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The last time I’d woken up and she was gone, I’d had to kill a dozen armed Russians and take another bullet to save her.
Now, she was headed into the eye of the storm, and I didn’t have a fucking clue where she was going or how much of a head start she’d gotten.
And this time, it was my fucking fault.
If I had just told her what she wanted to know, admitted to her what I’d seen in the lake, what I knew in my fucking soul to be true, she’d be on a train to Shannon right now with her head on my shoulder instead of Dublin with a fucking target on her back.
Movement in my peripheral vision caused my head to snap to the left and my hands to ball into fists.
An older woman was standing near the fence, watching me as she pretended to pick tomatoes. She’d been so still and quiet that I’d had no idea she was even there, but the moment our eyes met, she became a flurry of sound and movement. Flailing hands muffled a high-pitched yelp as she stumbled backward, away from me and toward the house.
P.S. There’s food on the counter from the neighbor.
The neighbor.
Five seconds later, my fist—still covered in plaster dust—was pounding on the front door of a farmhouse that was painted the same shade of purple as the spots on the sheep in its pasture.
The curtains on the window next to the door fluttered before a female voice exclaimed, “Go away!” from inside the house.
“Hello!” I shouted back, dropping my fist. “My name is Damien Hughes. I believe you spoke to my …”
My what? My soulmate? My immortal beloved? My entire reason for fucking living?
“My wife earlier.”
“I know who ya are,” she snarled, her voice loud and clear through the drafty, weather-beaten door. “Be gone, Devil!”
“Did she say where in Dublin she was going? Please … I have to find her.” It took all my strength not to put my fist through her fucking door as well.
“She prob’ly went back to the spirit world, where she belongs. Where ya both belong! Get off my porch, demon, before I call Father Sullivan!”
“If you know something, please tell me! You don’t understand how much danger she’s in.”
“I didn’t want to believe it when I saw Miss Darby. She seemed so … alive. But you … I’d know those eyes anywhere. Death incarnate—that’s what you are. Always were, always will be.”
“Look out the window again!” I shouted, turning to face the curtains she’d just drawn.
“And why would I do that? You’re prob’ly gonna try to steal my soul through the glass.”
“Because I can prove to you that I’m not a ghost or a demon or the goddamn Devil himself. Just look out the window. Please!”
Lifting the bottom of Kellen’s shirt halfway up my torso, I waited a full minute before the curtains finally fluttered again, which was followed by a gasp so loud I could hear it outside.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that’s a nasty gash.”
“Ya can’t injure a ghost, ma’am. I’m alive. I swear it.”
Nora accepted my explanation with a single nod. “So what the hell happened to ya?”
“The same thing that’s gonna happen to Clover if you don’t tell me exactly where she went.”
Four hours on a train, alone, with zero distractions from my dark fucking thoughts and worst-case scenarios was a punishment worse than death.
And I would fucking know.
Every town and village I passed through looked normal, other than the crushing swells of people crowding the platforms of the trains headed toward Shannon. The buildings and houses were still intact. There were no tanks lining the streets or drones dotting the skies.
Not until I got to the capital.
