I felt the others closing in behind me. Moab’s shadow draped over the table, and Canon posted up at my three o’clock. Even Scarlette stopped pretending to clean and let her knife dangle, attention fixed on Celeste.
She planted herself across from me, hands flat on the battered Formica. The stink of the incense hit me first—cloves, maybe, or whatever they embalm saints with. For a second, I thought she was going to slap me.
Instead, she leaned in, voice low and liquid, filled with her Louisiana accent. “Your Catherine calls to you across time itself.”
The words rattled something under my breastbone. I gripped the glass harder, felt my knuckles bleach out. Nobody said a word. Not even Vin.
Celeste flicked her eyes up, caught Moab’s glare, and swatted it aside. “The connection between souls knows no boundaries of time or space, my boy. If you want to find her, you’ll need to do more than sit and drink yourself sideways.”
I didn’t answer. My tongue felt too big for my mouth.
She slid a palm toward mine, long fingers haloed by silver rings. “We must go to Ireland. To the place you first awoke. The cemetery.”
Scarlette scraped her boots off the bar, swung them to the floor, hard. “That’s insane. It’s too fucking dangerous.”
Celeste’s gaze snapped to Scarlette, and for a moment, the two of them could’ve burned the whole block down just by staring. “Denying your gifts doesn’t make them disappear, child,” she said. “You of all people should know that.”
Scarlette’s jaw flexed. I saw her thumb tighten on the knife handle, but she kept it down.
Vin stood and raised a hand for everyone to shut the hell up. “It’s already been decided. The club is footing the bill.” He pointed at Mama Celeste. “One more won’t hurt.”
Celeste didn’t blink. “Then it’s done.”
Scarlette swore, loud and guttural. “Fucking shit.”
Moab chuckled, knowing Scarlette had never been on a plane and only seen them in the sky.
The room emptied of sound again, except for Vin’s frantic note-taking and the click of Canon’s teeth.
Celeste reached across the table and touched my hand, just the barest brush of skin. It felt like electricity. “You’ll find her, Sully,” she said. “But you may not like the price.”
She stood, gathering her skirts and her smoke, and left without another word. The door didn’t slam this time—it shut soft, like she’d taken the rest of the night with her.
We sat there, the five of us, looking at each other like we’d just agreed to rob a church.
Scarlette exhaled through her nose, then glared at me. “Hope she’s worth it.”
I thought about Catherine. The way her hair fell across her cheek. The sound of her voice, bright as glass in a bell. The way her hands fit mine. “She is,” I said.
Scarlette sighed and grabbed another beer. “Remember, if you get her here, she’ll be fucking scared to death.” She took a long drink and wiped her mouth.
She was right. The Catherine I wanted—the one I remembered—lived in a world of fire and famine and had never seen a working toilet, let alone a city pumped full of electric light. If we succeeded in dragging her through time, she’d lose everything she’d called real. But I also knew she wouldn’t hesitate. Catherine walked into war for love, stomped through mud, gored sheep, and English pikes because quitting was for people who felt sorry for themselves. The scary part wasn’t losing her again. The scary part was seeing if the real thing matched the ghost.
Toolie
We landed at night. Rain had started hours before and never got bored, sluicing the airport glass so hard the city outside was just a set of smeared neon halos. By the time we made it to the rental, my boots and jeans were soaked through, and so were my bones. If you want to know how old a city is, smell it in the rain. Dublin didn’t disappoint.
Moab took the wheel because he never trusted me on the left side of a two-lane highway. Scarlette rode shotgun, eyes glued to the GPS as if she’d punch the dashboard if it rerouted again. Moab had given her enough valium before we left the States to knock out a horse. Mama Celeste, wrapped in a blue windbreaker that looked older than Moab, sat in the back seat with me. She thumbed prayer beads and hummed, almost too soft to hear over the engine.
The car stank of coffee and wet wool. Moab kept the windows cracked, trying to chase out the damp, but it just let in the night:raw, salt on your teeth, a cocktail of sea rot and diesel. I liked it more than I wanted to.
We hit the city proper in a blur. Every alley was a gutter, every light a wet bruise. I watched the way the old city leaned in on itself, buildings hunched over cobblestones, trying to keep secrets from the wind. The closer we got to the river, the harder the sense of recognition clamped down on my chest.
"Left here," I said, before the nav could say anything.
Moab obeyed without comment. He only trusted my direction when I sounded like I’d already been where we were going.
We rolled into Temple Bar. The streets glistened. College kids and drunks spilled out from the pubs, but even they moved with a hunched, migratory shuffle, all their wildness dampened by the weather. We pulled up to the hotel Vin had booked for us. He’d called it “authentic,” which meant the windows didn’t close right and the bedspread was tartan.