We must be among the humans without being of them.
Bits of advice she’d parceled out to others over the years now haunted her own thoughts. Her last drink from Ruth had made her wary. She knew it was her unusual amnis that made her hunger more potent, but her “gift” didn’t offer any solution.
Mrs. Connelly had set down a dark pint when Anne felt the first tremor of awareness at the back of her neck. She looked up, scanning the corners of the pub for a sign of anything out of the ordinary.
Nothing.
She took a sip of beer. “Thanks, Peg.”
“No worries, Anne. A song later?”
“Sure thing. Anyone unusual around tonight?”
The older woman smiled. “Not unless you call the Kinney brothers being here and bathed unusual.”
“Any bathed Kinney brother is suspicious,” Anne said with a wry smile. “I don’t recognize them if they don’t smell like their sheep.”
Mrs. Connelly laughed. “You’re not wrong.”
The human left, and Anne watched the musicians as they rolled into another song, a more modern one she recognized as an acoustic version of a rock song. Not strictly traditional, but it fit the restless mood that wouldn’t leave her alone.
“Anne!” The drummer was waving her over. His wrinkled face broke into a smile as his nimble fingers danced with the tipper, beating out the rhythm on the bodhran. He nodded to the woman with the flute, who caught the drummer’s cue and slowed the song, waiting for her to join in.
She left her beer and book in the corner and went to sit next to the drummer, perching on the edge of the chair and leaning forward to sing the lyrics about a pair of brown eyes and a roving man. She rocked with the beat of the guitar and the drum, losing herself in the music for two songs. The music, like the ocean, centered her, made her remember life and not death. Laughter instead of blood. Happiness and not hunger.
Then Anne heard the flute dip low, and the pub quieted when they recognized the melody of the old Gaelic song. They all knew it was a favorite of hers. After a few beats, the music died down and the old woman looked to Anne with a nod.
She raised her voice and let the clear sound of “An Mhaighdean Mhara” fill the dark room. The lonely tale of the fisherman’s mermaid bride who left him to return to the sea was a simple old song, one her mother had sung by the evening fire, perhaps wishing she too could abandon the prison of her earthly life and run away to a home beyond the sea.
In the end, Anne supposed she had.
The unexpected melancholy gripped her throat, and a familiar curl of awareness in her blood forced her eyes to a shadowed corner of the pub.
Patrick Murphy stood in the shadows, arms crossed and brown eyes fixed on her.
Her blood surging to life within her, Anne met his gaze and sang on.
Were you born of woman
Or did you come from the earth?
Your eyes speak
Though your lips say naught.
He watched her, the man who’d stolen her heart so long ago, then broken it like the wild, young thing he’d been. He leaned casually against the back wall in his wool slacks and pressed shirt, as if the sight of him wouldn’t be enough to break her again. His lush lower lip fell as he stared, and Anne could see the glint of his fangs in the low lights of the pub.
She finished the song, barely controlling the tremor in her throat as she felt her heart pulse twice. His eyes never left her face.
The guitar and fiddle had picked up to a faster tune when she saw him break his stance and start toward the small stage. Anne nodded to a young girl happy to jump in the singer’s chair while Anne hurried to the back, forgetting her book in the corner as she grabbed Murphy’s arm and dragged him down the hall and toward the kitchen door.
She pushed into the night, Murphy at her heels.
Anne spun. “Patrick, what on earth—”
He silenced her with a furious kiss, spinning her in his arms and pushing her up against the back wall of the pub. His hands dug into the flesh of her hips while his mouth devoured hers, slaking a hundred years’ worth of hunger with lips and breath and the bite of fangs against her tongue.
She dug her hands into his hair, pulling him close for one heartbreaking moment before she tugged him away.
Murphy released her mouth only to press his face into her neck, laving his tongue against the hammering pulse in her throat. His arms banded around her waist, pulling her into his powerful frame. She felt him. Every inch of him. The years fell away under his mouth. Her skin came alive. Her amnis left her, rushing toward him, even as his own energy coursed over her skin.
He was a wave crashing over her, pulling her under, and Anne knew she had to step back before she drowned.
“Patrick,” she whispered, “stop.”
He let out a single shuddering breath against her neck. His fingers dug into her waist one second, and then he stepped back and looked up, avoiding her gaze.
Murphy took two deep breaths before he started in a hoarse voice. “Áine—”
“What are you doing here?”
He let out a string of Gammon curses that let her know he still wasn’t entirely under control. Not that she couldn’t see that from his fangs and his trousers. But Murphy only let his Traveller show when he was off-kilter.
He finally rubbed two hands over his face, mussing his hair and reminding her of the brash young immortal he’d been once, when she’d toppled head over heels for him and straight into a passionate affair that had lasted nearly thirty years.
By the time he spoke, the flippant tone had returned to his voice. “And how are you this evening, Dr. O’Dea?”