Freedom is its own kind of open door.
I fumbled the key into the hole, and we tumbled inside, wrapped in each other.
Cold hit me. A breeze that had nothing to do with air vents or open windows. The chill ran over my back like a bank of white clouds.
I slipped from Finn’s grasp.
“What is it?”
Nothing seemed out of place. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but perhaps I was looking with the wrong sense. I reached out with my subtle body, my aura. There was a ghost of energy in the room that hadn’t been there that morning, the residual fingerprint of someone else’s energy, lingering malice. I could feel them as if I’d walked through the vapor of their aura.
“Something’s off in here,” I said, unable to fully explain it to Finn. “I don’t feel safe.”
His eyes scanned the place for anything out of the ordinary. His chest expanded and fell with a testing breath. “I can’t say why, exactly, but this place does have a bad vibe,” Finn said.
I scrambled around the room, gathering my things, throwing one article after the other into my suitcase and shoving it closed while Finn watched me with a disconcerted expression.
“It reminds me of when my uncle Clancy took me to visit my grandmother in the hospital. We stood over her bed, and I swear I felt it when her spirit left her body. There was…a drift in the currents of the room.”
I shuddered. “Spoken like a true sailor.”
He crossed the floor, gathering me in the warmth of his arms, into the cocoon of his heartbeat. “If you don’t feel safe here, luv, you shouldn’t stay.”
“Hence, the packing.” I slung my duffel over my shoulder, plans formulating in my head. “Giovanni will let me stay with him until we figure out what to do.”
Finn’s eyes widened. A touch of anger and protectiveness flared from him and wrapped me in an unwelcome cloak of dull green and lifeless yellow. “That wasn’t my first notion,” he said. “You want to stay with some tosser you barely know rather than with me?”
“I—honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could stay with you.”
I thought of Ina Doyle. I wasn’t welcome in her son’s life, so how would she like me being in their home? “What about your mother? Do you really think it will be okay? For just a night or two? Just until I can figure out what’s next?”
“I’ll call Uncle Clancy. I’m supposed to drive him home when the pub closes. We can pick him up, and he’ll drive with us to my house. He’s got a way with my mother.” When he held the sides of my face, I gripped his forearms. Our eyes locked. “I don’t know what’s got you so spooked, but I don’t ever want to see fear in your eyes like I see right now. Let me take care of you.”
He didn’t say what I’m sure we both thought. Let me take care of you…until our time is up.
Thirty-One
A bout thirty minutes out of Dublin, the lights of the city gave way to dark country roads with occasional roundabouts and road signs written in both Irish and English. Finn, Clancy, and I rode in silence. I sat dazed, looking out the windows. Two things were definitely in abundance in Ireland: rock walls and pubs.
Finn had called ahead and told his mother I’d found myself in some very unsavory lodgings and that he’d invited me to stay with them. Uncle Clancy took the phone and spoke of how they had to help. After all, I was a young girl on my own.
We slowed, then pulled into a driveway with an enormous wrought-iron gate. A large iron sun adorned the top. “Ag éirí grian mainéar,” Finn said. “Rising Sun Manor.” The gate opened to a long, winding, uphill drive lined with dense trees and brush. I had an irrational flash of fear when the imposing iron gates swung closed behind us.
My father must be sick with worry by now, I thought, then tried my best to unthink it. I had to focus on my mother for the short time I’d be in Ireland, for the short time I’d be free to find her. I didn’t know how my dad did it all those years. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live the rest of my days with the pendulum of unanswered questions swinging through my heart.
Finally, Finn’s house came into view, stately and impressive. Like a summer cottage for royalty. Maybe that explained Finn’s mother’s disapproval. Perhaps I wasn’t good enough for her son. I never imagined Finn living like this. The spiked hair, tattoos, and leather straps on his wrist. The guitar and the blues. The way one penetrating look from him could shoot fire through me. He had the same tame fury simmering inside him as his country: cool green on the outside, intensity underneath. Finn’s fingers tapped a silent, restless tune on my thigh. His face was an impassive mask as we drove up to what Dun would gleefully call the O’LottaDough Mansion.
I realized there was so much I didn’t know about Finn Doyle. But I could see that he had a good heart, and that allowed me to disregard Giovanni’s paranoid warning. I knew what I knew. Finn was good inside and, right now, I was grateful for the refuge he could provide.
Clancy explained that the house had been built on a site where a castle once stood, but it had burned down centuries ago, leaving remnants of a cracked stone foundation and a tall circular building with a peaked roof. They had used the shell of stone, incorporating it and the tower into the home now known as Rising Sun Manor.
“Is that the ocean I hear?” I asked as we stepped out of the car onto a pea-gravel driveway. I hadn’t realized we were so close to the coast.
“It is,” Finn said. “I was born with sea air in my lungs and salt in my hair.” He pointed to an old stone tower looming above us. “That was once a lighthouse.”
We walked up the massive steps to the main house that splayed out like an open hand and through the wooden double doors. Finn set my bag at the foot of the staircase and pulled me forward. “C’mon. I want to show you around.”
“Don’t be long,” Ina warned after she greeted us icily in the foyer. “We’ll have dessert in the library,” she added, casting a sideways look at me, “and get to know one another.”
“I could get swallowed up in a house like this,” I told Finn as he led me from room to room, through doorways and long corridors. “How many people live here?”
“Just my folks and me,” Finn said. “Uncle Clancy lives in the old stable house on the far end of the property.”
“Seems like a lot of house for three people.”
“Aye, but you can be alone even when everyone’s home,” he said with a wink, pulling me into a hug behind a tall bureau.
“You never mentioned all this.”
“Not something you go crowing about, is it? It’s more than we need, aye. But my mother inherited it. The land has been in our family forever.”
We took a dizzying route through the house, a blur of smooth polished wood, darkly spiritual paintings of angels and death. One particular black-and-white print arrested my attention. Two figures seemed to be standing upon the clouds, gazing heavenward at a swirling, spiraling mass of angels. “That’s beautiful,” I said, particularly entranced by the spiral design.
“It’s a scene from Paradiso, from the Divine Comedy.” Like the couple in the painting, we stared upward at the ethereal art. “C’mon. You ready for the meet and greet?” Finn asked, a hint of teasing in his voice.
Personally, I could have skipped the whole “getting to know each other” session with his mom. Ina Doyle didn’t want to know me. Her mind was already made up.
“I love this room,” I said when we walked into the library. It was moody in the best way. High walls covered in gray fabric wallpaper and polished black furniture with gray-and-black damask. Ebony bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. The dark colors could have made the room dreary, but it wasn’t. It was heaven. A wide bank of windows overlooked the moonlit ocean. A fire blazed and crackled in the large fireplace.