Kiss of Angels Read online

  "That you're a ghost? If it really doesn't matter, why are we doing this?"

  "Whether I'm a ghost or just a human stretched thin. Sorry, it was my own thoughts I was following, and not what you're after saying. We're doing it because Grace doesn't like to be tricked. Because I've been ill-used, and I won't have that if I can stop it. And because perhaps—" Grace caught her breath and let it out again. "Because perhaps a half life isn't enough, if there's more to be had."

  Tony pushed off the rail and turned to lean on it the other way, his butt against the metal, as he put a hand out toward Grace. She took it and stepped into his embrace, smiling as she nestled against his chest. "The cold might not bother me, but the warmth is nice."

  "What would the crew see, if they noticed me right now? A lunatic cuddling the air, or a woman in black who didn't belong on the ship?"

  "The woman, and then I'd disappear, and in time they'd be telling tales of ghosts. If sailors are as superstitious a lot as they were when I sailed, they might put you overboard for consorting with me. I hate the size of this ship," she said, suddenly fierce and surprised at her own honesty. "There's no sense of the sea with it. It's only a floating fortress, beaten by the winds."

  "Someday," Tony said against her short hair, "you'll have to take me sailing on a real ship. One with sails, I mean. One you can sail."

  She smiled up at him, lips against his jaw. "Will you be my crew, Tony Pulcella?"

  "For as long as you'll have me." Tony fell silent a moment. "Grace, before you do this, before you go into the sea…"

  "Don't be giving declarations of undying love," Grace said, somewhere between serious and amused. "I can't take the melodrama."

  "You bleach your hair almost white and wear black leather so you're a ghostly floating head while you skulk around the city streets," Tony said dourly. "Don't pretend you don't love melodrama. But, listen, I want to say this. I hoped it would be me."

  Grace leaned back enough to see him more clearly, her eyebrows furled. His gaze was serious in the grey afternoon light, though his wind-swept hair did some damage to the noble intensity of it all. More matinee star than untouchable hero. "Hoped what would be you, mo cuishle?"

  "The kiss—your kiss—the—Jesus, it sounds stupid, trying to say it aloud. The kiss of angels. I hoped it would be…a fairy tale. True love's kiss. It sounds worse the more I talk." Tony didn't blush easily with his olive color-ing, but he tried, neck stiff as he turned his face from Grace's gaze. "Talking about true love to a five hundred year old woman who's been married twice—"

  "Thrice," Grace said softly, "though once only in my heart. That was all another lifetime, Tony. Another lifetime, a dozen lifetimes ago. Do you really think I'd be diving into the sea today, if it wasn't an angel's kiss I feel when your lips meet mine?"

  His eyes came back to hers and Grace brushed her fingers over his mouth. "I'm bad enough at showing it, much less saying it, love. Grace learned to play it close to her chest long ago. But I was content, for all those long years. It's only since you that this half life hasn't been enough. Before that wretched witch's daughter opened her mouth, there wasn't much point in saying so, because what could I do? And even if she had opened her mouth, but I hadn't known you? Ah, Grace might have wanted the Tear back to settle a score. But immortality, love. You know how the song goes."

  Tony said, "Grace," his voice suddenly thick, and she pressed her fingertip across his lips, silencing him.

  "Not today, and not tomorrow. I've a Serpent to see and a witch to destroy, but when it's all over, love. When it's all over, then we'll find the words to say."

  He closed his eyes, then nodded reluctantly. His voice was still rough as he opened his eyes to say, "You're a difficult woman, Grace," and Grace's answering smile was blinding.

  "Acht, you think I'm difficult now, wait until I've supped with the Serpent again."

  Before he could object—before she could think—Grace spun away from him, ran, and dove over the side of the ship in one long smooth motion.

  #

  It had been decades—centuries, even—since she'd swum in salt water. The memory of it hadn't left her, though: the taste, the buoyancy, the relentless cold, and the endless swell of waves. Of course, had she been less a ghost and more a mortal, the dive might have done her real harm, a thought she didn't consider until she broke the water forty feet or more beneath the ship's deck. Nor had she needed to take into account massive propellers driving the huge ship forward, the last time she'd taken a dive from a stern. The momentum of her dive had taken her a fair distance away from those huge props, though, and while she felt their pull as they churned the water, it wasn't quite irresistible. She kicked down-ward, swimming deep, while the water filtered through her, not quite able to seize hold and chill her into immobility. As the water turned black, she stopped kicking, waiting to see if she would drift upward again. No: but then, she hadn't expected to. Breathing was for the mortal, and she had long since known she didn't strictly need to, though she usually did, out of habit. But without real breath in her lungs, there was little to buoy her upward, and the water's pressure was more than enough to keep her submerged.

  Swimming all the way to the bottom of the ocean in hopes she'd find the Serpent in the dark had never been the plan, though. Once in his element, all she could really do was—Grace is here, she thought, and tried to make it an open, expansive thought, tinged with amusement. The O'Malley seeks audience with the Serpent.

  The Serpent seemed to share nothing of her humor. Grace tried again, wondering how—if—it would recognize her at all. Your watcher, she said silently to the ocean. The one who knows more than she should, through you. I've come back to you, Serpent. I've a question for you.

  It had a whole world to encircle, she told herself; a whole ocean to listen to. She should be in no hurry to have her call answered, though that was a thought that should have struck her earlier, before Tony had spent weeks arranging his month-long holiday, and before he'd gotten on a huge fecking ship to deliver her to the middle of the ocean. She could have done all of this by herself, including waiting for however long it took for a bit of flotsam in the sea to gain the Serpent's attention. Tony would have worried, to be sure, but he could have worried safely from land, and not wasted his holidays on a slow boat to Europe. It was sheer arrogance to imagine the Serpent would come when she called.

  But then again, Grace had never lacked for arrogance. On a grand scale, a day or a month or a year here won't matter, not to me, she told the ocean, but there's a man up there of whom I'm passing fond, and his days are only mortal in number. You know how fleeting humans are; it's part of why you chose me, so that you might have some sense of our brief lives, through one who was close to them. So I need to speak with you sooner rather than later, beastie, else all the sweetness you long to taste will be dead and gone before I return home.

  The water ought to have surged: it ought to have knocked her around with the Serpent's arrival, but there was no such thing. Its enormous eye simply opened in front of her, shedding light, without a drop of water disturbed by its sudden presence. Grace stood tall in the water, aware she was no more than half the size of one of its teeth, and one of the smaller ones at that. "I've some questions for you," she said again, then laughed suddenly, a sound that carried no distance in the heavy water but which bounced off the Serpent's scaly hide regardless. "That conniving old woman Chelsea told Margrit no one had ever spoken with you since the dawn of time. I fancy Chelsea thinks she knows quite a lot, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing at her theatrics. She claims it's you and the Green Mother who hold this world together, and both of you too remote to be known. But perhaps all we have to do is die, to meet you. There's a whole world of theology that might say so."

  Water rushed around her as the Serpent blew through slitted nostrils as long as Grace stood tall. "No theological debates, then? All right. Is the witch's daughter right, Serpent? Am I not cursed at all, but gifted with immortality since the
first day we met? Was that stone I woke up with a wish in a bottle? And do you know Fúamnach's secret, so I might take it back from her?"

  It—he, it, whatever it was—hadn't spoken to her before; why she expected answers now was beyond her, and yet seemed worth asking. The Serpent stared at her, sharing nothing save for his own size and presence, as if challenging her to doubt what it had granted her. Nor could she: looking into its massive eye she thought she was a fool for even daring to call on it, much less demand answers from it. With a sigh, Grace put her hand out like she might have for a dog or cat, and to her surprise the Serpent moved its huge head beneath her palm. Part of a scale on its head, at least; she reckoned its jaws could hold a blue whale or two whole, and the length of its head went beyond her ability to easily measure. But it put its head beneath her hand regardless, and once more the water didn't stir with its movement. "All right, then," Grace said quietly. "I've learned a tune or two since we last spoke, so I'll sing for my supper and then away with me, great beastie, with no more answers than I had before."

  #

  To Grace's relief, she was deposited back on the cargo ship, and not thrown all the way back to America, or even farther yet, to the shores of Ireland. The Serpent had known, she supposed, where she'd come from, perhaps because humans didn't belong in the middle of the ocean and the passing ships were the only way she might have reached him. She'd been much closer to land, the last time she'd encountered him, and overall she was grateful for the care it showed in depositing her where she'd come from.

  That she returned two days after she'd left was only a problem in that Tony had worried himself pale in her absence, in a way the men serving the O'Malley hadn't, centuries earlier. But none of them had been her lover, either, nor as protective as the police detective tended to be. Margrit Knight—who had ended up with a gargoyle, hah!—had chafed under that protective streak, but Grace found it charming, perhaps because she hadn't met a man in four hundred years who could best her in combat, even if she didn't ghost on him.

  A twinge made itself known along her jaw, and she rubbed it, chagrined at the memory it brought. It was true she hadn't met a man in four centuries who could defeat her, but Margrit had handed Grace her ass not all that long ago. Not that there was any shame in losing to a woman jacked up on vampire blood, but still, the loss stung a little.

  "You're brooding," Tony said sleepily, at her side. His color was better now that she'd been back a few days, and he'd regained the weight he'd lost worrying about her. Grace dropped a kiss on his temple and nestled back down in the mechanical-quiet of their little room. Her sailing ships had been quieter, for all that the wind snapped the sails and shouts of sailors threaded the days and nights alike. They'd been natural sounds, not like the grinding engines and roaring propellers, or groaning steel and hard boots against metal floors. "Are you sure he didn't say anything useful?"

  More awake, the detective wouldn't have asked that again; Grace had already snapped at him about it more than once. But in the dimness of night all she said was, "I'm sure, mo chroí."

  "Then we'll figure it out in Ireland. We'll find an answer." He was quiet a moment, his breathing drowned out by the ship's sounds. "I thought I might see it. The Serpent. I stayed up on the deck, looking."

  "For two days?" Grace pulled back a little, as though she could see him better that way, in the dim light. "No wonder you looked like death warmed over, love. Why would you do that?" A dry note came into her voice, half teasing and more serious than she wanted. "Don't you trust Grace?"

  His eyebrows furrowed, though his eyes stayed closed, and he moved closer, putting his lips against her skin. "Of course I do. I knew you'd come back if you could. Didn't stop me from worrying. But I wanted to see it, if I could. I don't…think you realize how extraordinary you are. Any of you. Not even Margrit, anymore. But I still see all of you through human eyes. I'm as close as any mortal is going to get, but I'm still on the outside looking in. I've never—" Grace, her own eyes closed now, felt the quirk of his smile against her shoulder. "—I've never danced with the devil in the pale moonlight. Which is all right. I've seen what it's done to Margrit. But I can't help wanting to be more a part of it. So I looked for the Serpent."

  "Did you hope it would grant you a Tear, too?" Grace murmured.

  Tony rose up on an elbow, surprise visible on his face when she opened her eyes. "No. I didn't even think of that. I just wanted to see it. The ouroboros. The Serpent. It's at the heart of so many myths, and it's real. I wanted to see that."

  She traced a finger over his jaw, stubbly with a day's growth of beard. "Perhaps that's what Grace will wish for, then. That the good detective might see the Serpent."

  He closed his hand over hers. "Don't you dare. What a waste."

  "Then what should I wish for, Detective?" Grace turned her back to him, drawing his arm over herself to nestle in his warmth. Easier to whisper of wishes and dreams when there weren't brown eyes gazing on her, weighing her words and her thoughts.

  "I don't know, Grace. You don't have to rush it. The Tear has sat around unused for centuries. Another year—or seventy—isn't going to hurt you any." Tony kissed her shoulder.

  "True enough," she said, but kept the rest of it, that seventy years would be far too late for him, within. "What would you wish for?"

  "I don't know. World peace. An end to hunger. To see the earth from space. That one's selfish, though."

  "If the Serpent grants a Tear to a single person, it might be said it's expected to be used selfishly, love. It's not a magic lamp, there for anyone to find through luck alone."

  Tony chuckled. "A lucky find means you have to make unselfish wishes?"

  "It's a gift from the world if you find a magic lamp," Grace said. "You'd best offer the world something in exchange."

  "Is that general Irish philosophy or a Grace O'Malley special?"

  "No idea, love. It's a long time since I've been home."

  #

  It had been long indeed, and though she felt a fool saying it, the words left her lips anyway: "It's changed."

  Of course it had changed; she had known Cork passing well, but it had been sacked and burned and sacked again, all the way up into the twentieth century. If anything was left that she knew, it was buried beneath the roads and sidewalks that had been plastered over the myriad islands that had once held the city between the streams of the River Lee. She knew it wouldn't be the same, of course: she'd seen maps and drawings from before photography, and thousands of pictures since. She knew what it looked like now, but knowing and walking down a broad lamp-lit street that had been river in her day were not the same.

  Worse was Clew Bay, which she'd once known like the back of her hand, and which now looked wrong in a hundred ways. The shoreline had shifted until she, who could have walked it blindfolded in a storm, would no longer trust herself to do so. What had been a track was now a road: the road they drove in on, with Tony swearing every time a car passed him on the right. Grace, who walked everywhere anyway, was more bothered by the different beach and the modern scents carried on the wind.

  Perhaps it would have been better if she could have come by water, but no: by water, the first thing to break her heart would have been her keep, her castle on Clare Island, which had been home to no one and nothing for centuries now. "My children still live here," she said abruptly, to the water.

  Tony, unburdened by troublesome memory but astute enough to leave Grace to hers, turned from a dozen yards down the beach to stare at her in astonishment. "What?"

  "Descendants," Grace corrected herself, still gazing at the water. It, at least, hadn't changed: it rolled slate grey under an equally dark sky, until the distant horizon made them one with each other. "They're Browns now, but I've granddaughters still alive. Four hundred years and the blood of the O'Malley still lives on."

  "You should meet them!"

  "No." Grace smiled briefly. "I wouldn't know them to see them, and it might be worse if I did. What if I saw my
own children in their faces? And they may not be properly here at all, not anymore. The house—it was never mine; there was a fort there, in my time—left the family a little while ago." She fell silent, jaw clenching before she spoke again. "I thought she'd had me by the gut when I left here after the Nine Years' War, but the witch's curse gives no quarter. The O'Malley blood may survive, but there's no-thing left of Umaill at all anymore. No house, no lands, no name. Only my own self alone."

  "Immortality." Tony's voice was pained.

  Grace offered a thin smile. "It's not what we dream it to be, is it? It sounds a grand adventure, and it is. But that adventure comes at a price. A tragedy in unending acts."

  "So you don't want to go out to the island." Now Tony sounded wry.

  Grace laughed, her humor turning. "No, but you do. You want to see where I once lived."

  "I want to see where you ruled."

  A rush of fondness washed through Grace. She prowled to the detective, curling herself around him and smiling. "You know just what to say to warm my old, cold heart, a chuisle. It's not what it was."

  "But it was yours. What is left, it's still part of who you were. And who knows?" Tony smiled. "Maybe when Fúamnach is dealt with, Umaill will be restored."

  "Will I come back and declare myself the O'Malley again?" Grace asked with a smile of her own. "Throw down the gauntlet at the British crown and demand Ireland be free and whole once more? The people rallied to my name for forty years after I died. Will they come fight for me again? Once they've finished putting me through a battery of mental tests and locking me away for my own safety? No, I don't think so. We'll sort the witch and go back to New York, Tony. My life hasn't been in Ireland for a long, long time."

  "If this was a decent fairy tale, that's exactly what would happen."

  Grace shook her head, still smiling. "There are no fairies, love. Not even Fúamnach herself is of the fair folk, but only the daughter of the barrows, as any witch might be. You'll need to walk in another world, if it's sidhe and druids you want to see."