Desire in the Shadows (The Gates of Desire #1)

Chapter One

One

Plan F

His eyes were dull.

Conor O’Malley had the look of a man obsessed with his job. Who knew nothing of emotions or flights of fancy. The sort of man whose idea of a good time was running the same computer algorithm all day with slightly varying inputs in order to find the most marginally superior combination.

He was perfect.

Aoife O’Donoghue sat in a Costa in Dublin’s City Centre across from the future love of her life.

She had an oat cappuccino, he had an oat cappuccino.

She was a software engineer for a start-up.

He was a software engineer for Google. It was all very fitting.

This was the date, the moment, the meet-cute that Aoife would tell to their grandchildren someday.

She would leave out the part where they’d met on Tinder.

Conor wiped the rim of his mug with a napkin. “Are you liking your job?”

Hate it. “Love it.”

“Me too.” He leaned forward, a dusting of chocolate in the corner of his mouth. “Did you like your degree at UCD?”

“Best years of my life.” I nearly had a mental breakdown.

“I know what you mean. Sometimes I miss those undergrad coding challenges. When I’m trying to get an algorithm to work, that’s when I really feel alive.”

When that happens to me, I feel like flinging myself and the computer out the window. “Exactly. I’m the same!”

“Your accent,” Conor said after a beat, “it’s not very Dublin. Where’s it from?”

“Everywhere … I moved around a lot growing up.” Aoife had once heard her accent described as “a Canadian pretending to be a South African pretending to be an Irish person.” Not that Conor could judge, his accent was barely Dublin either.

He had, apparently, acculturated in more ways than one to the Americanness of Google.

That was one of many reasons they would be a good match, though, right?

Yes. At twenty-eight years old, the day had finally come for Aoife to meet her forever-man.

It was time to join her kid brother in pleasing their parents with a match made in heaven.

Or science, as it were. Aoife’s parents were scientists.

They did not believe in heaven. But Aoife had been reminded lately, with increasing frequency, that her neuroscientist brother was already married to an award-winning microbiologist. At the perfunctory age of thirty, they would no doubt have their first baby who would be a degree-holding micro-neurobiologist before the child had graduated kindergarten.

As Mum put it: “accomplished people attract accomplished people.” So what was wrong with Aoife?

Conor straightened his glasses. Not that they’d needed to be straightened.

Aoife smoothed her red hair. She’d pulled it into a crisp, braided bun that morning.

Her earrings were silver studs, her clothes a smart black blazer with dark jeans.

And, of course, ballet flats. Aoife rubbed her ankles together, trying to relieve the pain in her feet.

The flats were chafing her pinkie toes. In truth, Aoife hated this outfit. Always had, always would.

She had five more exactly like it in her closet.

Aoife blinked. Hard. She was suddenly sleepy.

Oh. Conor was talking. His voice was exceptional at putting her to sleep.

That was a positive, wasn’t it? Who didn’t like to sleep better?

But she wasn’t supposed to be sleeping right now.

What was he talking about? She really should have been listening.

Aoife heard the word “Go”, the programming language, presumably, and not everyone’s favourite thing to pass in Monopoly.

Conor was saying something about objects in object-oriented programming.

Aoife loathed object-oriented programming.

She loathed all programming. Hence, why she was a programmer.

Focus, Aoife told herself, trying to stare harder at Conor to force herself to listen. This is interesting. What he’s saying is interesting. He’s the man you could be bringing home at Christmas, after all.

“This has been fun,” Conor said after a while, “I have to get back to work, but we should do this again.”

“Definitely.”

After an awkward hug outside the Costa, Aoife and Conor parted ways, Aoife crossing the Ha’penny bridge over the Liffey River to get to the tram.

The Liffey was the grimy and toxic-to-human-health dividing line between North and South Dublin, the importance of that line varying depending on who you asked.

She speed-walked over the bridge so she wouldn’t get trapped behind a slew of French secondary school students clogging up the footpath with their superior egos, attitudes, and fashion sense.

She managed to cut them off just in the nick of time, and walked with an extra spring in her step.

Things were going so well today. She’d possibly met her dream man, and she’d gotten ahead of the French students before she started imagining a giant wrecking ball bulldozing through them to get them out of her way.

Waiting at the Dawson Street tram stop to get back to work in Sandyford, she imagined bringing Conor home this Christmas.

Mum would adore his double Masters in physics and computer science.

Not as impressive as Mum’s triple PhDs, but not even Aoife’s sister-in-law could live up to that.

Dad would want to talk about the state of technology, being in artificial intelligence himself, and Aoife’s brother would be, begrudgingly, impressed Conor worked for Google.

And then, who knew what might happen after that?

As she boarded the tram, Aoife’s phone buzzed.

She glanced at her phone screen: it was from Conor.

Aoife’s privacy settings kept the message preview hidden from the lock screen, but her heart jumped.

He was messaging so soon? He must be into her.

Snagging one of the last tram seats, Aoife settled in to read about how much Conor had enjoyed their date and how he couldn’t wait to see her again.

Aoife unlocked the screen. She opened the message:

Send nudes?

~*~

“Just try it with me.” Pink margarita splashed the sides of Eimear’s wide-brimmed glass, spilling onto Aoife’s faux leather sofa. It wasn’t the first time.

“We’re not doing witchcraft.” Aoife put two shots of gin in a glass, followed by tonic and an orange slice.

She didn’t like the tonic, the gin, or the orange slice.

But it was a funny thing about what Aoife liked.

She always liked the wrong things. Life worked out better if she ignored what she liked, and did the opposite.

For the greater good. Aoife reminded herself of this as she glanced at Eimear’s margarita with painful envy.

“It’s not witchcraft, it’s a summoning.” Eimear slurred “summoning” so it came out more like “something”. Reaching for her curry on the coffee table, she shoved a spoonful of butter chicken into her mouth. “You know yer one?”

“Which one?”

“The girl with the face, and the hair.”

“Most people have those.”

“Well,” Eimear said, “I heard she did this summoning, found the one, and disappeared forever.”

“You want to disappear me?” Aoife’s question pitched high like a California valley girl, but her “r” on the word “disappear” was noticeably missing like a Londoner.

When sober, the dialects of the places Aoife had lived blended together into a bland nothingness.

When well on her way to drunk, they fought for dominance.

“I want you to find your dream lad and be happy. Not these dating app creepers asking to see your tits before he’s even taken you to dinner.

” Eimear’s fake-blonde ponytail swung like a metronome as she shook her head at the sad state of Tinder men.

“I bet yer one’s off riding the man of her dreams right now. ”

“Or she’s been murdered by a Tinder date.”

“Or that.” Eimear laughed, then realised she shouldn’t have been laughing and went sombre, downing a mouthful of her margarita.

“Christ, I love this cocktail,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want one? I’ll make you one.”

“No thanks, I’m a G&T girl.”

Aoife held up her glass as if cheersing her statement to which Eimear gave a “suit yourself, you lunatic” shrug.

“I want you to smile, Aoife,” Eimear continued. “Really smile. Come on, let’s do it.”

“I’m going to smile,” Aoife said. “I’m going to get a tonne of cats and rule over them as their queen. That will make me really smile.”

“Let’s call that Plan B.”

“Oh, that’s Plan F. But this is where we are.”

“Just try the summoning with me. Aren’t we supposed to be the children of the dúitseach?” Eimear raised her glass to their proverbial foremothers.

“Why would we be children of the Dutch?”

Eimear paused, hands and margarita praising the ceiling. “Isn’t that the Irish word for ‘druid’?”

“I think that’s the word for ‘Dutch’?” She was pretty sure, anyway. Aoife wasn’t very good at Irish. Which was perhaps the most Irish thing about her.

“What’s the word for ‘druid’?”

“Like I know.”

“Point is, let’s try it.” Eimear did a single-handed clap against her glass, her blue and white marbled nails looking like miniature waves.

“We can’t summon magical gates, they don’t exist.”

“Then what’s the harm in trying?”

Eimear could always be relied on for foolproof logic.

Aoife still wasn’t certain why or how they were friends.

They had met while waiting for take-away coffees at Insomnia, at which point Eimear had decided they were meant to be best friends.

Aoife hadn’t been able to get rid of her, so here they were. Best friends.