Free Haunting Embrace by Erin Quinn

once that he and Colleen had been distant cousins—both Ballaghs even before they’d wed, but no one talked of her grandfather much. Not Nana Colleen and not her dad, and she’d never really asked.
    He was just one of many dead ancestors whose pictures she’d glimpsed over the years. He’d been a big man, with broad shoulders and the heavy build of a seaman. The life of a fisherman was rarely an easy one, and Michael—Mickey—Ballagh looked like every year he’d spent afloat had left a mark on him.
    “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, looking past Áedán to Colleen, who stood like a fear-frozen rabbit in the talons of a hawk.
    Meaghan didn’t know what shocked her more—the vehemence of her grandfather or the timidity of her grandmother. In all her life, she’d never seen Nana Colleen cower to anyone.
    “I just went out for a wee bit, Mickey. I—my cousin, Meaghan, is here.”
    Mickey’s gaze flicked from Colleen to Meaghan and back. “Cousin? Here? From where?”
    “Well, from the mainland, of course. She tells me her mam has died.”
    Colleen was not the best liar and Mickey looked to be better than most at smelling deceit. He cast his cold scrutiny between them with restless ire. “So what if her mam’s dead?” he said. “What does she want here? Do you think I’m the fecking king that can feed all your sniveling relatives?”
    Meaghan felt her face flush with heat. Colleen took in quick and shallow breaths, and a vein throbbed at her throat. She seemed too fearful to be embarrassed by her husband’s rudeness. Fear was something else Meaghan was not accustomed to seeing on her grandmother’s face, and it caught her as much by surprise as anything else that she’d seen since opening her eyes in the cavern.
    “Of course not, Mickey,” Colleen said in a rush. “But it would be nice if we could offer the poor girl a meal and a bed for the night. She’s all alone in the world. She’s got nothing.”
    Mickey took a deep drink from his glass and swayed slightly. He was drunk, Meaghan realized. And mean with it.
    “Where did you go?” Mickey demanded, shifting that cold hostility to Áedán, who’d been watching with the kind of still attention a cat gave something it stalked.
    Meaghan noted that he could see Áedán, too, and her theory that the cavern caused his earlier invisibility grew more solid. The cavern was the lair of the Book of Fennore. She’d felt it to her bones. Meaghan had been in the cavern when she was sucked into that nebulous, terrifying world of Fennore where she’d met Áedán. He’d been invisible to everyone but her there, too. Now piecing it together, Meaghan thought the connection was obvious, if twisted. Close proximity to the Book’s power must have some impact on him. But why? Why did it affect Áedán and not Meaghan? If there was an answer to that question, it eluded her. She would have to wait until she could speak to Áedán alone to learn more.
    “I didn’t go anywhere. I slipped in the mud and hit my head,” Áedán answered Mickey’s question, his voice smooth and unconcerned. “Knocked myself out, evidently.”
    Mickey scowled. “You’re all right now?”
    “I am.”
    “But your hand still needs stitching, I see.”
    Colleen jumped as if prodded. “Have you hurt your hand, Mr. Brady? Well, let me tend to it right away.”
    “I want you here when I get home,” Mickey snarled at her as she hurried by. “Not off gallivanting with your beggar relatives. I work all day, and when I walk through that door, I bloody well expect to find my wife waiting with me tea.”
    He pronounced it tay like Meaghan’s father did. But his snide wrath made it sound offensive instead of endearing.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be so early,” Colleen said.
    She hunched her shoulders and tucked her chin, like a puppy caught peeing on the floor. Meaghan wanted to say something, to step in and defend her Nana, but there was peril in the antagonism