Chapter 23 #2
Liam dropped me like a hot potato as soon as we stepped inside the back garden. His attention immediately went to the pretty girls gathered in a flock across the yard, and our promise of sticking together was forgotten. As soon as I was alone, she sprang her trap.
From literally thin air, she appeared. No doubt, I was impacted by the haunted house ghost tour Oscar took us on a few nights before. I took one look at her in her long white dress, and I decided she was either a ghost or worse, a wraith.
I couldn’t exactly pretend I didn’t see her, since she stepped into my path, tipping her head to the side, her voice high-pitched but her words slow, like she was trying to freak me out. “Would you be buried with my brother’s people?”
I dropped my phone, clutching my chest. She scooped my phone up, and instead of giving it back, she extended her hand. Which I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch. Oscar had gone into explicit detail about how some people get possessed, and this weird kid was creeping me out.
We stared each other down, me heaving like I’d run a marathon, her looking eerie and possessed. She won, and she bloody well knew it.
She rolled her eyes, and the spell broke as she held her other hand out to introduce herself. “Hi, I’m Noinin.” She broke her name down into syllables—No-neen.
She clearly thought I was an idiot, talking to me like that, or thought I looked like a tourist. Still, I was older than her so I acted it, glaring at her.
“Shoulda just called you Daisy. Would have been easier for everyone,” I smarted back, trying to shut her down, and/or scare her off.
My ploy for scaring her off by being a bitch didn’t work.
“Aye, they probably shoulda.” She nodded her head to agree with me before doing a complete one-eighty, turning into an intelligent-sounding kid right before me. “But it goes with my parents' balmy tradition of their firstborn and last born sharing letters.”
“Huh?” I seriously couldn’t keep up with her. Her accent was thick, and when she got some speed to her speech, it was hard to understand.
She shrugged, passing my phone back before explaining herself more.
Slowly. “Ronin was their first born, and me, fingers crossed, will be the last child they’ll be having.
So, they had to work with Ronin, which is why I got Noinin.
You get it yet? The last three letters of our names match. Now the family is a finished circle.”
That made no sense to me, but I wasn’t about to argue with her. “Are you going to be a teacher when you get older? You’re good at explaining things,” I said, hoping to distract her enough for her to run off and play with someone else.
It didn’t work.
She smiled with a big, cheesy grin. “Dunno.”
I changed tactics and flicked my chin at her. “You purposely dressed like that to scare everyone?”
“Nah. But I do need to marry my brother and his friends off to keep the spirits at bay.” And then she looked at me like a cat does a mouse. “I knew you’d come. I’ve been waiting for you.”
The bad feeling pulling at my chest only intensified at the way she started sizing me up. “What? Why? I’m not marrying them, by the way. I’ll help you come up with another idea to keep the spirits happy, hey?”
She rolled her eyes and dropped her hand on her popped hip, basically glaring at me in challenge.
“What if I am a real-life banshee, and I’m offering you the chance of a lifetime?
” Her voice became all willowy again, her small, spindly arm lifted, and the sleeve of her dress swallowed her whole arm, except for the gnarled stick she used to point.
Of course, my eyes followed what she was pointing out. Although it wasn’t a what—it was a whom.
It wasn’t hard to see the similarity between Noinin and her brother.
While she had a crown of fiery red curls, his hair was darker overall, but in the afternoon sun, you could see he had the same red hair gene.
His hair sparked like rubies. And they definitely shared the same vibrant green eyes, almost the exact color of shamrock.
He was crazy tall. And I was pretty sure no amount of growing was ever going to get Noinin up to his height. Same for me, though. I’d never be his height.
She moved closer while I was staring, her hand curling around mine. “That’s Ronin, my brother.”
Just from that look, I was a little intimidated, without even properly meeting him.
He and his three friends were obviously older, and they were drop-dead gorgeous.
I don’t want to say they were arseholes, but they certainly knew they were good-looking, strong too.
Four of them would be Alphas, for sure. It was in their energy, and it nipped against my skin, making me shiver.
“Don’t worry about anything. They’ll treat you better than a queen, because Omegas are precious.”
“What? I’m not an Omega.” I spluttered.
She ignored me and started on the introductions. “So, that’s Keegan, Tynan, and Rafferty. For the record, they all think the sun shines out of their arse.”
“Noinin!” I scold. The Irish have a thing for kids swearing, despite swearing basically being a second language in Ireland.
“What? They swear. Besides, I have to let you know what you’re getting yourself into. And you know who my da is, right?”
“Not really. I’m only here for the summer.”
“How’d you end up here, then?” Her lips pulled together while she waited for me to answer, but she was impatient and acting like whatever I would say was irrelevant, anyway.
“In a car,” I clipped, my uncle’s warning of keeping my mouth shut ringing in my ears as I took a step back. “I think I’m going to go sit in the car and wait, actually.”
She proved she’s someone to be wary of when she snatched a hold of my wrist with an unworldly strength.
“Keegan—he’s the one right next to Ronin—is a tough guy.
Tynan’s got the shaved head, ’cause he got nits, but don’t tell him I told you.
Their ma is a bit…” She circles her finger and crosses her eyes.
“Anyway, he’s the sulky one in the bunch and spends way too much time training to be a boxer. ”
“Sulky? Boxer?”
“He doesn’t like to talk. He watches, though.
And never misses a thing, just saying.” She takes a big, showy inhale before going on, her stick mysteriously appearing in her hand as she moves to the last person in their group.
“Rafferty is different again. Smart as a whip and is definitely the brains of the pack.”
Twins. Double trouble.
Noinin’s weird way of speaking starts to take over again, somehow making the four of them stop talking and look our way like she called them. And then she does. “Now, Ronin or…”
She trails off as she races us across the yard toward the guys, which is in the opposite direction of my cousin and everyone else outside.
“What the flipping hell, Noinin?” I hissed, trying to fight out of her hand, to no avail.
Which is how I ended up in an empty corner of the garden, surrounded by the four guys she pointed out. She clenched her teeth, snarling the longer she and her brother had a silent argument.
I made the mistake of laughing under my breath, and she threw her angry eyes my way. For a kid, she had the presence of an elephant.
I threw my hands up in surrender immediately. “Hey, I’m not the one giving you grief.” At the same time, chick to chick, I had to give her a bit of push back, or she’d be running circles around me.
Her lips pursed, and she was winding back up to fever pitch again. I had to distract her, defuse the situation.
“Wow, would you look at the time?”
Then her eyes flared and she reached over and grabbed her brother's arm, checking it for herself. Her chin wobbled as she stared at her brother.
“Ronin,” Rafferty said. And in one word, I knew we were going ahead with Noinin’s harebrained scheme. Not only that, but in one word, I think I half fell in love with him. His voice was deep—melodic, almost.
Ronin kneeled in front of his sister, opening his arms, giving her a place to fall into, and she looked snug as a bug, glowing in happiness. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but the affection between them was obvious.
When they turned to face us, clearly Noinin was getting the ending to whatever fantasy she had spent all day setting up.
“Rafferty, you do the words, and Noinin will do the bindings,” Ronin said. The seriousness in his voice was at odds with his hesitation only minutes ago.
Noinin’s arms disappeared inside her wraith-inspired costume, and from inside, she conjured up “ribbons” that looked suspiciously like shoelaces. No one said a word as they shuffled around me, getting close enough our shoulders were touching.
And the expression she was giving me, like “please don’t be a Ronin and try to mess this up for me,” meant I did whatever she wanted.
Her small hands placed the ribbon on top of our hands. Once she was satisfied they would stay, she nodded at Rafferty.
Noinin’s arms blasted upwards, and it was Rafferty’s cue to keep up. He snake charmed me into a hypnotic state with every word that flowed out. I was completely under the spell of how he spoke. The words he said barely registered as they wormed their way inside my consciousness.
“May the meaning of this hour be fulfilled through the days and years to come. May the love of these men and this woman, their unity of spirit, grow deeper and stronger in the uncertainties and changes of life they will share.
“Loving each other, may they love all persons. Trusting each other, may they learn to trust life. May their love reach out to the love of all, that their lives may bless all whose lives they touch. May they find comfort together in shared hours of shadow, as well as in the bright sunshine of joy.
“May they be to each other both strong and gentle. May all who follow their lives with interest and affection have cause to rejoice, not alone in their happiness, but in their brave and generous living, which makes life beautiful and significant.”
I don’t know how, but the shoelaces dangling down were blown by a sudden gust of wind that pushed the five of us together while the “ribbons” got caught in a gust of wind, somehow falling like someone had tied them.
“Now give her the ring, Ronin,” Noinin insisted as she started spinning in a circle with her arms out wide.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a ring. A thick gold band folded into two hands holding a heart with a crown on top of it.
“Whoa, whoa… I can’t take that.”
That stopped her.
“And why not? No one stole it, no one paid a pound for it. I found it, which is the sign I was waiting on, plus you. I knew we had to do the ceremony today. Come on,” she implored, her voice pitching up again, full of emotion and urgency.
Admittedly, the wind was starting to blow a gale again, pushing us into each other and making everything hard to hear.
She took the ring out of her brother's hand and looked at each of us, a strange, knowing smile blazing over her face. I couldn’t pull my hand out of the binding, and she used that to her advantage, wrestling my finger into compliance. Then she spoke.
“Hark, O Spirit, and hear us now. We swear by peace and love to stand, heart to heart and hand to hand, confirming this our Sacred Vow.”
Without a word of a lie, as soon as that ring slid over the first knuckle on my wedding finger, a sun shower started. A ray of sun pierced through the clouds and bounced off the gold ring, setting it off so it shone under a spotlight, bathing us in its light.
She squealed in delight when the deed was done. And my uncle hollered my name. “Rosie, let’s go.”
I climbed in the car, the ring she'd pushed onto my finger gone. A fitting end to a very strange encounter. Perhaps she really was dipped in power and magic.
My memories fade, leaving me with a grief-filled heart and a better understanding of how we got here and what I have to do next.