Page 72 of Steel Rain

I tried to smile. To reassure her. To give her a nod that her secrets were still safe with me.

Despite Isla’s erasure, she still haunted this room. I swear, I could see her in the corner, her back to us as she looked out at the rose garden, her blonde hair in beach waves down to her slender waist.

“Thank you for joining us, Sinead.” The use of my given name made me straighten, as I turned to Eoghan at the head of the table. “It seems we have some things to discuss.”

My eyes turned, and I saw the last man I ever wanted to see, and the last person I would ever break bread with. Keith Bournes.

His handsome face looked back at me with a delighted smirk. I took a little joy from seeing his black eye. In fact, it was more than a black eye. It was swollen to the size of a golf ball, making it look like he had some kind of growth on his eyebrow. There was a blue mark across the bridge of his nose, and dried blood caked on the inside of his nostril. So at least I gave as good as I got. That was better than the last time.

I pulled out a seat and sat across from my enemy. The villain of my tale.

“What’s going on?” I tried to keep my voice even, but my fingers trembled on my lap.

Ajax sat beside me, and Dairo took the seat beside Keith.

“Well, isn’t this nice?” Eoghan said, his Irish lilt suddenly grating on my nerves because it slightly resembled Keith’s. “One big happy family.”

Eoghan lifted a finger and Malinda, his housekeeper, walked out of the room. Then servers in white shirts came in with plates, placing a covered dish in front of us. A server un-covered my plate. Then Eoghan’s. The others remained covered by the little silver domes.

No appetizers. Eoghan wasn’t really serving us a meal, so much as being his theatric self.

I looked down at the food. It was Irish beef pot pie.

“You remember this, Shiny?” Eoghan said, picking up his fork and stabbing it into the meal as soon as the servers exited the room.

He reached down, grabbed a bottle of his dry vermouth and poured me a glass, not offering anything to anyone else.

“My mum used to make this for you and Sibby.” He sat back down in his seat, lifted his glass to me, then drank his glass in one gulp.

“I remember,” I said, taking a much smaller sip of my drink. I didn’t want to touch the food, though it smelled delicious. But my stomach was in knots with anxiety.

He put the glass down and stared at me, then wagged his finger.

“You and I were close once, despite our age difference. Do you remember?” He chuckled to himself. “You were such an annoying little sister, and when Sibby was around, it was even worse.”

He turned his head towards Ajax who, like me, had barely moved. It was like we were in the wild, and a strange and ferocious animal was sniffing around us, wondering if he’d make us his next meal.

“Sibby didn’t get to know my mum though, God rest her soul.” He made a sign of the cross. “Sibby was born how many years after mum died?”

“Maybe three years?”

“That’s right!” He snapped his fingers in the air. “She’s almost twenty years younger than me. Gosh, that’s hard to believe, isn’t it? She makes me feel ancient!” He chuckled, downing his vermouth then pouring himself another. He leaned over, and refreshed mine as well, though I had hardly had any.

“She would have loved my mum. They have a lot of traits in common.”

Kindness. Sweetness. A flair for nurturing tender things, and keeping themselves warm in a world as cold as the one we lived in. All talents that I didn’t have. Or maybe it was a privilege to be so soft?

Whatever it was, I needed to protect her. I needed to make sure that Sibby didn’t become another tally on the Green’s ledger of stolen souls.

I clenched my fist.

“I walked by her room the other day,” Eoghan was on a rant, as if he was buzzed, but I knew better than to assume that alcohol would ever go to his head. The man was unaffected by drink, like a real Irishman. “And she was blasting this loud as hell music in her room. Something about mops, and water, or something … it took me a solid ten minutes to figure out that the song was lewd! Can you believe a girl that young listening to such …”

“What do you mean you walked by her room?”

I felt like the cogs were turning, and puzzle pieces were snapping into place. Eoghan’s one-man-show was about to drop a big reveal that would either break my heart or send me into a blinding rage.

“She’s here, Shiny,” he said, slowly, putting his elbows on the table and leaning towards me. “I was going to invite her to dinner, but I thought that it should just be the grown-ups at the table tonight.”

---