Unfortunately, I wasn’t certain just how wild a card I was. I was afraid there was something in the prophecy about me and it wasn’t good. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead, I argued that it would be a mistake to pass up any opportunity to learn all we could about the Book. And if this woman knew how it had escaped, who knew what else she might be able to tell us?
Bring the woman here, he said.
Not a chance of moving her, Kat had informed us. Her age was matched only by her stubbornness, cantankerousness, and a pronounced tendency to nod off to sleep without a moment’s notice.
So, here we were, making our way to the far edge of County Clare.
Where ninety-seven-year-old Nana O’Reilly was waiting for us.
I’d seen crofters’ cottages before, but this one took the cake. Illuminated by the Hummer’s headlights, it was a study in whimsy. An uneven stack of field rock, thatch, and moss tumbled across a yard of tiered gardens that, in summer, would yield a profusion of blooms, garnished by fanciful statues and Escher-esque stone fountains. Beyond it, the Atlantic Ocean glistened silver in the moonlight, salting the breeze.
There were no Shades here. The perimeter of the yard was heavily warded.
As we drove over the line of demarcation, I flinched. Barrons had absolutely no reaction. I’d been watching him carefully since the moment our headlamps picked up the faint silvery glow, curious to see if the wards would bother him.
He was the portrait of perfect impassivity.
“Do you even feel them?” I asked, irritated.
“I know they’re there.” Typical Barrons nonanswer.
“Do your tattoos protect you?”
“From many things. From others, no.” Another nonanswer.
We got out and made our way up the nearly overgrown flagstone path to the cottage door. It was green, painted with many symbols. The misshapen shamrock was unmistakable. Nana O’Reilly knew of our order. How?
Kat opened the door when I knocked. She’d hurried to the cottage ahead of us, hoping to smooth our way with tea, fresh water, and crates of supplies from town for the old woman.
I peered into the cottage. Candles burned and a brisk fire crackled.
“I’ll be getting me own door, I will. I’m no’ dead yet!” Nana O’Reilly nudged Kat aside. She wore her gray hair in a long braid over one shoulder. Her face bore the wrinkles of an old sea captain, from nearly a century of living on the shore, and she had no teeth. She gave Barrons a rheumy look and said, “The likes o’ ye’ll be findin’ no bide ‘ere!”
With that, she yanked me inside and slammed the door in Barrons’ face.
“What kind of likes is that?” I said, the instant the door was closed.
Nana gave me a look that suggested I might just be too stupid to live.
Kat settled the old woman in a chair near the fire and draped a faded quilt of many patterns and fabrics about her shoulders. The blanket looked as if it had been made decades ago from leftover patches of her children’s outgrown clothes. “I’ll be asking you, too,” Kat said curiously. “What likes is that?”
“Air ye daft, lasses? No’ our kind.”
“We get that, but what is he?” I said.
Nana shrugged. “Why would ye care? There’s white, and there’s not white. Wha’ more need ye ken than tha’?”
“But I’m white,” I said quickly. Kat gave me an odd look. “I mean, you can see that Kat and I are like you, right? We’re not like him.” If she could discern people’s true natures, I wanted to know mine.
Her rheumy brown eyes fastened on me like muddy leeches. “Ye color yer hair, ye do. Wha’s the truth o’ it?”
“Blond.”
She closed her eyes and went so still that for a moment I was afraid the old woman had fallen asleep.
Then her eyes snapped open and her mouth parted on a gummy O of surprise. “Love o’ Mary,” she breathed, “I ne’er forget a face. Yer Isla’s git! I’d no hae thought to see ye again ere I passed!”
“Git?” I said.
Kat looked stunned. “Daughter,” she said.
My mother’s name was Isla O’Connor.
I had the unmistakable look of her, Nana told me, in the shape of my face, the thickness of my hair, my eyes, but most of all in my carriage. The way my back flowed into my shoulders, the way I moved, even the angle at which I tilted my head sometimes when I spoke.
I looked like my mother.
My mother’s name was Isla O’Connor.
I could have repeated those two thoughts over and over for hours.