Read Online Texting the Underworld by Ellen Booraem - Free Book Online Page B

Something glistened on her cheek. “I didn’t know banshees could just plain cry.”
    â€œNor did I.” She swiped at her cheek. “Potent Mother Maeve. Must be because I have a body again. I’ve not done this for centuries.” A tear ran down the other cheek. She let it go. “I am almost enjoying it.”
    â€œHow long since you saw anyone from your family?”
    â€œI saw my father . . . oh, it must be many hundreds of years ago. I don’t know the numbers.” She flipped the top card off her Trivial Pursuit stack and made a show of studying it, although Conor doubted she even saw it. “I tell myself stories about my life—how I died, that I was betrothed to a man who stank, how I danced with . . . Well, never mind that. But I can’t remember how it
felt
: the touch of my mother’s hand, the sound of the children’s voices. I know there was pain and sorrow, but it’s all so distant from me now.”
    â€œThat’s good, isn’t it?”
    She smiled thinly. “Yes, I suppose. But the joys are distant, too.”
    There was that mosquito-flute sound again. Conor tried to shake it out of his head, but failed. “What
is
that music? It’s driving me nuts.”
    â€œWhat music?” Ashling sounded subdued.
    â€œShh. Listen. Don’t you hear it? And . . . and there it is, that sweet, smoky smell.”
    Ashling looked up. “I do smell smoke—is it not your own cooking fire?”
    Conor shook his head. “You don’t hear the music?”
    â€œNo, none at all.”
    â€œIt’s
constant
.” Conor shut his eyes to catch the tune. Sure enough, it was the same one he’d been hearing all day. He whistled it.
    She wrinkled her forehead. “I used to know that tune, but I can’t remember . . . Where did you hear it?”
    â€œI told you. It’s in my head and I can’t get rid of it.”
    â€œWhistle it again.”
    He did.
    She shook her head. “No. I cannot remember. Perhaps something I heard from my father . . . I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat happened to your father, anyways?”
    Ashling didn’t answer, but whistled the flute tune under her breath.
    â€œHey.” Conor jiggled her elbow. “I asked, what happened to your father?”
    She gave her head a shake. “I don’t know where he is. I am sure he’s been sent back again and again. He could be you for all I know.”
    â€œHoly macaroni.” He was just Conor . . . Could he be Maedoc, too? A big hairy guy in furs, who fought with a sword and had his eyebrows under control—how could that guy be him?
    â€œOr maybe not.” Ashling took his chin in her hand and gazed into his eyes—for a minute, the whole world was merry blue with wedges of gray. Her breath was on his cheek, smelling like woodsmoke but also the fresh air when you came out of the subway. His stomach gurgled.
    Ashling let go of his chin.
    â€œSo?” Conor said.
    She fumbled for her comb. “You may be somebody, but I don’t know who.” She started unbraiding her hair. She wouldn’t say anything more.
    Conor changed into his pajamas in the bathroom, head spinning. Who
was
he? And who was Ashling—a monster threatening his family, or a girl who missed her dad?
    It was too much; he couldn’t figure it out; it was no fair that he was going through all this. No fair at all.
    But one thing was almost certain: Whatever she was, monster or girl, Ashling had come for Grump.
    She wasn’t going to get him. He, Conor O’Neill—who used to be somebody else, maybe somebody brave—he would not allow it.

Chapter Six
    There are drums behind the flutes. He moves closer, watching the dancers circle a bonfire, hand in hand. There is Ashling’s red head—she’s holding hands with a woman on one side, a brawny young man on the other.