The Immortal's Unrequited Bride

“What? Why?”

Rowan placed the Very Rare on the shelf from whence it came and selected a nearly new bottle of Jameson’s Blended, handing it to Ethan without pomp or flourish. “Why?” He blinked once. Twice. “Easy. Midleton’s is a rare whiskey made for sipping, not drinking. It’s a whiskey for celebration, not obliteration. And while Jameson’s is also an admittedly fine whiskey, it’s half the cost. Your guilt won’t be so pricked when you’re puking it, and your toenails, up come sunrise.”

Ethan blinked at Rowan. “That was a speech.”

The muscular man rolled first his shoulders and then his head, rocking the latter back and forth until he paused to stretch and his vertebrae made a popping sound. “Made my point, didn’t I?”

“Sure, but it seems there were extra words in there. Some might even say they were compassionate words.”

Rowan shot Ethan a bland look before plucking a glass off the shelf. “Shut up and pour.”

“You too good to drink from the bottle?”

The larger man didn’t respond, simply held out the highball glass. When Ethan didn’t move fast enough, Rowan snatched the bottle and poured a solid two fingers of whiskey. Neck corded and hands trembling, he passed the glass to Ethan, picked up a second glass and poured again.

Ethan swirled his drink, staring at the play of light against fine crystal. “I’m not sure what to think, seeing as the ghost got to you. You. She must have been terrifying, horrid even. Dude, I bet that was it. She’s a hag, isn’t she? Proof she’s not my wife. I mean, looks aren’t everything, but when you take your marriage vows? That’s it. You’re waking up to that mug for the rest of your life.”

Rowan lifted his chin and locked his stare with Ethan’s. “Did you just call me ‘dude’?”

“Maybe?” He shrugged. “Okay, fine. Yes. But it was my second choice. First would have been Special Agent Supernatural—SAS for short—because of all the freaky shit that goes on around here. ‘Dude’ slipped off the tongue easier.” Sure, Ethan could have been a little more couth, but it would have been wasted effort. Besides, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to worry about offending the centuries-old Druid. Let Rowan turn him into a toad. With any luck, Ethan could counter-curse the other man on the way down. Gulping down the contents of the proffered glass, Ethan took the last swallow and gasped as powerful fumes rushed out his nose, cauterizing the tender skin. “I’d turn you into a gnat.”

Rowan’s eyebrows drew together for a split second. “A gnat?”

“Well, you’re turning me into a frog.”

“I am?” Rowan shook his head and tossed back the two fingers he’d poured. “I haven’t had enough to drink for you to make sense.”

“I always make sense,” Ethan countered. “Sometimes.”

Rowan grunted as he poured himself a second shot.

“So, let me be blunt.” Ethan set his glass down, commandeered the bottle and took a long draw, his breath exploding from his lungs as if he were a mythical fire-breathing creature. He wondered that the room hadn’t been incinerated. Voice raw, he managed to wheeze, “Why are you here?”

Rowan shrugged and sipped at his glass. “Personal reasons, I assure you.”

“And here I thought you cared,” Ethan murmured before taking a less aggressive pull from the bottle’s mouth.

“Don’t think that my presence here is any type of indicator that I give a personal damn about what you do or don’t do.” The barked response bore an accusatory tone. “I don’t leave my friends in trouble.”

“By your own admission last Thursday after sword practice when I cut you like a little bitch, I’m not your friend. And as far as my troubles go?” He lifted the bottle in toast and took another pull. “The only one I have involves a crazy-ass ghost-hag-stalker no one but you can see. Soon as I banish her? Life’s golden.”

Rowan stepped closer to Ethan. “You won’t banish the woman until we’re sure she’s not your wife.”

Ethan’s temper snapped like a mousetrap. The victim here, though, was his common sense. Pushing into Rowan’s personal space, he glared at the Druid. “Get it through your thick, geriatric skull, dude. I’ve never been married. Won’t ever get married. So the only thing I know for sure is that the woman wants something bad enough that she’s motivated to lie in order to get it.”

Rowan pushed Ethan back with enough force that he stumbled.

“Asshole.”

The bigger man set his glass down and, moving faster than thought, closed his hand around Ethan’s throat. “Leave it be.”

Simple words issued with such hostile overtones didn’t steal the underlying truth. Rowan gave a shit about him on some fundamental, purposeful level.

Wrenching free of the assassin’s grip, Ethan spun and stalked to the window. He braced a hand against the casing and leaned into it, pressing the pads of his fingers into the rough stone. He watched the waves rolling into the cliff face and took a drink.

This time the whiskey burned slower, spreading through the middle of his chest before radiating down his legs and along his arms. Lingering surprise at Rowan’s roundabout admission stole Ethan’s sarcasm. His fingertips twitched around the glass. Shoving off the window’s frame, he forced himself to face the man who inexplicably considered him a friend. “What do we do to get rid of her?”

Rowan retrieved the bottle of Midleton’s and poured himself a clean shot.

Ethan’s eyebrows drew together and he absently rubbed his furrowed forehead. “I thought that wasn’t the whiskey you drank to get drunk.”

Ice-blue eyes met his. “You’re getting drunk. I’m only here in a support role. Plus, you drank from the bottle. I prefer to keep my glass to my person.”

“Whatever.” Ethan took another sip, appreciating the ease with which the strong alcohol now went down. “Why are you so supportive of my intent to get blotto? You don’t even like me.”

“If you’d been paying attention to the gossiping hens around this place, you’d have heard I don’t like anyone or anything.”

“Gossip is for little girls and old women. Oh, and doctors. You wouldn’t believe how doctors gossip around their computer monitors in a hospital.” He shook his head. “Crazy.”

Rowan snorted. “Don’t be a fool. Gossip is limited only by one’s ability to communicate, be it by mouth, hand or other method.” Lifting his glass to his lips, he paused. “So, how long are you going to avoid the specter in the room?”

Ethan’s hands spasmed and the bottle he’d claimed fell to the floor, shattering on impact. “Where?” He glanced around wildly. “Where is it? She? It? She’s here, isn’t she?”

Rowan watched him through those notoriously shrewd, dispassionate eyes. “I haven’t seen her since she took off down the hall.”

“You said she was here. You said, ‘How long are you going to avoid the specter—’”

Rowan interrupted with a sharp look. “It was a question similar to ‘How long will you avoid the elephant in the room?’”

With a ragged curse, Ethan picked his way across the glass-strewn floor and back to the bookshelf where he blindly retrieved a third bottle. “And if I’d been an elephant handler traumatized by a crazed elephant, I’d have reacted the same.”

“Lucky for us you don’t have any elephants in your past.”

“It’s far more likely there’s an elephant—maybe even two—hanging around in my past than there is a woman who can claim with any legitimacy that she’s my wife.” Ethan pulled the cork free of the new bottle with a sharp pop. He took a long draw and coughed, his response as harsh as if the words had been run over a coarse cheese grater. “Trust me.”

* * *

Isibéal slipped unseen through the doors of the castle. That she could pass through walls of glass and stone, doors of wood and iron, still bothered her. For all that she’d been dead for centuries, she’d been trapped in her own personal hell. This? Moving free in the world? It would take some getting used to.

Wandering across the massive foyer and toward the stairs, attention wandering as she stepped from stone to stone, she didn’t see the man in time to keep from passing through him. She shuddered as she emerged, a sick sensation stealing through her middle even as a muffled whump had her looking back.

The man she’d passed through had collapsed and now flopped about like a flightless chick cast from its nest too early. The paroxysm he suffered proved severe as he smashed his head against the stone again and again, his arms and legs alternately flailing and stiffening as straight and rigid as an arrow’s shaft.

Isibéal moved to kneel at his side. She wanted to help him, to ease whatever pain he suffered, but without a body?

She sat back on her heels.

Useless. I’m entirely useless.

Men rushed to the foyer and headed straight for their felled brother.

Isibéal scrambled away, determined not to touch another soul until she was sure what the consequences were—for both parties. Summoning her focus and touching Lachlan...Ethan...had cost her mightily, but it was a pain she would gladly pay if only to touch him again. Yet this particular discomfiture proved powerful enough to sway her from any desire to touch any other human being. The consequences were a bit unnerving.

Moving like the wraith she’d become, she climbed the broad flight of stairs that would take her to the guests’ quarters in the northern wing.

Ethan’s quarters.

She remembered this castle as it had been before her death—stones rough from recent hewing, glass smooth in the windows that had been afforded such luxury, peat smoke already marring the hearths, and what had seemed like miles of hallways.

The stones were smoother now.

Glass, even resplendent stained glass by the most skilled artisans, filled every window and overhead opening.

Hearths were generally cold, replaced by strange flameless stoves.

Yet not everything was different, thank the gods. The floor plan had remained largely the same, from dining hall to observatory to sleeping quarters. She knew these halls. Remembered them. Had spent the last several months rediscovering nooks and crannies all around the castle as she observed Ethan.

Husband.

She couldn’t believe she’d laid claim to him in such a forward, arguably brazen manner, let alone in front of another assassin.

He’s mine.

Her heart’s objection to her mind’s reserved behavior coaxed a smile from her. She’d always had a bit of a problem with what men deemed appropriate for women to say and do. Seemed death hadn’t changed that.

Perhaps Ethan would still find that part of her as appealing now as he had done all those years ago. He used to tease her, once even threatening to do away with her dresses and make her wear men’s breeches after he found her riding astride her horse, voluminous skirts tucked around her legs. She’d stumped him when she begged him to follow through.

A soft laugh escaped her.

Gods, she had loved that man. That he might not be the same man he’d once been terrified her. Fear didn’t change the fact that simply seeing him had elicited from her the same response as in their previous life together. Being in Ethan’s presence made Isibéal want to be more, do more, rise to any challenge, fight harder—all the same feelings, emotions and reactions Lachlan had roused in her.

Not all, silly woman.

“Silly woman, indeed,” she murmured, pressing the back of one hand to her cheek.

Honesty, then. The other emotions Ethan roused in her were the very same Lachlan had discovered. Longing. Fervor. Lust. Passion.

“Love,” she amended for no one save herself. “All based in love.”

The emotions were there, regardless. She wanted Ethan as a woman wanted a man. No, not just “a” man. Her man. For that was who he was, and would always be, to her.

“Husband.”

She trailed unfeeling fingers along the stone walls out of habit, pausing when she reached Ethan’s door. She heard two voices. One belonged to her husband. The other could only be the large assassin who’d seen her. The latter gave her pause.

She laid a hand on the door and took a deep, unnecessary breath. “No matter what you’ve heard over the years, Isibéal, no matter that you know bits and pieces of his...Rowan’s...history, he’s given you no cause to fear him.”

That didn’t mean her inanimate heart wasn’t lodged in her throat. Some physical reactions, it seemed, were unaffected by death’s strict parameters.

Tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear, Isibéal drifted forward, through the door and into Ethan’s personal space.

Luck was with her as she found Rowan with his back to her. That allowed her to enter unseen. She’d take whatever boon the gods deemed appropriate, particularly if such resulted in her being able to observe Ethan without fear of discovery.

The men were in a hushed but heated conversation. Like as not, she wouldn’t have paid them any mind, would have simply watched Ethan, had she not heard the word ghost.

She shifted her attention to her husband, and what was left of her heart seized on his next words.

“I don’t care if the woman claims she’s my wife any more than I’d care if she claimed she’d once been the patron saint of sheep shit and goat cheese.”

Sheep shit and goat cheese? She shook her head, irritated but equally amused. His next words stripped the amusement away in mere seconds.

“She goes, Rowan. She’s out of the castle. I won’t have her here.” He shoved the fingers of one hand through his hair as he lifted the whiskey bottle with the other and took a hearty swig.

“You’d use your magicks to cast her out of this realm without knowing if her claim holds even an ounce of truth?”

“Our magicks. It’ll take us both, as I’ll need you to open a path into the spirit realm. I’ve more than enough magick to handle casting my...her...the woman—” Ethan’s eyes narrowed and his body swayed as he leaned into Rowan’s space “—out. And I’ll say it one more time, since you’re obviously deep enough in your cups to no longer make easy sense of the English language. I’m. Not. Married. Never have been. Never wanted to be.”

Rowan crossed his arms over his chest. “And just what have you got against marriage, then? What is it that scares you? The commitment, I’m guessing.”

Isibéal moved around the men and into Rowan’s field of view. She knew she had to look a sight with her temper up and her tenuous claim to her magick flaring. Strong emotion fueled her response and afforded her the wherewithal to rein in the wind that swirled around her. Not entirely, though. Her hair crackled and popped and her dress whipped about as her temper brewed.

Ethan carried on, totally unaware of Rowan’s raised eyebrows and the cause for the Druid’s response.

Her.

“I have no issues with committing but every problem letting the Fates take control when the heart gets involved and logic is replaced with emotion. And to do marriage right, you have to set logic aside. You have to allow yourself to fall. You can only hope the landing doesn’t break something critical.”

“It’s not like falling in love leaves you with broken bones, you gobshite.”

“It’s not broken bones I was referring to, but rather irreparably mangled hearts.” Ethan grinned, but the affectation was so dark as to be disturbing. “Love is for children and fools, Rowan, and I’m neither.”

The Druid’s shoulders stiffened even as he lowered his arms to his sides in a controlled move. “Tread lightly, darkling, seeing as I, myself was married and yet never counted myself a fool.”

“Why don’t you talk to your wife, then?” Ethan shot out. Rowan flinched and Ethan’s shoulders hunched. “Forget I said that—that was out of line. But know this, Rowan. I’ll not ‘tread lightly.’” Ethan’s lips thinned into a hard line even as his jaw took on a familiar, mutinous set that made Isibéal long to stroke the skin just there. “It’s been hundreds of years since you lost your wife and you still suffer with the mangled heart I referred to. You’re as dead inside as the incorporeal stalker who’s mistaken me for someone who would have ever said ‘I do’ to her or anyone else.”

Isibéal fumed at the thought that there would be someone else for her husband. The man she’d known would never, ever have operated with such blinders on, let alone have even joked about forsaking his vows to her, his wife. This man, Ethan, might have been the spitting image of her lost husband, but she wondered if she’d misjudged his character. Worse, had she mistaken his soul for Lachlan’s simply because she so desperately wanted it to be so?

She sagged, and Rowan caught her eye with a sharp move of his hand. Glancing up, she met that cold gaze and couldn’t help shivering. Then he gave a sharp shake of his head and laid his hand over his heart. Isibéal was lost until he mouthed the word patience as Ethan rambled on.

“The only time you’ll find me wearing the one suit I own and standing at the end of any aisle is right after Easter and Halloween when the grocery stores put the good candy on sale. I take my Toblerone acquisitions seriously, man.”

“Ethan.” Rowan dragged the name out, clearly a warning.

“Rowan,” Ethan mimicked, irreverent as ever. Then he held up his free hand, palm out. “The psycho-stalker came after me. That makes her mine. As such, I reserve the right to have the final word in this. She’s to be banished, dúr, caorach-grámhara duine cac.”

“And when, exactly, did you pick up the Irish?” Rowan asked quietly.

Ethan paled and shook his head, mouth working silently.

His shock at having spoken the old language fluently didn’t settle Isibéal’s ire. Ethan had done far too good a job at ensuring she was...what was the common vernacular? Ah, yes. Pissed off. He’d ensured that his words had enflamed her temper and pricked her pride. She knew she should step outside, give herself time and space to settle, but damned if she would. Ethan couldn’t be allowed the time necessary to create the banishing spell that would send her away. Permanently. For an unanchored spirit neither belonging to nor claimed by Tír na nÓg or the Shadow Realm, banishing her meant her soul would splinter. He would cause it—her—to splinter. The result? She would be little more than a recorded birth and death. She would have no more substance than a dandelion’s head blown into the wind by a temperamental child, its fluff carried a thousand different directions by the mercurial wind.

So, yes, while she should have stepped outside and centered herself, should have done whatever it took to subdue her wrath, she didn’t. Not even hearing Ethan slip into the Irish and call Rowan a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face” tempered the violence brewing in her.

Ethan could say what he would and call her whatever names soothed his black heart. None of it hurt like his explicit objective. If he thought she would sit around and passively wait, hands folded in her lap like a simpleton, while he gathered the means to banish her? He had another think coming.

By the gods, she’d survived this long. She wouldn’t give up the fight not only to carry on but also to make her way back to her husband’s side because of one imbecile’s unencumbered conscience. Even if that man was her husband. For all that she wanted to doubt, she’d seen too much to believe otherwise. Period. If it took her a thousand lifetimes of fighting her way back to him to convince him that that was, in fact, his role? So be it. But there would be more than a little hell to pay for his ridicule.

Isibéal looked at her luminescing hands and basked in the stinging power that traced her nerves. Skills long bound by the grave crackled to life, her long-neglected senses sputtering.

Holding her arms away from her body, she let her power run unchecked for the first time since she’d died. She pulled on her cursed tie to Lugh, the god who had bound her thusly. For the first time she was glad she could summon more power from her tie to the god than what now seemed such a paltry sum at her immediate disposal. She felt him stir, felt his interest in her wrath. So be it. If teaching Ethan a little respect meant she had to draw on the damned god’s strengths? She would do it, and without apology.

For if delivering a little retribution would feel good, certainly raining undiluted hell would be grand.

Isibéal raised her hands above her head.

Her hair whipped in an incorporeal wind.

And she called the brimstone and rain.

Chapter 3

Ethan had no idea where the native Irish language had come from when he insulted Rowan. Had no idea why he’d called him a “stupid, sheep-loving shit face,” either. It had to have been a fluke. Something he’d heard before. Surely...

Intent on terminating the conversation and getting Rowan out of his rooms, Ethan opened his mouth to speak. And stopped. Gooseflesh decorated his exposed arms as the temperature in his living room dropped from comfortable to for-the-gods’-sakes-someone-light-the-fire cold. His breath condensed on the air, small clouds chugging from between his parted lips. He lifted the whiskey bottle, intent on drowning the last of his urge to argue. A scattering of light caught his attention, and he paused. “What—” he tipped his head toward the door “—is that?”

Rowan turned with great care. “It seems ‘that’ would be your hag-stalker-ghost-wife. You probably shouldn’t leave off the moniker of ‘witch,’ though. It seems rather relevant. Particularly now that you’ve pissed her off.” He inched around the flashes of pale orange light that cascaded like a Fourth of July sparkler from roughly four feet off the floor. “You’re the one who pissed her off, so you’re the one responsible for settling her down.” He reached the door and slipped out, peeking back around the door frame to deliver his parting shot. “Preferably before she does something like, what was it you so randomly accused me of? Oh. Right. Turning you into a frog. Good luck.” He ducked into the hallway then, pulling the heavy door closed with an authoritative boom. A split second later, the iron latch dropped with an ominous clank.

“Coward,” Ethan called.

Interpreting Rowan’s muffled reply proved impossible.

Sure, Ethan could have gone after him, asked the man to repeat himself. He could have argued a bit more. Or he could even have...found one of a thousand more ways in which to avoid the inevitable confrontation with the invisible woman.

He sighed.

Avoidance was no longer an option. Intentional evasion would only allow things to escalate and leave Ethan hiding behind the Druids’ proverbial skirts. And Ethan did not hide behind anyone’s pleats and folds, maxis or minis, round gowns or kilts.

Taking a deep breath, he focused in the general direction he thought the woman stood.

Or did she hover? Crouch? Float? Whatever.

“This is going to be awkward, seeing as I can’t—” he gestured at the cascading sparks “—you know, see you. So I’ll just talk in your general direction and hope for the best.”

A book flew from the shelf and careened off his shoulder. “Ow!”

He spun away from the next book only to be pelted across the abdomen with the contents of the slag bucket from the hearth.

Ash billowed around him and created ephemeral clouds, the dark mass ballooning as it was pushed toward the ceiling, driven by an unnaturally pernicious wind. The gritty residue destroyed his white shirt and khaki pants, covered his exposed skin and burned his eyes. Racked with chest-rattling coughs, he covered his mouth and nose as he tried to steal even a single deep breath.

He needed to shut Sparky here down. Now. Her sparkler display had evolved from orange to a deep crimson. Ethan couldn’t envision a situation where that could possibly bode well.

Pulling his shirt up over his lower face, he squinted through the worst of the fallout and moved forward. The gritty stuff was everywhere. That wasn’t what had his ire up, though. It was the idea that she’d come into his space in what had become his home and wrecked his stuff that thoroughly pissed him off. Not only that, but now there was this monstrous mess to contend with. He coughed, and the ash in his throat seemed to congeal. A second wave of ash rushed over him as the winds stirred with more aggression, whipping against his skin.