Eerie Read online

“No.”

  “Did she recently reject someone?”

  “No.” Hailey was feeling less and less helpful.

  “Did you notice anything or anyone out of the ordinary at the pub, maybe paying extra attention to her lately?”

  Hailey racked her brain, but no one stood out. She shook her head.

  Toll licked his lips. “Anything . . .strange been happening?”

  What the hell?

  “You mean . . .stranger than finding Holly’s—” That sentence punched her in the stomach and stole her voice. There it was, like she’d just picked it up again. Her throat aching, Hailey bowed her head so Toll wouldn’t see her tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. He offered her a box of tissues and some water.

  “You’re gonna find her, right?” Hailey cried.

  He dropped his eyes, drew in a breath, and looked directly at her. “I will personally keep looking until we find her, until the end of my watch on this Earth, I promise you.”

  Chapter Five

  Denial

  What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!

  How sweet their memory still!

  But they have left an aching void,

  The world can never fill.

  - William Cowper, Walking with God

  Hailey let herself into an empty house, half expecting to find this was all just an elaborate prank, half expecting to see Holly, intact and unscathed, sitting in the kitchen.

  She wasn’t.

  But a note from Uncle Pix was:

  Hailey,

  We’re at the pub. “Search Headquarters.”

  Give us a call when you get home.

  Love Pix

  After making her obligatory phone call, she threw the note away and headed straight for her computer. She typed in “D.O.P.P.L.E.R.,” and several websites came up, but they all had to do with radar or ultrasound or weather.

  She sat back in her chair. That fire happened thirteen years ago. Maybe DOPPLER was defunct. In any case, it felt like a dead end, and Hailey’s leg was shaking again.

  It was nearly 3pm, and the kitchen clock with its tick-tick-ticking was driving her mad.

  She had to get out of there.

  Search Headquarters seemed like the logical place to go. Surely her uncle had opened for a reason—maybe he thought Holly’d come back there!

  Hailey grabbed her keys and bolted out the door.

  That night, customers were in and out of the pub as usual. The regulars offered their polite support, and after a few shots of whiskey (apparently, the Hullachan was serving the fight’n kind), they offered to light the torches, grab the pitchforks, and go after the “jag-offs” that took Holly.

  Hailey found the five brothers sequestered in the back room with a map of the city, a bottle of Michael Collins, and a bodhrán, which Dale drummed in perfect jig rhythm. She left them to it. While they compared notes, Frog—the pub’s giant bouncer— swore up and down to Hailey he’d never take another night off. He stood, arms crossed, jaw set, eyes fixed on the door; Mrs. Lash prepared dinner, and Fin tended bar. Hailey waited tables, avoiding eye contact as she ran pints and plates.

  Sometime around 7:00 p.m., the college crowd trickled in and business picked up. The lion’s share headed straight for the bar, especially the ladies, most of whom came to Hullachan’s on a mission to win a date with Fin.

  They could have him.

  Holly might’ve found him—how did she put it—“genuine and engaging,” but he was more like the big brother Hailey never wanted: slightly smug and more than a little overbearing. The one time she’d tried to flirt with a customer, Fin went all nuclear-Uncle-Pix on her and would’ve tossed him out, except Pix had beat him to it. Hailey never saw that kid again. The word “overprotective” always sprang to mind when Hailey thought of Fin. That and “man-whore.” But the ladies of Pittsburgh loved him and pretty much threw themselves at his feet, and that was just fine by him.

  A lot of students drank a few beers then went home, but some would stake out a booth and study there all night, drinking cups of coffee and eating the free pretzels. Hailey didn’t care who came to drink what, as long as they kept her busy. Every time she slowed down, the image of Holly’s foot caught up.

  She was at the bar filling a carafe of coffee for a regular bookworm when he stepped through the door.

  It was a bizarre moment for Hailey, who’d all but given herself whiplash from spinning around every time the pub door opened. But this time, she did not immediately turn to look, because she already, instinctively knew who it was, which was indeed strange, since she’d never actually met him in real life. She’d only ever seen him in her dreams, but she could feel him enter the room like the heaviness before a storm. She recognized this feeling.

  So, when she did turn in his direction, it wasn’t to see who was there, but to acknowledge his presence.

  In her dreams, he was always shrouded in a tranquil, shimmering light, a gladiator’s silhouette under a cloak of moonlight. She had no idea what he looked like in real life.

  But she did know he was an Envoy.

  She also knew how crazy it was to think these things about a stranger who’d just wandered into Hullachan’s, so as he moved through the pub, she moved to get a closer look. His face was smooth and clean shaven, and his tousled brown hair showed flecks of gold. Wearing loose blue jeans and a thin black sweater, which really showed off his physique, he strolled to a booth near the window, and like a prince who didn’t give a damn, he sat with his back to her.

  She needed to see his eyes. For the moment, though, she was perfectly content to stare at the back of his head.

  Fin whipped her in the back with a rolled up a bar towel.

  “Ouch!”

  “Snap out of it,” he said, and Hailey thought she detected a note of jealousy in his voice.

  The table the Envoy chose was still dirty from the previous patron, and Hailey rushed across the room to clear it. In all her nervousness, she knocked over a glass, which was still half-full of beer and backwash. It spilled across the table and poured over the edge, right into the lap of the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

  “I’m so sorry!” She opened her eyes wide and blinked furiously to keep from crying. Quickly, she wiped at the table and to her horror, ended up pushing another wave of beer over the edge and onto his legs. Mortified, Hailey froze, not sure what to say or do and bracing for an epic cuss-out.

  But he never flinched.

  Instead, he lifted his head slowly, very slowly, and looked up at her. With eyes so black they took on a blue sheen, he smiled his forgiveness. Then very briefly, a vertical line of bright violet bolted across his right eye then his left. It happened so fast, Hailey wasn’t even sure it was real.

  He stared at Hailey, his expression soft, and his eyes . . .his eyes after the flash, so gentle.

  For several seconds, Hailey stared into those eyes. Strange, how comfortable she felt, locked in his gaze, as if she were seeing a good friend after far too long apart. She wanted to hug this man, but she also wanted to smack him for staying away for so long. It was a complicated emotion, compounded by uncertainty.

  Hailey blinked. The stress must be getting to her. This man was probably just another college student. It was nuts to think he visited her in her dreams . . .and maybe rescued her from a burning house.

  Remembering the spilled beer, she blinked again.

  “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  Still he said nothing.

  Hailey dashed to the bar but felt her lip trembling and decided mid-stride to go blow her nose instead. Somewhere between her exhaustion and anxiety was an ugly cry waiting to erupt, but she wasn’t about to let it happen over something as meaningless as a spilled beer. She just needed a moment to breathe.

  Bowing her head,
she diverted to the ladies room.

  “I’m sorry, Fin, I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder as she zipped past.

  Fin grabbed a towel and strode to the booth. He did not offer the towel to the gentleman, who didn’t so much as look at Fin when he reached the table.

  “You’re a long way from Alaska,” said Fin to the stranger, as he bent to collect a shard from the floor.

  The stranger looked down at Fin.

  In a smooth, slow, slightly British accent, he said, “As are you, Pádraig.” He bowed slightly then forced a quick cynical smile. “Taking the semester off?” he asked scornfully.

  “Research project actually. For Dr. Woodfork.” Fin answered in a brash voice, standing as he spoke and taking care to avoid eye contact. He glanced toward the toilets then back at the table and sighed heavily. “What are you doing here, Asher? Come to check up on me?”

  Asher tilted his head and squinted. “Are you really so arrogant? Your life is meaningless, and my business here has nothing to do with you.”

  “Thanks,” said Fin, sounding even more snarky than usual. “How ‘bout I bring you a cold pint of ‘kiss my ass’?”

  “Mind your manners,” Asher warned. “Or have you forgotten your debt to me?”

  That deflated Fin, but only a little. “Fine,” he said. “Just . . .stop creeping out the waitress, alright?” He threw a look at ladies room again. “She’s got enough on her mind.”

  To Fin’s surprise, Asher stood and turned toward the door, which encouraged him to beat his chest a little.

  “In fact, stay away from the girls altogether, okay? That’s why you’re here, right? Morbid Envoy curiosity?”

  Asher stopped mid-step, spun around, and put his face close to Fin’s.

  Fin struggled to avoid Asher’s gaze.

  “You forget your place, slave. Ever defiant, but you are no Guardian, nor will you ever be. You are far too selfish to be trusted with such a duty. And if Woodfork sent you here to protect the girls, I should inform him that you’ve failed.” Asher turned toward the door again, took a few steps, and then he stopped and spoke sharply over his shoulder.

  “I see only one girl, Fin.” Asher’s eyes erupted into an electrical storm, and Fin’s face fell. He knew what that meant.

  Holly wasn’t coming home.

  Chapter Six

  The Hope

  “Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.”

  - Robert G. Ingersoll

  Hailey ran into the ladies room to recompose, but instead found herself trapped in a stall when two of Fin’s scantily-dressed fans promenaded in and parked in front of the mirror.

  Call it pride, but Hailey didn’t want them to see her cry face, so she sighed and waited next to the toilet for them to leave. It sounded like they were just fluffing each other’s hair anyway, which Hailey figured shouldn’t take long, but then they started comparing notes on Fin—his clothes, his muscles, which of them he’d looked at first, which of them he was more likely to take home first . . .on and on it went.

  Hailey was stuck.

  She’d been so quiet in her stall, they obviously had no idea she was in there listening. And now it would seem like she’d been eavesdropping if she suddenly burst out. She weighed her options and decided to ride this one out . . .and eavesdrop.

  “Did you see his tattoo?” said one.

  Hailey didn’t even know Fin had a tattoo.

  “Oh. My. God. I bet it goes all the way up his arm,” the other gushed. She smacked her lips. “Wonder how big it is.” It sounded like she was putting on lipstick.

  “You would, whore.”

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  “Whatever.”

  They both laughed.

  Hailey felt like she was getting dumber as their babble continued—their makeup, their highlights, how their boobs fit into their tank tops, whether they thought Fin noticed their cleavage . . .it was never ending.

  Hailey rolled her eyes. It was way too cold for a tank top.

  “Seriously, he has got to be the sexiest guy I’ve ever seen,” said one.

  “Not as sexy as the guy that just walked in here,” hissed the other. “Did you see him?”

  “How could I not? That idiot waitress spilled beer all over him.”

  Hailey’s jaw fell open. She wasn’t the most graceful server in the world, but she thought “idiot” was going a little far.

  “She’s such a skank. You hear about her sister?” Hailey froze. “Somebody kidnapped her from the parking lot in broad daylight, and all they found was her bloody shoe!”

  “Serves her right. She threw herself at every guy that walked in here.”

  Hailey’s heart pounded in her ears. She felt sick. And angry.

  “You’re such a bitch.”

  Finally one of them was making sense.

  “What? She was,” the girl jeered. “I knew her in high school. It was probably her pimp that took her.”

  Well, that was all Hailey could stand. She kicked the metal door open, marched right up to the more guilty-looking of the two hairspray-monsters and put her finger in the girl’s face.

  “The only skanks in this bar just spent the past eight minutes picking bugs out of each other’s hair and fussing over their over-painted, under-hydrated faces in front of this mirror, but none of your primping and preening makes a shit-bit of difference, because your soul is so ugly that no amount of lipstick and eyeliner can cover it up. No one is ever going to give you a second glance, and one day you’ll see in that mirror what everybody else sees right now—a dried up, used up, shriveled up, pitiful shell of an STD-infected, loudmouth hag!”

  The girl looked terrified. She shrunk away from Hailey and squeezed her eyes shut as if Hailey were winding up to punch her. The truth was, Hailey was no fighter, but she could sure shame someone into submission. She almost felt bad about that.

  “And it’s way too cold for tank tops!” she added as she turned to leave.

  “She was talking to you,” one of them said as Hailey strode out the door.

  “Crabs is not an STD,” the other argued before the door closed.

  Gross, thought Hailey, and she scrunched her nose.

  If Hailey felt bad when she walked into the bathroom, she came out feeling far worse. As she rounded the corner, she saw the booth where her dream man had been now sat empty.

  “Hey Fin,” she said, pausing near the bar, “where’d my customer go?” She jabbed her thumb at his booth.

  “Oh . . . He was pretty pissed you spilled a drink on him. He just got up and left.”

  “Oh no, I didn’t apologize properly.” Hailey felt just awful.

  “The guy was a jerk, Hailey. He didn’t deserve your apology.”

  “Why? Did he say something?”

  Fin pressed his lips together and busied himself with wiping an already clean part of the bar. She looked at him quizzically, wondering how bad it was—wondering if the stranger had used the word “skank” as he stormed out. Fin never answered and looked relieved when a customer asked him to refill a stout. She hated it when someone walked away angry. Just another worry to add to the pile of things eating away at her.

  Holly would have smoothed things over in a jiffy. Then she would’ve grabbed her shoes, turned on the music, and got the crowd clapping and cheering and forgetting about one silly little spilled beer. Hailey looked longingly at the door, hoping she’d magically appear.

  She didn’t.

  Fin’s fans were back at the bar and back on the prowl in short order, fully recovered and completely unaffected by Hailey’s tongue-lashing. Fin was eating it up, too, tossing glasses in the air and bottles behind his back, never missing one and never spilling a drop. The hags cheered and shimmied and smothered him with compliments.

&nbs
p; It was revolting. Hailey didn’t want to be anywhere near them. She was about to grab some whiskey and go talk to her mom, when an unshaven, sweaty little man burst into the pub. He strode past the bar and made a bee-line for the back room.

  Hailey followed and watched as he disappeared inside with her uncles. She listened through the door.

  “ . . .at least two of ‘em . . .skulking around . . .couple’a wretches to do the dirty work . . .” Hailey moved her ear closer to the door.

  “Betrayal!” one of her uncles shouted, and Hailey winced.

  “First Katherine. Now Holly!” Katherine was her mother’s name. Hailey’s heart pounded.

  “The line is broken,” said another. “Why would they do it? No, it’s not them at all, at all.”

  “It makes no sense,” agreed another.

  “One’s gone rogue, I tell yeh.”

  “And taken our sight! We’re blind, all of us!”

  “ . . .could be a wretch, could be right under our nose—we wouldn’t know it.”

  “And what can we do about it? Feckin nothing!” That voice belonged to Uncle Pix.

  “We protect the ones that need protecting,” one of her uncles answered calmly, “like we always have.”

  Someone slammed their fist on the table.

  “We cannot protect against what we cannot see.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Did you get a location, Tommy?” someone asked. Tommy was the man who’d just arrived, Hailey figured. He needed to talk louder. She could barely hear him over the high-pitched hag laughter coming from the bar.

  “ . . .on consecrated ground . . .still out there...”

  She strained to hear more, but somebody grabbed her arm and yanked her away from the door.

  “Ouch!”

  “What are you doing?” Fin chastised, and Hailey wrenched her arm out of his grip.

  “Eavesdropping,” she said unashamed. “Obviously.”

  Just then a couple of chairs squeaked across the floor inside the room and some footsteps approached the door.

  “Shoot!” she whispered, grabbing Fin by the arm. “Go-go-go.” Fin let her turn him around and run him back to the bar.