Inked Destiny

Three

Eamon stood as Liam escorted Etaín’s brother and father into the room. He’d expected the one but not the other. He had reservations about both, given the way they’d used Etaín’s gift over the years, exposing her to danger and seemingly unaware and unconcerned about what the use of it cost her.

Both men were dressed casually, expensively. He would have preferred to delay this particular meeting but the contact was as inevitable as the impending confrontation.

“Parker,” Eamon said, acknowledging the FBI agent who remained alive only because he couldn’t be certain Etaín’s brother had meant to make her the Harlequin Rapist’s target. “Captain Chevenier.”

The men claimed side-by-side chairs. Eamon sat across from them while Liam lounged in the doorway, interested audience and lethal bodyguard.

“Where’s my daughter?” the captain said, not bothering with pleasantries, his voice edged with tension, the fierce concern of a parent.

Eamon was willing to believe this man loved Etaín as his own, despite it not being the truth. He was willing to accept that one day he might have to add these two humans and those related to them to his clan, but currently he had only one concern with respect to them. “She and Cathal will join us once certain matters have been settled.”

Twin expressions of dislike and disapproval appeared on his visitors’ faces. Eamon very nearly smiled over the reaction. If their hostility alienated them further from Etaín, and with it, human concerns, then it served him.

“Why is Niall Dunne’s son still with her?” the captain demanded.

“Surely you know she’s seeing Cathal.”

“You find that acceptable?” Disbelief, condescension, a hint of moral outrage, the question making it obvious Parker had correctly interpreted the relationship and passed the information on to his father.

Eamon shrugged. “Some battles are best avoided. I mean to keep Etaín safe and one of the things I will protect her from is the harm that comes of using her gift at your behest. You will not be allowed access to her if the purpose of your visit is to ask her to touch crime victims and relive the horror of their memories. In fact, you will be escorted out of my home immediately without seeing her if you are unable or unwilling to swear an oath you did not come here with such a request.”

The captain leaned forward, enough menace and aggression in the gesture to have Liam straightening out of his laconic pose. “If my daughter refuses to use her unique abilities, and I hear it directly from her, I’ll accept Etaín’s wishes. I don’t know who you are. Until today, I’d never heard of you or seen you in all the times I’ve been to Aesirs. I don’t know what your connection to the Dunnes is, but be assured I’ll be looking now that you’ve come onto my radar screen. I demand to see my daughter. Get her in here or I’ll—”

“Dad, let’s calm down here. Please. I need to get my paperwork wrapped up and you wanted to make sure Etaín was really okay. Eamon knows this meeting with Etaín has to happen. I let her leave the crime scene without giving a statement. I let them all leave. Let’s shelve this discussion for now. All Eamon has asked is that we promise we’re not here to ask for her help on another case. I know I’m not. Are you?”

“No.” The answer was glared, delivered with open hostility.

“Good enough?” Parker asked, meeting and holding Eamon’s gaze.

It would have to be. Eamon had vowed to himself that this night would not pass without Etaín knowing the truth of what she was, and would be. The sooner this was done, the sooner more important matters could be addressed.

“Neither of you will mention this discussion to her.”

He hadn’t intended to set the men at ease, but his words had that effect. “Fine by me,” Parker said, placing a folder on the coffee table and flipping it open. A glance at the elder Chevenier gained his acceptance of the terms, a sharp nod and an easily read expression of confidence rather than defeat.

Eamon hid his smile. Neither of them thought him capable of persuading Etaín to give up their cause of justice. They were mistaken. His word was law in the world Etaín would soon learn existed.

“I’ll return momentarily with Etaín and Cathal.”

In the presence of Etaín’s family members, his third refrained from issuing a mocking comment, though Liam’s eyes glistened with suppressed amusement and unholy anticipation.

“He who laughs last, laughs best, and that will be me,” Eamon murmured a step away from Liam. “The day will come when you fall in love.”

“You’re mistaken. That particular nightmare is not for me.”

“I think otherwise and will enjoy every moment of your discomfort.”

“And here I didn’t think you cared, Lord.”

Eamon allowed himself the smile he’d held back. There was hardly any point in suppressing it, given that its absence wouldn’t curb Liam’s tongue.

He passed through the doorway, moving without haste to the bedroom to find Etaín on her side with Cathal against her back, his arm across her belly and his thigh over hers in possessiveness.

He joined them, Etaín’s lambent gaze making him wish he could resume where they’d left off. She rose onto her elbow, tempting him with the thrust of pink-capped breasts.

Eamon leaned in, claiming them with light sucks, lingering until her soft sigh expressed her desire for him. He moved to her mouth then, a long kiss followed by a feathering of them to her ear, his tongue flicking into the canal before licking the rounded tip in both reminder and promise of pleasure.

“Mmmm, back for more,” she said, hand going to the front of his pants, sending a jolt of lightning-white heat up his spine with the grasp of his cloth-covered erection.

“I wish it were so.”

“What’s up? Besides the obvious?”

“Your father and brother are here.”

Her hand left him and he felt its loss as a howling, twisting, storm wind. His mouth returned to hers in a spill and mix of magic, his controlled and hers a wild buffeting, though there was no threat, no grappling for control other than what came of being in her presence and wanting nothing more than to join his body to hers.

He drank her down, aware of Cathal’s hand sliding up her side to cover her breast, intensifying the eroticism of being with her, though he didn’t need to share her to find utter satisfaction. She’d enthralled him from the very first and remained a dangerous fascination. He’d given her more leeway than he once would have imagined possible.

The kiss ended with a moan of protest on her part, sending satisfaction purring through him. “It’s the work of moments to satisfy the reason for their visit. The sooner we attend to them, the sooner we can return to this much more interesting pursuit.”

“True,” Etaín said, nervous at the prospect of being in the captain’s company, and then immediately irritated at feeling that way. She was self-aware enough to know what lay beneath the nervousness—hope, an often bitter emotion when it came to her relationship with the man she’d once called “Dad.” She hadn’t seen him in months, and that last encounter had ended in an argument the same as many of the previous ones had.

She played with a length of Eamon’s hair, letting the silky strands of it distract her. It made her think of gentle waves lapping over pristine beaches.

“Do you have a bathrobe I can borrow?” She’d arrived at Eamon’s estate in nothing but his shirt, the clothes she’d been wearing when she was abducted no doubt bagged as evidence in the Harlequin Rapist case by now.

“I can do better than a bathrobe.” One last lingering kiss and he left the bed. He crossed to folding closet doors, the wood polished and expensive, the swirling designs carved into it turning the functional into elegant artwork.

He pulled them back, revealing several feet worth of woman’s clothing, grouped by occasion, from casual shirts through elegant eveningwear. “I arranged for the beginnings of a wardrobe.”

Her heartbeat sped up, dismay crowding in. Everything in that closet would be far more expensive than what she would have chosen to buy or wear. Now it begins. The changes she’d known would come, the expectations she wasn’t sure she’d be able to accept or tolerate or accomplish.

She glanced at Cathal, who grimaced and said, “Lucky you. Clean clothes. Now I’m sorry we didn’t swing by my place on the way here.”

“Mine too.”

Surrendering the warmth and comfort she gained with the touch of her skin to Cathal’s, she left the bed, and he did the same, heading for the bathroom.

At the closet she liberated the most casual of the shirts, though the rich texture of the fabric confirmed her suspicion about cost. Hiding her discomfort in humor, she said, “For a second there, when I saw the clothes, I thought maybe you were a cross-dresser like Derrick.”

“That’s a show you won’t see here.”

She laughed, but uneasiness about the future had her suddenly craving a return to normal, where normal held no worries about magic, where it was defined by days spent at Stylin’ Ink, sharing insults with Derrick and Jamaal and Bryce, easy camaraderie mixed with teasing as they created art that would last only for the lifetime of its human canvas.

Eamon tugged a pair of designer jeans from a hanger. “Let’s get this over with, Etaín.”

She took them from him. For a different occasion, she’d enjoy wearing nothing beneath the clothing and knowing he and Cathal were aware of it. But to meet with Parker and the captain, she needed all the armor she could get. “Panties? Bras?”

“In the dresser. Top left-hand drawer. I’ve got craftsmen working on additional furniture.”

Her footsteps faltered. But with Cathal’s emergence from the bathroom wearing dark pants and a slightly wrinkled shirt, she left discussion about living arrangements for later. She continued to the dresser, hastily choosing silky strips of blue lingerie before getting dressed.

“Let’s do this,” she said, though her heart gave a stuttering, skipping beat at seeing Parker.

She balled her hands into fists, shoving them into her pockets. Eamon had told her he believed it was the nature of her gift to want to see everything, to know everything, and she’d lost control of it. She would have stripped her brother’s mind if Eamon hadn’t used a spell to stop her as Parker embraced her, glad she’d been saved from the Harlequin Rapist.

Disapproval cemented the captain and Parker in place. Neither offered a smile or a hug. She hadn’t expected otherwise, yet that traitorous emotion of hope left her vulnerable.

An ache spread through her chest in a slow, treacherous wave. Cathal’s hand settled at the base of her spine, driving the pain behind a wall of resolve.

No regrets. There was nothing about the way she lived her life that she had to apologize for…and yet, in the same room with the man she still thought of as Dad, a part of her still craved love unconditioned on conforming to his expectations.

She let Cathal guide her to the couch, didn’t protest when he encircled her wrist, tugging her hand free of the pocket and clasping it as he sat.

Anxious to get this over with, she said, “I can guess what brings you here, Parker. What about you, Captain?”

There was censure in his expression. Hard intolerance in the presence of a man he’d convicted based solely on what his father and uncle were. Killers. No doubts there, though without her, the authorities had nothing.

“I wanted to make sure you are okay, even if the company you keep remains a concern.”

“I’m good.” She didn’t have the stomach to launch an accusation at him, that he’d had something to do with her being scooped up and confined in a small, windowless interrogation room. That he’d suggested it might break her so she’d become the prosecution’s golden witness in a case against the Dunnes.

She focused on Parker. “I won’t sign off on a lie. How do you want to spin this?” They could hardly include the terms psychic-bond or magic-infused tattoos in the official report.

“There’s enough evidence to get a death sentence anyway, so let’s keep your statement simple. Tell me everything that happened prior to your rescue.”

She did, adding her signature to the end of Parker’s written account. “Now for the tricky part.”

Cathal’s hand tightened on hers, an apology sliding into her through the contact or through the connection created by the ink on his forearms, she didn’t know which. “Not necessarily. For purposes of the report, I’ll sign a statement saying I had a tracker on you.”

A truth, though a misleading one. With the inked eye touched to his palm she saw a memory and knew the tracker was actually on the Harley.

Cathal’s determination poured into her like molten steel. It was all the warning she got before he said, “Given my father and uncle, you’ll understand why calling the police wasn’t a first choice when I discovered the woman I’m going to marry had been abducted.”

Silence exploded through the room like a bomb, sending shockwaves through her as well. She turned toward Eamon to gauge his reaction but his expression was the calm of a glassy sea.

Parker was the first to speak, a furious, “No fucking way, Etaín.” But she didn’t refute Cathal’s statement. Didn’t argue he was nothing like his father and uncle.

Cathal’s hand left hers to take up the pen she’d placed on the coffee table after signing her statement. He made quick work of writing his own and placing his signature on it.

“I’d like to speak with you, Etaín,” the captain said. “Alone.”

Eamon took Etaín’s hand in his. “That won’t be possible this evening. I believe we’ve concluded the necessary police business. Liam will show you out.”

With the mention of Liam’s name, Eamon glanced toward the doorway, drawing Etaín’s attention there as well, to see eyes dancing with suppressed laughter, and more.

Shhhadow walker. Assassin. The words came hissed in the same sibilant voice she’d heard in her nightmare, as if her gift now had a voice and didn’t always require the press of her palms to skin. The label given to Liam tightened her chest as shards of ice slid into her bloodstream with the question, Why would Eamon need a killer in his employ?

“Do you intend to let this man dictate what you can and can’t do, Etaín?” the captain asked, demand in his voice, but concern too, worry for her future. And at the moment she was a little concerned about it too.

Dragging her gaze from Liam she said, “No,” and was cut off from elaborating by the ring of the captain’s cellphone.

He removed it from his pocket, checking the incoming number before answering it. The caller did most of the talking. When the captain spoke again he said, “I’m with her now. Let me get back to you.”

Lowering the phone he said, “That was Oakland PD, there was an armed invasion at a biker bar. Twenty-seven dead, one survivor. He’s not expected to either regain consciousness or live. They’ve requested your help.”

“No,” Eamon answered. “I won’t allow you to put her in danger again.”

Imagined coils tightened around her chest, suffocating her. Cathal reclaimed her hand, his shock nearly overriding the fear drenching her, numbing her lips as she felt the phantom pull of a gun’s trigger. Not a bad dream, but something else. “When did it happen?”

“A little over an hour ago.”

Icy cold invaded her limbs, coming with the sense that she’d lived it real-time, not as some premonition of impending events. “Was it the bar where the Curs hang out?”

A cop face met her question. Answer enough. “Why do you ask?”

She squeezed Cathal’s hand in an unnecessary message not to mention the dream, now nightmare reality. “I was there a few days ago, doing what Parker asked me to do.”

“Then you’ll know some of the victims.” He stood, Parker doing so as well. “I’ll escort you to the hospital unless you intend to let Eamon dictate what you will or won’t do.”

“I’ll go.”

“You won’t,” Eamon said. “Think, Etaín, just how dangerous touching the dying might be to you.”

But she wasn’t worried about herself. Not as she flashed back to the scene of the slaughter and felt the phantom burn at her wrists, a tight circle of it that climbed upward into the vines on her arms. Searing heat coming with an awareness that someone nearby wore her ink—coming with the sickening dread that they all wore it, her, the killer, and Vontae—and worse, because of it, the killer she’d been in the dream had sensed Vontae.

Guilt sank gut-twisting roots inside her. Magic both attracts and repels, Eamon had told her once, and this seemed horrifying proof of it. “It doesn’t matter. I have to do this.”

Preempting further argument, she told the captain, “I’ll touch the remaining survivor. I’ll get the memories and draw them. I swear it.” The words brought with them her mother’s warning. Never make an oath you aren’t willing to pay dearly for if you break it.

“Let’s go,” the captain said.

Eamon’s hand settled around her upper arm in an unwavering restraint. “Etaín will follow shortly. I will ensure she keeps her pledge but there are matters we need to discuss first. What hospital?”

“Highland General.”

The captain’s expression when he met her eyes conveyed the message he wasn’t leaving until he heard what she wanted. It would have warmed her heart except this had everything to do with solving a crime, and had the additional benefit of getting her out of both Eamon’s and Cathal’s company.

He never contacted her just to find out how she was doing. It was always because he needed her to touch a victim. And it wasn’t any different with Parker.

Cathal ended the tense moment, siding with Eamon. “A few minutes won’t matter, Etaín.” His hand tightened on hers and she could feel his fear for her. “It might be better if you don’t walk into the hospital with your father and brother. Not after all the hype about your involvement with the Harlequin Rapist taskforce.”

He had a point there. News media speculation had her as psychic artist or bait, but so far they didn’t have her face or know she’d nearly been a victim.

“We’ll follow you,” she told the captain.

“Soon or there won’t be any point in coming to the hospital.”

“I’ve made you a promise,” Eamon said. “I’ll see that it’s kept.”

Both the captain and Parker stiffened, as if hearing more in Eamon’s words than she did. And then she stiffened too, wondering what he’d said to them before returning to the bedroom to tell her they were waiting.

The moment they left the room Eamon said, “I mean to keep you safe, from yourself if necessary and by whatever means are required. Ignorance is deadly, Etaín. You cannot remain so any longer.”

More words followed, spoken in what must be the language of magic, what water and fire would sound like if they had a voice. She felt as if some barrier was being brought down, saw it in a sudden luminescence, not surrounding Eamon but emanating from him, making him otherworldly, breathtaking in a way that was more than heart-stopping gorgeous or beautifully handsome, in a way that was beyond compelling, reminding her of tales of the shining folk, the stories her mother used to whisper to her at bedtime, or sometimes as they traveled by bus, leaving old names behind and taking up new ones.