The Witching Hour: 11 Enchanting Novels Featuring Witches, Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Ghosts, Fae, and More!, page 129
The sky was clear, though storm clouds brewed on the horizon, and the whole world seemed balanced on a knife’s edge. Something was in the air, and it tickled up and down my spine like I was full of static electricity. The next time I touched something metal, I was going to get one hell of a shock.
It was the first of April, and there I was sitting on the deck of my dead father’s beach house on the wild and windy coast of southern Victoria, Australia, like the April fool I was. Last night had culminated with a horrid confession from my boyfriend, Alex, rather than the passionate kiss I’d been expecting when the clock ticked over at midnight. Things had been great between us, and there I was thinking he was going to offer me a diamond ring. Fat chance.
He’d said it. It. The thing every woman dreads when she’s expecting the complete opposite. The five words that resembled the ultimate cop-out when breaking up with someone. It’s not you, it’s me.
My grip tightened around the glass of ‘water’ in my hands, and the ice clinked. Bastard.
Pair that with being handed a redundancy package from my job the month before and I was onto a winner. Pulling my feet up onto the deck chair, I curled in on myself. Bad things always went for the trifecta. What was number three going to be? It felt like the universe was aligning for the ultimate slap in the face, and it was aimed right at me.
If Dad were here, he would know what to do. He always knew the right thing to say. Buck up, kiddo. He just wasn’t as good as your old man. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.
Dad was gone now—he passed away from brain cancer, four months after his diagnosis—but his house was still here. He’d left it to me in his will, and I’d been too attached to it to even think about selling up. Good thing for me since I was broke and alone. I needed a place to crash until I could work out what I was going to do. So, I’d legged it from that awful party, passed Alex’s place to pack my things, and had driven from Melbourne straight to Ocean Grove. I’d driven home.
The sound of screeching tires echoed through the stillness, and the glint of sun hitting metal glistened between the scraggly windswept scrub. A silver car appeared over the rise and weaved along the unkempt driveway toward my little beach house. I watched as it finally stopped, coming to rest next to my little red sedan in the yard, and the handbrake made a ratcheting sound as it was pulled on.
A balding man was inside, and I could see he was wearing a suit and tie. He flung open the door and wrestled with the seatbelt, and once he’d unclipped it, he practically fell out of the driver’s seat and onto the patchy grass underneath. Then he dived back in, his stubby legs flapping about before finally emerging with a black briefcase. The whole thing was like a slapstick comedy routine out of a Monty Python movie, and I watched in silent awe at the display.
Narrowing my eyes, I wondered if he had the right house. He was wearing a dark suit, his tie done up, and his jacket still on. Lawyer? Debt collector? The odds were at two to one. His forehead was dripping with sweat as he waddled up the path, cursing under his breath.
Standing, I set down my glass on the table and leaned against the railing of the deck. “Can I help you?”
“Ah,” he said, glancing up at me. “Are you Skye Williams?”
“Yeah.” I looked him over and tried to hold onto my laughter. He looked like a penguin waddling up the path, and his short stature didn’t help one bit, nor did his thick Irish accent. He was a long way from Antarctica.
“My name is Robert O’Keeffe,” he said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. “I’m here on behalf of you mother, Aileen.”
I stared at him, my amusement turning into full-blown shock. I hadn’t heard from her since I was two years old, and even then, I couldn’t recall a single thing about the woman. All I had were a few creased photos and the random memories Dad used to mumble before he died. The meds the doctors put him on loosened his tongue, and for the first time in my life, I’d learned a little about the ghost of my mother, the Irish woman who’d come to Australia for adventure and ended up with my dad.
“My mum?” I asked the man. “You mean the woman who abandoned my dad and me when I was two? What does she want?”
The man, Robert O’Keeffe, wrung his hands. “I’m very sorry to be bringin’ the news, but your mother has passed on.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“It happened a month ago,” he went on, looking forlorn. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
I raised my eyebrows. I was supposed to feel something, wasn’t I? Sadness, shock, despair, or whatever emotion was comparable, but I didn’t feel anything. How could I when I didn’t even know her? My mother was a stranger.
“How?” I asked instead. Looked like morbid curiosity was now a thing with me.
“Heart attack. It was very sudden.”
I snorted and glanced out across the ocean.
“I know this is a shock to you,” he said, climbing the stairs and standing on the deck next to me. “But she left you everythin’ she owned. I’m a longtime friend, but I’m also the executor of her will.”
Everything was numb. Even the strange weather wasn’t bothering me anymore.
“I guess that means I’m stuck with her debts now,” I drawled. Glancing up at the sky, I added, “Thanks, universe. Just what I need. Just add bankruptcy to the pile, and you’ve got your trifecta. I knew something was coming today. I knew it.”
“No, no,” Robert said, watching me curiously. “She had no debts. You can be sure of that.”
“Then give me some good news, Robbie,” I said with a scowl. “I lost my job to a cheaper workforce overseas, my boyfriend dumped me last night, and now you show up in your suit and tie and say my stranger of a mother has died. I’m a financially ruined, emotionally whiplashed orphan. Give me your best shot.”
He beamed at me. “Aye, you’re the spittin’ image of her with your long black hair and green eyes, to be sure. She was just as strong willed with the mouth to match.”
Another tidbit of information had just fallen into my lap, and I wasn’t sure how to take it. When I was little, I’d always dreamed of her. I would lie in bed—cuddling whatever soft toy was my favorite that week—and dream up wild stories of what she would be like. She was from a faraway place that seemed so magical to a little girl of seven. Ireland with its green hills, wild forests, and fairies. Adventure…it seemed its call was in my blood.
Robert set his briefcase down on the table and popped the latches open. When he lifted the lid, he pulled out a pile of papers and a pen that glinted gold in the clear autumn sunshine, never mind the fact we were standing in the shade. The thing looked solid. As in twenty-four karat.
“I need some signatures to make it official, but here’s the list of her assets.” He cleared his throat and began to read. “To my daughter, Skye, I leave all my earthly possessions and assets. The cottage I have called home for twenty-five years, which has been in our family for a hundred and fifty more, that resides in the village of Derrydun, Ireland. My shop, Irish Moon. All my belongings and inventory. The bank accounts and whatever remains in them.” Robert shuffled another paper and read the amount, “Thirty-five thousand euros in the savings account. Twenty-eight thousand euros in the business account. Forty-six thousand euros in the term deposit.”
“Whatever,” I said, trying to keep calm about the one hundred and eleven thousand euros, not to mention the house and that Moon thing. It was about time she gave me something other than heartbreak. “Where do I sign?”
“I must warn you,” he said, holding out the pen. “There’s one condition that needs to be upheld.”
I snatched my hand back. “Which is?”
“As her last living relative, you must come to Derrydun. Your mother stipulated it in her will,” he said. “All costs associated with your travel will be looked after by her estate, but the condition still stands. You must come to Derrydun to settle.”
“I have to go to Ireland?” I exclaimed. “But that’s on the other side of the world!”
He nodded. “To be sure. That’s how geography works.”
“Oh, man…” I let my head fall into my hands before glancing up again. “Wait… I’m the last living relative?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to everyone else?”
Robert frowned. “They passed goin’ on twenty-five years now.”
Putting two and two together, I began to form a picture of my mother’s circumstance. She’d returned to Ireland and had never come back, but I didn’t realize it might have to do with something like that. Everyone else had died, and she’d gone back. Great, this was going to be one of those deep, dark family secret scenarios, wasn’t it? Did they have cults in Ireland?
Ignoring the lawyer—I presumed that was what he was—I studied the colors in the ocean. Deep blue, turquoise, greens, and dark blobs of black seaweed floating about in the current, at the mercy of the tides. Then there was the whole thing about the tides being at the mercy of the moon, and…well, it just went on and on. Everybody was controlled by something bigger than themselves. Employment, finances, global stock markets. I was unemployed, broke, dumped, and was moving into my dad’s beach house in the middle of nowhere. There were great job prospects in a town of two hundred people. Not.
What did I have to lose by going to Ireland? Not a lot. Maybe I could finally understand why she, Aileen, left us behind and get my inheritance along the way. That money would come in real handy.
“Okay,” I declared. “Give it to me.”
Reaching out, I grasped the pen and yelped as a bolt of static electricity cracked through my fingers and up my arm.
“Curious,” Robert declared. “That hasn’t happened before.”
“Holy…” I shook my arm, still grasping the pen. “That hurt like hell!”
“You know what they say about a static shock? It awakens things inside you that were sleepin’.”
“No one says that. Do they?” I asked, rubbing my arm.
“No, I just made it up.” He laughed and pushed the papers toward me. “Sign everywhere there’s a sticky note. There’s nothin’ predatory in there, by the way. It’s only for the name of ownership, which will be finalized when I see you in Derrydun.”
I gave him a look before flipping open the contract and signing. The pen scratched over the paper, the ink as blue as the sea before us. Flipping over the last page, I signed and gave him back his solid gold pen.
“Here.” He handed me a plastic folder printed with the details of a local travel agent. “Your ticket is already booked. You just have to call the agent, and give them your details.”
“Were you that sure I would agree?” I asked, taken aback.
“When people are presented with free money, they usually say yes,” he said with a deadpan voice. “It’s life. Sometimes, you need a break, and that’s what parents are for.”
I made a face. “Fair enough.”
“It was nice to meet you, Miss Skye,” he said. “I will see you in Derrydun.”
“Wait, you’re not traveling with me?”
“No, I cannae. But you’ll do just fine.” He closed his briefcase with a bang and clipped it shut. “Things always have a curious way of workin’ out for the women in your family. Of that, I’m sure.” Smiling mysteriously, he held out his hand.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I shook his proffered hand.
“One last thing,” he said, hesitating on the edge of the deck. “Your mother loved you a great deal, Skye. I was told your name was on her lips when she…you know.”
I didn’t reply. When it became apparent I wasn’t going to offer him anything in response, he turned and waddled down the path, squeezed into his car, and drove away just as erratically as he’d driven in.
Glancing down at the folder from the travel agent, I sighed. I was going to Ireland. Checking the date on the ticket, I yelped. I was going to Ireland the day after tomorrow.
It wasn’t until I went inside and called the travel agent in town that I realized the strange lawyer known as Robert O’Keeffe had no way of knowing I would be at the beach house.
Curious was the word of the day.
2
Green rolling hills passed by in a flash as I drove across the Irish countryside.
I’d landed at Dublin International Airport at the ass crack of dawn, bleary-eyed after a twenty-six-hour flight from hell. A quick stopover in the middle hadn’t helped much, but I was finally in Ireland and on my way to Derrydun, which the map told me was in County Sligo.
A rental car had been pre-booked, and to my joy, I’d been driving across an unfamiliar country with its funny road signs and imperial measuring system for the last three hours. Miles or whatever. Everything seemed really close but was actually really far away. Thus, the three-hour drive I was currently enduring.
Following the directions the GPS gave, I took the turn off the main highway and traveled down a smaller road through some fields and then a forest before buildings began to shimmer through the trees.
Ahead, I spied a sign that read Derrydun (Doire Dún). I assumed the last bit was the village’s name in the Irish language. All the signs had been like it on the way here. Attempting to pronounce the words, my tongue knotted up, and I sighed.
The road twisted and turned, but the village hadn’t come into sight yet. Was it that small I’d already driven past? I glanced at the GPS, beginning to think I’d gone too far or had missed a turnoff. Rounding a bend, a tree loomed directly in front of me, and my heart skipped several dozen beats.
“Holy shit!”
I swerved, and the rental car careened around the tree, across the street, and sailed into a coach bay beside a quaint little cottage with a thatched roof. I came to an abrupt halt, my whole body sliding forward and back as I planted my foot on the brake.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel, and I took a few deep breaths while my heart returned to a healthy rhythm. A range of curse words revolved through my mind, and I reached down and flipped the key in the ignition, turning the beast off before I accidentally put my foot on the accelerator and drove into the creek in front of me.
Getting out of the car, I slammed the door shut and breathed in the clear country air. Welcome to Derrydun, indeed. At least the sun was shining, and I wasn’t freezing in my dress.
Glancing around the little village, the first thing I noticed was the lack of noise. There was zero traffic, zero pedestrians, and zero human noise. I wasn’t used to it.
Really, the whole place looked like it was out of a children’s picture book. There were cottages with thatched roofs that had been turned into shops selling arts and crafts, a few whitewashed buildings bordered the road, there was a traditional looking pub covered in some sort of red leafed creeper, and overlooking the scene were ruins of some kind on the hill.
Where there wasn’t a building, there were masses of green. Trees, flowers, babbling brooks—the works. It was so quaint I almost threw up.
Farther up the street was a single set of traffic lights and a modern service station. I had no idea what they needed the lights for since the road was deserted. I was the only fool on it.
When my heart had stopped trying to claw its way out of my chest, I spotted Robert across the street where he was talking to a much taller man. They’d obviously witnessed my near miss with the tree, and my cheeks flushed. What an entrance.
Robert raised his hand in a wave and waddled over. I glanced at the man he’d been standing with, but he’d already walked off.
“What’s that tree doing in the middle of the road?” I exclaimed with a huff. “I nearly took it out!”
“It’s a hawthorn,” the lawyer said with a chuckle. “We build around because it’s bad luck to cut them down. They’re the trees of the fairies, you know. They’re supposedly the mystical doorways into the fae realm.”
I raised my eyebrows. “If you say so. They should put a sign or something.” I waved my hand at it.
“Was your trip enjoyable?” he asked.
“Until the tree incident, it was as fun as being stuck in a tin can for twenty-six hours straight.”
He smiled, not put off by my irritableness at all. “Welcome to Ireland. It’s good to have you home.”
Home? I wasn’t so sure about that. This was my mother’s home, whoever she’d been, and I had no connection to this place whatsoever. I was a stranger in strange lands. Hell, I couldn’t even understand the accent half the time, and we were all speaking the same language.
“Here are the keys,” Robert said, handing over a heavy padded envelope. “I know you’ve traveled a long way, so I’ll come by afore the funeral with the final paperwork.”
“You’re just handing me the keys without a signature?” I asked, peering into the envelope. “Just like that?”
“You’re Aileen’s daughter.”
“So that’s a thing? Like a discount card?” I made a face.
He shrugged. “You’ll find Irish Moon right there.” He pointed to a shop across the street. “And Aileen’s cottage is directly behind it. The two-story bluestone with the garden.”
“Irish Moon?” I asked with a frown.
“Your mother’s shop.”
I followed his pointing finger, but instead of finding the shop, my gaze collided with the strangest scene. There was an old man shuffling down the road, leading a donkey with a scrappy little Jack Russell terrier perched on its back.
My mouth fell open as they approached. It was a mirage. I was tired as hell from the flight and the death-defying drive over from Dublin, and now I was hallucinating.
“All right, Fergus?” Robert asked as they passed.
“Right,” the old man muttered.
“That’s a thing?” I asked, watching the procession with wide eyes.
“To be sure,” the lawyer said. “Fergus is a local institution. He sells his handwoven crosses of St. Brigid to tourists right there. Has for years. You should get him to make you one. Brigid of Kildare is one of the patron saints of Ireland. Besides, old Fergus would like you more if you did. Bein’ Aileen’s daughter isn’t a discount card.”
