“You’ve gone and shagged Seamus, haven’t you?”

  “Like I could keep my hands off of him after he hung himself out the window and shot magickal arrows at the Domnua? Please.” Bianca fanned her face. “I was dying for dinner to be over last night so I could jump him.”

  “I’m sure he was pleased with that then,” Clare laughed.

  “He seemed quite happy,” Bianca agreed. “But talk to me. I want details.”

  Clare sighed and turned to face her friend. What could she say? That she was worried she’d fallen so fast? That she wasn’t sure of who she was anymore, much less whether or not she could trust her own feelings?

  “It’s a lot, isn’t it?” Bianca asked, concern crossing her face as she studied Clare.

  “It’s quite a lot. I just… am struggling. How can I trust what I feel? I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  “You’re still you. You’re just an enhanced version of you. Like Clare 2.0,” Bianca said, startling Clare into a laugh.

  “So you’re saying just embrace it, roll with it, and go with the flow?” Clare asked.

  “I’m saying take that dragon for a ride and shoot lightning bolts from your hand while you’re at it, Goddess,” Bianca said, a wide grin splitting her face as she pulled the door open and motioned for Clare to go out in front of her. “The ride’s yours for the taking.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Clare demurred. She’d wondered about Blake almost incessantly since he’d kissed her at the circle of stones yesterday. It had felt like there was great meaning behind that kiss.

  Clare didn’t know what she wanted – from him, from the kiss, from anything really. She only knew that she didn’t want to be away from him.

  And maybe that was all she needed to know in this moment, Clare thought as she nodded her thanks to the man working behind the counter and stepped outside to where Blake was fueling the SUV. For a moment, she was distracted by the way the sun gleamed off of the black car, the handsome man leaning on it with his arms crossed in his leather jacket making quite a picture. One she couldn’t quite believe might belong to her.

  “Domnua,” Bianca hissed and Clare whirled, instinctively throwing her hand out as power raced along her skin from her necklace down to her arm. Bianca, having not been distracted by Blake, had seen what Clare should have seen, a drove of fifteen or so large Domnua slipping into the parking lot behind the SUV. They moved fast, crouching low to the ground, their bodies but a silvery streak in the daylight. Clare realized they were using the sun to their advantage, slipping from ray to shimmering ray, concealing their approach.

  Clare whipped her power at them and felt it snake across the parking lot. The fae shattered into a million silvery pieces before winking out of sight. Blake had barely had time to whirl and crouch, his dagger in his hand.

  “Badass,” Bianca commented, as they raced across the lot to the still-crouching Blake.

  “You have no idea. I mean, I always knew stones had power, but, wow, just wow,” Clare panted as they skidded to a stop next to Blake. Seamus brought up the rear, having seen them running across the lot.

  “Is everyone okay? What did I miss?” Seamus demanded, his hands filled with bags of pretzels and snacks.

  “Just Clare blasting some Domnua to smithereens,” Bianca exclaimed, reaching out to help Seamus with his load.

  “Far out,” Seamus said, pressing a kiss to Clare’s cheek. Clare just nodded as she watched Blake, who, from where she stood, looked extremely angry.

  “Uh-oh,” Bianca whispered as she passed Clare. “Someone’s ego is out of sorts.”

  Clare waited while Seamus and Bianca piled into the back of the car. Finally, Blake met her eyes.

  “Thanks,” Blake bit out.

  “Don’t mention it,” Clare said, her tone frosty as she turned on her heel and got into the passenger seat. Far be it from her to point out that he would have been in trouble if they hadn’t come out of the station when they had. But no… Damn men and their egos.

  Blake slid into the driver’s seat, slamming the door louder than necessary, and gunned the car away from the station, all but leaving a trail of smoke behind them. The car remained silent and Clare crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her nose in the air. It wasn’t as if she had anything to apologize for.

  “Soooo,” Seamus said, five minutes later when no one had broken the silence. “Did I miss something else?”

  “Someone’s mad that I saved him from the Domnua,” Clare said, then gasped as Blake swerved to the left and pulled the car off the side of the road. Slamming his hands on the steering wheel, he glared out the window.

  “I’m the protector. I’m supposed to protect you. That’s what I’m here for. You’re not supposed to be the one protecting me. This is what I was worried about! I knew I should have waited to touch you – to taste you. My mind is distracted. I’m just standing there, daydreaming about your body, and I could have been killed in an instant by the Domnua. What was I thinking?” Blake burst out.

  “Maybe we should leave…” Seamus began, but Bianca cut him off and shook her head.

  “No way am I missing this,” she said in a stage-whisper.

  And had Blake not been so intensely angry, Clare might have found humor in the situation. Instead, his words were like bullets, each one hitting her and burning to her core.

  “It wasn’t me who kissed you at the stone circle yesterday! It wasn’t me who slipped into the bathroom while I was in the tub!” Clare shot back.

  “Oh, this is getting good,” Seamus whispered from the back seat and Bianca elbowed him in the ribs.

  “I was helpless not to touch you,” Blake seethed.

  “Don’t play the victim here, buddy, because I simply won’t allow it. You wanted what you wanted and you got it,” Clare seethed right back, feeling anger seep into the warmth she had felt for Blake earlier today.

  “Aye, I wanted you – against my own better sense. I knew it would be suicide to touch you,” Blake said, slamming his hand on the steering wheel again.

  Clare looked out the window and blinked back the tears that threatened to overtake her. She’d been stupid to open herself to him – especially when they were in such a vulnerable position. It would be best if she played it cool and moved forward – for the sake of the team.

  “Hey now, don’t you think you’re being a little harsh?” Bianca interjected, coming to Clare’s defense.

  “It’s fine, Bianca,” Clare glanced over her shoulder with a smile for her friend, before turning a cool gaze on Blake. “We had some fun. Tensions were high and I needed an itch scratched. So, thanks for providing the scratch. Your services will no longer be needed.”

  Seamus whistled long and low from the back seat, so Clare knew that she had played her hand well. Though her heart twisted with the words, it was the only way to protect them all and stay on track with the quest. She’d deal with the fallout after she found the stone.

  “Is that the way of it then, Doc?” Blake asked, bitterness lacing his voice.

  “Aye, that’s most certainly the way of it,” Clare said, turning to look out the window and trying her damnedest to not crawl across the car and jump in his lap. She wanted to tell him no – of course it wasn’t true. But he was hurting her and this was the only way she knew to stay strong. Keep a professional distance – she’d learned it for her career, and now she would apply it to this job, too.

  After all, this was the biggest job of her life.

  Framing it like that helped to dull the edges of the pain, Clare thought, as Blake silently pulled the car back onto the road. She’d never have fraternized with a colleague at work – so what had made her think it would be okay to do so on this mission?

  “Ah, I hate to interrupt, but does anyone know where we’re going?” Seamus asked after a few more minutes of driving in silence. Clare ignored Blake’s sigh of frustration as she looked back at Seamus and shrugged.

  “I actually had a thought about that, while you two were yelling and pretending like you don’t care about each other,” Bianca said cheerfully. Clare’s mouth fell open and, turning, she glared at her friend.

  “It’s not that we don’t care. It’s just that we’re going to keep a professional distance from now on. There’s work to be done,” Clare said, enunciating carefully and shooting daggers at Bianca with her eyes.

  “Sure, whatever you say, boss. But here’s my thought – I was kicking the latest clue around in my head, and I think I figured out where we have to go.”

  “Where’s that?” Blake finally spoke.

  “Mt. Brandon,” Bianca said, beaming.

  Clare just shook her head in confusion as Blake cursed long and low.

  “Of course,” Blake said.

  “I’m missing something?” Clare asked, looking between the two.

  “What my beauty here has figured out,” Seamus said, “is that the clue talked about the saint walking his path in darkness. Another name for Mt. Brandon is the Saint’s Path. It used to be a Christian pilgrimage site. Has stations of the cross all the way to the top of the mountain. Makes perfect sense. The clue was being quite literal,” he finished, wrapping his arm around Bianca and giving her a little squeeze. Her face flushed in pleasure at his praise and Clare found herself being a little jealous. Why couldn’t she and Blake be easygoing like that?

  Because there was no ‘she and Blake,’ she reminded herself, turning around and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “To the Saint’s Path we go then.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The air in the car stayed tense for the next hour while Clare and Bianca worked on their iPads, bouncing theories off each other.

  “What do we know about the Saint’s Path?” Seamus asked, the bag of pretzels rattling as he dug into them. Blake’s jaw twitched at the sound, and it gave Clare great pleasure to reach for a handful of pretzels and eat them clumsily in his immaculate car.

  Hey, nobody said she didn’t have a mean streak.

  To his credit, Blake stayed quiet and focused on driving. Clare suspected he was still upset about missing the Domnua earlier; she watched as his eyes scanned his surroundings constantly.

  Everywhere but her, that is.

  So what? Clare thought, miffed that he’d accepted her reframing of the beautiful night they’d had together. It served her right, she supposed. She shouldn’t have dismissed their time together so casually. But hadn’t he been the one to get mad that she’d distracted him?

  The endless loop of annoyance in her mind made Clare want to scream. Instead, she sighed heavily as she took notes.

  “They say that Saint Brendan once lived there. It was a popular pilgrimage site for the early Christians. There are crosses all the way to the top. It’s a nice walk, that’s for sure,” Bianca said.

  “But nothing about the fae? No magickal history?” Clare asked.

  “None that I’m finding on the internet – with the limited time we want to be on the internet and all. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t. It’s more likely to be in some of my old manuscripts than anywhere else,” Bianca said.

  Clare’s phone beeped with an incoming text. She knew Blake preferred her to keep the phone turned off, but since she was feeling defiant today, she’d turned it back on.

  “I just heard from Fiona. She’s instructed us to go to Grace’s Cove and get a meal and a pint at a Gallagher’s Pub. They’ll put us up for the night and we can start our climb tomorrow.”

  “It’s a lunar eclipse tomorrow,” Seamus said.

  Clare slanted a look at him. “How do you know that?”

  “I follow astrology,” Seamus said with a smile.

  “Really?” Bianca asked. “Are our signs compatible?”

  “I don’t need a horoscope sign to be telling me if we’re compatible or not,” Seamus said and Bianca giggled.

  Clare rolled her eyes and wished to be out of this car as soon as possible.

  “We’ll climb it at the eclipse then,” Blake said, his voice tense.

  They all paused; they were the first words Blake had spoken in over an hour.

  “At night?” Bianca squeaked.

  “The saint walks his path in darkness,” Blake quoted and they all fell silent. His words struck a chord of truth.

  “He’s right. And what’s darker than a lunar eclipse?” Clare asked.

  “Well, technically, the day after a new moon would be the darkest,” Seamus began, but then held up his hand. “But yes, it seems poetic and right. I think tomorrow night we hike.”

  “Great, just lovely. I don’t even have hiking boots,” Bianca complained.

  Seamus hugged her again. “I’ll help you. We’re a team, remember?”

  Clare stared out the window as the road climbed and wound through the hills toward the coast, her mind on the word ‘team.’ She wondered what it would take to get them all back on even ground again.

  Maybe a pint and some pub food would do the trick.

  She certainly hoped so. Because if they went up the side of the mountain like this, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be coming down.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Blake fumed the entire way into Grace’s Cove. He was feeling annoyed, angry at Clare, and most importantly, mad at himself.

  Yeah, he’d really screwed up.

  Blake couldn’t decide which he was madder about – blaming Clare for distracting him from his job, or the fact that she had been forced to protect him from the Domnua. The very thought of it made his stomach churn in anger.

  It was his job – his oath – his sole purpose was to defend against Domnua. For Clare to protect him, while he’d idly daydreamed, was about as sacrilegious as it could get. If his grandfather had been alive and caught wind of it, he’d never have lived it down.

  It brought shame to his name, his role, and all the Protectors that had come before him.

  Yet, he’d been helpless not to fall for Clare. She embodied everything he’d ever wanted in a woman – a sharp mind, a bruising sense of humor, and a body that curved in all the right places. He’d been mooning over her for years, and it had all just come to a head.

  Having her in his family home, and taking her to the circle – well, it had pushed him over the edge. It had been stupid to take her up to the stones, Blake thought, as he crested another hill and finally caught sight of the coast.

  A kiss at the circle was a pledge – of eternal love, of protection, of a promise to be hers forever. Blake wondered if she’d felt the magick curl around them when he’d kissed her.

  If she knew just how much her words had hurt him when she’d lashed out at him in the car.

  Though, in all fairness, he hadn’t told her that he’d pledged himself to her. For all Clare knew, he was simply fulfilling his job duties. And perhaps it was better for them all that he hadn’t. If she truly thought he was just another fling, well, he’d go lick his wounds in private, then.

  And mourn her for the rest of his life.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  They rolled into Grace’s Cove in mid-afternoon, the winter sun shining its pale light over a cheerful village tucked in the curve of a line of stunning coastal cliffs. Houses and shops clambered over each other for space, presenting a charming mix of colors and shapes. All roads wound down to the harbor, where many boats were bundled up for the winter. Clare presumed the town made its money from fishing and tourism, both of which would offer slim pickings in the winter season.

  “It’s a darling town,” Bianca said from the backseat.

  “Aye, I imagine it’s quite lovely in the summer with the tourists on holiday and the boats out in the harbor,” Clare agreed.

  “Will Fiona be at the pub?”

  “No, they’re still in Dublin. We’re on our own, it seems,” Clare said, turning to scan the streets. “I think it’s up this way, at least based on my map.”

  Sure enough, they wound along a one-way street and stopped in front of a large building with a cheerful sign proclaiming it to be Gallagher’s Pub.

  “This looks nice,” Bianca said as Blake parked the car in a small alley to the side of the building.

  “Aye, it does. It will be nice to have a hot meal and a pint,” Seamus agreed.

  Clare said nothing as they exited the car, but she waited while Blake did some sort of magick. She felt the shimmer of it slide over her as he warded the car.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but Blake strode right past her – not even glancing at her.

  So much for trying to make amends, Clare thought, miffed at his attitude. And if he was supposed to be protecting her, shouldn’t he be waiting for her? Annoyed at everything, Clare hurried to catch up as they reached the front door of the pub.

  The pub was empty but for a pint-sized woman sitting at a long wooden bar that lined one side of the bar. Tables, booths, and a tiny stage to the right showed that they packed a regular crowd. Pretty landscape pictures and beer and whiskey signs covered the walls; the pub had a nice, warm ambience that felt immediately inviting.

  “Good afternoon,” the woman said, smiling at them from under a crop of dark curls, her pretty green eyes smiling at them in invitation.

  “Cait?” Clare asked, raising an eyebrow at her in question.

  “That’s me and this is my fine establishment,” Cait said, sweeping her arm out to indicate the empty pub. “Don’t be fooled by the empty space. We’ll be packed in about an hour.”

  “I’m sure you will be. Fiona sent us,” Clare said, following Cait as she walked to the bar. Cait ducked under the pass-through to stand behind it.

  “Ah, yes, she did text me – which is something I’m still not used to,” Cait laughed, and automatically began building a Guinness.

  “Texting?” Bianca asked, sliding onto a stool.

  “Fiona texting. I’m not used to her using technology like that.” Cait shrugged, then raised an eyebrow at Clare as she pointed at her. “Drink?”

  “A cider is fine,” Clare said, and Bianca nodded for the same.

 

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