Page 168 of A Winding Wave of Magic
I nearly choked. Caomhán just shrugged, seemingly unphased by his mother describing him as a playboy.
“My father had children by at least six different women,” Aoife told me like she was describing the weather. “His brother was just the same.”
“And that…that doesn’t bother you?” I wondered.
“Might have, once. But if I held a grudge against every woman who fell under his spell, we’d have no friends west of Dublin,” Aoife said as she attacked the fish again. Ciarán, though…I didn’t know he had any. So who’s your gran, then? Your type lives a bit longer than ours, but we might have known her. I never knew Uncle was with a seer. He was frightened of them, like everyone else.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “Seers are terrified of shifters.”
“Except you,” Caomhán said with a leer, then proceeded to tell his mother the story of how we met.
Aoife’s stern expression didn’t change, but her eyes glimmered at me. “Your grandmother,” she pressed when he was finished.
I hesitated, unsure if I should say. But though I didn’t have the keen sense of smell these distant relations had, I found I could sense something else about them—the fact that I could trust them.
“Her name was Penelope,” I said. “She went by Monroe.”
At that, both Aoife and Caomhán froze.
“Do you mean PenelopeÁineO’Briain?” she said, using the Irish version of Gran’s real surname.
I nodded. “You knew her?”
Aoife and Caomhán glanced at each other and back at me.
“Well, you could say that,” Aoife replied slowly. “There’s not a fae in all of Ireland that doesn’t know Penny O’Brien. And of what she took when she disappeared. Themurúch,the lost mage, and her Secret, fled from their island home. Never to be heard from again.”
“Dia ár sábháil,” Caomhán murmured. “So she’s alive, then? And what of Ciarán?"
Both leaned in, their fathomless black eyes seeming more animal than ever.
I swallowed thickly. “I—no. No, she’s not. She—she died. A few months ago. As far as Ciarán, I never knew him. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“So, that’s who you were mourning in the church that day.” Caomhán nodded as if something made sense.
“Penny was murdered,” I said, hating the way my voice still shook when I said it out loud. “By someone called Caleb Lynch.”
The air inside the kitchen grew heavy and still.
“Caomhán,” Aoife said slowly as she set the knife down. “I think we shall move our little chat to the office. Take Cassandra in there and open up the good whiskey. I’ll bring the glasses.”
Once we were seatedin a dark-paneled den lined with club chairs and a beaten executive desk in one corner, Aoife handed me one of the glasses Caomhán had helpfully filled with whiskey and waited for me to take a sip before starting.
“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”
I hesitated. I was supposed to keep these things secret, wasn’t I? And yet, it was becoming clear to me that these people were some of the family Penny had risked her life to find. Kinship seemed to shine through both of the familiar faces, and my tongue loosened the moment I’d set foot in this house. I’d never looked at anyone and seen so much of myself before, and the familiarity of it all was unsettling, to say the least.
Keep it hidden, Penny had told me.
And yet, as Jonathan had said, it was the time for truth.
I’d been holed up in that little house for weeks, trying and failing to find myself in solitude.
But solitude had been the story of my life, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere.
So, I made a decision.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I began.
