Chapter Six

“Here’s all her stuff. At least everything I could find. Her car is parked out front too,” Ethney said as she handed Grace’s purse to Daire. “How’d she take everything?”

“Better than I thought she would,” Daire admitted while leaning against the doorframe to Grace’s apartment. After the initial accusations, she’d been relatively calm. There were two kinds of people: those who simply couldn’t believe what they saw and those who believed and accepted it without question. He was glad Grace was the latter.

“Good. Now you don’t have to lie to her anymore.” Ethney wagged her brows at him. “You can show her what it’s like to have her world rocked by a dragon.”

Daire shut his eyes and covered his face.

“She’s cute.” She jabbed him in the shoulder. “Plus, she must like you at least a little. I mean, she didn’t go shrieking into the night, and she hasn’t kicked you out yet. I’d take that as a good sign.”

He let his hand slip down to his shoulder where he rubbed at the muscles. “Really?”

“Yeah. Make a move. You won’t regret it,” Ethney said.

He shook his head. Part of him wanted to taste the curvy beauty. “What about Astraea?” he asked.

Ethney snorted. “Who cares? Do you think she doesn’t know we have a little fun, too? At the end of the day, we’re still getting the job done, and that’s the most important thing.”

The other guardian did have a point. Astraea was involved enough to tell them where they were needed and when. Otherwise, she left them up to their own devices unless there was a real emergency.

He opened his mouth to say something but stopped when the water turned off in the bathroom. The apartment walls were paper thin, and he didn’t want Grace to overhear Ethney talking about him getting laid.

“How’s Kevin?” he asked.

“Confused. He gave us a few possible locations for the lycanthrope base, but given tonight, I doubt they’re still hanging around.”

“At least I got a few of them.”

She huffed. “There’s still over fifty of them, and we don’t have a lot of time to hunt them down, especially since one of us has to babysit the kid.”

“We’ll figure it out. I’m going to make sure everything is cool with Grace, and then I’ll be down,” Daire said.

The lightness left Ethney’s face. She licked her lips, her eyes darting past the door and into the apartment. “All joking aside, can we trust her? Do you really think you can leave her alone and she won’t say anything?”

“She won’t say anything.” Grace was curious, but he trusted her to do the right thing.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.” He’d been around long enough to read people. Grace was a good person.

“Everything okay?” Grace asked. Her feet padded across the carpet until she was right behind him at the door.

“Yeah. Ethney was bringing back your things.” Daire handed her purse over to her.

Grace took her bag and hugged it to her chest. “Thank you! I was worried I’d have to call the credit card company and get a new phone and keys.”

“It should all be there,” Ethney confirmed. “I’m Ethney, by the way. It’s nice to meet you.” She squeezed past Daire so she could stick her hand out.

Grace took her hand. “Grace Tyler. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” She shifted her gaze from Grace to Daire. “I’ll see you soon, then?”

Daire nodded his head as Ethney backed out the doorway and hurried back down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“She’s not really your sister, is she?” Grace asked.  “And there probably isn’t a nephew either?”

Daire turned back to her. Her eyes were downcast, and her fingers fiddled with the strings on her robe.

“No. Not by blood, but I think of her like a sister. We’ve worked together for a long time. There is a sixteen-year-old boy in my apartment. He’s been bitten by the lycanthrope. We’re trying to help him,” he told her honestly.

“Is she a dragon, too?” Grace asked.

He shook his head. “A mermaid. She’s a Cancer, which is a water sign. So is Aric, but he’s a Scorpio. He’s a dragon, too, but a water type.”

“So, that’s why he looks like the Loch Ness monster,” Grace said.

Daire chuckled. “I think he might be the monster.”

Her eyes widened, and he laughed harder.

“Aric likes to play those types of practical jokes on people. When you’ve been around as long as we have, you get bored. It’s all in good fun, though. Aric would never do anything to harm anyone.”

“I see.” She kept her eyes trained on the floor while her teeth chewed on her lower lip.

He sobered, concerned by her sudden quietness. “Do you understand? Is this too much for you?”

Grace hugged herself. She turned around and ambled to the couch, plopping down onto the cushions. “I keep going from intrigued to shocked,” she admitted.

“It’s a lot to take in.” He followed her to the couch and took a seat next to her.

“Yeah. It is. Why are you telling me all of this? I don’t understand. If I’m not supposed to know, why tell me?” Her gaze darted up to meet his.

“I don’t want to lie to you, Grace. I never did. I...” He trailed off, unsure how to say the words to express what he was feeling. No one had stirred emotions like this in him since Alannah. “There’s something between us. I don’t know what it is,” he admitted, lifting his hand to reach out and touch her before letting it drop back to his side.

Grace gulped. “I feel it, too.” Her gaze finally drifted up to meet his. “This is crazy.” She inched a little closer.

Daire leaned forward, letting his lips brush over hers. They were soft and had a slight minty taste to them. Her mouth parted and her tongue flicked out, tracing along his lower lip.

He groaned at the feel, deepening the kiss. Her breasts pressed against his chest as she moved forward. His hand went to her behind, pulling her so she was straddling his lap. He wanted Grace like he needed his next breath. The thought scared him and excited him all at the same time.

What was he getting himself into? This couldn’t be anything more than a temporary thing. He’d sworn his services to Astraea for eternity. Grace was mortal.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, pulling back so she could peer into his eyes.

He pushed a damp lock of hair away from her face and sighed. “After the full moon, I’ll have to leave. I don’t have a choice. I don’t want to hurt you, Grace, and I can’t give you anything more than the next two weeks. Even at that, I have a job to do. I’ll be in and out hunting lycanthrope.”

She exhaled loudly and looked down at her fingers that had gripped the lapels of his flannel. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry.” He leaned forward to brush his lips against her forehead.

She slipped off his lap and curled herself into a ball against the arm of the couch, hugging her legs close. “It’s okay. I should’ve known the moment I met you, you were too good to be true.”

He frowned.

Grace laughed before elaborating. “Cute guy, great accent, nice, doesn’t care that I have a kid. You’re too perfect. There had to be something wrong with you, right? It’s probably better that we don’t go there and we just stay friends. It will make saying goodbye easier.”

Daire swallowed. He didn’t think it’d be easy at all to say goodbye to Grace. Things were already hard enough, and he didn’t want to make them harder on her. He had to do the right thing, and that was to let her go.

“So, friends then?” Grace asked with a small smile.

“Friends.” He nodded in agreement while shifting on the couch to get his very alert member to calm down.

“How do we get these lycanthrope?” Grace asked after a few minutes of silence.

“My team and I will do it,” he said. “I don’t want you involved.”

“I’m already involved,” she said, lifting her gaze to his as if daring him to challenge her. “I can help. Tell me what I’m looking for. I’m good at digging things up.”

“You know you can’t use any of this, right?” he asked, remembering she was a reporter. He didn’t think she’d double-cross him, but he didn’t want any surprises either.

“I already told you this is my town. Besides, I was thinking in the shower. Assuming it’s okay with you and the others, this would make one helluva interesting piece of fiction.”

“Fiction? Like a book?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Maybe I could try my hand at writing a fiction story. It might be fun. No one would have to know it was real. Trust me; no one would believe it was real anyway.”

She had a point. It was breaking the rules, technically. Humans weren’t supposed to have any knowledge of the guardians, but the rebel in him asked what it would hurt to let her write a story? “It would probably be okay. Best not to use real names, though.”

“Is Daire your real name?” she asked.

“Yeah. Daire of Clan McCarthy.”

“Clan? I didn’t realize they had those in Ireland anymore.” She frowned, her brow dipping down with confusion. “How old are you?”

He offered her a small smile. “I was born in the early sixth century.”

“That was like...” She trailed off, her eyes drifting to the ceiling as if she were trying to do the math in her head.

“It means on my next birthday I’ll be one thousand five hundred eleven years old.”

“Oh my!” she exclaimed with a gasp. “You’ve been serving Astraea for that long?”

“Not quite. Only since five thirty-six, when my family perished,” he admitted.

“Right. Because those few decades make a big difference. How can you...I just...that’s a long time,” she finally stuttered.

“It is. But I’d do it all again for my family.”

“You must have really loved them,” she whispered.

“I did. Alannah was... When she came into the room, it lit up.” Kind of like it did now when he was around Grace. “Neala was our pride and joy.”

“What happened to them after you made your deal with Astraea?” she asked.

“Astraea turned back time. Instead of Alannah and Neala being home when the thieves arrived, I was. There was famine at the time. They thought my family had food, but we were barely getting by ourselves. The thieves attacked me instead of them, taking my life in exchange for theirs. Alannah remarried one of our neighbors who had lost his wife to the famine. Neala grew up, married, and had three children of her own,” he said with a smile. They’d lived their lives fully thanks to his deal.

“So, this deal you made, it’s for all of eternity?” she asked.

“Yeah.” It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time. Up until this moment with Grace, he’d never thought twice about it, but when he had to leave her in two weeks’ time, it was going to be difficult. There was something about the woman next to him that drew him in and didn’t want to let go.