the black of night. And yet someone was there. A creeper creeping.
Stories she’d heard over the years settled around her neck and squeezed like a pair of old hands. The farmer whose head was severed while trying to pull a fairy tree out of the ground with his tractor; the woman who had the gift of sight, only to have dozens of black beetles crawl out of her eyes the moment she died; cattle that were seemingly healthy one day struck dead in farmers’ fields the next. No one spared. Not even children. Sickened in their cribs, their souls snatched and switched. She shivered. She was hallucinating. Hearing things, seeing things, feelings things. Her limbs were tingling. Would they shut off that music? She clasped her hands over her ears as colored lights danced in her mind. Something strange was going on. This wasn’t worth it. They died, died, died. She had better do something before she was next. Dead. She scrambled out of the tent, set her sights on her cottage, and ran.
Chapter 2
Summer had officially arrived in Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, and the interior of Naomi’s Bistro captured the moment like a still-life painting. Sports equipment lay dumped in the hallway, runners littered the stairwell, and sunglasses hastily forgotten by customers stared up from tabletops. Once they opened for brekkie, the front door of the bistro would be in constant opening-slamming motion. Siobhán O’Sullivan loved every bit of it except for the occasional grumpy customer, the weeds that turned the back garden into a jungle if they didn’t keep up with it, and picking up after her siblings, and when that got old, nagging them to pick up after themselves. Blessed be thy summer days, but summer had a way of making everyone revolt. Alarms were ignored. Showers took longer. Even the rashers seemed to sizzle slower on the grill. Siobhán had just collected a pile of shoes and sunglasses, and was about to drop them in the lost and found bin, when a familiar knock sounded on the door. Three quick raps, a pause, and two more.
Siobhán dumped the gear and was already smiling when she opened the door. Macdara Flannery stood in front of her, his messy brown hair and smiling blue eyes a welcome sight. Her fiancé. Would she ever get used to that thought? They’d been secretly engaged since the spring, a delicious secret between the two of them. The gorgeous engagement ring he’d given her, an emerald set up high surrounded by diamonds forming a Celtic cross, was upstairs locked away in a keepsake box by her bed.
“Dara,” she said, leaning in for a quick kiss, “are you here for brekkie?”
It wasn’t until he stepped completely in that she saw his forehead was creased and his eyes weren’t as smiley as usual. He leaned against the door frame. “I have to go to Ballysiogdun.”
Ballysiogdun was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it type of village in rural County Cork. “Whatever for?” She waved him into the dining room. “Tea? Brown bread?”
“Cappuccino,” he said. “To go.”
“I like your style.” She set about making them both one, humming along to the whir of her favorite espresso machine. He was chewing on something and best let him spit it out for himself. She was on her summer break, an entire ten days off from garda duty. She wished she were going on a proper holiday, sunning in Spain, or even a few days in Dublin with Maria, but finances were stretched and a long list of family and bistro obligations dangled in front of her. How she missed the days when summer equaled freedom. When months were rolled out in front of her like a sun-kissed present. As an adult, it was just another season, hopefully with a bit less rain and an uptick in the temperatures. A time to weed the back garden and go for longer runs.
Macdara glanced around. “Where’s your brood?”
“Ann and Ciarán are having a lie-in. James and Elise are driving me mental with their on-again off-again romance and I have no idea where he is—”
The sound of heels clacking down the stairs startled them, followed by a flash of long black hair, a waft of perfume, and then the slam of the front door. Gráinne. Another one to keep an eye on. Siobhán looked out the window in time to see her sister wiggle off to Sheila’s Hair Salon. She was dressed in a short skirt, tights, heels, and her leather jacket. Was she getting her hair done this early? Did Sheila even wake up this early?
“Hiya,” Eoin called out with a wave as he ambled past Siobhán before disappearing into the kitchen. It took a moment for her to clock what was different about him. He hadn’t been wearing his Yankee baseball cap; instead he’d replaced it with a hairnet. Her brother was maturing. Seconds later came the smell and sound of rashers on the grill. Eoin had one more year until his Leaving Certificate, and after that hopefully university. For now, he was the main man running the bistro with their employee Bridie during the day, and working on his graphic novels at night. They starred, of all things, a superhero character based on her, frankly, and he’d made her into a redheaded Amazon lifting sheep over her head with one hand, but she wasn’t about to complain and stifle his creativity. On the surface, all was well with her brood. If only that meant peace of mind.
Siobhán found she worried even more when things were going well. She didn’t want to be a when-was-the-other-shoe-going-to-drop type lass, but with six of them, even if a shoe didn’t fall, there was at least always an untied lace to trip over. She was a proactive worrier.
She placed Dara’s cappuccino in a takeaway cup and handed it to him. “Brown bread?” She’d already made three batches this morning and was dying to dig in.
“I’m not hungry.”
She raised an eyebrow. Rare were the days when Macdara turned down any food let alone her brown bread. Enough stalling, he needed a push. “What’s the story?”
“My cousin Jane called. Aunt Ellen is in some kind of trouble.”
Siobhán knew that his mother had a sister and Macdara had one grown cousin, but she’d never met either of them. “What kind of trouble?”
“Jane wouldn’t say. It’s something bad. I could hear the terror in her voice.”
“Terror?” Macdara wasn’t a man prone to exaggeration unless he had a cold, and then he behaved as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were riding straight for him.
“She was on the verge of hysteria. Said she didn’t trust her local guards. I told her I would be there straightaway.” His eyes flicked to her right hand. Zoomed in on her ring finger. Not this again. He loathed that she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. It was way too dear. There was no way she was going to wear it. Not while cleaning. Or jogging. Or working. Or riding her scooter. Or going out to the shops or pubs. Or baking brown bread. Or eating brown bread. Too risky. Each outing an opportunity to lose it. She’d rather die.
“It’s safe,” she said. “I’ll always keep it safe.”
“And secret,” Macdara said, sounding none too pleased about it.
“We can’t torture people with a long engagement. You know how nosy folks are. They’ll hound us nonstop.”
“Is that the real reason?”
She frowned. He wasn’t playing nice. It’s not like he had to wear a giant ring effectively announcing that he was off-limits. She was still the newest member of the guards. Before they revealed their engagement, they were going to have to confess their relationship to their superiors. They could even be assigned to different garda stations. He knew all this. Yet he was pouting. “Why are you meeting your cousin in Ballysiogdun?” Deflection was a trick Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery knew well, but she was banking on him realizing the futility of grilling her any further.
She
