HauntingBeauty







Chapter Twenty-three


THEY lay in silence late into the night, face-to-face, fingers touching, skin pressed to skin. Danni learned of his childhood, listening to the deep flux of his voice as he spoke of growing up in Ballyfionúir, where he’d known most everyone. He talked of his mother and how she’d scrub Sean and his brother within an inch of their lives before marching them to mass each Sunday. She’d carried a flask in her purse and had partaken of more than communion wine during the service. The ebb and flow of his voice was another caress in the darkness and one she fell into, like a dark pool of warm water.
As she watched his mouth forming words, watched memories move through his eyes, she thought him achingly beautiful. At almost the same instance, she was struck by the truth of their situation. It twisted what they’d shared into a few heartrending moments before reality would rip them apart. For whatever reason, Sean was alive in this time, but in her time—the time she knew and wanted to live in again—he was a ghost. The tragedy of it nearly drove her from the bed. A random image came to her then—one of a movie she’d seen in the group home, before Yvonne had taken her in. It was an eighties movie, about a man who’d never known love until a strange woman had suddenly appeared in his life.
She remembered Tom Hanks as the hero, goofy and charming, besotted by the beautiful woman with the long blonde hair and strange ways. He’d brought her home with him, intent on marrying her and living happily ever after—until he’d discovered she was a mermaid. Drunk and disillusioned, Tom Hanks had turned to his brother in hurt bewilderment and told him that all his life he’d been searching for someone to love and now that he’d finally found her, the woman of his dreams was a fish. A fish.
The delivery of the line had been classic and never failed to bring laughter. It didn’t make her smile thinking of it now though, because the twisted pain behind the flippant statement was far too real for her. Danni had been looking for someone to love her whole life, too. And Sean was more than everything she’d wished for.
Only in her case, the man of her dreams wasn’t a fish. He was dead, or would be by tomorrow’s end.
She’d almost told him earlier, should have told him when the opportunity was there, so close. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for her to speak those words. But she couldn’t do it. She was afraid of more than being left alone. She was afraid of losing him. Afraid of what the truth would do to this fragile bubble they now lived in.
Sean went on talking, unaware of the turmoil in her heart. Listening to him, she noted the confusion that clouded his eyes as he moved past the years of adolescence into manhood. The vivid details of his recollections dimmed as he struggled to remember life after he’d become an unwitting specter. Overlooked, or noticed only by a few—those sensitive to his energy, those who feared the shadowy image that never quite came into focus.
He’d taken their reactions as aversion. Why would they like and accept him? He was the son of the man who’d killed his own wife and then wiped out another man’s young and happy family. He didn’t blame them their censure.
Colleen had been the only constant in his life after Fia and the children disappeared, after Niall took his own life in remorse....

After Sean had been killed. Danni pieced together what he didn’t say.
Occasionally it seemed he would meet someone with a sixth sense, someone who could really see him, and the details would suddenly appear again. He didn’t know how relief filled his eyes then, how these pockets of awareness became confirmation of his existence.
But Danni understood it. She thought of what he’d told her earlier, about the widow he’d gone to in the middle of the night. Dream lover, she’d called him, imagining the lonely woman visited by Sean—solid, muscular, warm Sean. Had she seen him, like Danni did? Or had he been a fantasy she imagined as a dream, like the one they’d shared yesterday morning?
“Hey,” he said, tracing a finger over her jaw. “I’ve put you into a coma with my boring stories, haven’t I?”
The very idea of it made her smile. Sean was a lot of things she hadn’t expected, but boring wasn’t one of them. She could listen to that deep and sexy voice day in and day out and never get tired of it. She leaned closer and kissed him. The feel of his mouth was ad dicting, like the taste of him, the scent of him. They’d made love for hours—hours—until her muscles felt tired and sated, but she still wanted more. A stockpile to last her when he was gone.
The thought sobered her. No. She would find a way to make sure that didn’t happen.



IT was several hours before dawn when Danni slipped from bed and dressed. She’d slept a little, but each time she dozed off, the warmth of the man sleeping beside her would wake her again to dwell on the quandary of how and where and who they were. Her thoughts had finally driven her from the bed, from the man who’d aroused feelings in her that couldn’t be allowed to take root. At any minute the air could turn again and spit the two of them out of this time and place and back to a future that was pointless.
She couldn’t love a dead man.
Restless, she paced the kitchen until she began to feel caged. The sense of being trapped finally coerced her outside, where sounds of the sea pounding relentlessly against the rocks, thundering and receding with steadfast determination, eased her tension. Beneath the black tapestry of sky, she could see lights out on the water. Fishing boats already pushing off, fighting the tide.
Danni breathed in the damp and salty scented air, turning her face to the sliver of moon hovering low on the horizon. Dawn was not far away.
She nearly screamed when a shadow moved to her right and Colleen materialized from a flat boulder where she’d been sitting. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for Danni to take a stroll in the darkest hours and for Colleen to happen upon her.
“You’ve been waiting for me,” Danni said, and it wasn’t a question.
“For longer than ye know, child,” Colleen answered, taking up her seat again on the boulder. “Sit down, ask me your questions. You’ll be having some by now.”
“And you’ll tell me the truth if I ask them?”
“And why wouldn’t I?”
Danni sat down, trying to mask her frustration at Colleen’s noncommittal response. Danni wanted to ask about Sean, but she was afraid—afraid that giving her questions a voice might somehow strip away this tentative happiness she’d found. But she knew that was a fool’s way of thinking. By tonight they’d both be dead. Still she couldn’t start there. Not with Sean.
“What happened to my mother?” she asked instead.
“She went to America,” Colleen responded coolly.
“Try something I don’t already know. Why did she leave my father? Was it because of Niall?
“Of that I know less than you. I only know she took you and your brother and went to find her sister.”
“Her sister? In California?”
“I believe it’s true, but I’ll not swear to it.”
“She took us both? Me and Rory? But what happened to him? And why was I left in Arizona?”
Colleen looked down at her feet and shook her head. “I can only guess from what I know of you and what I know of her and what I hope is the way of it. I think she must have found her sister and left Rory with her. Then she took you to Arizona—don’t ask me why because I cannot tell you.”
“Then what?”
She gave Danni a bleak look and disheartened shrug. “It could only be bad, whatever it was. Nothing else would have kept her from her children.”
“Unless she decided to go back for Rory and just left me behind.”
The words burned in her throat.
“You don’t believe that, do you now? And neither do I.”
Danni looked away. She didn’t know what she believed anymore. But this could be her only chance to find the truth, and she couldn’t avoid asking what she needed most to know just because she was afraid.
“And what about Sean?” she whispered. “How does he die?”
“You haven’t seen it for yourself?” Colleen demanded.
Danni crossed her arms, looking beyond Colleen to the sea. “What I saw was very confusing. I couldn’t tell exactly what was happening. I think Sean—young Sean—was already dead. He was on the ground and Niall was holding him. They were in the cavern, beneath the ruins.”
She glanced over in time to see Colleen’s eyes narrow. There was a spark of something burning deep inside them. Maybe hope, maybe despair. Danni couldn’t tell.
“My mom is there with me and Rory.”
“What about me?” Colleen asked.
Danni shook her head. “There’s another man, but I couldn’t see him. I don’t know who he is, but he’s angry and he’s arguing with my mother—or Niall. I don’t see my father at all. He must come later. Too late to help them.”
“And I’m not there?” Colleen repeated, her voice sharp.
“No. Should you be?”
“Since Michael was a lad, I’ve seen it,” she said softly. “And though I’ve no idea how, I know I’ve lived it.”
“Lived it? What does that mean?”
Colleen shook her head. “Tell me more.”
Danni wanted to press her, but the intensity of Colleen’s expression made her go on. “The argument between the man I can’t see and Niall or my mother seems to escalate, and I hear a gun and there’s pain. I feel pain. Like I’ve been shot. And then I’m outside again, with Sean. Grown-up Sean. We’re standing beside a grave and when I look in, I see myself—as I am now. A woman. I’m in a grave with Michael—Sean. The boy.”
“And the ruins are to your back, the dolmen in the distance.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen it myself, many times.”
“All of it? Or just the grave?” Colleen didn’t answer. Frustrated, Danni asked another. “Why did you say you’ve lived it?”
Colleen shifted uncomfortably. “You’ll think me a lunatic,” she murmured.
“I already think that,” Danni countered, and the old woman looked up with surprise.
“Fair enough, I suppose. I’ll tell you then, though I doubt you’ll believe me. It begins each time at a different point. The first, it was just the Book I saw.”
“The Book of Fennore?”
“And what other Book would I be talking about?” she snapped. “Other times, I’ve seen the grave or the cavern.”
“For the love of God, Colleen. For once could you be less cryptic?” Danni asked.
“I’ve no liking for that vinegar tone, child.”
“I’m sorry. But I feel like I’m running out of time.”
“Aye, and right you are about that. But you see, what comes to pass has happened over and over again. It’s not just seeing, I have. It’s living it as well.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that.”
“Sure and you rushed me. What is it you expect?”
Danni let out a breath of exasperation and wry amusement. Her grandmother might look like a sweet old woman, but any fool who took it for more than a deceiving appearance would soon find out that beneath her façade was steel will.
Colleen gave a heavy sigh and went on. “What’s at work here, on Ballyfionúir, it’s out of order. Out of all sense of order. ’Tis always been this way. The old ones will talk about it, if you’re buying the pints and the music has mellowed their tongues. They’ll tell you tales of people appearing like a bolt of lightning only without the thunder to warn you. Or others who have just gone missing, suddenly there and then not. Erased by God and drawn into another place.”
Legends, myths, built and spread over the ages. That was what a sane person would call it. But Danni had given up on sanity—and so it seemed sanity had given up on Danni. Were the old ones Colleen spoke of other time travelers? People who appeared and disappeared . . . like Danni and Sean had? Danni would have scoffed if she wasn’t proof herself that it could happen, had happened.
“Is it only here that the stories are told? In Ballyfionúir?”
“Oh no, the whole island is filled with magic from the shores to the clouds. Can you not feel it?”
Danni nodded. Yes, she felt it. “Is it because of the Book of Fennore?”
“I cannot tell you the answer to that. I do not know it myself. What I do know is that this isn’t the first time I’ve lived the days leading up to that awful night when everything I love is lost. I’ve lived them many times.”
Her skin puckered with goose bumps as Danni asked, “Why don’t you try to stop it, then, if you know what’s going to happen?”
“Are you thinking that I haven’t? That I just stand by and watch?”
“I don’t know what to think, Colleen.”
“Twice I’ve tried, but fate will have its way. The devil couldn’t change it unless he was drunk.”
“But what happened when you tried?”
“The end was the same and yet it wasn’t. I will not talk of it,” she said, and there was a dark pain in her voice that cut through Danni like slivers of metal peeled from a blade. “I can only say I made it worse, both times. I cannot try it again.”
Danni watched her, waiting for her to continue, but she fell into agitated silence.
“You’re there when it happens?” Danni repeated softly. “But I didn’t see you.”
“This last time, I couldn’t watch it again. I couldn’t face it and do nothing. Yet I knew anything I tried would only end with it worse than before. So I removed myself, hoping . . . always hoping . . .”
She trailed off and something in her eyes made Danni feel like she’d missed a vital clue.
“So you’re saying you keep reliving your life?”
“Not all of it.”

Not all of it? What did that mean?
“I suppose I could say it’s your life I live.”
Danni frowned. “My life . . . ?”
And then suddenly understanding broke over her like the foamy white surf violating the soft sands and fragmented shells of the beach. Tonight grown-up Danni would die, but her child-self lived on to be abandoned in Arizona, always searching for what she couldn’t find, what she couldn’t have. And tonight, young Sean would die, only his spirit would live on, forever seeking justice. The two would exist on opposites sides of the world until one day Colleen would send that spirit to find Danni and bring her back to this point in time, when it would all happen again.
“You knew we were coming—Sean and I—because we’ve been here before,” she whispered.
Colleen nodded.
“But we don’t make a difference. We just come back to die. Is that what you’re saying?”
Colleen’s bottom lip trembled, and her eyes glimmered with unshed tears.
“But something has changed this time, hasn’t it? You think something’s different. Why? What is it?”
“I cannot tell you,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Fate, destiny. It can’t be bent by one person’s will, can it now? Not by looking back and doing it differently. The Lord knows I have tried to alter the course time and again.”
“Don’t talk in circles, Colleen. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to save him.”
“And make it worse? Perhaps exchange one life for another? Take away the one chance to change it again? Can you not hear what I’m telling you, child? I have tried and I have failed. Whatever is to come, it must come from you.”
She’d tried and she’d failed, yet Colleen had managed to do something right—or wrong. Something that culminated in this moment, this moment of truth. Unless this too was just another piece of the repeating ritual.
“What has the Book of Fennore to do with me, Colleen? Am I supposed to use it? Is that what you’re talking around?”
The moonlight gave Colleen a waxy sheen. She looked unreal, perched in the greedy black of night, bathed by the glow of harsh unyielding brightness. The lines on her face mapped the deep valleys of her sorrow, the jagged edges of her joys, the fanning rivers of her hope. The breeze teased the ends of her cloak and tugged at the stray wisps of her hair. She looked lost and alone, but resilient and determined.
“Trust yourself, granddaughter,” Colleen said softly. “If it’s the Book you think you must use, then that is what you should do. Only you know the answer to this riddle.”
“Why only me?”
“It is you who wrote it,” she said.
Danni clenched her eyes shut against the wave of anger rising inside. Why couldn’t Colleen give her a straight answer? Yes or no, go or stay. Use it or run from it.
“Just tell me the truth,” she said, unable to keep her resentment at bay.
“Aye, we all are wanting that. The truth. But who is to say what truth there is? Not myself, for I’ve guessed it wrong too many times before.”
Danni opened her eyes again, hearing the whispered words repeating in her head. Fate, destiny. It can’t be bent by one person’s will, can it now? Was she asking or telling?
“It can be changed,” Danni said suddenly, fiercely.
“Really? And who would be doing the changing? You?” Though her words came with a sharp bite of doubt, Colleen couldn’t hide the eagerness in her tone.
“Maybe,” Danni said.
“Sure and don’t you sound convinced? Maybe. Phhssht. Was maybe what God had in his mind when he created the world?”
Danni raised her brows. “Maybe. Maybe that’s why it’s such a mess.”
Colleen grinned at that. “A tongue you have in your head, darlin’. It does a grandmother good to hear it.” Colleen patted Danni’s hand. “Ask me another,” she said. “For I know if there’s an answer, you’ll find a way to ferret it out.”
“Tell me about the Book,” Danni said softly. “Did my mother bring it here?”
“I only know what I’ve heard, and hasn’t that come to me by way of the wind and every window it’s blown through before mine? All legend. It is what it is.”
“Sean says the Book can’t be used,” Danni said.
The old woman paused, considering. Danni wondered what thoughts went through that sharp mind. She waited, tense and unsure.
“The Ballaghs have always been known to be healers and mystics,” Colleen said, seeming to ignore the implied question. “Marked man—’tis roughly what the name means. And isn’t it true, for marked we’ve been through the ages. Powerful and feared were the Ballaghs.”
She gave Danni a meaningful look.
“Is that why I see things?” Danni asked. “Because there’s Ballagh blood in my veins?”
“Aye, you get it first from me and then from your mum.”
“My mother is a Ballagh?” Danni murmured, thinking of Cathán asking Fia if Danni was related to her. Now it made sense.
“Oh yes, a direct descendent of a MacGrath and Ballagh union. The same is true of your father.”
In her mind, Danni pictured the twist and turn, the weave and grain of the bloodline. Ballaghs and MacGraths as entwined and knotted as hemp.
“Does my mom see things, too?”
“Now how would I be knowing that? She’d think me a crazy woman if I asked her. But she bears the birthmark, same as you. Same as me.” Colleen pushed up her sleeve and showed Danni the small rose shape in the crook of her arm.
“What about Sean?”
“Indeed, what about him?”
“Who were his parents?”
“What is the question you’re meaning, I think. My husband was a Ballagh as was his wife who died bringing Sean’s father into the world. And when Niall chose a wife, wouldn’t you know, another Ballagh.”
“So Sean has no MacGrath in him?”
“Well sure, somewhere in his family tree there’d be a MacGrath. But Sean is perhaps the purest of blooded Ballaghs in centuries.”
“And does he, I mean, has he had visions?”
“He’s never shared them with me if he has. But visions aren’t the only thing the Ballaghs are known for. Oh, the list is long of the powers a Ballagh might possess. They say once upon a time there was a Ballagh who could stop the curse of death from stealing the dying.”
Danni’s mouth went dry. “Stop it how?”
“Well now, if I knew that I’d be a millionaire, wouldn’t I? But that’s not what you mean, is it? What is it you’re wanting to know, girl?”
“Does Sean have . . . powers?” She felt ridiculous even asking the question, but it was even more absurd to ignore what was happening all around her. Ballyfionúir was a place of magic, of the unbelievable.
“Oh aye. He’s a great sorcerer. Do you not see how he’s enthralled you?”
Danni looked up at that and saw humor in Colleen’s eyes. But behind it there was something else. Something more. The look sent a shudder through Danni’s body.
“I watched the Gardai dig up that grave and pull Michael’s body out of it. And yours, I saw that, too. But wasn’t it the very next morning Michael was at my table waiting for his breakfast?”
Michael’s spirit, anyway, but Colleen didn’t have to spell it out for Danni. Did his appearing to them both qualify as a power? Danni thought of how he’d seemed to her the night he’d shown up on her doorstep. She hadn’t thought him a ghost. Even after she knew, when he’d touched her, kissed her . . . it had felt real. Not as real as last night, but real enough that she’d believed it.
“He’s not the only ghost on this island, though, is he?” Danni said. “What about the white ghost?”
“What do you know of the white ghost?” Colleen asked sharply.
“I’ve seen her.”
“And what business was she about? Did she offer you a thing? Anything?”
“Her comb.”
Colleen sucked her breath in through her teeth.
“I didn’t take it. Sean told me to never take it.”
“Aye, he’s a good boy. So he knows of your sight?” she asked, curious.
“I told him it was a dream, but he guessed the truth.”
“Lies are never the answer, child. If you’re to save one another, there can be no secrets.”
“And is that what I’m here for? To save Sean?”
“And he, you.”
“With the Book? Is that it? I’m supposed to use it?”
Colleen shook her head. “And how would you be doing that? To use it you must have it. To have it, you must know where to find it.”
“You’ve looked for it, haven’t you?” Danni asked suddenly. “You’ve seen it, too, and you tried to take it.”
“I’ve only seen it once,” Colleen told her. “In the hands of my son, just before he destroyed all that I loved.”
“You saw it in real time? Not a vision?”
Colleen nodded, her eyes on Danni’s face. “And you?”
“Only visions. Twice, now.”
The smile that curved Colleen’s lips held too much satisfaction for Danni not to know she’d been led to this point. Inexplicably, but inerrantly led.
“And what have you seen?”
“Enough to wipe that satisfied smile off your face.”
“’Tis not satisfaction,” she said.
“What, then?” Danni demanded. “The Book of Fennore is evil. I could feel that, and I wasn’t even there. Not really.”
“True enough. It can give you everything you wish for, but what it takes . . . It steals the part of you that makes you a person, that makes you human.”
“But you would have me try to use it anyway?” Danni asked, hurt, wounded to her soul by having to ask the question.
“I cannot tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. Can you not hear my words?”
“I hear just fine.” And Danni’s tone said that she did. Colleen was willing to sacrifice Danni if it meant saving everyone else. Suddenly she was tired, tired to the core of her being. She stood and took a step toward the cottage.
“I’m just the messenger here, Danni,” Colleen said softly.
“Funny, Sean told me the same thing. But you know what? That doesn’t make it any better. I hear the Grim Reaper is just a messenger, too.”
Colleen’s eyes narrowed. “Do not use that tone with me, Dáirinn. I am still your grandmother, and I will have the respect I am due.”
“My grandmother?” Danni repeated incredulously. “That’s a technicality, Colleen. The reality is you are a stranger. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“And whose fault would that be?”
Speechless, Danni stared at her. Whose fault? Was she nuts?
But Colleen’s eyes were blazing now, and she stepped up to Danni and pointed a finger at her. “I’ll tell you since you seem to have lost your tongue so suddenly. The fault is yours, Dáirinn MacGrath. And yours alone.”
The breath came out of her lungs with a whoosh. “How can you say that? Do you know what life has been like for me? Do—”
“Ach, spare me the sad tale. What has life been for Sean? For Niall? Your mother? What of them?”
Danni was shaking her head, trying to grasp how Colleen could lay fault at Danni’s feet. “I was a child when all this happened.”
“And even then you could have stopped it. But instead you put it all behind you and never thought of it again. You forgot,” she spat.
“You think I did that on purpose? My God, Colleen, you think I chose to live that way?”
“What I think is not important.”
“But you’re accusing me—”
“By the end of the day, everything I love will be taken from me. I’ve not the time to woo you round to the truth. Ye can stop it.”
“You can’t be serious?” Danni said, feeling helpless under the weight of Colleen’s censure. “Look at me. I’m not some omnipotent being who can just snap her fingers and change the world. I can’t even get my own dog to follow me home.”
“And yet here you stand.”
“Because of you. You brought us here.”
“No, child. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Sean. Look inside to see how you came to be here.” She turned then and walked away.
“Wait,” Danni said. “What else . . . How am I supposed to . . . What do I do?”
“And what answer would you have me give? You can do whatever it is you set your mind to. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”
“But I don’t even know where to start.”
“Then I’d be setting my mind to find out, wouldn’t I now?”
And with a curt nod of her chin, she started down the path without looking back. The fog rolling off the sea gobbled her up and left Danni alone in a white and black world with no place to hide.



Wyszukiwarka