Chapter Four
Four
Worship
Heat met her first. Warm, inviting, as she stepped inside. Then came sound. Laughter. So much laughter. Aoife nearly laughed aloud, too.
The Knitting Widow was a pub. How cliché. An Irish girl crossing worlds and landing in a pub.
Unlike most pubs back home, this one wasn’t dark.
It was full of life and light. Like most pubs back home, it looked like a community space.
A gathering place. Small round tables and chairs peppered the room, the rotted floorboards soft beneath Aoife’s feet.
A fire whipped heat into the room from an open brick fireplace, the moving darkness lilting about the room.
Somehow, the darkness looked less threatening here.
Aoife glanced around for the cat, but it had disappeared.
The woman with the ghostly eyes had implied Aoife was on a mission.
So … what was she meant to do now? Aside from getting a drink, she supposed.
Did she have money? Did they use money here or was it a bartering system?
Perhaps the currency would be her first scientific investigation in this world.
Putting her hands in her pockets, Aoife checked for coin.
Her fingers touched pieces of round metal.
She pulled them out, noting there were four different sizes, each with a unique colour and design.
Not to mention she had far more of some coins than others.
There were a number of black coins featuring a hooded figure carrying a gnarled walking stick.
Then a few bronze coins with a man who had a warrior’s body and a cat’s head.
There were a couple of silver coins with a very fit, almost majestic looking half-naked man on them.
And a single gold coin, containing a tiny etching of all three figures.
Aoife wondered who these people were. Leaders? Presidents? Revered heroes?
Yet another question to be answered.
Aoife worked her way through the crowd. If she got to the bar, she could talk to the bartender and start asking about this world. Bartenders were usually happy to have a chat, especially if they thought it meant extra tips for their—
Her breath caught. Her heart stopped.
The chatter of the pub went to a quiet murmur, the heat of the fire roaring to match the sudden heat in her blood.
Him.
Behind the bar, she saw him.
His smile was two parts sincere, one part mischievous with hair darker than the darkness.
His irises were an inner circle of blue stained in an outer circle of sable; ice and shadows.
Their beauty was wild. Reckless. Her lungs squeezed, begging for air, but the rest of her had forgotten how to breathe.
Tattoos clawed up his neck and down his wrists, strength and power emanating from his built chest and firm arms.
And then.
Oh, and then.
He looked at her.
Those eyes drank her in like she was a luxurious wine, his gaze lingering on her eyes, her lips, her neck, her … Aoife flushed, her heart threatening to give out from what his gaze was doing to her.
Someone spoke to him. He looked away. Aoife gripped a nearby chair for balance. Her fingers clasped the hard wood as if she were holding onto a rope while dangling off a cliff.
What was he? A magician? She felt like she’d been drugged. Or spellbound. No one had ever made her feel like this. It wasn’t natural, was it? She breathed. In. Out. One more time.
“If you’re not drinking, Miss, I’m afraid you don’t belong here.” His voice. It carried across the room, rich and rough, dripping with a strength that made Aoife’s body weak all over again.
“I … drink,” she managed.
“What’ll it be then?” He looked at her without looking at her.
Aoife straightened her back and took a clumsy step towards him. “Gin.”
“Gin?” He had a sliver of a smile. “What in the God’s name is a gin?”
“I …” Aoife tried to focus through the sound of blood pumping in her ears. “I’ll have whatever you recommend.”
“Smart woman.”
Aoife walked to the bar as if in a dream. Was she floating? Was she breathing? Breathe. You really need to breathe. Step by step Aoife moved until her elbows rested on the sticky, slanted wood of the bar.
He was close enough to touch and he smelled like lust: cinnamon heat and vanilla sweet.
His eyes met hers. She forgot to breathe again.
Crash. Clatter. Smash. A row of glasses hit the floor, the black cat from before standing on the bar where the glasses had been.
“Bad kitty,” Aoife whispered.
Her whisper might as well have been a shout.
Silence had cut through the room, not a scuffle of a shoe, not a sniffle of a nose to be heard.
Only the fire whipped quietly in the background.
And was she imagining it, or was the floating darkness …
gathering closer? As if it were watching them like spectators.
“The cat … he’s with you?” The bartender’s voice held a curious heat.
“No. Yes. I followed him here.”
The cat rubbed his cheek against the bartender’s forearm, bopping his head into the bartender’s hand. Even the fire went silent. Aoife looked back to see pale faces.
Had something happened? Was it important?
“Everyone,” the bartender said. “Out.” The power in his words sent a shiver down Aoife’s spine. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. She stepped back, poised to leave. He took her hand.
“Not you,” he said.
Aoife’s blood sang with expectation.
When everyone else had left, he turned to her, eyes cutting, mouth set in a hard line. “Did Aristen put you up to this? If so, it isn’t funny.”
Aoife’s head still buzzed, and it was hard to think with him still holding her hand, with his touch sending tingles up her arm.
“Who’s Aristen?” she managed to say.
The hardness in his eyes softened. “You don’t know Aristen?”
“Should I?”
“Probably best you don’t.” A small smile played on his lips as he let her go, a rush of cold flooding her in his absence. “Did someone else put you up to this?”
“What do you mean by ‘this’?” Aoife rubbed her arms, trying to get the heat back. It didn’t work.
He watched her, studying her with those ice and shadow eyes.
“Where are you from?” He sounded confused. Curious.
“Ireland,” Aoife said. “You?”
“The … Western Lands.” He said it as if it were obvious. “But I’ve moved around. Where’s Ireland?”
“An island in the North Atlantic.”
The confusion on his face deepened. “What’s the North Atlantic?”
“It’s …” Aoife looked at his baffled features. She looked at the cat who seemed equally confused. “It’s really far away.”
“Are you a Child of Fortune?” The question was partially directed at Aoife, partially directed at the cat. Was Aoife or the cat supposed to answer?
“No, I …” Aoife sighed. The roar of the fire grew louder in her ears as did the rapid beating of her heart.
And then, the world seemed to slow as Aoife felt herself stepping back, stepping out of herself, as if she were looking at her circumstances as a ghost of herself.
She was here. Wherever “here” was. In a pub.
Alone. Talking to a stranger. A gorgeous stranger, but still a stranger.
She didn’t know where she was, how she’d gotten here …
or how to leave. Aoife felt a sudden rush of panic, her ghost self and her real self smashing back together again.
She didn’t know anything. Aside from investigating, she couldn’t really do anything either. What if she was trapped here? What if—
Aoife mentally slapped herself. “What if” nothing. This was a dream, an illusion, or some otherwise not-real thing, wasn’t it? She would leave when she woke up. Or was resuscitated. Or came down from her drug high.
The bartender was watching her with those intoxicating eyes of his, and Aoife found herself hoping she didn’t wake for a while longer.
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry if I caused a problem. I really just followed the cat.”
The bartender watched her. Silent. God, he was gorgeous.
“Well.” The bartender smiled. “I’ll be damned.”
“What for?”
“I was just proven right.” He grabbed a fresh glass and began making a drink with various herbs, syrups, and liquors.
“That’s bad?”
“Depends on who you ask.” He set the drink in front of Aoife and then made one for himself. “I don’t think I wanted to be proven right.” He took a drink. So did Aoife.
She paused, glanced at her drink. She took another sip. Citrus notes with a smooth layer of chocolate wrapped in the warmth of a creamy liquor. It was like eating a chocolate covered orange. A chocolate covered orange that could get her absolutely hammered if she wasn’t careful.
A little voice in Aoife’s head tried to remind her with a deep and desperate urgency that this was the wrong situation.
This was the wrong drink, the wrong man, the wrong place.
She wasn’t supposed to be enjoying a drink like that with a man like this.
Or, at the very least, she was supposed to pretend she wasn’t.
Nothing good would come of indulging the things she fancied.
But it was so hard to think, the way he watched her.
Like she was endlessly fascinating to him.
The way his entire body exuded sexual confidence, strength, intrigue …
it hushed that desperate voice inside her until it was only a murmur.
Which was why Aoife said, “This might be the best thing I’ve ever had,” before she could stop herself.
The bartender smiled, and that voice in her head was reduced to the faintest whisper. “It better be,” he said. “I worked hard enough on the recipe. And the syrups.”
“You created this?” Aoife hoped the shock in her voice didn’t come across as insulting.
“You mean to tell me,” he rested his elbows on the counter, drawing closer. Aoife’s heart fluttered, “you haven’t heard of the Knitting Widow’s famous, home-brewed cocktails? I’m a little offended.”
“I’m not from here,” Aoife breathed. “Ireland, remember?”
His smile widened. She smiled back like it was what she’d been born to do.
“Then I guess,” he said, “you get a pass.”
“Thank goodness.” She laughed.