The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) (10 page)

SAM SNAGGED THE
last stool in the crowded bar in Bray—a gritty, working-class neighborhood at the southern tip of Dublin. A hurried bartender wiped the spot in front of him with a wet rag and leaned in, shouting over the jumble of voices. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Whiskey.”

The bartender pushed back from the bar and filled a glass with a healthy shot, and slid it toward him.

Sam wrapped his fingers around the glass. “Is Padraig Smythe here yet?”

“He left ten minutes ago.”

Sam pulled out his phone, checking to see if there was a message. There wasn’t. “Do you know if he’s coming back?”

“Don’t think so,” the bartender answered. “He said something came up at home.”

Sam knocked back the shot, setting the empty glass back on the counter and pushing it toward the bartender for another. Just when he was starting to catch a rhythm. He shook his head, frustrated. He couldn’t seem to catch a break with this case. Every time he picked up a lead, he ran into another wall.

The bartender refilled his glass and Sam gazed out the dingy windows of
Teach
Ó
ir
, the dive bar around the corner from the music shop Brigid had listed on her employment form. He’d talked to Padraig Smythe, the owner of the shop, less than an hour ago. Padraig couldn’t remember anyone by the name of Brigid O’Sullivan, but he’d agreed to meet Sam here for a pint.

Sam was hoping he might be able to jog the man’s memory.

So much for that idea.

“Blackthorn cocktail,” a clipped Irish accent called over the swell of voices in the bar.

Sam eyed the girl, probably around eighteen, with short black hair and a lip piercing. She wore black leather cuffs around her wrists, and silver pentagrams winked from her fingers. “Blackthorn cocktail?”

She nodded, picking at her black nail polish.

Sam thought of the roses growing outside his cottage, the thick black vines with long sharp thorns. “What’s in that?”

The girl didn’t even bother to look at him. “Whiskey, vermouth, bitters and absinthe.”

Sam noted the tattoo on her neck, a small crescent moon. “Why is it called a blackthorn cocktail?”

The girl sent him an annoyed glance. Dark eyeliner was smudged around her smoky gray eyes. “Blackthorn’s a
plant.
”

“What does it look like?”

The girl glanced back at the bartender, drumming her fingers impatiently over the counter. When the bartender ducked into the back, she picked up Sam’s fancy phone and searched the internet. “Here,” she showed him a picture of a shrub with thick black stems, long thorns, and tiny white flowers. “It usually blooms around Imbolc.”

“Imbolc?” Sam asked when she handed him back his phone.

The bartender walked back out with her drink and she rolled her eyes, laying a few Euros on the counter. “It’s a pagan holiday. Look it up.”

She turned, disappearing into the crowd. Sam slid his phone into his pocket. He was somewhat familiar with Ireland’s pagan celebrations. It was the Midsummer’s Eve festival that had led him to Seal Island in search of Tara last summer. But he’d never heard of Imbolc, or blackthorn.

He made a mental note to look into both of them later.

Snagging a day-old newspaper off the end of the counter, he scanned the headlines. The noise in the bar rose to a fever pitch when he spotted the image of an oil painting in the bottom right corner. He checked the page number and flipped to the
Style Section
, taking in the collection of orange rose paintings adorning the walls of a fancy Dublin gallery.

The Connelly Gallery is pleased to announce the first-ever auction of Glenna McClure’s original rose paintings.

Rose paintings? Glenna? Sam stared at the flaming petals and fiery brush strokes. Since when did Glenna paint roses? He glanced at the address, pulling his phone back out and typing it in. The gallery was back in the center of the city, at least an hour’s drive from here in rush hour traffic. He stood, pulling out his money to pay.

“Is that what I think it is?” The bartender twisted the newspaper around to face him. His expression went stony as he read the headline. He tore it off the bar, crumpling it in one hand.

Sam paused, his hand on his wallet. “Not a fan of roses?”

The bartender threw the newspaper in the trash. “I’m not a fan of that artist.”

Sam slid his wallet back in his pocket. He kept his tone light and neutral. “Any particular reason?”

The bartender nodded, his jaw tight. “She used to live here.”

“In Bray?” Sam asked. He knew Glenna was from Dublin, but he didn’t expect her to live in a place like this, one of the seediest neighborhoods in the city. He expected her to have grown up in a townhouse along one of the affluent streets north of the river. “When?”

The bartender turned, clearing plates off the bar and dipping them in the sink. “About ten years ago.”

Sam lifted a brow. “That’s a long time to carry a grudge.”

“Not if she killed your brother.”

“She…what?”

The bartender dried his hands, flinging the towel over his shoulder. It landed with a sharp thwack. “He wasn’t the only one. Three men died in this town because of her.”

Sam slid back onto the barstool, signaling the bartender to fill up his glass again. “How old was she when she lived here?”

“Nineteen or twenty.” The bartender snagged a pint glass from the rack above the bar, setting it under the taps. “She kept to herself mostly, but my brother couldn’t stay away from her.” His gaze hardened. “She was beautiful—too beautiful.” His hand wrapped around the Smithwicks lever. “No woman should have that much power over a man.”

Sam thought of Tara and Brigid—women trapped powerless in relationships with abusive husbands. It went both ways: the balance of power, the struggle for it. When any person got too much, the other was in trouble. “I take it…she didn’t return his affections.”

The bartender poured himself a shot, leaning his elbows on the bar. “She told my brother she wasn’t interested. She told him, and his two friends, to leave her alone. But they were young and madly in love. They started following her around the neighborhood, knocking on her door in the middle of the night, singing her songs from the street when the rest of us were trying to sleep.”

“How did she take that?” Sam asked.

“Not well.” The bartender pushed back, sliding a pint of Smithwicks down the bar to a customer. “But where other women might have told them off or put a stronger bolt on their door, Glenna locked herself in her apartment and painted those orange roses.” He jerked a thumb toward the trash can. “The ones you saw there? Only half a dozen of them in all of Ireland.”

Sam reached for his glass and took a long sip.

The bartender’s hand shook as he tipped the bottle, topping off his glass. “The same night she painted those roses, real roses grew in the gardens of the men who were after her. It was the middle of winter, but these orange blooms lit up like they were made of sunlight. We had to shut our blinds so we could sleep at night. Some of us went so far as to cross the street so we didn’t have to look at them.”

Sam thought of the roses growing outside his house, glowing as if their petals were on fire. He thought of Glenna in her robe, desperately trying to destroy them.

“When a week passed and she didn’t come out of her home, my brother and the others finally gave up,” the bartender continued. “Brokenhearted, they came into the pub and drank themselves senseless.”

Sam nodded. That was pretty standard, wherever you lived.

The bartender slid the rag off his shoulder and wiped it slowly over the taps. “At the end of the night, they left and walked home to three different homes along the river. One by one, they fell into the water and drowned.”

Sam’s hand stilled on the glass. “All three of them?”

“Aye.” The bartender nodded. “All three in one night.”

Sam fought to wrap his head around it. He’d come here to talk to a man about Brigid. Not find a string of missing persons connected to Glenna. “And…you think this artist killed them?”

“I know she did.” The bartender cleared the empty glasses off the counter, stacking them on the shelf under the bar.

“Then why isn’t she in jail?”

“We went to the garda and tried to have her arrested, but there wasn’t enough evidence against her. There were witnesses who’d seen how drunk my brother and his friends were before they left the pub. It was unlikely, but possible, that they could have stumbled into the river on their own.”

“What about bodies?” Sam’s gaze fell back to the few sips of whiskey left in his glass. “Surely, they washed up after a while.”

The bartender shook his head. “The bodies were never found. But the roses—the day the men died—the roses in their gardens turned black.”

THE ROSES FELL,
tumbling to the ground. The scent of the petals grew stronger, the sickening sweetness dizzying in the heat. Glenna pushed her heavy hair back from her face, not even noticing the smear of blood on her arms.

She hacked at the stems, her blade severing the vines twisting up the walls of Sam’s cottage. She gripped Finn’s fillet knife—the sharpest blade she could find on the island—slicing through the thorns.

Sam didn’t deserve this. None of them did.

She slashed at the roses, attacking the bush until there was only one long stem left—a thick vine of impenetrable black. She dropped the knife and sank to the ground amidst the knotted thorns.

A single rose bloomed, with one black petal unfurling in the moonlight.

O
wen chased the football through the rutted streets of the village. It bounced toward Ronan, but Kelsey beat him to it. She squealed as she knocked it away from him and passed it to Ashling.

“Kelsey,” Ashling called, as they raced past the pub. “Next time they want to play boys against girls, we should give them a head start.”

Kelsey giggled, her blond hair flying out behind her. Owen’s sneakers slapped against the pavement, and she glanced over her shoulder, hesitating for a split-second as the ball sailed back toward her.