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Soon, the entryway opened up, and I was finally able to stand upright again. The light coming in through the cave entrance bounced off the water, casting glittery sparkles and shimmering shadows on every stone surface inside. The narrow ledge I’d been walking on expanded into a pebbled beach that curled around the left side of the cavern, stretched across the back, and ended in a dramatic spray of jagged boulders on the right. And behind those rocks was where I stored my most precious belongings in the whole entire world.
As I worked my way around the edge of the cave, sliding my hand along the stone wall out of habit, I made sure to watch my step. Radiating out from the edge of the water was a web of red ropes, each anchored to a heavy rock. There were twelve in total, and I hoped that on the other end of at least half of them, I’d find an unsuspecting lobster trapped in a cage.
But first, I had to check on my babies.
Once I made it to the farthest, darkest corner of the cave, I squatted next to a boulder and reached around behind it. Groping the cool stone wall until I found a crevice, I shoved my hand in and pulled out a simple black backpack.
In fifth class, I was mortified by my own backpack—a pink and purple nightmare that I’d been carrying since I was a little kid. Oliver refused to buy me a new one, no matter how much I begged, so after seeing that jet black backpack on the lost-and-found table at school every day for a month, my desire got the better of me, and I stole it. I realized on the way home that Oliver would beat me black and blue if he caught me with something that didn’t belong to me, so I hid it in the cave.
And eventually, I’d filled it with other things that I wanted to hide from Oliver—things I loved, things I’d stolen, things I would need if I ever found a portal to the otherworld and decided to run away.
Sitting on my favorite boulder—the one with a chunk broken off, forming a seat—I placed the canvas bag on the ground and unzipped it with a flutter in my chest that made me forget all about arseholes like Cash and his friends and my da and the Russians. None of them could hurt me in the cave. In here, it was just me, the sound of the waves, the shimmer on the water, and all my favorite things—stored in clear plastic resealable bags to keep them dry and mildew-free.
The first bag I pulled out of the backpack contained a pack of matches from The Bloody Stream pub and four of Oliver’s cheap cigars. I’d taken them one at a time so that he wouldn’t notice.
After making a hole in the end of one cigar with my thumbnail, I toasted the other end with a match and placed it between my lips. I’d learned how to light them from watching Oliver. Puff, rotate, puff, rotate. The smoke tasted gross and made my head spin, but the smell? The smell was intoxicating. Powerful men smoked cigars, and there, in my secret hideaway, I could pretend like I was powerful too.
Balancing the lit cigar on the edge of the boulder, I dug through the rest of my belongings—a framed picture of Ma, extra clothes, a few bottles of water, and some long-expired snacks—until I finally reached the heart of my trove. There, at the bottom of the bag, was the entirety of my book collection—the Legend Has It series by Darby Donovan.
My mother had been gone thirteen years, but I still got misty-eyed every time I saw those books. I pulled them out one by one, running my fingers over the gilded titles through the plastic bags I kept them in. They had dark green linen hardcovers, like vintage books, with gold foiled titles and haunting hand-drawn illustrations inside. They were my most prized possessions, and between those pages, in the forest of Glenshire, I felt more at home than I did in my own house.
I wished I could stay out there all night, reading and smoking and avoiding my father, but it was getting late, and those traps weren’t going to empty themselves.
After placing everything back in its designated spot, I gave the backpack a firm hug and returned it to its secret hidey-hole.
Then, with Oliver’s cigar between my teeth and one eye squeezed shut to keep out the smoke, I knelt down at the water’s edge and used both hands to reel in the first of the traps. It felt heavy, which gave me hope, but when I peered into the water to see what was inside, it was the reflection of the sky on the surface that caught my attention.
Or rather the streaks of fire shooting across it.
CHAPTER 5
CLOVER
Even thirty meters below ground, the explosions were deafening. Oliver’s cigar tumbled from my gasping mouth and hit the water with a hiss as the cave began to shake. It floated there in front of me, unlike the loose rocks that fell from the cavern ceiling. Those pummeled the surface like a hailstorm, dousing me with frigid seawater and crashing on the pebbled beach all around me. Covering my head with both hands, I darted over to the cave entrance and ducked inside the narrow tunnel that would lead me out.
The bombing was relentless. With every concussion, my heartbeat stuttered, my eyes squeezed shut, my body jerked, and my lips mumbled a prayer that the cave wouldn’t collapse before I made it out. But as I approached the mouth of the tunnel and that first whiff of smoke filled my lungs, I realized that the cave might be the safest place on the entire peninsula.
It couldn’t have been later than seven, but it looked like midnight outside. Plumes of gray smoke and ash billowed in the sky, torn and punctured by the endless barrage of missiles that came screaming off the deck of the cruise ship. Smoke swirled on the surface of the water as well, but not where a fleet of boat-like tanks sliced through it on their way from the belly of the ship to the harbor. Every panicked breath I took was answered with a violent cough as the thick, sulfuric air suffocated me. I had to get to higher ground. I had to get to Odie. But when I turned and stared up at the cliff behind me, I realized that my mental image of hell from earlier had been wrong.
Hell wasn’t a mountain of fishing nets. It was a burning cliff separating you from the people you loved.
Blast after blast rattled my chest as I climbed up the trail, constantly scanning the ground for my next step or handhold. Fire licked at the edges of the path and reached for me with crackling fingers, but I refused to look anywhere but straight ahead.
How many minutes had it been since the bombing had started? Three? Five? Maybe they were okay. Maybe they’d gotten out. I didn’t hear any screaming.
My stomach dropped.
I don’t hear any screaming.
I had just begun to panic when my body came to a sudden halt. The bush that hid the entrance of my secret trail was completely engulfed in flames. In fact, everything on top of the cliff was engulfed in flames. My mouth fell open as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. What had been an idyllic sea of purple and yellow wildflowers swaying in the breeze just half an hour before was now a fiery, blazing wasteland. I couldn’t see a single house—they had either been demolished or were shrouded in smoke so thick that I couldn’t tell if they were still standing. And off in the distance, the rolling hills of Howth appeared to be boiling—everywhere a shell landed, an orange fireball swelled and popped, spewing a cloud of sparks and black smoke.
Pulling the neck of my shirt up over my mouth and nose, I leaped over a shorter bush and sprinted down the path. I could hardly see anything up ahead, but the fire closing in on the trail illuminated my steps as I ran. It was so hot; I expected to find my wellies melted onto my feet by the time I got home.
If I still had a home.
Pushing that thought away, I glanced over my shoulder in the direction of the cruise ship. I could only tell it was still there because its generic white paint color glowed through the haze and ash like the blurry essence of a ghost ship. Flashes of orange burst from the cannons on its deck, and after each one, a nearby explosion seized my heart and made me flinch. They never landed in the same spot twice, which was why it shouldn’t have surprised me when one screaming missile careened directly into the cliff in front of me.
Rocks and earth exploded in all directions as a blinding heat seared my face and sent me flying backward. I landed in the unforgiving arms of a burning gorse bush. Its sharp, flaming branches punctured my skin and singed my clothes before I rolled onto the ground, gasping for air. Clumps of dirt and grass rained down on me from the blast as I struggled to suck in a breath. I couldn’t hear anything, but everything was loud. I couldn’t feel anything, but everything hurt. I couldn’t see anything …
