Read Online The Selkie Sorceress (Seal Island Trilogy, Book 3) by Sophie Moss - Free Book Online Page B

elbows on the bar. “She told my brother she wasn’t interested. She told him, and his two friends, to leave her alone. But they were young and madly in love. They started following her around the neighborhood, knocking on her door in the middle of the night, singing her songs from the street when the rest of us were trying to sleep.”
    “How did she take that?” Sam asked.
    “Not well.” The bartender pushed back, sliding a pint of Smithwicks down the bar to a customer. “But where other women might have told them off or put a stronger bolt on their door, Glenna locked herself in her apartment and painted those orange roses.” He jerked a thumb toward the trash can. “The ones you saw there? Only half a dozen of them in all of Ireland.”
    Sam reached for his glass and took a long sip.
    The bartender’s hand shook as he tipped the bottle, topping off his glass. “The same night she painted those roses, real roses grew in the gardens of the men who were after her. It was the middle of winter, but these orange blooms lit up like they were made of sunlight. We had to shut our blinds so we could sleep at night. Some of us went so far as to cross the street so we didn’t have to look at them.”
    Sam thought of the roses growing outside his house, glowing as if their petals were on fire. He thought of Glenna in her robe, desperately trying to destroy them.
    “When a week passed and she didn’t come out of her home, my brother and the others finally gave up,” the bartender continued. “Brokenhearted, they came into the pub and drank themselves senseless.”
    Sam nodded. That was pretty standard, wherever you lived.
    The bartender slid the rag off his shoulder and wiped it slowly over the taps. “At the end of the night, they left and walked home to three different homes along the river. One by one, they fell into the water and drowned.”
    Sam’s hand stilled on the glass. “All three of them?”
    “Aye.” The bartender nodded. “All three in one night.”
    Sam fought to wrap his head around it. He’d come here to talk to a man about Brigid. Not find a string of missing persons connected to Glenna. “And…you think this artist killed them?”
    “I know she did.” The bartender cleared the empty glasses off the counter, stacking them on the shelf under the bar.
    “Then why isn’t she in jail?”
    “We went to the garda and tried to have her arrested, but there wasn’t enough evidence against her. There were witnesses who’d seen how drunk my brother and his friends were before they left the pub. It was unlikely, but possible, that they could have stumbled into the river on their own.”
    “What about bodies?” Sam’s gaze fell back to the few sips of whiskey left in his glass. “Surely, they washed up after a while.”
    The bartender shook his head. “The bodies were never found. But the roses—the day the men died—the roses in their gardens turned black.”
     

     
    THE ROSES FELL, tumbling to the ground. The scent of the petals grew stronger, the sickening sweetness dizzying in the heat. Glenna pushed her heavy hair back from her face, not even noticing the smear of blood on her arms.
    She hacked at the stems, her blade severing the vines twisting up the walls of Sam’s cottage. She gripped Finn’s fillet knife—the sharpest blade she could find on the island—slicing through the thorns.
    Sam didn’t deserve this. None of them did.
    She slashed at the roses, attacking the bush until there was only one long stem left—a thick vine of impenetrable black. She dropped the knife and sank to the ground amidst the knotted thorns.
    A single rose bloomed, with one black petal unfurling in the moonlight.

 
     
     
     

     
     
    O wen chased the football through the rutted streets of the village. It bounced toward Ronan, but Kelsey beat him to it. She squealed as she knocked it away from him and passed it to Ashling.
    “Kelsey,” Ashling called, as they raced past the pub. “Next time