Devil of Dublin: A Dark Irish Mafia Romance Page 2

  From that vantage point, I saw that I was right—the wall was one big circle—and it had an opening on the right, where a door used to be. It had probably been a cute little cottage once upon a time, but now, it was just a ruin. An empty ruin, I thought at first, but when I scanned the parts that I could see again, I noticed a dark spot, down low on the wall to my left. Pushing up onto my tiptoes, I craned my neck and raised my eyebrows—as if that would make my eyeballs higher—until the spot turned into a headful of glossy black hair. Black hair that belonged to …

  A boy.

  A real boy, curled up against the wall with his arms around his knees, crying into the crook of his elbow.

  At least, I thought it was a real boy. He didn’t have wings. Or pointy ears. But the way his hair flipped and curled at the ends seemed pretty fairylike to—

  “Ahh!” I squealed as my foot slipped off the rock.

  The second I hit the soft leaves below, I scrambled over to the doorway in a panic, hoping to block the exit before the fairy could run away.

  I succeeded, only because, instead of running, the commotion caused the boy to hide against the wall next to the doorway, probably hoping to slip out unseen if someone were to enter. It would have worked if I hadn’t been looking for him. He blended into the shadows like he belonged there.

  “Why were you crying?” I asked, using my softest, sweetest voice. “Did your grandma go to heaven too?”

  The boy only growled in response, baring his teeth and squinting his eyes like a dog.

  My mother had taught me to always put my hand out whenever I met a strange dog. She’d said it was like they could tell by smelling you whether or not you were a good person. So, with a deep breath, I extended my hand and watched the boy’s face change from vicious to … something else.

  At first, I thought he must like the way I smelled, but then I realized that it was what was in my hand that had caught his attention. His pale eyes widened as he stared at the sugary treat.

  “You want it?” I nudged the cookie in his direction. “You can have it.”

  The boy made that snarling face again, but then he snatched the biscuit out of my hand so fast that it made me jump.

  He shoved the whole thing into his mouth and chewed wildly with his eyes narrowed and fixed on me.

  I stood with my back pressed against one side of the doorway. He scared me, but the idea of letting him get away scared me more.

  “Why were you crying?” I asked again.

  Chew, chew, chew.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  Another glare. More chewing.

  “What’s your name? My name is Darby Collins. D-A-R-B-Y C-O-L-L-I-N-S.”

  No response.

  “I’m eight. I just finished second grade, and I already know my times tables. How old are you?”

  The boy swallowed and crouched down slightly, as if he were about to bolt.

  Or attack.

  “Are you eight too?”

  He shook his head, letting his wild, dark hair fall into his face.

  “Nine?”

  No.

  “Ten?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want to play with me?”

  The boy squinted his eyes at me again—which I could barely see peeking through his curtain of hair—but at least he wasn’t growling anymore.

  “Ooh! I know! We should play Harry Potter! This place looks just like the Forbidden Forest! And this could be Hagrid’s house! It looks just like this! You should be Harry ’cause you got all that black hair, and I could be Ginny Weasley ’cause I got red hair. They get married at the end, you know? Spoiler alert.”

  The boy just stared at me as if I were speaking Greek.

  “You do know what Harry Potter is, right?”

  His head swiveled left and right so slightly that I almost missed it.

  “You don’t? Oh my gosh, it’s so good! It’s a story about kids who are wizards and witches, but not mean witches, like the one that lives down by the lake—I mean, lough.”

  He cocked his shaggy black head to one side, just an inch or so.

  “You don’t know about the witch either?”

  Another head shake.

  “Oh my gosh! Come on.” I beamed, reaching out my hand. “Let’s go see!”

  The boy looked at my outstretched palm. Then, he glanced up at my face. I could see one of his eyes through a part in his hair, and it was such a strange, pale gray color that for a moment—just one moment—I thought maybe he was the witch in disguise. That it was all a trick, like in Hansel and Gretel. Only instead of luring me into her cottage with candy, this witch pretended to be a crying, frightened child. I was one second away from running straight back to my grandfather’s house when the boy finally placed his hot, timid hand in mine, and I felt it—the same tingly, fizzy sensation I’d felt when I’d entered the woods.

  He couldn’t be the witch, I decided.

  He had fairy magic all over him.

  As we walked down the hill toward the lake, I stopped to pick up two nice, straight sticks.

  “Here,” I said, handing one to the boy. “This is your magic wand. Maybe if the witch sees us and thinks we’re witches, too, she’ll leave us alone.”

  I waved my stick around, but he just stared at his.

  “Hey … don’t worry,” I said. “She won’t get us. Grandpa says we’re safe on this side of the … lough, and Grandpa knows everything.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder to reassure him, but he jerked away from me immediately.

  Jeez.

  We started walking again, but this time, I didn’t offer him my hand.

  Eventually, the bluebells gave way to blackberry bushes that grabbed at my shoelaces and scratched at my legs. But I could see the lake sparkling on the other side of them, so I forged ahead, wiggling through every gap in the brambles that I could find.

  For a minute, I didn’t think the boy would follow me, but when I made it to my final hiding place—a massive oak tree on the edge of the lake—I heard the bushes rustle beside me and saw a head of messy black hair appear out of the corner of my eye.

  I had to turn away to hide my smile. “Do you see her?” I asked, pretending that I was looking for the witch.

  He didn’t answer, of course.

  Clutching my wand tighter, I scanned the edge of the water, looking for signs of anything … witchy. There was nothing on my side of the tree, so I turned to look at the bank on his side, which meant that I also had to look at him.

  The boy was staring out over the water, lost in thought. Even though he was as still and drab as a black and white picture, something about him reminded me of fire—his dark, unruly, chin-length hair that twisted and waved like flames, his smoke-colored eyes, his ashen skin. He didn’t even have a single freckle. That made me sad. Grandpa had told me that everywhere you have a freckle is where an angel kissed you. I must have been kissed a million times, but this boy hadn’t been kissed even once.

  Maybe that’s why he was crying, I thought.

  Or maybe it was because of the cut on his bottom lip. The small red gash was the only colorful thing about him.

  Suddenly, the boy darted behind the tree. His shoulder smashed against mine as he clutched his wand to his heaving chest.

  “Did you see her?” I whispered. My heart began to pound, and I didn’t know if it was because of the witch or the fact that this boy was touching me again.

  He shook his head and pointed at the lake with his wand. Taking a deep breath, I peeked around my side of the tree. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. The water looked normal, kind of a murky brownish, greenish, blue. There were blackberry bushes on the other side of the lake and more trees that went on forever. I squinted as I peered into them, searching for a bear or a wolf or something equally terrifying, and that’s when I saw it. Stony and round and missing a roof.

  The witch’s house.

  I pulled my head back behind the tree and stood shoulder to shoulder wit
h the boy, squeezing my wand, still as a statue again. But statues don’t breathe, and I’m pretty sure I was breathing loud enough for the witch to hear me all the way across the lake. She would find us and eat us for sure.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered. “Run!”

  The boy and I scrambled back through the thorny bushes and up the hill as fast as we could, not caring how many fairy hat flowers we stepped on along the way. We didn’t stop running until we were safely back at Hagrid’s house with our backs against the cool stone wall.

  “We need to make a potion to protect us against the dark arts,” I panted. “That’s what Professor Snape would do. I’ll get the ingredients. You find a cauldron.”

  I crept through the doorway, which was thankfully on the side of the cottage that the witch couldn’t see, and started foraging for enchanted objects. It didn’t take me long to find two mushrooms, three sparkly rocks, a variety of pretty leaves, and the most magical ingredient of all, a real snail shell. That would definitely keep a witch away.

  With my hands full, I tiptoed back into the stone circle, but when I looked up, the boy was gone.

  Jumping up so that I could see over the wall, I scanned the woods for any sign of him, but it was like he’d just … vanished.

  “… they’ll use their magic to disappear like that.”

  The sound of my grandfather’s snapping fingers rang in my ears.

  I sat down in the middle of the leaf-covered floor and crossed my arms with a humph.

  Maybe he needs to go work on himself too.

  I crumbled up one of the big, crunchy leaves I’d found until it was nothing but confetti. Then, I threw it as hard as I could. Of course, the pieces just fluttered in the air and landed gracefully on the ground in front of me, which only pissed me off more.

  “Humph.”

  I didn’t feel like making a potion anymore.

  I started to crumble up another leaf, but the sound of leaves crunching outside of the cottage caught my attention. I sat perfectly still.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  The noises were definitely footsteps. And they were definitely coming from the direction of the lake.

  As the crunching got louder, I swore that in between every few steps, I heard a soft splashing sound too.

  It’s the witch! She swam across the lake to get me, and now, she’s all drippy and wet, and she’s gonna eat meeee!

  I clutched my wand and squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember the spell that Harry had used to blast all those Dementors when he was at that spooky lake all by himself.

  Expelli something. No, expecto. Expecto something. Expecto what? Expectoooo …

  The crunch-splash-crunch-splash got louder and louder until I could finally see the top of the witch’s head on the other side of the wall.

  With a big, deep breath, I jumped to my feet, pointed my wand at the doorway, and yelled, “Expecto blasto!”

  But instead of a beam of white light slicing through a lake witch, all I saw was a boy, looking at me like I was crazy, holding his wand stick in one hand and a scuffed black leather shoe in the other.

  I immediately burst out laughing. I laughed, and I smiled, and I lowered my not-so-deadly weapon with a sigh of relief.

  “I thought you left.”

  The boy walked in very slowly, very carefully, and set the shoe down on the ground as if it were a bomb that needed defusing. But instead of exploding on contact, a little water sloshed out of it.

  My eyes lit up.

  “Wait … is that … our cauldron?”

  The boy nodded, his face expressionless.

  “And it even has water in it?”

  He didn’t respond, but something in the tilt of his mouth told me that there was more to the story. And that was when it hit me.

  “You got this from the lake, didn’t you? You went back down there all by yourself?!”

  His silvery eyes sparkled with pride.

  “This is gonna be the best potion ever!” Sitting cross-legged on the ground next to our makeshift cauldron, I gathered my ingredients and handed the leaves over to my new friend. “Crumble these up real small. They’ll go in last.”

  While he was doing that, I broke the mushrooms into little pieces and dropped them into the dark water. They floated on top like marshmallows. Next, I dropped in the rocks, followed by a piece of my hair.

  As I stirred the mixture with my magic wand, the boy sprinkled his leaf pieces on top. Then, he reached up and plucked a strand of his own hair as well. I didn’t know if witch repellant called for red and black hair, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I watched the dark, wavy strand sink into the potion before remembering the most important ingredient.

  “And finally,” I said, handing the treasure to my assistant, “the shell of a mystical Emerald Isle snail.”

  As I placed the pearly spiral in his outstretched hand, my fingers grazed his skin, causing a lightning bolt to zap up my arm. It sizzled, and it scared me, but it didn’t hurt—kind of like holding a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

  Fairy magic, I almost whispered out loud.

  He dropped the swirly shell into the murky water, but instead of hearing a plop, all I heard was an annoyingly loud beeping sound. I had no idea what it was until it registered a moment later that my butt was vibrating.

  “Shoot.” I pulled the phone out of my pocket and tapped the screen until the noise stopped. “I gotta go.”

  In Harry Potter, they drank the potions they made, but there was no way I was going to drink that shoe water, so I did what the priest had done at Grandpa’s church and dipped my thumb into it instead.

  The boy sat perfectly still as I lifted my thumb to his forehead and drew a wet plus sign right in the middle. He held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut when I touched him, but he let me do it.

  “You are now protected against the dark arts,” I whispered.

  When he opened his eyes again, they were all red and watery, like I must have hurt him, but I couldn’t figure out what I’d done.

  Maybe a drop of water ran into his eye, I thought. That had to be it.

  The boy stared at me, and even though I knew it was rude, I stared back. It was like he had some kind of power over me. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. And something in my chest felt like it was burning.

  “Darrrr-byyyy!” My mom’s voice came charging up and over the hill.

  Shoot.

  “Coming!” I shouted back with my hands cupped around my mouth.

  The boy frowned, causing me to notice the cut on his lip again. I wanted to kiss it and make it better, like my mom used to do for me, but he was a stranger. And a boy. My mom said that kissing was only for boyfriends and girlfriends and not until I was at least twenty-five.

  Then, I got an idea.

  I kissed the end of my magic wand and placed it as gently as I could on his hurt lip. The boy squeezed his eyes shut again, but this time, he didn’t reopen them. Instead, his face crumpled in on itself, and I sat there, watching with a knot in my throat and another one in my belly.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away until my mom finally yelled, “Darrrr-byyyy!” in her angriest teacher voice yet.

  I jumped to my feet and turned toward the top of the hill just as my mom’s long red hair came swishing through the trees. I registered the crunch-splash-crunch-splash noises again, but this time, they were moving away from me. And they were going much, much faster than before.

  I glanced back over at the place where the boy had just been sitting, but he was already gone.

  And he had taken our cauldron with him.

  “Darby Elaine Collins! What did I tell you? I said that when that timer goes off, yer supposed to—” She stopped marching halfway down the hill and covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh my God.”

  Walking the rest of the way with wide, shimmering eyes, my mom did a full lap inside the cottage while I scanned the woods for any s
ign of the boy.

  “I completely forgot about this place,” she said, running a finger along the jagged seam between two stones. “I used to play back here all the time … with your auntie Shannon and uncle Eamonn.”

  Gesturing to the left, she said, “We had a pretend kitchen right here, where we made mud pies with Mam’s pots and pans. Shannon would dig up the dirt, Eamonn would get water from the lake, and I’d mix it together …”

  For the first time since we had arrived in Ireland, my mom smiled. Then, she looked back over at me. “Did ya have fun?”

  I couldn’t help my answering grin as I nodded vigorously in response.

  “Good,” she said, her sad eyes shining. “That’s good.”

  Taking my hand, she led me away from my new favorite place and back up the hill. “So, did ya find anything magical back here?”

  I glanced around to make sure he wasn’t within earshot. Then, I cupped my hands around my grinning mouth and whispered, as quietly as my giddiness would allow, “I think I found a real-life fairy.”

  CHAPTER 2

  DARBY

  ONE YEAR LATER

  I tried to walk as quietly as possible through the woods so that I wouldn’t scare off the fairies, but that was kind of impossible with my grandmother’s porcelain tea set rattling in my nervous hands.

  After my grandmother passed, my mother felt so bad about how long she’d been away from Glenshire that she’d promised my grandfather we’d come back and visit every summer. We’d had to cut back on things like eating out and buying new clothes in order to afford the plane tickets, but I didn’t care. I would have eaten rice and beans for every meal if it meant that I could play with my new friend again.

  My suitcase had barely crossed the threshold before I gave Grandpa a quick hug and made a mad dash for the back door. My mom called my name and told me to wait, but instead of shoving a phone into my pocket and giving me a lecture about safety, she shoved a silver tray containing a blue-and-white floral teapot, four matching teacups and saucers, a sugar bowl, and a creamer into my hands with a wistful smile. She said that she and her sister used to have tea parties in the “playhouse” all the time.