Page 31 of Beer & Broomsticks

A broad wooden beam crashed to the ground beside them, and she barely heard his muffled grunt over the sounds of screaming patrons.

“Jaysus! Ruairí, love, are you all right?”

“Shhh, I’m grand,” he whispered into her ear. “I need you to stay hidden, Bridg. Can you do that for me,mo ghrá? Can you stay quiet long enough for me to get ya out of here?”

She nodded, suddenly terrified at seeing him so grave. Ruairí was seldom serious, and everything was cause for amusement to him.

The fear in his blue eyes was strictly for her as he helped her rise but only enough to huddle behind the bar. “Fire,” he mouthed with a glance overhead. She kept her back pressed to the cooler and tried to catch a glimpse in the cracked mirror of the mass exodus out of Lucky’s door. Two men, warlocks she’d never seen before, stood in the center of the sea of tables. The dark-haired man with the ice-blue eyes met her gaze and winked.Winked!As if the destruction of her pub didn’t just happen. Bridget almost stood up to give him a healthy piece of her mind, but all hint of humor left him as he shifted to confront the beefy blond man who walked over the debris as if it were of no concern to him.

“You can drop the glamour, Ronan. You’re the only one with the bollocks enough to stand up to me,” the newcomer said. The coldness in his tone nearly froze Bridget’s blood into ice chips. “Where’s the sword, boy? Tell me now, and I won’t kill you.”

But the man who revealed himself wasn’t Ronan. He was the one who had been with Ruairí and his cousin an hour earlier. The resemblance between the two men, standing face to face, was uncanny, leaving no doubt they were twins.

“Antoin?” Disbelief was in every line of the newcomer’s face, and his tone was heavy with surprise. “’Tis you returned from the dead, then?”

“I’ve gone by Alexander for years, Loman. Do keep up with the times.”

His reveal caused Bridget to suck in a breath, and she met Ruairí’s worried gaze with a matching one. Sweat was beaded on his brow as he kept shooting looks upward to monitor the crawling progress of the fire. It occurred to her he’d somehow slowed the flames, controlling the blaze yet not making it obvious to non-magical patrons who might have stayed hidden. The smoke clung to the ceiling and inched its way toward the door opening.

Confident in Ruairí’s ability to contain the fire, she peeked over the bar in time to see Alexander/Antoin casually brush the dust from the debris off his shoulder.

“AlexanderCastor,” he emphasized with a smirk.

Never would Bridget have thought another person could make the fearsome Loman O’Connor pale, but pale he did. In seconds, though, his bravado was back along with what appeared to be a permanent sneer.

“Castor? Are ya cuddin’ me, Antoin? Alexander Castor is a legend, not a wee scut afraid of his own shadow. If you think to have a laugh at my expense, brother, you’ll have to try harder than that.”

But Castor never blinked. Instead, his brows shot up as a mocking smile curled his lips. His confidence seemed to chip away at Loman’s shield by the way the other man flushed and shifted his stance as if preparing for a fight.

Ruairí touched her wrist and nodded toward the back room. “Time to go,mo ghrá.There’s about to be a feckin’ battle of the Titans, and we don’t want to be caught in the crossfire,” he said in a hushed voice.

“He’ll see us if we move now,” she said just as quietly.

Not losing his challenging look, Castor shifted to the right and sauntered forward as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Loman, not fool enough to let his adversarial brother out of his sight, turned in a half circle, causing Ruairí and Bridget to scoot sideways so he wouldn’t catch them from his periphery.

Although Castor never looked their way, Bridget mentally blew him a kiss in hopes he somehow understood how much she appreciated his sacrifice on their behalf. He’d seen her in the mirror, so he was absolutely challenging his brother for her benefit.

Ruairí scowled and shooed her forward when she hesitated to leave.

Two feet into their frantic, crawling escape, she came up against a hard object—aninvisiblehard object that very much felt like a man’s jean-clad leg. She fell back into Ruairí, unsure what to do now that their way had been blocked.

Before they could react, the cloak fell away and revealed Quentin, deadly intent on the conversation across the room. He didn’t spare them a glance as he dropped one arm and used his index finger to gesture to the exit.

Heart close to beating out of her chest, Bridget scrambled for freedom, uncaring if she made noise at that point. Only when she’d reached the alley did she realize she was alone and that Ruairí had stayed behind to help the others should they need him. She ran back for him, but her brother Cian stepped into her path from beneath a cloaking spell of his own.

She really needed to learn that trick.

“I’ll go for Ruairí, Bridg. You get to safety, yeah?”

“The fool stayed behind. Why, for the love of the Goddess, would he do that? The ceiling is on fire!” She didn’t care that her voice was close to screeching, she was terrified on Ruairí’s behalf. He was the softest of the O’Connors, concerned with the welfare of others over his own. The man didn’t have it in him to purposely hurt another, and Bridget feared it would get him killed.

“I’ll not let anything happen to him. I swear on me life. And I’ll be damned if our pub will burn down.”

Bridget was torn. As much as she wanted Ruairí safe, she didn’t want Cian rushing into danger to save him. But of the two, Cian was better prepared for intrigue and the perils that came with it. As a previous spy for the Witches’ Council, he’d been in sticky situations before. “Be careful. I’d not be happy with you if you were hurt because you’re too thick to stay out of the fray.”

With a kiss on his cheek, she ran for the inn.

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