Page 16 of Heart of the Wren (Haunted Hearts: Season of the Witch #2)

LORCAN

I KNOCKED on the door of my own bedroom. Dara had asked for some privacy while he meditated after dinner and it had been a couple of hours. A shuffling of feet and the whoosh of a leg being thrust into a pair trousers preceded the plodding of heavy bare feet. The door clicked open.

“Sorry,” Dara said. “I think I dozed off. It happens sometimes.”

He was shirtless and again I tried not to stare at his chest or his broad shoulders with their clusters of tiny freckles. “I was wondering,” I said, “if you’d like to come with me for a drive tomorrow?”

“Oh?” Dara picked up his shirt but didn’t put it on. His chest flexed, making his soft, pink nipples jump… as well as my willy.

“The snow is easing off and hopefully we won’t get any more overnight.” I scratched my cheek. “Is, ah, is this what you meant when you said it had to snow sometime?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, sorry. Sometimes when you put the weather off it sort of builds up and comes back stronger.”

I nodded as if I understood. “I need to get away from the farm for a few hours. Michael and Eddie can look after things. I know what Bullseye says but I don’t just work all the time.”

“Only most of the time?”

I hung my head a little. “And I thought it might give us a chance to talk. In private, like.”

He lifted his arms, flashing the ginger hair of his armpits before letting his shirt slowly fall over his body.

I followed its journey down Dara’s beefy, hairy chest, over his round belly, to his wide waist.

“I’d love to,” he said.

???

We set off early the following morning. I turned the radio up and let the music fill the car.

Dara tapped along in time to the beat. Neither of us spoke much but it didn’t matter.

Though he had the look of a dyed-in-the-wool rocker, he was surprisingly knowledgeable about music in general and a huge fan of Alison Moyet in particular.

He sang along to her version of That Ole Devil Called Love, giving it his all in a carefree manner I envied.

Like his usual voice, his singing was husky but comforting.

A welcoming hug home. A glass of hot whiskey and cloves after a long, cold day in the fields.

“I spend a lot of time driving,” he said. “I listen to the radio all the time. It’s easier than lugging a bunch of cassettes around but I made an exception for Yazoo. I saw them live once, in Bristol.”

“For some reason I only pictured you driving around Ireland,” I said.

“I do, for the most part. I was over in Wales for a job at the time.” He tapped the door in time to the music. “A fella I knew was being bothered by a ghost and he wanted me to come and get rid of it.”

I glanced at him a couple of times, trying not to take my eyes off the wet road. “A ghost?”

He nodded. “It never did any harm but people were scared.”

“How did he get in touch with you? Don’t tell me your van has a phone?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? No, I met him in Dublin, he was over for work.

We got to talking, then we got to kissing, then we got to…

well, not talking, you know how it is.” He chuckled a bit.

“Afterwards, he told me his ghost problem and I told him I might be able to help. He brought me home with him the next day.”

“Aw, like a little lost kitten he found in the road.”

He held his hands together like paws and laughed.

“And?” I asked. “Did you see the ghost?”

“I felt it,” Dara said. “But unfortunately I couldn’t help it move on.”

”You don’t seem to have much luck with this sort of thing. ”

His grin widened. “I can only do so much. I know how to do magic but it doesn’t mean the whole world bends to my whim.

The ghost was stuck in a pattern and patterns can be very hard to break.

They often have to play out to the end and if you don’t get in at just the right time, there’s nothing you can do. They’ll start all over again.”

“What sort of pattern?” I asked.

“Ghosts can repeat the same actions, over and over again. Over the course of seconds, or years, or even longer. You need to be in the right place at the right time to catch them. This particular ghost didn’t interact with people at all.

It was caught in a loop but there didn’t seem to be any rhyme nor reason to when it would appear.

The fella lived in this gorgeous big country estate, loads of fancy gardens and it even had a butler.

His family lore said a nun would walk down a hallway on the ground floor, stop to light a candle, then walk through a solid wall.

“I did some digging and found the site the house stood on what used to be a convent in the 15th or 16th century and there was a door where the wall is now. I cleansed the area, did a banishing, tried to talk to the ghost but nothing worked. She was stuck in the same pattern. Over and over. For centuries.” He stopped tapping the door.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be a ghost but I hope it’s like dreaming.

You’re not really aware of what’s happening around you.

You’re not even really you. You’re just… ”

“A record,” I said. “A memory.”

“England has its problems but it was nice to be somewhere I didn’t have to worry about being fined or locked up for being with another man,” he said .

“I know what you mean. It’s always in the back of my mind, y’know? The fear of being found out.”

“I love this time of year.” He changed the subject quicker than I changed lanes. “When all the shades of green gets replaced with white snow, grey clouds, and black trees.”

“And brown slush.” The sides of the road were lined with the stuff. “I thought you'd hate all this desolation.”

“Oh, it's not desolate. The world is sleeping. Dreaming. Rejuvenating. What would be the point of spring without a winter to compare it to?”

???

All the snow had turned the road to Ross Castle into a muddy mess. Patches of ice clung in the lowest puddles and resilient snow filled the surrounding fields. Standing on the edge of Lough Leane, the castle itself was a ruin — a single, gaunt stone tower surrounded by high walls.

I parked as close as I dared without getting the tires stuck.

“I used to love coming here with Dad. He’d take us a couple of times a year.

I think Mam had to force him, otherwise he’d never leave the farm.

This is probably where I got my love of history.

He knew everything about it and he’d tell us stories.

” I paused for a second. “Of course, I never once saw him reading a book so there’s every chance he was making them all up. ”

A set of locked gates blocked our path. “This is our heritage,” I said. “They’ve no right to lock us out.” I clambered over the gates and dropped down to the other side, grabbing my knee as I landed. “It never used to hurt. ”

Dara followed my lead, although it took longer. I wasn’t exactly nimble but he had more bulk to manoeuvre. He stumbled when he landed but I reached out and caught him.

“Are you alright?”

He smiled. “Fine. I’m fine.”

We hadn’t talked about our kiss in the kitchen. There had been a lot to do, what with the window being smashed and the sick sheep to care for. I’d been dog tired and fell asleep in my chair after dinner. “Hardly anyone comes here,” I said.

“It’s an awful shame the castle has been left to rot like this.” He lay his hands on the trunk of a huge yew tree, one of six around the tower. “But at least there’s some life here.” Being an evergreen, the tree still had its foliage, each branch topped with snow.

“Now don’t get your hopes up about this place.

” Entering the forlorn tower, I explained how the main roof had long since collapsed, and the floors rotted away until nothing but a shell remained.

Sheltered from the outside, deep snow covered the ground, stubbornly refusing to melt.

We gazed up to the slate sky and with the walls rising around us I imagined being stuck at the bottom of a well.

“Imagine what it must have been like,” I said.

“Back when this was new, back in the 15th century. It’s said to have been built by the chieftain O’Donoghue Mór and they say he still slumbers at the bottom of the lake.

” I stretched my hand out to the waters beyond the slender and vacant window.

“Every seven years, on the first morning in May, he rises on a magnificent white horse and if you see him you’ll have good fortune for the rest of your days. ”

“Patterns,” Dara said. “Once you start to notice them, you see them everywhere.”

“You’re not going to try and banish him, are you?”

He laid his hands on the wall and walked along, letting his palm and fingertips graze the stones.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Searching… for… the right… spot. Here.” He beckoned me over. “Put your hand here.”

The stone was smooth and flat, cold as the grave, but no different from any other in the castle wall.

He stood close and laid his hand over mine.

His silver rings were chilly and his skin was rough but my body lit up from his touch.

From his pocket he took a small bottle with a swing-top cap and some golden oil inside.

He flicked open the top, stuck his thumb over the opening and tilted it.

Closing the cap, he touched his thumb to my forehead.

The oil was warm. He touched his own forehead too.

“This will help you see,” he said. “Now, close your eyes.”