Page 17 of Bargaining with the Devil

Her glass was empty. She got up and crossed to the whisky. He glanced her way and then back to his work. After she’d poured herself another tumbler full, she returned to her seat by the fire again, bringing the bottle with her. No point making a third trip.

"Does it help?" he asked without looking up again.

“Does what help?”

“The whisky. Does it quiet the memories?”

The slice of his soft words was so quick, so clean, that she didn't feel the pain from them at first. When she did, it stole her breath.

“Yes, sometimes,” she said once she could answer. “What of it?” She pointedly took another large sip. She would not be ashamed. She would not let herself care what he thought.

“’Tis an attractive solution, sure. But it becomes a habit for some folks. I’ve seen more than one person slip away to it.”

“I suppose you’ve never needed a drink to help you sleep.” She let sarcasm color every word. “Undoubtedly you have no memories of your own that need quieting, being such a fine upstanding citizen.” It was a low blow given what he did wasn’t for pleasure or personal profit but assigned to him in the name of some higher cause.

“If you’re talking about the work, most of the men I’ve killed deserved it.” His mouth was flat. “Knowing that, I’ve never lost sleep over it.”

She wouldn’t feel guilt at her blow having landed.

Most of the men, he said. Not all. “Some don’t deserve it?”

“Mistakes get made. I do as I’m told, nothing more, nothing less. I don’t doubt mistakes get made by others, instructing me on targets. And death can’t be walked back, after.” He laid the knife down and removed the strop from the chair, placing it beside the grindstone. “But ’tisn’t me making that decision. So ’tis not for me to be regretting it either.”

Cold as ice, Ciarán Quinn. Cold as Death himself. And living by his own code, no one else’s.

“Then too, most of us aren’t purely good or purely evil, aye?” He took up a small bottle of oil and what looked like the pistol’s firing mechanism. He carefully dripped oil along the joins and crevices of the metal. “The lowest, most despicable man might have a mam he loves. Mayhap he has a little daughter at home who briefly showed him a moment of pure beauty when he first held her.”

Poetry, coming from Death’s lips. “And it doesn’t bother you?”

He wiped away excess oil with a small cloth. “Some would say it should. My mam would if she knew what I do. ’Tis why I’ll never tell her; ’twould upset her too much. My sisters too. But nay, it doesn’t bother me. ’Tis like this, Lucy. Life’s an unfair bargain some of the time. Bad things happen to good people who’ve never made a wrong move in their lives. And there’s not much we can do about that if it happens to us. Keep hoping for the best, for ourselves and those we love. Go onwards, living our lives. No matter what.”

“Easy for you to say.” Her voice was bitter. She didn’t care. “If you never lose sleep at night. If you’ve no memories you need to quiet.”

“I didn’t say I never lose sleep,” he said softly. “Just not about the lives I’ve taken. There’s one memory that haunts me every day of my life. ’Twill forever, every moment I’m still above ground and breathing.” He looked at her again. “Even so, I’ve only ever used drink for it hard but one time. Only the once, and never again.”

Lucky, if he had only one memory that so plagued him. She had far more than one.

His movements were efficient fitting the pistol back together. “’Twould be easy enough, sure. Drinking those thoughts away in the night, falling into a dreamless sleep. But ’twould still be there in the morning regardless. I’d still be living with it all the same. The fuckin’ memory and the fuckin’ pain both.”

What could have carved his soul so deeply, this man who was so casual about being an instrument of death? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Quinn laid the assembled pistol back on the table and rose, his still-damp trousers clinging to his hips and thighs. Arse too, when he shifted to retrieve the empty second glass.

He turned towards her, long and lean and lit by oil lamp, so much muscle and skin and man. Her whisky-seared mouth went dry.

She was ogling him just a little—which he’d noticed, judging by the lift of his mouth. But she wasn’t going to avert her eyes like a bashful maiden this time, not like she had earlier. If he was comfortable, without the least shame in his skin, why shouldn’t she look her fill? Besides which, it was a lifetime ago since she’d been a bashful maiden. That version of her was long since gone.

He brought with him the smell of the oil he’d used on the pistol and the fresh scent of rain. He stopped a step from her, holding out his hand for the whisky bottle. His fingers brushed hers briefly, warm, as she passed it over, and sensation skittered up her arm.

He poured his glass nearly full, leaning to replace the bottle beside her chair. This close, she could see the silver tracery of an old scar on his biceps. A strong urge to touch it, to discover how the texture compared to the skin beside it, had her swaying towards him, reaching out a hand.

Which he caught firmly in his, trapping her fingers. “Don’t be doing that right now, a mhuirnín. But if you’re still looking at me this way tomorrow, we’ll discuss it, sure.”

Her face flamed. Mortified, she tried to pull her hand free from his.

He kept ahold of it. “Don’t misunderstand me. ’Tis not that I’d mind it, you touching me. But not tonight, not with whisky in your veins.”

“I’m fine.” She yanked her hand free. “And don’t start moralizing at me again about the whisky.”