“Don’t underestimate the effects of what you went through, Constance. She may have been down there longer and tortured, but your wolf tore Nate’s throat out. That is not something you get over in a matter of a few days.”
“Oh, thank you for pointing out how fucked up I’m supposed to be over this, Murphy. Jesus, I wonder what I would do if you weren’t around to tell me these things? Oh, yeah. I’d do just fine on my own. Like I did for the whole tribunal.”
“Are you going to hold it over my frigging head for the rest of our lives that I wasn’t there for that goddamn tribunal?” Murphy’s eyes gleamed with a dangerous fury.
“Nice. Now you’re angry at me. You are angry at me. You can turn it around and play the martyr all you like, but the truth is you know you were wrong and not admitting it is not going to change anything.”
“I was not wrong.” Murphy stormed over to his boots and stuffed his feet into them without benefit of socks. “You’re too damn stubborn to acknowledge that I was trying to help you.”
“Save me, you mean.” My voice was savage. Paddy’s gaze went back and forth between us as if he watched a brutally competitive tennis match.
“What is the fucking difference?” Murphy demanded.
“That’s the biggest problem. You don’t know and you can’t tell the difference or see how insulting it is that you think I’m so fucking weak that I need you to save me because I’m not capable of doing it on my own. Go to hell, Liam Murphy!”
“You were on trial for your life!” Murphy’s voice shook he was so angry. “You could have been put to death. Can you set your damn ego aside for one minute and see it from my perspective? I had to do everything I could and finding that damned precedent was the one thing I knew for sure would save your life. It had nothing to do with whether I thought you incapable of saving yourself. You couldn’t search for the precedent, but I could. That’s why I did it.
“If saving your life is a crime, then I confess. I’m guilty as hell of at least trying my damndest to do it. Just because it ended up the tribunal set its own precedent, doesn’t invalidate my decision to search for one that already existed.
“I’d do the same thing over again, you know that? The same fucking thing.”
He glared at me, his mouth tense and tight before he slammed out the door.
Paddy watched it for a moment and abruptly headed across the room. His hand on the knob, he turned back. “Stay here.” The door banged behind him.
My hand shook as I set aside my half-drunk screwdriver, and curled up in the chair.
* * * *
Hours later Murphy and Paddy returned to the room. They smelled of wind and beer, as if they’d gone for a long walk after a visit to a bar. They were not in the slightest bit intoxicated, and Murphy’s anger had burned out. Paddy took one look at me, swore under his breath, and went into the bathroom. Water began to gush from the shower.
I hadn’t moved in the chair since they’d left. My legs, drawn up beneath me, had long since lost all feeling. My head hurt both because of the sore spot on the back of my skull and no dinner. Half a vodka and orange juice had not helped.
If my legs hadn’t been numb, I would have crawled into bed long ago but I was afraid to get up because I thought I would fall. So I sat with my head against the back of the chair, eyes open but not focused on anything in particular.
“Stanzie?” Murphy kept his voice low when he talked to me and came to stand close by the chair. If I wanted to see his face I had to turn my head. But I kept it still. He knew I heard him though, my body betrayed me as it always did when he was near.
“It’s late, honey. You want to go to bed? We’ll need to get up early tomorrow to drive to Vermont.”
“Did you eat anything?” My voice was hoarse, as if I’d shouted for hours on end when all I’d done was kept silent.
“We ate at a sports bar a few blocks from here. You hungry? I could order you something from room service if you like.” He sat on the foot stool and reached out a hand to touch me, but let it fall short of actual contact.
He said, “I should have been there with you, but I didn’t want to lose you and I had to do all I could.”
“I had people,” I said. “Paddy and Vaughn and Jossie. Kathy Manning.”
“But you wanted me,” he said. “I let you down.”
“I am scared to go to Maplefair,” I admitted painfully. “I am a coward.”
“No, you are not. You are one of the bravest people I know. If you had a fan club, I’d be the president.”
I opened my eyes and he had the same look of infatuation on his face he’d had a lot lately when he looked at me. I didn’t understand it. It couldn’t be infatuation because he loved Sorcha. He was fond of me, devoted even, but he would never love me the way I loved him. Every time he stared at me that way I wanted to cry because it was so hard to know all I’d ever be to him was a dear friend and companion. Someone to take care of and to save and keep him from mourning Sorcha’s loss.
Chapter 3
I was restless. Paddy’s profile was clear from my vantage point in the backseat of the Prelude as he slouched in the front passenger bucket. At some point, he must have given Murphy the Mac Tire pack ring, because it gleamed on the middle finger of Murphy’s right hand which I could plainly see as he gripped the steering wheel.
We were all dressed in funereal black, and Paddy had managed to calm his wildly curly hair somehow.
Each passing mile on the highway brought us inexorably closer to Vermont—to Maplefair’s territory in Easton.
Part of my restlessness could be traced to that fact, but a lot of it was simply being confined in the cage of the car.
Murphy, exquisitely attuned to my rising level of agitation as he always was when we drove together, cast me a sympathetic look in the rear-view mirror.
“There’s a rest stop two miles ahead,” he told me. “Just over the border.”
I gulped. The Vermont border. After we crossed, it was only another hour or so until our destination.
Paddy checked his watch, a subtle reminder that we were due in Easton by noon, and it was already edging past eleven.
Aside from a slight tightening of his mouth, Murphy ignored him and switched lanes to position us for the exit. Paddy sighed and slouched further into his seat.
He’d spent the past three hours in rapt observation of the New England scenery. Not that he’d gotten much from the highway. It must have been sufficiently different from Ireland to interest him because he’d seemed mesmerized. He’d slurped Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and cursed when powdered sugar from his jelly doughnut had sprinkled across his black dress pants but, aside from that, had kept mostly quiet.
Murphy had concentrated on driving—probably in an effort to keep my agitation at a minimum. I’d sat in the backseat and munched glazed doughnut holes and sipped French vanilla-flavored coffee. My head hurt—a stress headache combined with the knock on the head I’d received nearly a week ago. Today was Tuesday. Tomorrow would make one week since I’d woken in Grandmother Emma’s root cellar chained to a metal morgue gurney, with Bethany Dillon chained to her own gurney a feet away.
Bethany. Her name swept a rush of guilt and hopelessness through me and I sighed.
“Almost there, honey,” Murphy said from the front seat. He was right. The car was on the off-ramp and, a moment later, we pulled up in front of a low brick building which housed public restrooms and a small vestibule filled with