Haunting Embrace by Erin Quinn

stones of the Fennore cliffs. They were jagged and blackened, glistening like rotted teeth against the onslaught of winds, tide, and time. The entire island was surrounded by such barriers, which had kept the Isle of Fennore from habitation for centuries. Invaders had found inhospitable waters and impossible landings when they’d tried to come ashore. Fierce waves had slammed them into rocks while riptides had sucked any survivors down into the cold depths. While the rest of Ireland was pillaged and plundered, the Isle of Fennore remained pristine. The Vikings had called it cursed. The English had called it worthless. The people who finally managed to settle on this island called it a blessing.
    Legend said that Ruairi of Fennore had been the first to navigate the vicious seas surrounding the isle, and he’d done it with mystical powers. He hadn’t walked on water, but the stories told of him sailing his small round curraghs over the tops of the waves, like hovercrafts over flat terrain. When Meaghan was a child, it had been one of her favorite stories. Ironic, if she was right and Ruairi of Fennore really was her half brother . . . a time traveler just like Meaghan.
    Colleen began to walk again, but Meaghan knew in her gut that the woman who would become her grandmother had more to say than what she’d revealed in the cavern, and whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good. Both fascination and fear filled the glance she cast at Meaghan—a look she’d been on the receiving end of many times before from others, but never from her grandmother. Nana Colleen had understood Meaghan like no one else.
    Meaghan braced herself for the worst even as she acknowledged that, at this point, she couldn’t even guess what the worst could be.
    “It wasn’t just Saraid who told me you were coming,” Colleen said. “I saw it myself, though I didn’t know just what I was seeing.”
    Meaghan swallowed a lump in her throat. Her grandmother had visions—sometimes of the future, sometimes of the past. When Meaghan had been a child, Colleen had always known when she’d been up to mischief. She’d always known when her granddaughter was in trouble, too. Often Colleen’s visions came out of sequence and context, but they were rarely wrong.
    “What did you see?” Meaghan asked softly.
    Colleen’s eyes narrowed and Meaghan watched the swift calculations going on behind them. Meaghan hadn’t asked what she’d meant by “I saw it myself” and now Colleen worked through the implications of that and came to the inevitable conclusion. Meaghan hadn’t asked because she already knew.
    “I’ve not had many visions,” she said. “My first came only last year.”
    Surprised, Meaghan blurted, “You didn’t have them as a child?”
    Colleen shook her head. “My mother had them and her mother before her so I knew it was only a matter of time before they started for me. I’m not sure if coming here spurred them to start or if it was just my time, though.”
    Meaghan suspected that the Isle of Fennore had a role in it but she didn’t say it. Instead she waited impatiently for her grandmother to reveal just what had happened in this vision.
    “I saw you with two others,” Colleen said at last. “A big, strapping blonde man with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
    That would be Rory. Her half brother.
    “Beautiful eyes like yours,” she went on, surprising Meaghan. “There was another woman with you. A lovely lass. She had eyes like a stormy sky.”
    Danni. Her half sister.
    “What were we doing, the three of us?”
    “You were in the cavern.”
    “Alone?” she asked.
    Colleen shook her head. “I don’t think so. I heard other voices, but all I could see was you three. That and a book.”
    Meaghan’s mouth went dry. “What book?”
    “Now isn’t that a strange question. Does it matter what book?”
    Yes, it could matter a great deal. Especially if the book had been the Book of Fennore.
    “That’s it? That’s all you saw?