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Chapter One

Maeve

I once read somewhere that grief is like a seed, planted deep in your chest. Water it with enough tears and eventually something beautiful will bloom from your loss.

What a load of fucking crap.

Grief is an infection you can’t cut out. It festers and builds, growing heavier, weighing on you until you can’t breathe. It’s a gaping wound in your heart that will never heal right, and somehow you're expected to continue life like nothing’s wrong. Like you’re not rotting from the inside out.

When my grandparents were murdered during a robbery, my entire world flipped upside down. My only family, gone. Just like that. No goodbyes, no closure.

Simple tasks, like getting out of bed, felt like scaling Mt. Everest, and I couldn’t summon the energy most days. Inevitably, I lost my job at the CPA firm I’d worked at since graduating Uni.

The crushing grief wasn’t new to me. This wasn’t my first run-in with tragedy.

When I was fifteen, my parents died in a car crash. After that, I moved to Ireland to live with my only remaining relatives—my grandparents—where they raised me until I moved back to the states for college.

I never should have left Ireland. What had I gotten out of it?

A college degree for something I didn’t give two shits about anymore.

Why hadn’t I just moved back to Cork after I graduated?

I’d asked myself that question so many goddamn times.

My therapist told me if I had, the robber would only have shot me too.

I told her he might as well have, with this gaping hole in my heart.

When I found out my grandparents had left me their antique shop, I was torn.

On one hand, McCrum’s Curios was home. It had been in operation for almost as long as the old stone building had existed, handed down through generations of my family.

My parents had taken me there for Christmases when I was little, and as a kid living in a new construction duplex in the heart of Boston, it had felt like magic.

After the car crash, it went from this fairytale place I visited during the holidays to my year-round home.

McCrum’s Curios had been a salve to my soul. Now, after all these years, I was going back. But it wouldn’t be like before. There’d be no warmth or laughter. No family waiting for me with open arms.

It was empty now. Wounded. Missing a piece of its soul. Just like me.

The old antique shop was the last bit of family I had to hold onto, even if it wasn’t a living, breathing thing. It didn’t matter. It felt alive, like it was waiting for me to come home.

Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork never seemed to change, no matter how much time passed. Most of the same antique and curio shops neighbored McCrum’s. Same shop signs, same dusty antiques that never seemed to move from their display windows. Same nosey neighbors.

Mrs. O’Neill, owner of O’Neill’s Vintage , still sat in her creaky rocking chair, just like she had when I was a kid. Cup of tea in hand, chatting the ear off a customer with gossip they couldn’t care less about.

The old Irish woman glanced up and waved when she saw me coming up the sidewalk with my bags in tow.

I might have waved back if it wasn’t for her too-loud whisper to the customer—probably a complete stranger.

“See that girl there? That’s Maeve McCrum, granddaughter of that couple murdered next door a couple months ago.

Nose always in a book, or doodling away with her colored pencils, always hidin’ from the world. ”

The elderly woman gave a woeful shake of her head before taking a drink from her cup. “Misfortune follows her everywhere, poor cailín .”

I ignored her and turned my attention to the sign affixed to the fence bordering the McCrum property. It read “ McCrum’s Curios and Antiques .”

Knocking some of the dirt crusting the letters loose with my sleeve, I shot Mrs. O’Neill a dirty look.

“Well, not so much as a hello or nothin’,” the old woman huffed. “That big fancy college in America not teach these young folk manners?”

Snorting, I jammed the antique skeleton key into the front door’s brass hardware, and when the hinges groaned open, I stepped inside.

I would have slammed the door behind me as a message to gossipy Mrs. O’Neill, if it wasn’t for the old stained-glass window embedded in the antique wood, depicting a clover with an eyeball in its center.

My fingers stroked the colored glass panels before gently closing the door and turning to take in the store with my belly in knots.

Being back summoned complicated feelings.

It smelled just like I remembered. Like aged leather and wood, weathered books and something else I couldn’t ever put my finger on, a deep and spicy aroma. It probably smelled like any other antique shop to everyone else, but to me it was heaven.

A scratchy meow at my feet had me looking down to see a tubby calico cat brushing against my leg.

For the first time in what felt like forever, joy filled my chest, and tears of happiness trickled down my cheeks. “Gilly!”

My luggage thunked to the floor, and I dropped to my knees, sweeping my grandparents’ cat into my arms.

The police had said there was no sign of Gilly when they’d been here, and I figured the robbers had let her out in their hurry to flee the crime scene.

The cat mushed her face into my tear-soaked cheek, purring and chirping happily. She must have survived on the shop mice all this time. “I’m so happy you’re here, Gilly. I thought I was all alone.”

The calico cat licked my nose, as if to affirm that we were in this together, then hopped out of my arms and retreated to an overstuffed armchair for a nap.

I’d been home for all of five seconds and, just like that, it was like I’d never left at all.

Even the store and some of the stock looked just how I’d last seen it. Stacks of furniture with all sorts of jewelry, vintage clothing and old curios filled every nook and cranny.

The rows of stuff were piled so high you couldn’t see over them, the pathways between so confusing that signs with arrows pointing toward the exit and the register hung from the exposed ceiling beams.

Despite it being in the middle of the day, it was dark.

Tapestries and other hangings for sale covered much of the windows.

A plethora of lamps were plugged in with extension cords that threaded through the piles of inventory to the nearest wall socket.

It was a miracle McCrum’s hadn’t burned down yet; everything about it was a fire hazard.

As I wandered deeper into the shop, signs of the tragedy that had taken place here became evident. Books scattered the floor, pages knocked from their bindings. A lot of the shop’s stock had been taken as evidence, but none of it had helped.

They still hadn’t found the bastards who murdered my grandparents.

I stepped over a toppled chair to reach the shop counter. Tears were flowing again, but now they were anything but happy.

There, staining the dark wood of the counter, was my grandpa’s blood.

The counter was beautifully carved and too big for the space it occupied.

It had once been the bar in an old pub my great-great-grandparents had courted in.

They’d bought the bar when the pub itself went out of business and used it for their store’s register counter.

Now the beautiful antique was stained with their grandson’s blood.

The entire store was filled with old family legends, but the most interesting wasn’t the bar. It was what was mounted on the wall behind it.

Walking around the register, I grabbed a chair and stood on it to reach an unassuming oil painting—since I was five feet tall and couldn’t reach dick on my own—hanging on the wall.

It was ugly, depicting a clumsily painted pile of kittens.

It was also worthless, so no one ever asked about it, which was exactly what my grandparents intended.

The painting hid a secret.

I lifted the canvas off its hook to reveal a bronze shield etched with a celtic knot. At its center was a giant golden-yellow topaz fused into the metal.

Grandpa used to tell me stories about how our ancestors were once powerful monster hunters, who helped protect Ireland from dangerous creatures.

Supposedly, our ancestors were at the Battle of Mag Tuired, a devastating fight between giants and man.

Our side won, and the giant king’s eye—said to contain ancient power—was pried from his skull and given to our family as a trophy.

It was supposed to bring us luck. Ha.

The amber gemstone was beautifully eerie. When I was a kid, I’d climbed up on a chair just like this with a stick or broom to sneak a peek beneath the painting, and imagined the king of the giants staring back at me from his evil eye.

A shift in the gem’s reflection had a shiver skipping down my spine. I hadn’t moved a muscle, yet there it was again, moving shadows and glittering light on the stone’s surface.

I replaced the painting, hiding the stone from view.

It wasn't like I bought into the legend about the king of the giants and his eye of destruction. But I did know one thing:

It sure as fuck wasn’t lucky.