Shadow Spell (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 2)

There was no harm in the day—he felt none at all. And after the early-morning clash, Connor felt Cabhan would be curled up in some dark cave, gathering.

“We’ve five hawk walks already booked today, and may have others before it’s done. Maybe I’ll see you on the paths.”

“Maybe.”

“If you text me when you’re done for the day, I’ll meet you here, walk back with you to the cottage.”

“We’ll see how it all goes. Mind yourself, Connor.”

“I will. I do.”

Because her eyebrows had drawn together, he kissed the space between them, then strolled off. Looking, to Meara’s mind, like a man without a single care in the world rather than one with the weight of it on his shoulders.

An optimist to the bone, she thought, envying him a little.

But she pulled her phone out of her pocket as she took the path to the stables and her workday.

“Morning, Ma.” And smiling to herself, prepared to give her annoying sister a shot right up the arse.

4

CONNOR SLIPPED THROUGH THE EMPLOYEES’ GATE FOR the falconry school. As always, he felt a little flutter—a bit like beating wings—in his heart, along his skin. It had always been the hawk for him. That connection, like his power, came down through the blood.

He’d have preferred having some time to walk around the enclosures and aviary, greet the hawks, the big owl they called Brutus, just to see—and hear—how they all fared.

But the way he’d started his day meant he was a few minutes behind already. He saw one of his staff, Brian—skinny as a flagpole and barely eighteen—checking the feed and water.

So he only glanced around to be sure all was well as he crossed over to the offices, past the fenced-in area where his assistant, Kyra, kept her pretty spaniel most days.

“And how’s it going for you today, Romeo?”

In answer, the dog wagged his whole body, clamped a gnawed blue ball in his mouth, and brought it hopefully to the fence.

“It’ll have to be later for that.”

He stepped into the office, found Kyra, her hair a short wedge of sapphire blue, busy at the keyboard.

“You’re late.”

Though she just hit five foot two, Kyra had a voice like a foghorn.

“Happy I’m the boss then, isn’t it?”

“Fin’s the boss.”

“Happy I had breakfast with him so he knows what’s what.” He knocked his fist lightly on the top of her head as he moved by to a desk covered with forms, clipboards, papers, brochures, a spare glove, a tether, a bowl of tumbled stones, and other debris.

“We’ve had another booking come in already this morning. A double. Father and son—and the boy’s just sixteen. I’ve put you on that, as you do better with the teenagers than Brian or Pauline. They’re for ten this morning. Yanks.”

She paused, sent Connor a disapproving look from her round, wildly freckled face. “Sixteen, and why isn’t he in school, I want to know.”

“You’re such a taskmaster, Kyra. It’s an education, isn’t it, to travel to another country, to learn of hawks?”

“That won’t teach you to add two and two. Sean’s not coming in till noon, if you’re forgetting. He’s taking his wife in for her check with the doctor.”

He looked up at that because he had forgotten. “All’s well there, right, with her and the baby?”

“Well and fine, she just wants him there as they may find if it’s a girl or boy today. That puts Brian on the nine with the lady from Donegal, you at the ten, and Pauline’s at half-ten with a pair of honeymooners from Dublin.”