a Touch of Revenge (Romantic Mystery - book 6): The Everly Gray Adventures (26 page)

I pulled the S&W from my waistband, aimed it at Connor.

Annie squinted at me. “Duct tape now. Murder later.”

I’d seen duct tape in one of the kitchen drawers earlier, but couldn’t remember which one. “How about you do one of those fancy moves to cut off the blood supply to her head? Better yet, let me practice.” I grinned.

Annie must have had Connor in a solid hold because she returned my smirk. “Chances are you’d kill her since your technique isn’t that polished yet.”

Fion’s eyes dilated, her glare filled with hatred.

The sick desire to continue playing with her tumbled through me, but I squashed it, snagged the duct tape from the third drawer I searched, and tossed it to Annie. “Make it tight. We know she can heal herself, that she has the power to create energy forms capable of harming, and possibly killing, people. Oh, and we know she’s insane. That’s a bad combination.”

“Nice work, ladies.” Lorcán stood at the kitchen door, a large roll of plastic in his hands. “And since you already have the duct tape handy, perhaps you can help me cover this hole before the rain comes.”

Annie threw him the empty roll of tape. “We’ll need more. I used this roll, except for the last inch.”

It was crazy wrong.

Rain had started to blow in through the hole in the wall, and filled the kitchen with a damp, musty scent. Fion Connor had her mouth clamped shut and was eyeing me with a death look, Annie and Lorcán—who’d never met each other—were carrying on a normal, friendly conversation like they’d been childhood friends, and all three of them were ignoring the fact that I had a loaded gun pointed at Connor.

Revenge was not living up to my expectations.

TWENTY-EIGHT

ANNIE TAPPED MY SHOULDER. “COULD
you hold off on the shooting for a couple minutes? The rain’s really starting to come down and we need to get this hole covered.”

What the hell? I released the magazine, pocketed it, shoved the Smith&Wesson into my waistband, and picked up the free end of the plastic.

Lorcán had been rummaging through drawers. “Found some tape. Shouldn’t take more than a minute to get this patched, then I’ll haul your…target over to the house.”

“What?” The plastic slipped from my fingers. “No, she shouldn’t be around innocent people. It’s bad enough she’s here at the cottage. It would be best to move her back to Grady’s—”

“Pierce shouldn’t walk that far,” Annie said. She picked up my end of the plastic, handed it to me.

I held it tight to the wall while Lorcán taped. “No, of course not. He shouldn’t move at all—”

Lorcán snorted, then nudged my fingers lower on the plastic. “My son is probably on his way over here right now.”

He was right. Pierce simply didn’t lie around. Guilt swamped me. “My fault. I should have filled him in as soon as we had Grady and Connor contained. I’ll just—”

“Fill me in now?” Pierce asked from outside the plastic.

How the hell did my plans for revenge get so screwed up? My side of the plastic was taped solid, so I scooted behind to Annie’s side. And there he stood, leaning heavily against the wall, looking ghost-pale with rain dripping down his face.

I wrapped my arm around his waist. “Let’s get you out of the rain.”

We headed back to the house, Pierce leaning on me, heavy. The chill from his body penetrated my bones. It scared me, right down to my soul. If anything happened to him… “You’re cold, and wet, and…oh, my God, does Siofra know you’re out here? She’s gonna give both of us the Mother Glare.”

“She’s busy with Cait.” He sounded worried.

“What’s wrong?” I was only half listening to him, because the rain was in my eyes, and I needed to see well enough to avoid any slippery areas between the cottage and the house. No way would I let Pierce fall with his leg freshly stitched up.

“Vomiting for the last hour.
Máthair
thinks her body’s getting rid of the drugs. Nothing serious.”

I blew out a sigh. At least there was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Sweat trickled down my back. Pierce wasn’t a lightweight, and even my well-toned muscles were quivering with the strain. I shot a glance toward the house. Ten feet. I could make it without dropping him. I thanked the gods and goddesses there were only two steps leading to the kitchen door.

Pierce was closest to the doorknob, so he turned it, but I shoved the door open. I didn’t want him to be off-balance for even a second, because it could topple both of us to the floor. After I got him safely maneuvered into a chair, I hustled back and shut the door, then found a towel and mopped up the water we’d dripped all over Siofra’s clean floor.

“
Máthair
likes you, Everly.” He sounded slurry.

“I like her, too.” I brushed his hair off his forehead. Too hot. “You have a fever, Pierce. We need to get you back to bed, and…” What the hell had I been thinking? It was one of those horrible face-palm moments, when I wanted to slip through the floor and die on the spot. “I should have tried healing you when the injury first happened. So stupid of me.”

He winked at me, his eyes glassy.

A pang shot right through my heart. Damn, but I loved this man. Now if I could just figure out exactly what that meant.

“
Máthair
would never have allowed it.”

“What? Why not?” And where was she? It would be best if we both walked him to the bedroom. Maybe she couldn’t leave Cait. “Will you be all right here for a minute? I’m going to prepare the bed, make sure the covers are down before I take you back there.”

He grinned. The fever had definitely made him loopy.

I started toward the hallway, but stopped when Annie clattered in through the back door, holding it open for Lorcán. He had Fion Connor balanced over his shoulder, and someone had slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth.

“She say anything interesting?”

Annie grinned. “Nothing repeatable.”

This wasn’t good. On the other hand, I would have help moving Pierce back to bed…and, um, his father was available to take care of getting him into some dry clothes. Last thing I needed was an audience if I had to strip Tynan Pierce.

Still, first things first. “What are you going to do with her?” I asked Lorcán, pointing at Connor.

He shrugged, bouncing Fion halfway off his shoulder. “Siofra will know.”

I didn’t have time to fix the situation. Pierce came first, and there was a healing to do. “Just drop her for now. We need to get Pierce into some dry clothes and back to bed. He has a fever, and I’m going to…” However was I going to explain it?

Annie’s eyes sparkled. “If you could heal Maddie and me, you can heal Pierce. We were almost dead, and Pierce is just stubborn.”

Lorcán didn’t so much as twitch. Maybe touch-healing was a normal thing for the people who followed the goddess Dana.

Siofra burst into the kitchen, her face alight with anticipation, and threw her hands into the air. “We’re having a houseful tonight, aren’t we, then? Lorcán, put that woman on the sofa, then get your son into some dry pajamas, and tuck him into bed. I’ve had to move Cait upstairs so we can keep a close watch on her tonight.” Her eyes narrowed in on Annie. “I’m Siofra, Tynan Pierce’s mother. And you’re…?”

“A.J.” She didn’t elaborate.

Tears came to Siofra’s eyes, and she smothered Annie in a huge hug. “I’ve heard so much about you. Thank you, thank you, for keeping my son safe for those years.”

Annie choked, blinked rapidly. “Uh, it was both of us. We watched over each other.”

Siofra backed away, then smiled and patted Annie’s cheek. “Of course you did. Now then, if you could pour a glass of ginger ale for young Caitlin, and Everly, if you’ll come with me, we can see about finding something for the two of you to wear.” She gave us the once-over. “You’re both quite tall, but we’ll manage.”

Neither of us were actually tall, but Siofra only came up to my shoulder. It was all relative.

Annie blinked a few more times, then turned toward the refrigerator.

There was nothing for me to do until Lorcán had Pierce settled, so I dutifully followed Siofra into a storage area off the kitchen. Within minutes she’d piled my arms full of soft, comfortable clothing. I didn’t ask where it came from, because my mind was already reeling with too much unexpected information.

Annie and I divided the sweat pants and shirts, then she shooed me into the bathroom. “You go first. You have a healing to do.”

I shucked my wet clothes, gazed longingly at the shower, but settled for washing up in the sink. It took a couple minutes of vigorous towel drying to get most of the moisture out of my hair, then I slipped into the sweats Siofra had provided. The pants were a smidge short, but they were warm and dry, so I wasn’t about to complain that my ankles were showing. The whole time I was in the bathroom, I fretted over healing Pierce, and it must have showed on my face when I entered the kitchen.

Siofra took the wet clothes from my hands, and plunked them on the counter. “I’ll get to washing those up as soon as I have A.J.’s. What’s troubling you
mo iníon
?”

My gut churned.
Iníon
meant daughter. I’d seen it on a billboard near Glanmire, but I never expected anyone to say it in reference to me. Nerve-rattling, but it wasn’t what Siofra wanted to know. “It’s the healing. I…”

Annie’d strolled out of the bathroom in time to hear Siofra’s question. “Every time Everly has done a healing, it’s been a life or death situation, so she didn’t have time to think about it.” She added her wet clothes to the pile on the counter. “I’ve learned that if I give her too much time to think about anything, she gets caught up in second-guessing herself.”

She had me dead to rights. “Best friends can be a real pain in the patootie.” I turned to Siofra, needing to explain. “Every time I’ve healed someone, and there haven’t been all that many times, thank God, it was like Annie said, I
had
to respond the situation immediately. The energy just happened, like a spontaneous combustion in my body, but this is different. Pierce’s life isn’t in danger. He’s probably strong enough to be giving Lorcán a hard time, especially with the whole clothes-changing exercise.”

There was distinct rumbling coming from the guest bedroom, and Siofra smiled. “I’d wager on that. Are you saying, then, that you aren’t able to heal anyone without divine intervention?”

I sighed, confused. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve never tried to create healing energy from scratch before. Manipulate it, infuse it with different levels and tones of universal energy—yes, absolutely. It’s a part of me that I would never deny.”

Annie nudged me. “I believe Pierce sent me several messages and one detailed report about you healing the energy-locks Fion Connor used as wards to protect her house.”

“Yes, that’s true.” My neck prickled with wariness. Annie never had that gleam in her eyes unless she was about to spin my world in a new direction.

She shrugged. “So you created healing energy from scratch. At least that’s what the report said.”

“But…” Damn, did she always have to be right? Probably. And I needed to acknowledge it. “You’re right. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing because, like all the other times I’ve healed, it was spur of the moment, unexpected.” Strength poured into me. “It’s time for me to do some creating.”

“There’s another issue here,
mo iníon
.” Siofra’s words stopped me in mid-stride, and I turned to face her.

“You love my son.”

There went my knees, giving out on me again. I, oh, so casually leaned my arm against the wall for support. “I do, but…” And then it hit me. “Healing him will open both of us to very intimate knowledge of each other.”

Siofra nodded.

My curiosity reared up, biting my yellow-bellied chicken in the ass. “How do you know this stuff?”

“I mentioned it before, remember? I was raised in the Circle of Nine.”

Which made no sense whatsoever, since I hadn’t been near a computer to Google it yet.

Lorcán came up behind me, slapped me on the back, and none too gently. “He’s all yours.” The “good luck” was implied.

In only a few hours my entire life had changed. Again. I’d have to give that some thought after my revenge had been packaged up and secured with a tidy little bow.

Totally done with discussing the Pierce-Everly relationship, and with his
mother
no less, I fingered the Smith&Wesson, thinking I would stow it in my handbag, and then decided to leave it where it was. Healing was a complex art that lived and breathed pure energy. There was no room for judgment, and it was time for the warrior and healer in me to find peace with each other.

I glanced up to find three pairs of eyes staring at me, confused. “I’ll just…” I made an ungraceful exit, and sprinted down the hall to the guest room.

Annie was right behind me, stopped me. “Before you go in there, I just wanted to say that what you and Pierce have is amazing. I never thought he’d be able to love anyone and…” She worried her bottom lip. “Be careful with him. He’s big, bad, and dangerous, but when it comes to this kind of love, the man is a virgin. I’m guessing you might be too close to him to see it, so I…butted in. I love you both, and—”