A Gilded Cage (Chronicles of an Urban Druid Book 1) Read online

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No, but I feel it. It tingles like it’s squirming up from beneath my skin. Like it’s alive somehow.”

  “That’s not gross at all.”

  “Right? This morning when I had my shower, I saw the faint outline of the tree of life. The triquetra came around lunch. What does it look like now?”

  Liam brushes a gentle sweep across my skin, and my cells light up inside. It’s the same sensation I got when the handsome weirdo in the alley pressed his palm there.

  “The tree is a brilliant, shamrock green, the triquetra a shimmering royal blue, and circling the whole thing are the words, Glaine ar gcroi. Near tar ngeag. Beart de reir ar mbriathar.”

  “Well, shit.” I flap my shirt in front of me and shuck it back on.

  “You know what that means?”

  “If you’d spent more time paying attention during Irish classes instead of flirting with the girls, you’d know what it says too.” I free my hair and face him. “It’s three sayings, and it means purity of our hearts, strength of our limbs, and action to match our speech.”

  His gaze narrows on me. “That was your toast last night for Emmet. Do you think that has something to do with it?”

  “Indirectly. It’s the three-part family motto of Da’s people back home in Ireland. How weird is it that a guy gets the better of me in a dark alley, presses his hand on my back, and leaves when I pass out?”

  Liam crosses his arms and frowns. “I, for one of many, am damned thankful that’s when the asshole took his leave.”

  “Me too, but how do you explain a family crest magically appearing on my skin hours later?”

  “I don’t… I can’t.”

  “Yeah, me either.” I’m still standing there thinking about last night when the man’s voice drifts into my head. It was right before I passed out. He leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Ye’ve got fight in ye, kin of mac Cumhaill. I’ll give ye that.”

  I blink, and my entire body tingles. “I need to speak to my father right now.”

  The Fifty-first Division Headquarters, where Da has served since he graduated from the academy almost thirty years ago, is a bustling, gritty old law enforcement center on Parliament a block south of King. It’s a heritage building, with decorative masonry, arched windows, and an interesting roofline that looks more like a turn of the century bank than a police station.

  There’s limited parking in a public lot, which is nice, but what I love most about the place is that across the road there’s an original city fire hall complete with shiny brass poles and a Dalmatian named Pongo.

  It’s hot—in fact, I’m cooking with a cotton shrug on and annoyed I have to wear one. With the foresight of not wanting to strip my shirt off at da’s station, I wore a strapless tank with an airy knit sweater. Even that’s too much.

  “It never gets old, does it?” I lock my car and Liam and I cross in front of the fire station.

  For once, I’m more interested in getting inside to the air-conditioning than watching the fireman with no shirts polish their trucks.

  Liam follows my gaze and chuckles. “I’ll take your word for it. I’ve never gotten weak in the knees for a pec wink.”

  I laugh. “Sucks to be you.”

  I wave to Greg working the door and head straight up the staircase on the left. Da knows I’m scheduled to go over my statement, so of course, he’s working in-house for the afternoon.

  “Hey, kiddo.” Da’s partner Marcus lifts his gaze over the monitor of his computer and gives me a once-over. “I heard about last night. How are you?”

  I glance at the concerned faces of two dozen cops I’ve known my whole life and smile. “Right as rain, guys. Seriously. You know us Cumhaills. You might be able to knock us down, but you’ll never be able to keep us there.”

  “Good girl.” Marcus points across the space. “You’re set up in meeting room two.”

  I weave my way through the warren of cubicles with Liam on my heels. “Meeting room two is good. The walls are mirrored so I can read his reaction. There’s no way he can front when he sees the tattoo.”

  “Do you hear yourself, Fi?” Liam casts me a sideways stink eye. “In what world would Niall Cumhaill be associated with a man who attacks his daughter in an alley?”

  I pause with my fingers curved around the handle. “Only one way to find out.”

  Chapter Three

  I’m fuming mad by the time I drop Liam at Shenanigans and park in my spot behind the house. The back door is propped open to catch a breeze, and I fly inside, nearly bowling Emmet down as he comes out of the kitchen. His hands are full, two sweating beers in one, and a bowl of nuts in the other.

  “Whoa, Fi. Where’s the fire?” He shifts to avoid a full-on collision, and a wave of nuts washes the rim of the bowl. They rain down on the hardwood, scattering at our feet.

  I am about to let loose on what a royal shitshow my afternoon was when a squirrel runs over my foot and starts chattering madly at my brother.

  “What the fuck!” Emmet yells, backing up fast.

  Calum jumps through the doorway to the den, spots the squirrel, and squeals like a five-year-old. “Is it rabid? Give it nuts, Emmet. Give it all the nuts.”

  Only my lightning reflexes save the bowl and its contents before my twit brother dumps the nuts on the floor. “I washed that damned floor yesterday. If Slappy Squirrel wants nuts, she can eat the ones you already dropped.”

  As if agreeing with me, the little brown rodent chirps and switches her tail at them. In a flurry of grabby hands, she gathers the discarded peanuts, pockets them in her cheeks, and trots back outside. At the door, she sits back on her haunches and chatters something at me as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Calum waits until the wee beastie bounds off the back steps before he hustles past me to slam the door. “Okay, that was bizarre.”

  My mind stalls out. “Believe it or not, that doesn’t top my list of bizarre today.”

  Calum takes the beers from Emmet and points for him to go back to the kitchen for more. “Did something happen at the station? I figure you’d be used to that particular brand of strange and unusual by now.”

  “It did, and I am.”

  I accept the beer he offers and plunk into what is known as my chair. It’s a pretty blue reading chair that our mom bought for herself a year or two before she died. Because of its delicate lines and it being the only dainty thing in a house with six men, they leave it for me.

  “Okay, what did I miss?” Emmet comes in with another beer and a bag of chips. “What has your freak-o-meter redlining?”

  I take a swig of my beer and set the bottle on the side-table coaster. “This morning after I showered, I found a gift left behind from the man who attacked me last night.”

  Both of them tense and I wave away their panic.

  “Nothing too horrible but look at this.” I peel off my sweater, gather my hair to the front of my shoulder, and turn so they can see.

  “He inked you?” Emmet says.

  “Sort of… I guess. Only it isn’t a tattoo, and it’s been getting darker and more detailed all day. It doesn’t hurt or need to heal. And look at what it says.”

  They both lean in and read the Irish.

  “I don’t get it,” Calum says. “You’ve been branded with the Cumhaill family motto? Why? By whom?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. I showed it to Da at the station this afternoon, and he went into complete lockdown denial. Then, he checked his watch and suddenly had things to attend to. He left, denying he knew anything about it.”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” Emmet says.

  “Emmet, he left me to go over my final statement without him being there.”

  Calum frowns. “Okay, that’s weird. There’s no way he’d leave the details that might catch that guy to anyone else. He’d want to be there for sure.”

  “Still,” Emmet says. “Do you think he knows more than he’s admitting to?”

/>   “Who’s not admitting to what?” Dillan says, coming in from the hall. Calum and Emmet catch him up, and I show him the tattoo. “Oh, if the oul man told you he didn’t know what that is, his pants are on fire.”

  “I knew it.” I drop my hair, still incensed that he lied to me, then ditched me to avoid answering my questions. Doesn’t a girl have a right to know about her mysterious mugging tattoo? “What I don’t know is why he lied, what the tattoo means, or what the hell a guy in the alley did to make it appear?”

  “I can’t help you there, but I know he’s lying about not knowing about that image.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’ve seen it before. When we were kids, Aiden and I got into his things from Ireland. We found a cool dagger at the bottom of his trunk. That Celtic tree is the image stamped into the leather sheath.”

  “So why not tell me? What’s the big secret?”

  Dillan shrugs and accepts the beer Emmet hands him. “I dunno. What I do know is, Da would never let his shit put you or any of us in danger. If he didn’t know the connection before you showed him your back, he does now. Give him a chance to sort it out and see if he comes back to you with an explanation.”

  “Like I have any choice in the matter.”

  The doorbell rings and I head to the front of the house to see who it is. Emmet and Calum both cut me off and practically body-check me into the wall to take the lead. “What? Now I’m not allowed to answer my front door? Boys, get over yourselves.”

  “You can never be too careful,” Calum says. “Maybe the squirrel told his friends about how good our nuts are, and they’ve circled back for more.

  I laugh. “First off, you are nuts. Second, do you think if the neighborhood squirrels have organized they would use the doorbell to ask for more nuts?”

  “That was one freaky intelligent squirrel.”

  “What the hell are you guys talking about?” Dillan asks, looking utterly lost.

  Emmet has already answered the door and is talking to whoever it is. He leans back, his grip still firmly on the door. “Fi, there’s a registered letter here, and this guy wants you to sign for it.”

  Dillan and Calum both eye the delivery person up and down like he’s a person of interest in a potential crime about to be committed. Only when they’ve thoroughly reduced the poor guy to a nervous wreck, do they let me go to the door.

  Calum frowns. “Registered mail? Could this day get any more bizarre?”

  I sign for the letter and roll my eyes. Save me from well-meaning men. “Registered mail isn’t common in our life, but it isn’t bizarre.”

  I open the manila envelope and pull out a folded piece of paper. No, it’s not paper, it’s thick and textured like a sheet of old, handmade parchment. “Okay, maybe it’s a little bizarre.”

  Emmet looks over my shoulder and points at the green wax seal holding the ends of the parchment closed. It’s the same tree of life and Celtic logo that I now wear on my back.

  “Okay, Calum, you’re right. It’s full-on bizarre.”

  “What does it say?” Dillan asks when we return to the living room, and the four of us sit and reclaim our beers. Condensation made wet rings on the coasters, and I’m thankful that the boys are house-trained enough that they use them. Coaster training took a lot of yelling and more than one bloody nose to get it through their thick heads. I exchange my beer for the letter, wipe my fingers dry on my jeans, and break the seal.

  “The writing is fancy,” I say, studying the smooth lines and long tails and curls of the penmanship. “It’s inked in some kind of calligraphy.” I read the first couple of lines in my head, stop and start back at the top reading aloud. “Okay, boys, you’re not going to believe this…”

  My dearest Fiona,

  Forgive the bluntness of this letter arriving unsolicited and likely unwelcome to yer home. If I were not yer granda and fast approaching the end of my time on this earth, I would never introduce myself in such a manner.

  A lifetime ago, your da and I parted ways. True to the passions of our family, it was a heated and vocal event. We pictured his future differently and he left Ireland, never to return. The rift broke his mam’s heart, and I’ve long regretted it.

  When Aiden was born, I tried to make it right and haven’t stopped trying for almost three decades. To no avail. I wish with everything in me that yer gran and I could’ve watched yer family grow.

  Ye must know by now yer da is a stubborn man. He’ll not hear my apology, so I beseech the youngest and most soft-hearted of my heirs….

  Come home, mo chroi. Visit an oul man before the final set of his sun. There is much I need to teach ye about yer heritage. There are heirlooms that belong to yer family. It would ease my passing to know they were in yer hands.

  To Aiden, Brendan, Calum, Dillan, and Emmet: I’m proud of the men ye’ve become. Yer calling to do right warms my heart. I’ve followed ye all from a distance, watching, and hoping that one day we’ll meet.

  All my love and devotion,

  Granda,

  Lugh Cumhaill

  P.S. If ye mention this to yer da—and I’m sure ye will—know that he’ll forbid ye to come. I’m sorry to put ye in the middle of such a situation. It’s that important.

  Dillan reaches toward me, and I pass him the letter. “We have a gran and a granda in Ireland? Why didn’t we know that? Why don’t we know them?”

  “Because the bastard disowned me,” Da snaps while storming in from the den’s open doorway. He snatches the letter from Dillan’s hand, looks it over, and huffs. “If he’s not my da, then it stands to reason he’s not yer granda.”

  “But, Da,” Calum says. “It sounds like he’s sorry and tried to make it right. Don’t we get a say in this?”

  Da grips the letter tight in his fingers and rips it in half. Then, he puts the pieces together and rips it again. My heart lurches with each renting tear, and I want to snatch the bits from his hands. There’s no point.

  Rip after rip after rip; the pieces grow smaller.

  My eyes sting, and I blink back tears. “You had no right to do that. That letter was addressed to me. Maybe I want to hear what Granda has to say. Maybe I want to hug my gran and see where you grew up. What’s so wrong with that? Were they horrible to you?”

  Da scowls. “Och, of course not.”

  “So, if they simply wanted a different future for you and you stood your ground and built the life you wanted, why can’t you make amends and let us get to know them now?”

  My father takes the confetti bits left from my letter and stuffs them into his pocket. “Because I know the man, Fiona. The moment he gets his claws into one of my kids, he’ll size ye up for a future ye never wanted. The same future I walked away from thirty-five years ago.”

  I chuff. “Da, the man doesn’t know us. He doesn’t hold designs on our plans.”

  “And ye’d be wrong on all accounts if ye believe that,” Da snaps, the vein on the side of his head throbbing. “Forget hoppin’ the pond fer a grand family reunion. It won’t be like that. What he offers, yer best without. The only truth in that damnable letter is that I do forbid it. Ye won’t go to him. Ye won’t speak to him. And if he was here and says he has no watch, yer not even to give him the time of day.”

  “Come on, Da,” Emmet protests. “He can’t be that bad.”

  “He’s worse. Trust me. Ten minutes in the door and he’ll have yer sister’s future planned and her head filled with tales of Cumhaill family traditions. I’ll not have it.” He gives us all a final glare. “That’s the end of it. I’ll not hear another word on the matter.”

  We hold our breath as he storms off.

  The front door slams and I wince, anticipating the shattering of glass. By some miracle, it doesn’t come. I sink into my chair and cast a glance at my brothers. “So, we know where Da stands on the matter.”

  “I guess we do,” Dillan says.

  I pick up the manila envelope from where it fell down the crack o
f my chair cushion and feel something else inside. “Do any of you know where Da was raised? Maybe we can research the area and contact Gran and Granda ourselves. How many Lugh Cumhaill’s could there be in Ireland?”

  Calum laughs. “That’s our Fi. Deadset on doing the opposite of whatever she’s told not to.”

  I ignore the jibe, my mind still spinning. If my tattoo links back to our family heritage and Da refuses to tell me what that’s about, maybe Granda knows. Spontaneous branding isn’t normal. If my GQ mugger did something to me, I want to know what.

  “Look.” I scan the room. “Don’t tell me you all aren’t curious. We have grandparents—people who want to get to know us. People who tried to play nice and make amends with Da, but were refused. If Granda is dying and reaching out, it has to be now. We should try to find him.”

  Dillan curses. “Did you miss the part where the top of Da’s head blew off and splattered the stucco? He stood here two minutes ago and forbade us from looking into this.”

  I pull the rectangular slip of paper from the envelope and study it. “Okay, I won’t research him. Are you happy?”

  Dillan’s gaze narrows. “No. I know that look—we all know that look. You have a bad idea festering, and it’s going to bite us in the ass, I know it.”

  I hold up a paid travel voucher in my name for a flight to Kerry, Ireland. “Well, if we know the bite is coming, why play it safe? Who’s driving me to the airport?”

  Chapter Four

  I quickly realize it’s one thing to get fired up and hop on a plane to find my long-lost grandparents, and quite another to face an airport carousel, jetlagged, three thousand miles from home, and realize that no matter how long I stand here, that chute won’t barf out my suitcase.

  “Sorry,” the attendant says when I explain things to him. “The baggage claim office is there. Queue up, and they’ll take down yer tale of woe.”