Dreamfever
Page 85

No one knew who Isla’s father was. My grandmother, Patrona O’Connor—Nana’s face creased in a smile of toothless delight when she said her name; they’d been contemporaries and friends dearer than sisters—had never wed and had refused to divulge his name. She bore Isla late in life and carried the knowledge of her child’s father to her grave, which, by the by, was a few miles south if I had interest in paying respects.
Patrona! That was the name Rowena mentioned the day I’d been searching the museum for OOPs and she’d found me in the street. She insisted I had the look of her but was unable to grasp how that could possibly be. She said she would have known. Now I understood why: Rowena had known my grandmother!
“Are there other O’Connors, besides me?”
Nana snorted. “Eire’s full ‘o ‘em. Distant kin. Nary a line as potent as Patrona’s.”
Rowena said there were no O’Connors left! Had she meant only my direct line? As far as I was concerned, at best she’d misled me, at worst she’d lied.
Although the Grand Mistress had disdained my mother’s un-proven lineage, Nana continued, there’d been no disputing Isla was the finest sidhe-seer any at the abbey had ever encountered. As time passed, she and Nana’s granddaughter, Kayleigh, had not only been initiated into the abbey’s most private and hallowed circle but were appointed to positions of the greatest power therein.
Life was blessed. Nana was proud. She’d raised her Kayleigh well, trained in the Old Ways.
The old woman’s eyes closed and she began to snore.
“Wake her,” I said.
Kat tucked the blanket more closely around her. “She’s lived nigh a century, Mac. I imagine her bones are weary.”
“We need to know more.”
Kat cast me a look of rebuke. “I’ve yet to hear a word about a prophecy or the Book.”
“Exactly why we need to wake her!”
“Focus less on your kin and more on our problems,” Kat chastened.
It took several minutes of gentle shaking and coaxing, but the old woman finally stirred. She seemed to have no awareness that she’d been asleep and resumed talking as if she’d never stopped.
It was a time of great hope, she said. The six most potent sidhe-seers lines began to grow stronger again: the Brennans, the O’Reillys, the Kennedys, the O’Connors, the MacLoughlins, and the O’Malleys. Each house was producing daughters with gifts awakening sooner, developing more quickly.
But things changed and dark days came, days when Nana walked the land and felt the wrongness beneath her feet. The soil itself had been … tainted. Some foul thing had roused and was stirring in the belly of the earth. She bid her girls discover the source. Bade them stop it at any cost.
“Are you a sidhe-seer, too?” I asked. “Did you once live at the abbey?”
Nana was asleep again. I shook her. It didn’t work. She snored on. Kat made the old woman tea. I added a second bag to her mug.
Five minutes later, although her head still nodded dangerously, her eyes were open and she was sipping tea.
She’d no use for the abbey. No care for study. Her bones knew truths. What need had a woman of more than bone-knowing? Learning, she scoffed, confused the bones. Reading blinded the vision. Lectures deafened the ears. Look at the land, feel the soil, taste the air!
“Dark days.” I coaxed her to focus. “What happened?”
Nana closed her eyes and was silent so long I was afraid she’d fallen asleep again. When they opened, they glistened with unshed tears.
The two children who’d once played in her garden changed. They became secretive, fearful, exchanging troubled looks. They no longer had time for an old woman. Though she’d been the one to set them on their course, had pointed the way with her bones, they shut her out. They whispered of doings of which Nana had caught only bits and pieces.
Hidden places within the abbey.
Dark temptations.
A book of great magic.
Two prophecies.
“Two?” I exclaimed.
“Aye. One promised hope. One pledged blight upon the earth and more. Both hinged upon a single thing.”
“A thing?” I demanded. “Or a person?”
Nana shook her head. She didn’t know. Had assumed it was a thing. An event. But it might have been a person.
Kat removed the teacup from the old woman’s hand before it spilled. She was nodding off again.
“How was the Book contained in the abbey?” I pressed.
She gave me a blank look.
“Where was it kept?” I tried.
She shrugged.
“When was it brought there and by whom?”
“‘Tis said the queen o’ the daoine sidhe placed it there in the mists o’ time.” A gentle snore escaped her.
“How did it get out?” I said loudly, and she jerked awake again.
“Heard tell ‘twas aided by one in the highest circle.” She gave me a sad look. “Some say yer mam.” Her lids closed. Her face sagged and her mouth fell open.
My hands fisted. My mother would never have freed the Sinsar Dubh. And Alina was not a traitor. And I was not bad. “Who was my father?” I demanded.
“She’s asleep, Mac,” Kat said.
“Well, wake her again! We need to know more!”
“Tomorrow’s another day.”
“Every day counts!”
“Mac, she’s weary. We can begin again in the morning. I’ll be staying the night. She shouldn’t be alone. She should never have been alone this long. Will you be staying, as well?”