Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (8 page)

“So how do you know this so called ‘pub food’
is any good if we haven’t been there?” I asked, shooting a glance
over at her.

Her hair was pulled back, but loose strands
were whipping about her face as she looked over and smiled at me.
“I said we haven’t been there before. I never said that I hadn’t
been there.”

“Oh,” I exclaimed playfully. “So you went
there without me, did you?”

“Hey, a girl’s got to have lunch, doesn’t
she?” she laughed.

“Yes, I suppose she does,” I replied. “So do
they have colcannon and Dublin coddle?”

“Among other things, yes they do.”

“And Guinness, of course?”

She glanced at me and raised an eyebrow,
giving me an unmistakable stare.

“Okay,” I held up my hands in surrender. “I
know, I know. Stupid question.”

“Well, it IS an Irish pub, Rowan,” she
laughed.

She downshifted as the traffic signal ahead
of us winked yellow, and we rolled to a stop at the white line just
as it switched over to a glaring red.

Considering the events of the day, I was
surprised to find myself in such a good mood. Truth is, even if
today had never happened, I still would have been surprised. I
hadn’t felt this good about life since the first time I’d been
cold-cocked by an unwanted ethereal vision of a horrific murder;
and that had been almost four years ago.

A far cry from past experiences, my
seizure-induced headache had faded relatively quickly. None of the
typical creepy sensations that always accompanied these events had
plagued me in the least. Even though I could still feel a troubling
shadow falling across my life yet again, it was faint and nebulous.
Nothing like the dark foreboding that always forced me into a
brooding stupor.

I didn’t know if it was some sort of
artificially conjured euphoria brought on by my wife’s contagious
good mood, or what. Maybe I was just getting better at keeping
myself grounded and centered. As basic a task as that is for a
Witch, it was something I’d been having trouble with for some time
now. In the end, I simply didn’t care what it was, but I knew one
thing for sure— I planned to enjoy every minute of it.

I simply felt good. I was truly relaxed and
happy for the first time in a very long while.

I felt my wife’s fist thump hard against my
shoulder as she playfully punched me. “What are you grinning about,
Row?”

I hadn’t realized that the broad smile had
carved itself into my face, but I suppose it was just part of the
mood. “Nothing,” I replied, rolling my head to the side so I could
look at her. “Not a thing.”

“Sure, whatever,” she replied with her own
smile, then asked, “So, did Ben say when he would be getting out of
there?”

“Probably in a couple of hours is what he
said. Why?”

“Well, it’s only a little after six right
now, so that would still be early yet,” she replied, pulling her
hand across her forehead and dragging some of the wild strands of
hair from her face. “Maybe he and Allison could join us later for a
pint or two.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied,
remembering that I had purposely not told her about the phone call
I’d overheard. Truth was, I didn’t actually know to whom Ben was
talking on the other end, but I had my suspicions. Still, it was
best not to start a rumor, even if it was only between us.

“Come on,” she urged. “It’ll be
fun.
The Don’t Be Brothers
are
supposed to be playing tonight.”

“The what?” I asked, furrowing one eyebrow
and squinting at her.

“The Don’t Be
Brothers
,” she repeated. “It’s a play on…”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I told her as I
nodded my head. “I’m just not sure I want it.”

“They’re really good, Row. I’ve heard them
play before.”

“Okay, so speaking of playing, what DO they
play?”

She shrugged. “Irish folk songs, what
else?”

“You mean Irish drinking songs.”

“Of course, they’re playing in a Pub.”

“So that means we have to sing along.”

“Your point?”

“I don’t know any of the words, and I doubt
if Ben or Allison do either.”

“Aye,” she said as she shook her index finger
at me. “But I do.”

“Okay,” I gave in, reaching to my belt and
grabbing my cell phone. “I’ll give him a call, but I don’t make any
guarantees.”

I wasn’t actually sure if I would be able to
reach him, but I was willing to try. If I was correct, and the
earlier call had in fact been from Allison, maybe they had managed
to patch things up by now. An evening out might even be just
exactly what they needed. After all, it was Friday. They were
adults. Their son was old enough not to require a sitter, so that
shouldn’t be an obstacle. Looking at it that way, there was really
nothing to keep them at home.

I thumbed in the speed dial code and put the
phone up to my ear. I heard the ringer at the other end issuing
from the earpiece, but halfway through the trill it suddenly became
muffled. As I listened, a heavy, rhythmic thrum was starting to
fill my ears and was effectively dulling the ambient sounds. I
glanced around expecting to find a car with a radio blasting heavy
metal music somewhere nearby. If that was the source of the noise,
however, I couldn’t locate it.

When the second ring sounded, a coppery
metallic taste began creeping up the back of my tongue, and I
instantly tensed. The sensation wasn’t new to me, and I desperately
feared what I thought it was about to bring. The false sense of
security I had felt a few moments ago was now fleeing in
earnest.

A tidal wave of déjà vu slammed into me full
force, and I knew it was more than just a trick of an overactive
imagination. I had been here before, experiencing an unwanted
psychic event from the passenger seat of my wife’s Jeep. I opened
my mouth to warn her of what was about to happen only to have my
words halted in my throat by the sound of Felicity’s own frightened
voice.

“R… Ro… Rowan…” she stuttered, a note of
confused terror like I’d never heard from her before was interwoven
through the syllables of my name.

I turned my head only to see my wife’s
normally beautiful face drawn tight into a pained grimace. Her
teeth were clenched, and her back began to arch, pressing her body
hard against the shoulder belt. A split second later she was
shaking uncontrollably. Her head snapped back, thudding against the
headrest as her eyes began to roll upward.

The Jeep suddenly lurched forward as her feet
slipped from the clutch and brake, her right foot landing
momentarily on the accelerator. I dropped the phone, grabbing at
the steering wheel as I wrenched the stick shift into neutral. The
engine coughed then settled to an idle, but we were still rolling
forward.

“Felicity!” I screamed, but she couldn’t hear
me. I could only barely hear myself as the driving rhythm continued
to grow inside my head.

Her body was bucking in violent spasms
against the safety harness, and she continued to vibrate with the
physical tremor. Her arms were drawn up to her chest, turned
inward, and her hands were postured like tight paws, her
fingernails digging into her palms.

A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her
mouth as she frothed, and I could see that she was biting her
tongue. The back of her head continued to slam against the padded
headrest, and I mutely thanked the ancients for it being there.

Sharp but distant noises began to invade the
heavy beat in my head, and I recognized them as blaring horns. A
quick glance forward told me that the traffic signal had switched
to green. We were moving forward, rolling by the grace of leftover
momentum, but it was far from what traffic would bear. Still, it
was too fast for my liking considering the circumstances.

“Felicity!” I called out again, ignoring the
futility of the action.

I was struggling to guide the rolling Jeep
while at the same time unbuckling my own seatbelt. My first thought
was to get my foot on the brake and bring the vehicle to a stop,
but I wasn’t the most limber individual on the face of the planet,
and I wasn’t sure I could get around my wife’s stiffened legs. In a
hostile attempt to assume control of my emotions, a wave of panic
began sweeping over me as it elected to challenge my desperate
concern for Felicity and move itself into the top position.

A prolonged whimper emanated from my wife as
she jerked against the tensed muscles of her body, and I realized
it was a scream that couldn’t escape. The other realization that
struck me square in the face was that the tables had turned. I was
helplessly watching her go through all of the things she had stood
by and watched me suffer so many times before.

I managed to release the catch on my shoulder
harness and twist toward her, levering myself against the back of
the seat. As I brought my leg up, my knee cracked hard into the
dash, sending a lance of pain through the joint. I barked out an
expletive as I pitched forward, and the back of my hand raked
against the jangling key ring that hung from the ignition
switch.

It was then that I realized the panic had
taken over long before I’d ever noticed its icy fingers clawing at
my stomach. A brief but welcome stab of lucidity hit me, and the
logic it brought along set off a chain reaction in my brain. I
reached for the keys and gave them a hard twist, switching off the
engine. That done, I quickly wrenched the gear shift into first
with a hard shove, doing little good for the transmission but
bringing us to a lurching halt.

The dark music was pounding inside my skull
as I scrambled from my seat amid the dulled blare of horns. Angry
motorists were pulling around our stalled vehicle and speeding off,
narrowly missing me in the process. The commotion began to die down
only after I could be seen pulling my wife’s still-seizing body
from the driver’s seat.

It was official. I was no longer in a good
mood.

“L
emme get this straight…”
Ben’s voice came at me over the cell phone. “Firehair went
all
Twilight Zone
this time
instead of you?”

Firehair was just one of the nicknames he had
for my wife, but it was by far his favorite.

“Yeah, kind of,” I answered. “Or maybe in
addition to.”

Felicity and I were parked diagonally across
from one another in a booth at Seamus O’Donnell’s. She had pressed
herself as far into the shadows of the corner as she could get, and
I was keeping a close eye on her.

The pub wasn’t my first choice of places to
be given the situation, but it was the closest for what she needed.
Fortunately, the evening rush had not yet started, so I was able to
carry on the phone conversation without yelling over the noise of a
crowd or stepping outside.

“What?” he chirped, a note of concern leaping
into his tone. “You were both all zoned out in a moving
vehicle?”

“No, not exactly,” I explained, still trying
to get a handle on what had happened myself. “I had some ethereal
background noise in my head, but I never stepped over the line. I
did that this morning before you came by.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Do what?” he barked again.
“So you did the la-la land thing this mornin’, and you’re just now
tellin’ me?”

“I didn’t have anything to connect it with at
the time, Ben,” I replied. “Then the whole thing with the
kidnapping happened… I mean, give me a break.”

“So you think it all has something to do with
the Brittany Larson abduction?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Don’t be so goddamned overconfident, Rowan,”
he chided.

“Cut me some slack, Ben,” I replied stiffly.
“I’m still a bit rattled. This kind of thing has never happened to
Felicity before. I’m not real happy about it, in case you haven’t
noticed.”

“Yeah… Sorry. You’re right,” he apologized.
“So listen, where are you two right now? Home?”

“No.” I shook my head out of reflex as I
spoke. “We’re in a bar down on Oakland called Seamus
O’Donnell’s.”

“What’d ya’ go to a bar for?” he asked, a
note of confusion in his voice.

“It was the closest place where I could get
her out of the heat and let her rest up,” I told him. “Besides,
it’s actually where we were headed for dinner anyway.”

“She doin’ okay?”

“Seems to be.” I looked across at Felicity.
She was still at the far end of the booth but had leaned forward
now, elbows on the table, eyes closed, and fingers slowly massaging
her temples. “But judging from the looks of her and speaking from
experience, she’s got a killer headache at the moment.”

“What about you?” he pressed. “You gonna go
all loopy or anything?”

“Like I actually know when that’s going to
happen, Ben?”

“Yeah, forget I asked.” He huffed out a heavy
sigh then muttered, “Jeezus fuck, white man. What am I gonna do
with you two?”

“Wish I could help you there, Chief,” I told
him. “I’m wondering the same thing myself.”

“Not what I wanted to hear,” he replied. “So
listen, stay right where you are. I’m pretty much done here, so I’m
gonna shake loose and come down there.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

I thumbed off the phone and clipped it back
onto my belt then turned my full attention back to my wife. Her
eyes were still closed, and she was carefully working her fingers
from temples to forehead and back again. Her lips were parted
slightly, and I watched the rise and fall of her chest as she
struggled to regulate her breathing. I knew exactly how she felt,
and it was killing me to see her like this.

Of course, I suppose now I knew exactly how
she felt when the roles had been reversed.

“I’d like to tell you it gets better,” I said
softly. “But, it’s more like you just get used to it.”