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Useless. I’m entirely useless.
Men rushed to the foyer and headed straight for their felled brother.
Isibéal scrambled away, determined not to touch another soul until she was sure what the consequences were—for both parties. Summoning her focus and touching Lachlan...Ethan...had cost her mightily, but it was a pain she would gladly pay if only to touch him again. Yet this particular discomfiture proved powerful enough to sway her from any desire to touch any other human being. The consequences were a bit unnerving.
Moving like the wraith she’d become, she climbed the broad flight of stairs that would take her to the guests’ quarters in the northern wing.
Ethan’s quarters.
She remembered this castle as it had been before her death—stones rough from recent hewing, glass smooth in the windows that had been afforded such luxury, peat smoke already marring the hearths, and what had seemed like miles of hallways.
The stones were smoother now.
Glass, even resplendent stained glass by the most skilled artisans, filled every window and overhead opening.
Hearths were generally cold, replaced by strange flameless stoves.
Yet not everything was different, thank the gods. The floor plan had remained largely the same, from dining hall to observatory to sleeping quarters. She knew these halls. Remembered them. Had spent the last several months rediscovering nooks and crannies all around the castle as she observed Ethan.
Husband.
She couldn’t believe she’d laid claim to him in such a forward, arguably brazen manner, let alone in front of another assassin.
He’s mine.
Her heart’s objection to her mind’s reserved behavior coaxed a smile from her. She’d always had a bit of a problem with what men deemed appropriate for women to say and do. Seemed death hadn’t changed that.
Perhaps Ethan would still find that part of her as appealing now as he had done all those years ago. He used to tease her, once even threatening to do away with her dresses and make her wear men’s breeches after he found her riding astride her horse, voluminous skirts tucked around her legs. She’d stumped him when she begged him to follow through.
A soft laugh escaped her.
Gods, she had loved that man. That he might not be the same man he’d once been terrified her. Fear didn’t change the fact that simply seeing him had elicited from her the same response as in their previous life together. Being in Ethan’s presence made Isibéal want to be more, do more, rise to any challenge, fight harder—all the same feelings, emotions and reactions Lachlan had roused in her.
Not all, silly woman.
“Silly woman, indeed,” she murmured, pressing the back of one hand to her cheek.
Honesty, then. The other emotions Ethan roused in her were the very same Lachlan had discovered. Longing. Fervor. Lust. Passion.
“Love,” she amended for no one save herself. “All based in love.”
The emotions were there, regardless. She wanted Ethan as a woman wanted a man. No, not just “a” man. Her man. For that was who he was, and would always be, to her.
“Husband.”
She trailed unfeeling fingers along the stone walls out of habit, pausing when she reached Ethan’s door. She heard two voices. One belonged to her husband. The other could only be the large assassin who’d seen her. The latter gave her pause.
She laid a hand on the door and took a deep, unnecessary breath. “No matter what you’ve heard over the years, Isibéal, no matter that you know bits and pieces of his...Rowan’s...history, he’s given you no cause to fear him.”
That didn’t mean her inanimate heart wasn’t lodged in her throat. Some physical reactions, it seemed, were unaffected by death’s strict parameters.
Tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear, Isibéal drifted forward, through the door and into Ethan’s personal space.
Luck was with her as she found Rowan with his back to her. That allowed her to enter unseen. She’d take whatever boon the gods deemed appropriate, particularly if such resulted in her being able to observe Ethan without fear of discovery.
The men were in a hushed but heated conversation. Like as not, she wouldn’t have paid them any mind, would have simply watched Ethan, had she not heard the word ghost.
She shifted her attention to her husband, and what was left of her heart seized on his next words.
“I don’t care if the woman claims she’s my wife any more than I’d care if she claimed she’d once been the patron saint of sheep shit and goat cheese.”
Sheep shit and goat cheese? She shook her head, irritated but equally amused. His next words stripped the amusement away in mere seconds.
“She goes, Rowan. She’s out of the castle. I won’t have her here.” He shoved the fingers of one hand through his hair as he lifted the whiskey bottle with the other and took a hearty swig.
“You’d use your magicks to cast her out of this realm without knowing if her claim holds even an ounce of truth?”
“Our magicks. It’ll take us both, as I’ll need you to open a path into the spirit realm. I’ve more than enough magick to handle casting my...her...the woman—” Ethan’s eyes narrowed and his body swayed as he leaned into Rowan’s space “—out. And I’ll say it one more time, since you’re obviously deep enough in your cups to no longer make easy sense of the English language. I’m. Not. Married. Never have been. Never wanted to be.”
Rowan crossed his arms over his chest. “And just what have you got against marriage, then? What is it that scares you? The commitment, I’m guessing.”
Isibéal moved around the men and into Rowan’s field of view. She knew she had to look a sight with her temper up and her tenuous claim to her magick flaring. Strong emotion fueled her response and afforded her the wherewithal to rein in the wind that swirled around her. Not entirely, though. Her hair crackled and popped and her dress whipped about as her temper brewed.
Ethan carried on, totally unaware of Rowan’s raised eyebrows and the cause for the Druid’s response.
Her.
“I have no issues with committing but every problem letting the Fates take control when the heart gets involved and logic is replaced with emotion. And to do marriage right, you have to set logic aside. You have to allow yourself to fall. You can only hope the landing doesn’t break something critical.”
“It’s not like falling in love leaves you with broken bones, you gobshite.”
“It’s not broken bones I was referring to, but rather irreparably mangled hearts.” Ethan grinned, but the affectation was so dark as to be disturbing. “Love is for children and fools, Rowan, and I’m neither.”
The Druid’s shoulders stiffened even as he lowered his arms to his sides in a controlled move. “Tread lightly, darkling, seeing as I, myself was married and yet never counted myself a fool.”
“Why don’t you talk to your wife, then?” Ethan shot out. Rowan flinched and Ethan’s shoulders hunched. “Forget I said that—that was out of line. But know this, Rowan. I’ll not ‘tread lightly.’” Ethan’s lips thinned into a hard line even as his jaw took on a familiar, mutinous set that made Isibéal long to stroke the skin just there. “It’s been hundreds of years since you lost your wife and you still suffer with the mangled heart I referred to. You’re as dead inside as the incorporeal stalker who’s mistaken me for someone who would have ever said ‘I do’ to her or anyone else.”
Isibéal fumed at the thought that there would be someone else for her husband. The man she’d known would never, ever have operated with such blinders on, let alone have even joked about forsaking his vows to her, his wife. This man, Ethan, might have been the spitting image of her lost husband, but she wondered if she’d misjudged his character. Worse, had she mistaken his soul for Lachlan’s simply because she so desperately wanted it to be so?
She sagged, and Rowan caught her eye with a sharp move of his hand. Glancing up, she met that cold gaze and couldn’t help shivering. Then he gave a sharp shake of his head and laid his hand over his heart. Isibéal was lost until he mouthed the word patience as Ethan rambled on.
“The only time you’ll find me wearing the one suit I own and standing at the end of any aisle is right after Easter and Halloween when the grocery stores put the good candy on sale. I take my Toblerone acquisitions seriously, man.”
“Ethan.” Rowan dragged the name out, clearly a warning.
“Rowan,” Ethan mimicked, irreverent as ever. Then he held up his free hand, palm out. “The psycho-stalker came after me. That makes her mine. As such, I reserve the right to have the final word in this. She’s to be banished, dúr, caorach-grámhara duine cac.”
“And when, exactly, did you pick up the Irish?” Rowan asked quietly.
Ethan paled and shook his head, mouth working silently.
His shock at having spoken the old language fluently didn’t settle Isibéal’s ire. Ethan had done far too good a job at ensuring she was...what was the common vernacular? Ah, yes. Pissed off. He’d ensured that his words had enflamed her temper and pricked her pride. She knew she should step outside, give herself time and space to settle, but damned if she would. Ethan couldn’t be allowed the time necessary to create the banishing spell that would send her away. Permanently. For an unanchored spirit neither belonging to nor claimed by Tír na nÓg or the Shadow Realm, banishing her meant her soul would splinter. He would cause it—her—to splinter. The result? She would be little more than a recorded birth and death. She would have no more substance than a dandelion’s head blown into the wind by a temperamental child, its fluff carried a thousand different directions by the mercurial wind.
So, yes, while she should have stepped outside and centered herself, should have done whatever it took to subdue her wrath, she didn’t. Not even hearing Ethan slip into the Irish and call Rowan a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face” tempered the violence brewing in her.
Ethan could say what he would and call her whatever names soothed his black heart. None of it hurt like his explicit objective. If he thought she would sit around and passively wait, hands folded in her lap like a simpleton, while he gathered the means to banish her? He had another think coming.
By the gods, she’d survived this long. She wouldn’t give up the fight not only to carry on but also to make her way back to her husband’s side because of one imbecile’s unencumbered conscience. Even if that man was her husband. For all that she wanted to doubt, she’d seen too much to believe otherwise. Period. If it took her a thousand lifetimes of fighting her way back to him to convince him that that was, in fact, his role? So be it. But there would be more than a little hell to pay for his ridicule.
Isibéal looked at her luminescing hands and basked in the stinging power that traced her nerves. Skills long bound by the grave crackled to life, her long-neglected senses sputtering.
Holding her arms away from her body, she let her power run unchecked for the first time since she’d died. She pulled on her cursed tie to Lugh, the god who had bound her thusly. For the first time she was glad she could summon more power from her tie to the god than what now seemed such a paltry sum at her immediate disposal. She felt him stir, felt his interest in her wrath. So be it. If teaching Ethan a little respect meant she had to draw on the damned god’s strengths? She would do it, and without apology.
For if delivering a little retribution would feel good, certainly raining undiluted hell would be grand.
Isibéal raised her hands above her head.
Her hair whipped in an incorporeal wind.
And she called the brimstone and rain.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_f517e3c9-503e-5c72-bf3f-d87d82b2f0af)
Ethan had no idea where the native Irish language had come from when he insulted Rowan. Had no idea why he’d called him a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face,” either. It had to have been a fluke. Something he’d heard before. Surely...
Intent on terminating the conversation and getting Rowan out of his rooms, Ethan opened his mouth to speak. And stopped. Gooseflesh decorated his exposed arms as the temperature in his living room dropped from comfortable to for-the-gods’-sakes-someone-light-the-fire cold. His breath condensed on the air, small clouds chugging from between his parted lips. He lifted the whiskey bottle, intent on drowning the last of his urge to argue. A scattering of light caught his attention, and he paused. “What—” he tipped his head toward the door “—is that?”
Rowan turned with great care. “It seems ‘that’ would be your hag-stalker-ghost-wife. You probably shouldn’t leave off the moniker of ‘witch,’ though. It seems rather relevant. Particularly now that you’ve pissed her off.” He inched around the flashes of pale orange light that cascaded like a Fourth of July sparkler from roughly four feet off the floor. “You’re the one who pissed her off, so you’re the one responsible for settling her down.” He reached the door and slipped out, peeking back around the door frame to deliver his parting shot. “Preferably before she does something like, what was it you so randomly accused me of? Oh. Right. Turning you into a frog. Good luck.” He ducked into the hallway then, pulling the heavy door closed with an authoritative boom. A split second later, the iron latch dropped with an ominous clank.
“Coward,” Ethan called.
Interpreting Rowan’s muffled reply proved impossible.
Sure, Ethan could have gone after him, asked the man to repeat himself. He could have argued a bit more. Or he could even have...found one of a thousand more ways in which to avoid the inevitable confrontation with the invisible woman.
He sighed.
Avoidance was no longer an option. Intentional evasion would only allow things to escalate and leave Ethan hiding behind the Druids’ proverbial skirts. And Ethan did not hide behind anyone’s pleats and folds, maxis or minis, round gowns or kilts.
Taking a deep breath, he focused in the general direction he thought the woman stood.
Or did she hover? Crouch? Float? Whatever.
“This is going to be awkward, seeing as I can’t—” he gestured at the cascading sparks “—you know, see you. So I’ll just talk in your general direction and hope for the best.”
A book flew from the shelf and careened off his shoulder. “Ow!”
He spun away from the next book only to be pelted across the abdomen with the contents of the slag bucket from the hearth.
Ash billowed around him and created ephemeral clouds, the dark mass ballooning as it was pushed toward the ceiling, driven by an unnaturally pernicious wind. The gritty residue destroyed his white shirt and khaki pants, covered his exposed skin and burned his eyes. Racked with chest-rattling coughs, he covered his mouth and nose as he tried to steal even a single deep breath.
He needed to shut Sparky here down. Now. Her sparkler display had evolved from orange to a deep crimson. Ethan couldn’t envision a situation where that could possibly bode well.
Pulling his shirt up over his lower face, he squinted through the worst of the fallout and moved forward. The gritty stuff was everywhere. That wasn’t what had his ire up, though. It was the idea that she’d come into his space in what had become his home and wrecked his stuff that thoroughly pissed him off. Not only that, but now there was this monstrous mess to contend with. He coughed, and the ash in his throat seemed to congeal. A second wave of ash rushed over him as the winds stirred with more aggression, whipping against his skin.
Who the hell does this ghost think she is?
Oh. Right.
My wife.
Ethan’s temper spiked. He’d reached his limit with this nonsense. Whipping his free hand out, he cupped his palm and made a scooping motion toward the ghost’s colorful display. He felt her. Felt the shape of her bare feet and ankles. Felt the grave’s chill countered by the hum of elemental magick coursing through her form. Felt the electrical charge that made her twitch and jerk in his grip. Felt the slight weight that powerful magick always carried, that touchable, tangible thing. And it was that weight, that substance of understanding, that confirmed she knew what havoc she could wreak and with minimal effort. His acceptance that she had to be sentient forced him to rethink how he approached her.
Forcibly shedding the cobweb-like strands of temper that had woven around him and now clung with what seemed like pernicious intent, he tapped into the last of his tolerance. “I will afford you one chance to control your temper, woman. That chance is now.”
The mirror above the fireplace gave an ominous, otherworldly groan, bowed outward and then shattered. Shards bounced off each other, the tinkling sound eerily similar to that of a thousand crystal flutes simultaneously toasting a single event.
“Enough!” he bellowed. Tightening his ethereal hold on her feet, he nearly lost his tenuous control over her when the urge to caress her ankle stole over him. “Magickal manipulation,” he spat, “not authentic feelings.” A harsh twist of his hand to the right and he pulled her down, anchoring her where she stood. Holding his other arm out parallel to the floor, palm down, Ethan let loose the barriers he kept in place, barriers that held his earth magick at bay so he could live, think, breathe, even just exist without bringing about destruction. He was beyond thinking now, driven to respond. “Rise!”
The stone floor, an extension of the element he controlled, responded by cracking and shattering in such rapid-fire succession his room sounded like a war zone. Rock and mortar heaved and blew apart, only to reform to Ethan’s will. He commanded the floor upward, drawing more and more stone to encase the unseen woman where he had pinned her struggling form.
“Bind and hold,” Ethan breathed, infusing the word with intent, with elemental magick, as he curled his fingers into his palm. Made a fist. Melded the rock together to form an impenetrable, airtight, inescapable prison created by his will and his element. He wouldn’t have her waltz out of here without consequence.
Materials continued to fly toward the column he created, exposing the castle’s wooden support beams as the rock adhered to Ethan’s orders and reformed, horizontal floor to vertical prison. And then a room appeared below—a classroom by appearances. Its occupants, students and instructor alike, could be seen through the dust. Shouts resounded as the young assassins in training—tyros—scrambled to avoid falling stone and other debris even as they adhered to their instructor’s shouted instruction to “Get out!”
The instructor, Niall, was one of the Arcanum. Controller of the element of air, he thrust his hands out and used his element to deflect a large rock that had broken away and careened toward him. The assassin’s eyes narrowed and his lips began to move in what was, Ethan assumed, a summoning spell wherein he called his element to heel.
Invisible though it was, the physical barrier the air created could be seen because of the thick dust on this side of the boundary and the clear space surrounding Niall on the other side. The world behind the artificially created wall shifted, papers blowing all about, as Niall commanded the air to lift him straight up and deposit him at Ethan’s side.
Cool. The first of the cavalry has arri—
Niall’s fist connected with Ethan’s jaw. The impact sent him lurching across the wrecked floor, where he slammed into a damaged stone wall. Bracing one hand against the windowsill, he shook his head and tried to clear his muddled thoughts.
Didn’t see that coming.
His concentration broke and the stones he’d been directing began to fall, creating a deadly shower. Rock ricocheted around him. Chunks large and small plummeted into the room exposed below. Larger stones took out the ancient wooden tables the tyros used as desks as well as the hodgepodge of both archaic and modern lab equipment, the podium Niall had lectured from and the computer that had been open atop it. Niall’s computer.
Oops. Again.
Smaller stones, mortar and personal flotsam from Ethan’s living room continued to fall through the floor and fill in voids until the classroom below looked as if destruction had rained, and it had been a torrential downpour.
Ethan worked his aching jaw back and forth as he slowly straightened.
Niall crossed arms sleeved with tattoos over his chest. “Ask me why I hit you and I’ll do it again.”
Normally, Ethan would have poked at Niall simply because the man had a fantastic sense of humor. Today wasn’t a normal day.
The door to Ethan’s room crashed open in a shower of splinters. The Druid’s Elder and the entire Arcanum, some with spouses hot on their heels, crowded the entrance, weapons raised.
