Page 31 of Irish Fury
HANNAH
The great Hannah Todd,former mediocre artist, psychiatric patient, prostitute for candy, and your newest accomplishment, animal scourge of Dublin.
Hannah clenched her jaw, refusing to acknowledge the digs. She knew killing that last cat would catch her flak. The bastard voices hadn’t stopped reminding her, all day, all night, every waking minute.
It had been a last-ditch effort to control the situation and prevent them from taking over. Hannah found living outside the hospital surprisingly challenging and admitted that she was rusty in ruining people’s lives.
The dead animals would have frightened most people or at least given them pause that something more nefarious was at foot.
Not Margaret Morrow.
That childish bitch practically skipped and jumped rope over the corpses. Now that she’d moved in with a man, getting to her had quadrupled in difficulty. His flat was in an area with several cameras and security measures.
She’d managed to follow his car once. He’d gotten out at Trinity. He looked too old to be a student, probably a professor, plus he was rarely, if ever, alone.
The voices told her to lie low. They had a plan. They always had plans, but they usually involved them crowing about how brilliant they were and how stupid she was.
She lost time two days ago. Five hours of time. They were up to something, and even when she did the breathing therapy to settle her mind that she’d learned at the hospital, the lost time remained void.
Damn her for the last animal stunt. They’d warned her not to go against them. Not to think for herself…
Oh, look, the dumb bitch finally remembered who she answers to.
It isn’t her fault for going after cats. They kind of complement her cat-lady look: fat, hairy, and friendless.
Christ, Hannah. Truly, do something with yourself.
I think we should find another body. One more willing to follow us.
“I thought it would scare her,” she hissed under her breath.
She sat at the end of her hotel bed, the white, untidy sheets bunching beneath her fat thighs. Take-out containers littered the room’s long, white, shiny counter. The scrapbook she’d spent years of her life creating lay open beside her. Mirren MacGregor’s smile beamed at Hannah from each and every page, making her eyes tighten and her teeth clench.
Shame and regret pierced her chest right above her heart. There were days when she barely remembered why she hated her so much. Days she forgot that she was an artist. That she had a mother, a brother.
Doesn’t that feel good, friend.
Punishments always feel good, don’t they?
Ignoring the voices, she moaned as the pain increased, finally looking at her chest. Ahh, that made sense. The tip of her steak knife was digging ever deeper into the flabby meat of her left breast.
She coated her free hand in the blood and gently pressed the print over one of Mirren’s faces, obliterating one of the woman’s hideous smiles.
There were days when she wondered how different her life would be had the voices never come to her.
Lonely. Cold and lonely.
twenty
JONATHAN
Jonathan’s earsburned every time he remembered the…intervention. “Christ have mercy,” he muttered, staring at his reflection in his bathroom mirror. At least his mother had planned their “talk” while his dad and uncle were away.
Apparently, his mom and aunts figured out years ago that he had a thing for Mags. He hadn’t been nearly as ambiguous about his feelings toward her as he’d thought.
He smoothed his hands over his suit jacket. Tonight, he paired his dark navy suit with a pale blue button-up. The gold and sapphire cufflinks that his father had given him for graduation glinted at his wrists.
He turned his head first one way and then the other. Women seemed fascinated by the white color. For him, it wasn’t that unusual, given that he, Daniel, his dad, his uncle Bran, Dagr, and his father, Ulf, all had the same. The grandmother he’d never met sure had strong genes.
