My thoughts drifted from my mother to Peter’s mom. I was worried about Claire. I had no idea what had set her off against Emmet. Perhaps Claire herself had a strong enough psychic ability to sense his otherworldliness? But that didn’t explain the history she seemed to think she had with the golem, who she thought his people were, or, most importantly, what had happened to Peter’s brother, the son she had turned over to them for safekeeping. I felt certain of one thing: It was a pure fiction that the old man was some long-lost Great-Uncle Peadar. This man, this “dried-up husk,” as Claire had called him, was somehow Claire’s son and Peter’s brother. Logically, I couldn’t account for how Peter’s brother could be older than his parents, nor could I imagine the circumstances that had inspired Claire and big Colin to give up their boy, but there was no question that Claire believed him to be her long-lost son. “Peadar,” the name of the missing uncle, was only a convenient label to hang on the body that had been found. Something for Detective Cook to chew on.
After Claire and I had returned to the bar, Colin came and whisked her upstairs to their living quarters. She hadn’t made another appearance. I had joined Peter behind the bar, and we’d worked together until last call. “This is nice,” Peter had commented at one point, his mismatched eyes, right blue and left green, misty with drink. I knew without asking what he meant by “this,” and part of me agreed. Even so, the revelation that the Tierneys—a family I had always thought of as being the most normal family in the world—had been touched by some form of magic was making me ask the same questions Emmet had raised. How could it be that Peter was never bothered by my family’s magic, and now by my magic, for that matter, when most normal people were at least a little unsettled by it?
The sound of a car pulling into our drive pulled me from my thoughts. A door opened and softly closed, and then the car reversed back onto the road. High heels moving cautiously across stone told me one of my aunts had returned.
Iris’s eyes widened, and she stopped in her tracks, clutching her purse to her chest, when she registered my presence in the garden. In spite of her air of guilty surprise, she looked radiant in the rosy hues of early daylight. I knew it meant I was both a hypocrite and a liar, but I realized in that instant I’d never speak to her about Connor. I couldn’t bring my heart to do it. I couldn’t risk the fragile renaissance I was witnessing any more than I could rip the wings off a butterfly. I would take this secret to my grave. I made this decision in the full knowledge that my own weakness would make it a heck of a lot harder for me to judge either of my aunts. I raised my cup. “Morning.”
“Good morning.” She gave me a smile that tottered between embarrassment and hubris. “I guess this old girl still has it in her,” she said just in time for Oliver to arrive, shirtless and wearing baggy sweatpants, a mug of steaming coffee in hand.
“Well, she sure did last night,” he said with a smirk, “and by the looks of you, all night long too.”
“Oliver,” we gasped in unison, and he let loose with a full-throated laugh. He came over to the table and joined me.
“When do you close on your new house, again?” Iris asked before shaking her head and going inside. In spite of her embarrassment, there was a sly and satisfied look on her face.
“Surprised you are home,” I said.
“And why do you say that?” He held his mug in both hands and leaned in as if I were about to tell him the juiciest of secrets.
“Well, you know. After last night. You and Cook. I mean Adam.”
He feigned a look of shock. “Well, my dear, we don’t all have the alley cat morals of your Aunt Iris.”
“You’d better not let her hear you say that,” I said.
“Point taken.” He took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair.
He grinned. “We danced a little. Drank way too much. Talked a little. Then I walked home. I was in no shape to drive, I’ll tell you that.”
“Wait, that’s it?”
“We are having lunch today,” he said. “I want to take our time and make sure this is right. We were kids . . . before. I don’t want to rush things. I want to go slowly and enjoy it.”
“You, Oliver Taylor, want to take things slowly?”
“Is that so unbelievable?”
“Yes. Who are you, and what have you done with my real uncle?” He blew me a very wet raspberry in response. A question rose to my mind. “How is it that Adam doesn’t react poorly to your magic?”
Oliver raised his eyebrows and frowned at the same time, considering the question. “He did at first, when we were young, back when we first met. But I suggested that he not ‘react poorly to it,’ as you so quaintly put it.”
“You compelled him?”
Oliver nodded. “Yeah, but that was the one and only time. I owned up to him that I had done it, and I promised us both I’d never suggest anything to him again.” He took a sip of coffee and then looked at me over the rim of his mug. “Adam is worried about you, you know?”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“?‘Gut feeling,’ he says. Peadar Tierney showing up with a hole punched through him. You’ve been acting all cagey around him, he says. Don’t worry; I didn’t say anything about the old guy.”
“Is it hard for you, keeping secrets from Adam?” I found myself piling up secrets in my relationship with Peter: my mother’s return, the truth about Maisie, the incident with Peadar, Emmet throwing himself at my feet, my liking that Emmet had thrown himself at my feet.
“Honestly, I don’t know, but the way things happen around here, I am sure I will have many opportunities to find out. Tell me, Gingersnap. What was all the commotion with Claire last night?” He sat down his cup and leaned his chair back so that it balanced on its hind legs. “No, I was neither too wasted nor too preoccupied to notice.”
“You tell me. Claire thinks she knows Emmet or at least ‘his people.’?”
“People?” he rocked his chair back on all fours and tilted his head.
“She says he isn’t human. She thinks he is something otherworldly, but other than that I don’t know more than you do.”
“But you will get to the bottom of it?”
“Of course. I have ideas, but they sound crazy, even to me.” My instincts told me to hold off on sharing more than I had to, at least until I knew the full story of what was going on with Claire. “I love Peter, and I want to marry him, but I want to know what I’m getting into with the Tierneys. You know?”
“Indeed I do. Let me know if I can help.” The sun had made its way high enough in the sky to illuminate the whole of our garden. “Lord, doesn’t that feel good?” Oliver asked as he stretched up into the golden light. He stopped mid-stretch and stood, walking over to where he had placed the sundial. He held out both hands, palms down, toward the marker. “Someone has been messing around here.” He turned and regarded me, his right eyebrow raised. “You have been messing around here. Just what have you been getting up to, Gingersnap?”
My mind breezed over a thousand lies, none of which I had the heart to tell. I rose and rushed over to his side. “Connor,” I said and gave a slight nod toward the dial. So much for taking the secret to my grave. “I was trying to resurrect a memory of Mama,” I said. “He hijacked the energy.”