Haunting Beauty (29 page)

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.”