fennore?
Apparently so, for why else would Fia have said it?
Danni licked her dry lips and drew in a breath. The sun was at the height of noon. It would be hours until it set and brought the dark of night, but Danni was out of time. She couldn’t dwell on the questions any longer. She had to seek the answers and she had to do it now.
Because the only time she had left was the time to try.
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