Shadow Spell

9

AS IF HER DAY HADN’T BEEN FRAUGHT ENOUGH, MEARA added on a frantic and weepy call from her mother that sent her searching out Boyle.
He sat in his office scowling as he was prone to scowl over paperwork.
“Boyle.”
“Why is it the numbers never tally the first time you do them? Why is that?”
“I couldn’t say. Boyle, I’m sorry to ask but I need to go. My mother’s had a fire at the house.”
“A fire?” He shoved up from his desk as if he’d rush off to put it out himself.
“A kitchen fire, I think. It was hard getting anything out of her, as she was near hysterical. But I did get she’s not hurt, and didn’t burn the place down around her. Still, I don’t know how bad it all is, so—”
“Go. Go on.” He rounded the desk, taking her arm, drawing her out of the office. “Let me know what’s what as soon as you can.”
“I will. Thanks. I’ll do extra tomorrow to make up for it.”
“Just go, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m going.”
She jumped in her lorry.
It would be nothing, she told herself. Unless it was something. With Colleen Quinn, you never knew which.
And her mother had been all but incoherent, wailing one minute, babbling the next. All about the kitchen, smoke, burning.
Maybe she was hurt.
The image of Connor, the black bubbling burn on his arm flashed through her mind.
Burning.
Cabhan. Fear spurted through her at the thought he might have played some part. Had he gone after her mother because in the end she’d resisted his call?
Meara punched the accelerator, rocketed around curves, raced her way with her heart at a gallop to the little dollhouse nestled with a handful of others just along the hem of Cong’s skirts.
The house stood—no damage she could see to the white walls, the gray roof, the tidy dooryard garden. Tidy, true enough, as the small bit of garden in front and back was her mother’s only real interest.
She shoved through the short gate—one she’d painted herself the previous spring, and ran up the walk, digging for her keys, since her mother insisted on locking the doors day and night in fear of burglars, rapists, or alien probes.
But Colleen rushed out, hands clasped together at her breast as if in prayer.
“Oh, Meara, thank God you’ve come! What will I do? What will I do?”
She threw herself into Meara’s arms, a weeping, trembling bundle of despair.
“You’re not hurt? For certain? Let me see you’re not hurt.”
“I burned my fingers.” Like a child she held up her hand to show the hurt.
And nothing, Meara saw with relief, a bit of salve wouldn’t deal with.
“All right then, all right.” To soothe, Meara brushed a light kiss over the little burn. “That’s the most important thing.”
“It’s terrible!” Colleen insisted. “The kitchen’s a ruin. What will I do? Oh, Meara, what will I do?”
“Let’s have a look, then we’ll see, won’t we?”
It was easy to turn Colleen around and pull her inside. Meara had gotten her height from her long-absent father. Colleen made a pretty little package—a petite, slim, and always perfectly groomed one, a fact of life that often made Meara feel like a hulking bear leading a poodle with a perfect pedigree.
No damage in the front room, another relief, though Meara could smell smoke, and see the thin haze of it.
Smoke, she thought—more relief—not fog.
Three strides took her into the compact, eat-in kitchen where the smoke hung in a thin haze.
Not a ruin, but sure a mess. And not one, she determined immediately, caused by an evil sorcerer, but a careless and inept woman.
Keeping an arm around her weeping mother, she took stock.
The roasting pan with the burned joint, now spilled onto the floor beside a scorched and soaking dish cloth told the tale.
“You burned the joint,” Meara said carefully.
“I thought to roast some lamb, as Donal and his girl were to come to dinner later. I can’t approve him moving in with Sharon before marriage, but I’m his mother all the same.”
“Roasting a joint,” Meara murmured.
“Donal’s fond of a good joint as you know. I’d just gone out the back for a bit. I’ve had slugs in the garden there, and went to change the beer.”
Fluttering in distress, Colleen waved her hands at the kitchen door as if Meara might have forgotten where the garden lay. “They’ve been after the impatiens, so I had to see about it.”
“All right.” Meara stepped over, began to open the windows, as Colleen had failed to do.
“I wasn’t out that long, but I thought since I was, I’d cut some flowers for a nice arrangement on the table. You need fresh flowers for company at dinner.”
“Mmm,” Meara said, and picked up the flowers scattered over the wet floor.
“I came in, and the kitchen was full of smoke.” Still fluttering, Colleen looked tearfully around the room. “I ran to the oven, and the lamb was burning, so I took the cloth there to pull it out.”
“I see.” Meara turned off the oven, found a fresh cloth, picked up the roasting pan, the charcoaled joint.
“And somehow the cloth lit, and was burning. I had to drop everything and take the pan there, where I had water for the potatoes.”
Meara picked up the potatoes while her mother wrung her hands, dumped the lot in the sink to deal with later.
“It’s a ruin, Meara, a ruin! What will I do? What will I do?”
The familiar mix of annoyance, resignation, frustration wound through her. Accepting that as her lot, Meara dried her hands by swiping them on her work pants.
“The first thing is to open the windows in the front room while I mop this up.”
“The smoke will soil the paint, won’t it, Meara, and you see the floor there, it’s scorched from the burning cloth. I don’t dare tell the landlord or he’ll set me out.”
“He’ll do nothing of the kind, Ma. If the paint’s soiled, we’ll fix it. If the floor’s damaged, we’ll fix that as well. Open the windows, then put some of Branna’s salve on your fingers.”
But Colleen only stood, hands clasped, pretty blue eyes damp. “Donal and his girl are coming at seven.”
“One thing at a time, Ma,” Meara said as she mopped.
“I couldn’t ring him up to tell him of the disaster here. Not while he’s at work.”
But you could ring me, Meara thought, as you’ve never understood a woman can work, does work, wants or needs to work, the same as a man.
“The windows,” was all she said.
Not a mean bone in her body, Meara reminded herself as she cleaned the floor—not scorched at all, but only smudged with ash from the cloth. Not even selfish in the usual way, but simply helpless and dependent.
And was that her fault, really, when she’d been tended and sheltered the whole of her life? By her parents, then by her husband, and now by her children.
She’d never been taught to cope, had she? Or, Meara thought with a hard stare at the roasting pan, how to cook a fecking joint.
After wringing out the mop, she took a moment to text Boyle. No point in keeping him worried.
Not a fire but a burnt joint of lamb and a right mess. No harm.

Meara carted out the ruined meat to dump in the bin, scrubbed off the potatoes and set them to dry—as they were still raw because her mother had forgotten, all to the good, to turn the heat on under them.
She set the roasting pan in the sink to soak, put the kettle on for tea, all while Colleen despaired of being evicted.
“Sit down, Ma.”
“I can’t sit, I’m that upset.”
“Sit. You’ll have some tea.”
“But Donal. What will I do? I’ve ruined the kitchen, and they’re coming for dinner. And the landlord, this will put him in a state for certain.”
Meara did multiplication tables in her head—the sevens, which buggered her every time. It kept her from shouting when she turned to her mother. “First, look around now. The kitchen’s not ruined, is it?”
“But I . . .” As if seeing it for the first time, Colleen fluttered around. “Oh, it cleaned up well, didn’t it?”
“It did, yes.”
“I can still smell the smoke.”
“You’ll keep the windows open a bit longer, and you won’t. At the worst, we’ll scrub down the walls.” Meara made the tea, added a couple of chocolate biscuits to one of her mother’s fancy plates—and because it was her mother, added a white linen napkin.
“Sit down, have your tea. Let’s have a look at your fingers.”
“They’re much better.” Smiling now, Colleen held them up. “Branna’s such a way with things, hasn’t she, making up her lotions and creams and candles and so on. I love shopping in the Dark Witch. I always find some pretty little thing or other. It’s a lovely little shop she has.”
“It is.”
“And she comes by now and then, brings me samples to try out for her.”
“I know.” So Colleen could have her pretty little things, Meara knew as well, without spending too much.
“She’s a lovely girl, is Branna, and always looks so smart.”
“She does,” Meara agreed, and knew Colleen wished her daughter would dress smart instead of cladding herself for the stables.
We’ll have to keep on being disappointed in each other, won’t we, Ma? she thought, but said nothing more.
“The kitchen did clean up well, Meara, and thanks for that. But I haven’t a thing now, or the time really, to make a nice dinner for Donal and his girl. What will Sharon think of me?”
“She’ll think you had a bit of a to-do in the kitchen, so you called round to Ryan’s Hotel and made a booking for the three of you.”
“Oh, but—”
“I’ll arrange it, and they’ll run a tab for me. You’ll have a nice dinner, and you’ll come back here for tea and a bit of dessert—which I’ll go pick up at Monk’s Cafe in a few minutes. You’ll serve it on your good china, and feel fine about it. You’ll all have a nice evening.”
Colleen’s cheeks pinked with pleasure. “That sounds lovely, just lovely.”
“Now, Ma, do you remember the proper way to deal with a kitchen fire?”
“You throw water on a fire. I did.”
“It’s best to smother it. There’s the extinguisher in the closet with the mop. Remember? Fin provided it, and Donal put the brackets in so it’s always right there, on the wall of the little closet.”
“Oh, but I never thought of it, being that upset. And how would I remember how to use it?”
There was that, Meara thought. “Failing that, you can dump baking soda on it, or better all around, set a pot lid on it, cut off the air. Best of all, you don’t leave the kitchen when you’ve got cooking going. You can set a timer on the oven so you’re not wed to the room when you’re baking or roasting.”
“I meant to.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“I’m sorry for the trouble, Meara, truly.”
“I know, and it’s all fixed now, isn’t it?” She laid a hand lightly over Colleen’s. “Ma, wouldn’t you be happier living closer to your grandchildren?”
Meara spent some time nourishing the seed she’d planted, then went to the cafe, bought a pretty cream cake, some scones and pastries. She dropped by the restaurant, made arrangements with the manager—a friend since her school days, circled back to her mother’s.
Since she had a headache in any case, she went straight home from there and rang up her sister.
“Maureen, it’s time you had a turn with Ma.”
After a full hour of arguing, negotiating, shouting, laughing, commiserating, she dug out headache pills, chugged them down with water at the bathroom sink.
And gave herself a long stare in the mirror. Little sleep left its mark in shadowed eyes. Fatigue on every possible level added strain around them, and a crease between her eyebrows she rubbed in annoyance.
Another day like this, she decided, she’d need all of Branna’s creams and lotions—and a glamour as well—or she’d look a hag.
She needed to set it all aside for one bloody night, she told herself. Connor, Cabhan, her mother, the whole of her family. One quiet night, she decided, in her pajamas—with a thick layer of one of Branna’s creams on her face. Add a beer, some crisps or whatever junky food she had about, and the telly.
She’d wish for no more than that.
Opting for the beer to begin—it wouldn’t be the first time she’d taken a cold beer into a hot shower to wash away the day—she started toward the kitchen, and someone pounded on the door.
“Go away,” she muttered, “whoever you are, and never come back.”
Whoever it was knocked again, and she’d have ignored it again, but he followed up with:
“Open up, Meara. I know very well you’re in there.”
Connor. She cast her eyes to the ceiling, but went to the door.
She opened it. “I’m settling in for some quiet, so go somewhere else.”
“What’s this about a fire at your mother’s?”
“It was nothing. Go on now.”
He squinted at her. “You look terrible.”
“And that’s all I needed to finish off my fecking day. Thanks for that.”
She started to shut the door in his face, but he put a shoulder to it. For a foolish minute, each pushed against the other. She tended to forget the man was stronger than he looked.
“Fine, fine, come in then. The day’s been nothing but a loss in any case.”
“Your head hurts, and you’re tired and bitchy with it.”
Before she could evade, he laid his hands on her temples, ran them over her head, down to the base of her skull.
And the throbbing ache vanished.
“I’d taken something for it already.”
“That works faster.” He added a light rub on her shoulders that dissolved all the knots. “Sit down, take your boots off. I’ll get you a beer.”
“I didn’t invite you for a beer and a chat.” The bad temper in her tone after he’d vanished all those aches and throbs shamed her. And the shame only added more bad temper.
He cocked his head, face full of patience and sympathy. She wanted to punch him for it.
She wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and just breathe.
“Haven’t eaten, have you?”
“I’ve only just gotten home.”
“Sit down.”
He walked over to the kitchen—such as it was. The two-burner stove, the squat fridge, miserly sink, and counter tucked tidily enough in the corner of her living space, and suited her needs.
She grumbled rude words under her breath, but she sat and took off her boots while she watched him—eyes narrowed—poke around.
“What are you after in there?”
“The frozen pizza you never fail to stock will be quickest, and I could do with some myself for I haven’t eaten either.”
He peeled it out of the wrap, stuck it in the oven. And unlike her mother, remembered to set the timer. He took out a couple bottles of Harp, popped them open, then strolled back.
He handed her a beer, sat down beside her, propped his feet on her coffee table, a man at home.
“We’ll start at the end of it. Your mother. A kitchen fire, was it?”
“Not even that. She burned a joint of lamb, and from her reaction, you’d think she’d started an inferno that leveled the village.”
“Well then, your ma’s never been much of a cook.”
Meara snorted out a laugh, drank some beer. “She’s a terrible cook. Why she got it into her head to have a little dinner party for Donal and his girl is beyond me. Because it’s proper,” she said immediately. “In her world, it’s the proper thing, and she must be proper. She’s bits of Belleek and Royal Tara and Waterford all around, fine Irish lace curtains at the windows. And I swear she dresses for gardening or marketing as if she’s having lunch at a five-star. Never a hair out of place, her lipstick never smudged. And she can’t boil a potato without disaster falling.”
When she paused, drank, he patted her leg and said nothing.
“She’s living in a rental barely bigger than the garden shed where she lived with my father, keeps it locked like a vault in defense against the bands of thieves and villains she imagines lie in wait—and can’t think to open a bleeding window when she has a house full of smoke.”
“She called for you then.”
“For me, of course. She couldn’t very well call for Donal, as he was at his work, and I’m just playing with the horses. At my leisure.”
Then she sighed. “She doesn’t mean it that way, I know it, but it feels that way. She never worked at a job. She married my father when she was but a girl, and he swept her up, gave her a fine house with staff to tend it, showered her with luxuries. All she had to do was be his pretty ornament and raise the children—entertain, of course, but that was being a pretty ornament as well, and there was Mrs. Hannigan to cook and maids to see to the rest.”
Tired all over again, she looked down at her beer. “Then her world crashed down around her. It’s not a wonder she’s helpless about the most practical things.”
“Your world crashed down as well.”
“It’s different. I was young enough to adjust to things, and didn’t feel the shame she did. I had Branna and you and Boyle and Fin. She loved him. She loved Joseph Quinn.”
“Didn’t you, Meara?”
“Love can die.” She drank again. “Hers hasn’t. She keeps his picture in a silver frame in her room. It makes me want to scream bloody hell every time I see it. He’s never coming back to her, and why would she have him if he did? But she would.”
“It’s not your heart, but hers.”
“Hers holds on to an illusion, not to reality. But you’re right. It’s hers, not mine.”
She leaned her head back, closed her eyes.
“You got her settled again?”
“Cleaned up the mess—she’d swamped the kitchen floor with water and potatoes—and I can be grateful she’d forgotten to turn the flame on under the potatoes so I didn’t have that secondary disaster to deal with. She’ll be having dinner at Ryan’s Hotel with Donal and his girl now.”
He rubbed a hand on her thigh, soothing. “On your tab.”
“The money’s the least of it. I rang Maureen, and had it out with her. It’s her turn, f*ck it all. Mary Clare lives too far. But from Maureen’s, Ma could see Mary Clare and her children as well as come back here for visits. And my brother . . . His wife’s grand, but it would be easier for Ma to live with her own daughter than her son’s wife, I’m thinking. And Maureen has the room, and a sweet, easy-goer of a husband.”
“What does your mother want?”
“She wants my father back, the life she knew back, but as that’s not happening, she’d be happy with the children. She’s good with children, loves them, has endless patience with them. In the end Maureen came around, for at least a trial of it. I believe—I swear this is the truth—I believe it’ll be good for all. She’ll be a great help to Maureen with the kids, and they love her. She’ll be happy living there, in a bigger, finer house, and away from here where there are too many memories of what was.”
“I think you’re right on it, if it matters.”
She sighed again, drank. “It does. She’s not one who can live content and easy alone. Donal needs to start his life. I need to have mine. Maureen’s the answer to this, and she’ll only benefit from having her own mother mind the children when she wants to go out and about.”
“It’s a good plan, for all.” He patted her hand, then rose at the buzz of the timer. “Now it’s pizza for all, and you can tell me what’s all this about Cabhan.”
It wasn’t the evening she’d imagined, but she found herself relaxing, despite all. Pizza, eaten on the living room sofa, filled the hole in her belly she hadn’t realized was there until the first bite. And the second beer went down easy.
“As I told Branna, it was all soft and dreamy. I understand now what Iona meant when it happened to her last winter. It’s a bit like floating, and not being fully inside yourself. The cold,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten that.”
“The cold?”
“Before, right before. It got cold, all of a sudden. I even took my gloves out of my pocket. And the wind came up strong. The light changed. It had been a bright morning, as they said it would, but it went gray and gloomy. Clouds rolling over the sun, I thought, but . . .”
She dug back now, mind clear, to try to see it as it had been.
“Shadows. There were shadows. How could there be shadows without the sun? I’d forgotten, didn’t tell Branna. I was too wound up, I suppose.”
“It’s all right. You’re telling me now.”
“The shadows moved with me, and in them I felt warm—but I wasn’t, Connor. I was freezing, but I thought I was warm. Is that sensible at all?”
“If you mean do I understand, I do. His magick’s as cold as it is dark. The warmth was a trick for your mind, as the desire was.”
“The rest is as I told you. Him calling my name, and me standing there, with my hand about to part the vines, wanting to go in, so much, wanting to answer the call of my name. And Roibeard and Kathel to my rescue.”
“If you’ve a mind to walk from work to the cottage, or when you guide your customers, stay clear of that area, much as you can.”
“I will, of course. It’s habit takes me by there, and habits can be broken. Branna made me a charm in any case. As did Iona, and then Fin pushed yet another on me.”
Connor dug into his pocket, pulled out a small pouch. “As I am.”
“My pockets will be full of magick pouches at this rate.”
“Do this. Keep one near your door here, and one in your lorry, one near your bed—sleep’s vulnerable. Then one in your pocket.” He put the pouch into her hand, closed her fingers over it. “Always, Meara.”
“All right. That’s a fine plan.”
“And wear this.” Out of his pocket he drew a long thin band of leather that held polished beads.
“It’s pretty. Why am I wearing it?”
“I made it when I was no more than sixteen. It’s blue chalcedony here, and some jasper, some jade. The chalcedony is good protection from magick of the dark sort, and the jade’s helpful for protection from psychic attack—which you’ve just experienced. The jasper’s good all around as a protective stone. So wear it, will you?”
“All right.” She slipped it over her head. “You can have it back when we’re done with this. It’s cleverly done,” she added, studying it. “But you’ve always been clever with your hands.”
The instant the words were out, she winced inwardly at the phrase. “So, that’s filled you in on the highs and lows of my day, and I’m grateful for the pizza—even if it came from my own freezer.”
She started to get up, clear the dishes, but he just put a hand on her arm, nudged her back again.
“We haven’t finished the circle yet, as we’ve been working backward. And that takes us to last night.”
“I already told you nothing was meant by it.”
“What you told me was bollocks.”
The easy, almost cheerful tone of his voice made her want to rail at him, so she deliberately kept her tone level. “I’ve had enough upheaval for one day, Connor.”
“Sure we might as well get it all over and done at once. We’re friends, are we not, Meara?”
“We are, and that’s exactly the point I’m making.”
“It wasn’t the kiss of a friend, even one upset and shaken, you gave me. Nor was it the kiss of a friend I gave you when I got beyond the first surprise of it.”
She shrugged, to show how little it all meant—and wished her stomach would stop all the fluttering. You’d think she’d swallowed a swarm of butterflies instead of half a frozen pizza.
“If I’d known you’d be so wound up about a kiss, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“A man who wasn’t wound up after a kiss like that would’ve been dead for six months. And I’m betting he’d still feel a stir.”
“That only means I’m good at it.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t argue with your skill. I’m saying it wasn’t friend to friend, and distress. Not that alone.”
“So there’s a bit of lusty curiosity as well. That’s not a surprise, is it? We’re adults, we’re human, and in the strangest of situations. We had a quick, hot tangle, and that’s the end of it.”
He nodded as if considering her point. “I wouldn’t argue with that either, but for one thing.”
“What one thing?”
He shifted so quickly from his easy slouch she didn’t have an instant to prepare. He had her scooped up, shifted as well, and his mouth on hers.
Another hot tangle, fast and deep and deadly to the senses. Some part of her mind said to give him a punch and set things right, but the rest of her was too busy devouring what he gave her.
Then he tugged on her braid—an old, affectionate gesture, so their lips parted, their faces stayed close. So close the eyes she knew as well as her own took on deeper, darker hues of green with little shimmers of gold scattered through.
“That one thing.”
“It’s just . . .” She moved in this time, couldn’t resist, and felt his heart race against hers. “Physicality.”
“Is it?”
“It is.” She made herself pull back, then stand—a bit safer, she thought, with some distance. “And more, Connor, we need to think, the both of us need to think. It’s friends we are, and always have been. And now part of a circle that can’t be risked.”
“What’s the risk?”
“We have sex—”
“A grand idea. I’m for it.”
Though she shook her head, she had to laugh with it. “You’d be for it on an hourly basis. But it’s you and me now, and with you and me what if there are complications, and the kind of tensions that can happen, that do happen, when sex comes through the door?”
“Done well, sex relieves the tensions.”
“For a bit.” Though just now the thought of it, with him, brought on plenty. “But we might cause more—for each other, for the others when we can least afford it. We need to keep ourselves focused on what’s to be done, and keep the personal complications away from it as much as we can.”
Easy as ever, he picked up his beer to finish it off. “That’s your busy brain, always thinking what’s next and not letting the rest of you have the moment.”
“A moment passes into the next.”
“Exactly. So if you don’t enjoy it before it does, what’s the point of it all?”
“The point is seeing clear, and being ready for the next—and the next after it. And we need to think about all of this, and carefully. We can’t just jump into bed because we both have an itch. I care about you, and all the others too much for that.”
“There’s nothing you can do, not anything, that could shake my friendship. Not even saying no on this when I want you to say yes more than . . . well, more than I might want.”
He stood as well. “So we’ll both think on it, give it all a little time and see how we feel.”
“That’s the best, isn’t it? It’s just a matter of taking time to cool it down, think clear so we’re not leaping into an impulse we could regret. We’re both smart and steady enough to do that.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
He offered a hand to seal the deal. Meara took it, shook.
Then they both simply stood, neither backing away, moving forward, or letting go.
“Ah hell. We’re not going to think at all, are we?”
He only grinned. “Not tonight.”
They leaped at each other.