Shadow Spell (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 2)

She clicked and clacked at the keyboard as she laid out the morning’s schedule. Though she tended toward the bossy and brisk, Kyra was a wizard at doing a dozen things at once.

And—the fly in Connor’s ointment—expected everyone else to do the same.

“I’ve set you on at two for another,” she added. “Yanks again, a couple over from Boston. They’ve just come in from a stay at Dromoland in Clare, and they’re having three days at Ashford before moving on. Three weeks holiday for their twenty-fifth anniversary.”

“Ten and two then.”

“They’ve been married long as I’ve been alive. That’s something to think on.”

Listening with half an ear, he sat to poke through the paperwork he couldn’t palm off on her. “Your parents have been married longer yet, considering you’re the youngest.”

“Parents are different,” she said—decisively—though he couldn’t see how.

“Oh, and Brian’s claiming there was an earthquake this morning, near to shook him out of bed.”

Connor glanced up, face calm. “An earthquake, is it?”

She smirked, still clattering on the keyboard with nails painted with pink glitter. “Swears the whole house shook around him.” She rolled her eyes, hit Print, swiveled around for a clipboard. “And he’s decided it’s some conspiracy, as there’s not a word of it on the telly. A few mentions, so he claims, on the Internet. He’s gone from earthquake to nuclear testing by some foreign power in a fingersnap. He’ll be all over you about it, as he’s been me.”

“And your bed didn’t shake?”

She flashed a grin. “Not from an earthquake.”

He laughed, went back to the paperwork. “And how is Liam?”

“Very well indeed. I’m thinking I might marry him.”

“Is that the way of it?”

“It might be, as you have to start on racking up those anniversaries sometime. I’ll let him know when I’ve made up my mind.”

When the phone jangled, he left her to answer, went back to clearing off a section of his desk.

So some felt it, some didn’t, he thought. Some were more open than others. And some closed tight as any drum.

He’d known Kyra most of his life, he mused, and she knew what he was—had to know. But she never spoke of it. She was, despite her blue hair and the little hoop in her left eyebrow, a drum.

He worked steady enough until Brian came in and, as predicted, was full of earthquakes that were likely nuclear testing by some secret government agency, or perhaps a sign of the apocalypse.

He left Brian and Kyra batting it all around, went out to choose the hawk for the first walk.

As no one was watching, he did it the quick and simple way. He simply opened the aviary, looked into the eyes of his choice, held up his gloved arm.

The hawk swooped through, landed, coming in as obedient as a well-trained hound.

“There you are, Thor. Ready to work, are you? You do well for Brian this morning, and I’ll take you out later, if I can, for a real hunt. How’s that for you?”

After tethering the hawk, he walked back to the offices, transferred him to the waiting perch, tethered him there.

Patient, Thor closed his wings, sat watchful.

“We may get some wet,” he told Brian, “but not a drench, I’m thinking.”

“Global warming’s causing strange weather around the world. It may have been an earthquake.”

“An earthquake ’tisn’t weather,” Kyra stated.

“It’s all connected,” Brian said darkly.