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CHAPTER 1

Girl from the North Country

I had two reasons for accepting this job in Ireland—the first a lot more sensible than the second—but neither included dying on the dilapidated roof of Hotel Naruka, where an ambulance wouldn’t have a chance of making it up the Kerry mountains.

I winced as my knee banged off the rain-soaked tiles.

“Ah, Jayzus, Roe!” James yelled from below. “Ye come down right now or ye’ll be blown straight off, so ye will.”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly, rising to my feet. “But if I leave the roof like this, your friend might end up with a pond in his old guest room.” I turned to face the ocean view from Naruka, hoping James wouldn’t notice me massaging my knee. Despite the blustery Atlantic wind, the real storm was still hovering miles away over velvet hills.

“Luckily,” James drawled, “Bryn isn’t coming here for the room.”

“Just the thrill of chance electrocution then?” I returned with a wry grin, having explained to James just yesterday the unfortunate state of his hotel’s wiring.

He tucked two thumbs under corduroy suspenders. “Ye forget who owns this place?”

“ Time?”

His lips twitched. “If it was, I’d have a word or two with her.”

“Make sure you ask her what happened to the fuse box.”

His eyes twinkled. “I’ve a fair idea. Now, will ye come down so she doesn’t take me old frail Irish heart?”

Snorting, I glanced at the man who couldn’t be much older than thirty-five. Fine-featured and unintimidatingly pretty, James had such an easygoing nature that at first, I’d worried some quick-fingered guest would steal his hotel’s silverware. But hidden under that befuddling charm and a pair of foggy glasses, was a man who didn’t miss much.

I started tucking a coil of wire back in my toolbelt. “You know that accent will only work on me for so long,” I lied.

“Ye should hear me after a pint.”

“I’ve heard you after ten, and I think you lost fifty bucks when I did.”

“Forty, and t’was on a fine horse race.”

I tucked my tongue in my cheek. “James, it was a replay .” And I’d only barely won his money back over a game of pool.

He coughed to hide either his laugh or his regret, then tugged off his flat cap so inky-black hair sprang as loose and free as the greenery crawling over Naruka. “Listen, I’ll have Bryn stay in another room, so I will, if it means ye’ll not end up a corpse in me raspberry bushes.”

Which would be a shame, since he used them to make drool-worthy scones each morning.

I tugged my braid over my shoulder and scooted toward the ladder. “I promise not to sue for the insurance or anything.”

James gawked behind his glasses and leaned forward. “Ye think they’d give me insurance on this bloody place?” he said, jerking his thumb at the hotel’s greenhouse, currently growing from her side like a hot glass wart. “Sure, if it all burned down it’d be just as well for me. Though me mammy would be spinning in her grave.”

I paused mid-rung of the ladder to admire the place.

He might have a point; Naruka in 1992 didn’t look that much different than the 1500s. Her massive stone staircase ascended to a blood-orange door framed by ivory pillars and rose-blooming vines. Ethereal, historical, and unabashedly devoid of good maintenance—like a woman who knew her worth and wasn’t going to cover it up with cheap makeup. Twelve chimneys protruded at almost comical angles, most with a tree or shrub growing from them that I’d enjoy pulling out, and twin orange urns sat on either side of the staircase—one overflowing with hydrangeas, the other barren.

The cleanest thing she could claim was the wire I’d installed, now pinned to her side. But there was an undeniable character I’d loved from the first glance. Like she’d grown out of the bogs and mountains behind her, formed by Ireland herself, making my wire seem like an unwanted intrusion.

“When are you expecting Bryn again?” I asked when my boots sank into the squishy underbelly of Ireland. I might have been joking about the pond, but there was probably a good amount of water damage I’d need to patch up before he arrived.

James glanced at his watch like it had the days on it—maybe it did. The set of exposed gears glinted a wet gold along with the ring on his right hand. “Two weeks, when he’s to host a wee ceremony for me,” James replied, drawing a cigarette from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.

Ceremony? Like a wedding? “Is he a priest?”

James chuckled lightly. “A priest? Bryn? He is in me hole. No, sure, he’s an artist, and done most of the oil portraits ye’ve seen in our library, and some of the repairs as well, but...” James caught my look just as his cigarette lit. “Ye’d better practice now if yer to have any hope of convincin’ him when he’s here,” he warned.

I schooled my face. “I thought the paintings were very nice.”

When James leaned in, the scent of tobacco wafted enticingly under my nose. “Listen now, there’s not one of us who claims to know much about good art,” he said seriously, “but ye’d best pretend for all of our sakes.”

Squeezing my lips together to hide my smile, I nodded, and James gestured for me to follow him around the hotel, through the uncut grass he pretended was a meadow. “Now about this ceremony. We’ve an old tradition up in the mountains—it’s a special thing, and not many go through it.”

I scratched at my ear. “Why’s that?”

He took his time answering, brushing his fingers over the unkept rosemary, plucking the head of a fading daffodil that had managed to bloom well past the spring.

The grass soaked my jeans to the knees as I followed him, the taller stems stamping dark tattoos on my calves. But I enjoyed it, each step a reminder that I wasn’t in Canada anymore, that I’d left those twenty-six years behind. To start fresh, to figure out why I’d been the half that survived, to be someone my twin would have been proud of.

And all that was the first , very sensible reason I’d taken this job.

“It’s a rite of passage,” James said when the unruly grass brushed up against a wire fence. “Or ‘tis the closest thing ye could call it.”

I propped an elbow on the top of a wooden post, and the overgrown ivy pricked through my denim sleeve with ease.

God, the look of this place, the feel of it. The mist tickling my lips with its odd taste of worms and soil, still just new enough to enjoy. And everything burst and crawled and sprung and dangled, reveling in the forever damp like a mangy dog after a swim, shimmering in its wet coat whenever the sun peeked over the hills of West Kerry.

Which was decidedly not today.

“And Bryn’s coming here specifically to host this ceremony?” I clarified, tearing my gaze from the wild, wicked ruin of the fields.

James blinked droplets of mist away, nodded. “We take turns every year, and this is his. He’ll take one guest up the mountains, and if they’re lucky, they’ll come back a new person.”

“Then I hope we get someone checking in soon,” I offered, frowning at the cliffs behind us, only jutting gray masses beneath the fog. “What happens at this ceremony, exactly?”

Now, James grinned. “Oh, Bryn’ll say a few Irish blessings from a teacup, sprinkle some fairy dust, and the like.”

“So a regular Friday night at the pub,” I said, then smirked at him. “Will you be breaking into song again too?”

James puffed out his cheeks. “T’was one time.”

It was three times—in one night. “You have a very pretty voice, James.” He blushed, then rolled his eyes. “And guests pay for this ceremony experience?”

“Aye, but few can afford the cost.” He turned, folding his arms over the top of a fence post so we mirrored each other, then glanced back at the hotel. “Did I ever tell ye what Naruka means?”

He waited until I shook my head.

“ Memory ,” he said. “It means memory.”

“Irish?”

“No, another language. It came from a ledger they found in the bogs out back, not far from where Bryn will lead the ceremony. That’s how it started centuries ago, when…”

The sudden drumbeat of hooves had James drifting into silence.

I lifted my cheek from my fist, my ears tracking the familiar thud-thud-thud that sprinted over the land. Already, my pulse quickened in anticipation, my heart whomp-whomping in my chest like the blades of a fan on a hot Canadian night.

As fog clawed back from the fields, the sun peeked through the clouds, shying away from the storm that stood as a dark smudge not too far behind. But in any weather, under any light, Ireland was still beautiful.

Then, my second reason galloped through the fog.

Tye’s burnt-coffee hair clung to the base of his neck, slick with sweat and mist and exhilaration. He perched slightly off the western saddle, muscled thighs tensing in soaked jeans as he moved with the horse. His cheeks were flushed with the thrill of racing across the hills—or maybe the insanity of doing it on a morning with a weather warning in place.

Someone looking for their own kind of freedom, as my twin would have said.

Would this be mine? Here in Ireland, fixing hotels? I wanted it to be—wanted to have something like Tye did, like my sister had.

“Ye know that saddle cost me a hundred quid?” James remarked with a chuckle. “Said he wouldn’t ride none of that fancy English shite.”

I smiled to myself. “You should have heard him arguing with the horse school back home in L’Ardoise. After six months, they were probably happy to see him go,” I said dryly, watching as Tye thundered across the field, spraying ribbons of mud.

“’Twas a long sabbatical, and I can’t say I’m not glad to have him back.” James tucked his thumbs into his suspenders and eyed me through lashes beaded with dew. “Glad he brought ye with him too.”

Something swelled in my throat—Hope? Chance? That thrumming anticipation for the new—no, the unknown.

My reply was swallowed by thundering hooves as Tye blew past. He didn’t glance at us, his attention fixed on the fog, his arms drawn taut from bracing the reins. His full lips moved, damp with rain as he murmured to the horse, whatever he said drowned out by the storm moving in.

Then he was past us, a silhouette against a wall of gray trees.

I t rained on Tuesday, sprinkled on Wednesday, misted on Thursday, and spat at me by the time Friday rolled around. Even today, in broad daylight when the sky was completely cloudless, Ireland had the supernatural ability to coat Naruka with its grievances.

But I never minded overmuch, as there was always plenty to fix inside the house, which meant I was now on a first-name basis with the hardware shop owner—and his sons and sixteen cousins. But this paled in comparison to my budding relationship with the postman and his wife, who would ask me about the weather (poor), how James and I met (through Tye), then how Tye was enjoying being back (great, he’s busy wrestling milk out of the beast James calls a cow), if Naruka had any new guests (no), and again, a comment on the weather.

Despite having a seemingly photographic memory of the recorded date of every death in town, the postman had never heard of this ceremony Bryn was conducting. It might be for the best though, if it didn’t happen, because while Bryn’s old room wasn’t exactly a pond yet, we certainly wouldn’t be winning the West Kerry hotel award.

Plop. Splat.

I backed away from the dripping ceiling, nearly bumping into James, who stood staring aghast at the puddle in guest room three.

“Sorry, Roe, ye warned me there might be a leak, but I’d only just found the room’s key.” He held it up with a sheepish grin before tucking it tidily into his breast pocket.

I watched the leak drip like weak filtered coffee into a pair of Oxford shoes. “Those his?”

“Aye,” James said, peeling back the linen curtains. “And he’s a picky bastard.”

“About his things, or the room?”

James looked at me for a long moment, his eyes flicking down my overalls. “About everything,” he decided, shifting away from the window. “Now, what do ye think?”

“That the shoes are a goner.” I set my toolbox on a desk still littered with papers. “I can patch up the ceiling easily enough, but you might need a new—”

I stopped when James’s hands started swatting at invisible cobwebs. “Not the roof, sure, the room ,” he emphasized. “What do ye make of it?”

The room? It wasn’t much different than my own, though this one was bigger, with a sense of someone who knew how he liked things—clean, tidy, particular—and it smelled kind of like clean laundry hung out to dry in winter.

I paused my scan when dark, hooded eyes blinked back at me from a rusty mirror, reflecting my full upper lip, the dent in my chin, and my flat, freckled nose. Like James’s Asian complexion, my First Nations bronze was an oddity around here.

“Besides the ceiling,” I answered, “the room’s in pretty good condition, a few cracks down the—”

“Ah, never mind,” James said briskly.

I frowned at his tone. “Is everything alright?”

“Of course, sure. Ye can start with the leak while I tidy a wee bit.”

Did he want me to compliment the decor? I tried a few more times, mentioning the beautiful old hope chest currently eating the sleeve of a sweater, the bookcase bending from the weight of medical texts and leather journals, the curtains tangled around a four-poster bed, but none of my comments cheered James overmuch.

“Are these Bryn’s things?” I asked when the tick-tick of three clocks filled the silence.

James inclined his head. “He left them here some years ago now.”

“He didn’t want his stuff?”

“Yera, he wanted a clean break from the place.”

That piqued my interest. A clean break? “Did something happen?”

James paused in the middle of shuffling papers together and glanced out the window, where the Kerry mountains ascended to blue ridges, then wilted under smoky clouds. “He made a mistake,” he said at length.

Oh. Well. “I guess Bryn’s coming back for his things, too, then,” I deduced.

“No, he’s coming back because it’s his duty to.”

Duty? “For the ceremony? What does—”

“Ah!” James exclaimed, grasping a torn piece of paper in his hands, a bewildered smile playing on his thin lips. “I didn’t know he drew her—isn’t she pretty?” he murmured to himself.

I eyed the rough sketch of a woman with spiraling horns that James all but beamed at. Under the gray light, the brown of his eyes glowed nearly purple, a deep, velvet indigo from some reflection I couldn’t see.

Then it was gone.

Setting the sketch aside, James tugged open the desk drawer, revealing a stack of polaroids weighed down with a single golden ring.

A lot of things to leave behind—because Bryn had to? Because there’d been some emergency? A death in the family, maybe, but why not send for your stuff? A “mistake,” James had said, but still…

I paced the room, eyes skimming the model boat bookend, the maps stowed on the shelves. Why leave this here for years ? You get rid of it, if you’re James, at least sell it or something, unless you thought Bryn would be coming back. For a ceremony? Was it that important for Bryn to lead it?

“Roe, do ye want to see him?” James asked.

“Who?”

In answer, he motioned me over with three quick flicks of his hand.

When my shoulder brushed his, James tilted a Polaroid toward me. In it, a grainy photo of a man stood with his arm around our one current and long-term guest, Kazie, who lived in the room beside mine.

“Is this Bryn?”

James inclined his head. “Aye, some years ago.”

He was still a boy, really, young enough that his jaw had a soft delicateness to it, but his eyes were a haunting blue, his skin snowmelt white. He looked like he had all the answers, a little secret, a piece of something he’d found and hey , wouldn’t you like to have it too?

James packed the rest of the photos away, all except the sketch of the horned woman—that he folded and stowed in his breast pocket and, whistling, continued his sweep of the room.

I stood for a moment, staring after him. He hadn’t been what I expected, certainly not the typical boss I’d gotten back home. Nothing ever rattled him, not even our lack of guests, and any job I did—big or small—only pleased James more. So if he wanted me to prepare Naruka for Bryn to lead some Irish ceremony, I was game.

By the time he had mopped the floors, I’d managed to wrestle the leak into submission, and he’d left only when I assured him I wouldn’t slip off the ladder.

I hummed an old song under my breath. Something my sister had played for her tutor over and over on the piano, then eventually something she’d taught me, but—

A low rumble slid under the cracked window.

I glanced over. Not James’s car, that’s for sure; I could hear that decrepit beast two miles away.

Stowing my plaster scraper, I crossed the room, my boots echoing dully on the oak floors. Was Bryn early? Or was this the guest he’d lead a ceremony for?

The radiator warmed my jaw as I drew back the curtain, its heat a welcome contrast to the cool draft sliding under the window. Rain beaded on the glass, and a moth smacked into the misty surface over and over and over, its powdered wings turning deathly translucent.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

And there, coming to a smooth stop in the shadow of Naruka, its left tire crushing James’s raspberries, was a blood-red Mercedes.