Peacock on Parade (Shamrock Safari Shifters #2)

Chapter 1

T ara Lynch had dreamed of going to Ireland since she was a little girl. The green hills of her ancestors called to her heart. The magical heritage known around the world spoke to her. The misty light made famous in paintings drew her in, and the proud literary heritage cried out for exploration.

The Starbucks in the airport was something of a reality check.

It didn't change the light, or the sharpness of the stone-walled fields she'd seen as the plane flew over the little island country, but it did jolt her into realizing that Ireland was a real place, not one actually built of fairy tales and four-leaf clovers. She stood in the airport's skybridge, her suitcase clutched in one hand and her camera bag slung over her shoulder, and stared at the incredibly prosaic parking garage that stood between her and the gently rolling hills. Then, with a laugh, she took her phone out for a snapshot that she posted to her social media page: off to a magical start in Ireland, where the concrete is…made of leprechaun bones? I don't even know! What was I expecting?!

Almost immediately, somebody who was up much too early back in the States responded with You've been scammed! Real Ireland has horse-drawn carriages, thatched cottages, and rainbows everywhere!

I promise to post pictures of any and all horse-drawn thatched rainbows, Tara posted, and, grinning, went to catch a bus to 'the rebel county,' Cork.

Cork did not seem to be in any particular state of rebellion, when Tara arrived five hours later. The bus stopped on the "quays," a word that was definitely spelled q-u-a-y-s and which the driver pronounced as "keys." Tara stiffly climbed out onto a river front, almost forgetting her suitcase along the way. There were bridges on either side of her—at least four within easy sight, in fact—the world's most bus-stationy-looking bus station over there, and a row of brightly painted but somewhat run-down-looking businesses across the quiet, quick-moving water. Tara checked her phone for directions, found the train station in relation to where she was, and trundled across the water, voice-typing a new post as she went.

So Cork is apparently 'the rebel county' because King Henry the Somethingth couldn't squash their rebellions, not because it's trying to secede from Ireland as a whole or anything. This is the River Lee that I'm crossing now —she stopped to take a picture, smiling as the vivid colors came to life on her screen— and in five minutes I'm going to be at the train station. From there it's out to my hotel and then to SLEEP. She signed off with a series of tired emojis that made her start yawning, which was not great. She hadn't slept on the plane, and while she'd dozed on the bus because she simply couldn't keep her eyes open any more, she'd still basically been awake for like twenty-three hours now and had at least five more before she should actually go to sleep, if she wanted to combat jet lag at all.

The train station was much smaller than she expected, and filled with a combination of casual chaos and unintelligible accents from which a handful of other American voices really stood out. She'd listened to a lot of Irish podcasts in the weeks leading up to her visit, trying to get used to the accent, but standing in the swirl of people and chatter in Kent Station, she thought maybe she'd somehow been listening to English or Scottish ones instead. There was a garbled musicality to the voices around her, but she honestly couldn't understand a word of them. Nervous with anticipation, she approached the station gate and said, "Cobb?"

"Cove," the portly man at the gate said, with an aura of long-tested patience. "Platform two."

Tara whispered, "Cove," to herself, and glanced at her ticket again as she passed through the barrier. It definitely said Cobh, c-o-b-h, which looked like 'Cobb' to her. On the platform, still nervous, she said to someone else, "Is this the train to…Cove?"

"It is," the woman said easily. "Last stop."

Relief swept through Tara. "And it's—sorry, I'm American—it's pronounced 'Cove?' Not 'Cobb?'"

The woman gave her a much fonder and more patient look than the gate attendant had. "Yes, chicken. 'Bh' in Irish sounds like a V."

Tara felt heat climbing her cheeks, though she smiled. "I didn't know that. Thank you."

"Thanks to your own self for listening," the woman said dryly. "Loads of tourists don't." She went to stand farther up the platform, clearly ending the conversation, and Tara stood there still blushing and feeling quite a lot younger than her thirty-one years. She'd never travelled outside of America before, and not that much inside it, if she was being honest, but the last thing she wanted to do was fulfill the rude American stereotype. She would do her best to be respectful to the language, even if everybody spoke English.

Although maybe that was why she couldn't understand so many of the people in the train station. Maybe they were speaking Irish. She got on the train when it arrived, listening hard to the people around her, and had a sinking feeling that they were speaking English and she just couldn't understand them. She sank into her seat, feeling unprepared and nervous as the train pulled out of the station.

'Scared to death' was not the face she wanted to present to her social media, though. Tara straightened, taking a picture through the window as the train passed by a curve of water, though she didn't post it yet. She would do a bigger post later, instead of the minute-by-minute tedium of a train ride, even if it was only a short one. A mechanical voice said "Oileán Ainmhí" overhead, and then, "Anavee Island," as a scrolling banner flashed the first phrase, then the second, and Tara, aloud, said, "Wait, I thought ' b h' made a 'v' sound in Irish…"

"So does 'mh,'" a teenage boy nearby said with a grin. "And you can't complain, because 'g-h-o-t-i' can be made to spell 'fish' in English."

Tara stared at him a moment, then laughed. "Yeah, I guess not. What's ‘Anavee' mean?"

"Animal," he said. "There's a wildlife park there."

"Oh, that sounds neat. Thanks." Without planning to, Tara grabbed her suitcase, rose, and got off the train at Anavee Island.

The moment she was out the door she wondered what on earth she was doing. She had a suitcase with her, for heaven's sake. And the rough road on the far side of the railroad gates didn't look like the kind of thing you wanted to pull a suitcase along. And she had days in Cork. She could come here another time, without a suitcase.

She turned around to get back on the train just as the doors closed and it pulled away. "Well, crap."

There was another train in half an hour, but standing there waiting for it seemed even worse than risking the little road. With a sigh, Tara hauled her suitcase through the gates and followed the road a few dozen feet before it branched off toward the wildlife park. Cursing her life choices, Tara dragged the suitcase up to the little entryway hut and smiled through the glass at the employee who looked up from her phone. "Hi. I got off at the wrong stop so I guess maybe I'll go to the park? Is there somewhere I can leave my suitcase, by any chance?"

The girl examined her, leaned forward to examine the suitcase, and sat back again with pursed lips. "Well, I shouldn't, but I will. Come on, buy your ticket and bring it around and I'll store it for ye, but this entrance closes at half four and if you're not back before then your luggage will be stuck in here overnight and my boss will give out to me, so don't do that to either of us."

"I absolutely won't," Tara promised as she paid for her entry fee. "What does 'give out to you' mean?"

The girl laughed. "Scold me like. She's a fierce one, is Maureen Kelly, with a lot of opinions, and I wouldn't want to be the one who crosses her. She's the director of this place and runs a tight ship. Here now, put that here." She opened a door on the park side of the entrance hut and gestured Tara inside. There was hardly room to turn around, but Tara found a desk to tuck the suitcase under, mostly, and gave the girl a grateful smile.

"I promise to be back before…what time is 'half four?'"

"It's half four," the girl said blankly, then almost visibly rearranged her way of thinking and came up with, "Four thirty."

"Four thirty. Right. Gotcha. Thank you," Tara said fervently, and the girl smiled.

"No bother. Go on, mind yourself." She went back to her window, and Tara, suddenly staggering with exhaustion, left the little entrance building. Walking would wake her up. She knew it would. She just had to get moving, get her blood flowing. Or maybe find food, which her nose told her lay ahead somewhere. There was a playground to the immediate left of the entrance, and just beyond it, on the right-hand side, a green single-story building that proclaimed Hot & Cold Snacks. Tara bet 'coffee' fell under a 'snacks' heading, and right then, she didn't even care if it was terrible. She went inside, got coffee and something that the packaging called a flapjack even if it didn't look anything like any flapjack she'd ever seen. It had a protein bar vibe, instead, and when she tried it, it seemed to mostly be an oat bar with fruity stuff in it. Not bad. A little weird, definitely not a flapjack, but not bad, especially after being up for thirteen thousand hours and an overseas flight. She emerged from the snack shop, burned her tongue on the coffee, and stood there a minute, getting the lay of the land.

There was a lake over to her right, and a pond to her left, with capybaras in it. Tara drifted that way, following the footpath until it veered farther from the capybaras than she wanted it to, so she tried the muddy green beside the path. It seemed pretty dry, so she walked forward cautiously, smiling at the big fluffy golden rodents. Well, maybe not really fluffy, but they were so chonky they had a sort of fluffy vibe to them.

They, like a lot of other animals in the area, seemed to be free-range. They kept to their side of the pond, but it looked like they could wander through the whole park, if they felt like it. There were lemurs over next to the lake, and something small and golden-grey darting through the trees above them. She could see a massive pelican standing in the lake, and with a startled shiver, heard a big cat roaring somewhere in the park. "They're not free-range, right?" she asked the capybaras. One of them turned its soulful brown eyes toward her, then shook its head with a few heavy swings, like it had actually heard and understood her. Tara gave it a thumbs-up, finished her flapjack and her coffee in that order, and found a garbage can before taking her real camera out for some photography.

A genuinely amazing array of animals seemed to be just wandering around loose. She saw a handful of beautiful little things that looked like a mix between rabbits and capybaras, with long slender legs, large ears, and blunt faces. They were shy, which was tragic: Tara wanted to pick one up and snuggle it. Although that would probably get her thrown out, so, no. She took pictures instead, and smiled at a handful of peacocks strutting around before working her way toward cheetahs and a huge open area where zebras, giraffes, some kind of antelopes, and, weirdly, wallabies lived. "Because wallabies are so well-known in Africa," she said to them as she took pictures. At least they, too, were also behind railings, and not strictly free, although she bet both the giraffes and the ostriches could jump the fence effortlessly, and possibly the other animals could too.

She paused to take a picture of a baby giraffe fluttering its eyelashes at her, then found a map that told her she'd covered less than half the park's pathways. It was almost four by then—she really hadn't been making very good time—and this was too good a wildlife park to rush through. She promised a lazing cheetah that she would be back tomorrow, and turned to retrace her footsteps.

That actually seemed like a bad idea, just a few minutes into her walk back toward the train station. Going over new territory had kept her awake. Now keeping her feet moving was a borderline impossible task, because she'd seen it all before. Even a flock of little dinosaur-like geese rushing by didn't help much. Maybe she didn't need to stay up a whole five more hours, after all. If she could check into her hotel, she could just face- plant until tomorrow. She yawned, yawned again, and then with a tired chuckle, gave herself permission to follow a peacock as he sauntered across the greenery. If she got any good pictures, she could call the series 'The Peacock Parade,' or something.

Besides, he was heading in the right direction, and following him was more interesting than staying on the actual path. Tara stayed quite a ways back, not wanting to spook him, and switched to a longer lens so she could get close-up pictures without bothering the bird. After a while, he led her back to the snack bar, where another three or four peacocks were roosting. Peacocks and peahens, Tara supposed: one had the glorious tail feathers of a male, and the others were browny-grey with only a bit of iridescent color at their throats. "Right?" she said to one of them. "The dudes should absolutely go all-out to impress us. At least you've got that going for you. You should meet human dudes. Hang on, I'm going to go take a couple more pictures of that fancy fellow."

The peacock she'd been following had gone around the back of the snack shop, where tourists probably weren't supposed to go. On the other hand, no one stepped up to stop her, so Tara snuck back there just in time to watch the peacock transform into the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen.