“She said she’d meet me at my place tonight so we could discuss it.”
Nolan licked a film of beer foam off his lips and gave Shane a funny look. “Good luck, man. I mean it. You’re gonna need it.”
Siobhan was surrounded by a precarious tower of books in the rare book room at the main branch of the New York Public Library. She’d been coming so often since she’d learned about her fate, the lady at the front desk didn’t give her a lecture about treating the manuscripts with respect anymore. She would just smile and nod to Siobhan and occasionally say, “Still working on your PhD, honey? You’ve been at it a long time.”
She sure had. Long enough she knew these texts—all in old Gaelic—cover to cover. But the answer was in here somewhere, a way to protect herself from being killed. Under normal circumstances she had the utmost respect for the wacky rules her clan enforced on her. No boys, no booze, no fun. Fine, she was a sworn protector, she could accept that. Yet her male cousins were allowed to fornicate with the regularity of frat boys because they had to spread the seed.
This one rule, though—it being her duty to die—wasn’t fair, not as far as Siobhan was concerned. In seven generations no one had been sacrificed to the gate, and in all that time nothing terrible had happened. Her being born a girl was a complete fluke. One chromosome of difference and she wouldn’t have to worry about this.
She closed the book in front of her and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
What did she think Shane could do to help? He wasn’t a scholar and he didn’t know anything about her people’s laws. Yet since meeting him she was becoming more and more certain he was the key to protecting her rapidly dwindling future.
Flipping open another book, she scanned the familiar pages, the Gaelic words translating before her as if the whole thing were written in English.
And the daughters will be not mothers. They are pure of blood and virtue, and the untainted women of the clan, on the day of their twenty-fifth year, shall give their virginal essence to the gates—
Siobhan’s head shot up and her heart hammered. Virtue. Untainted. Virginal. Those were loaded words in any language. And her father had practically beaten it into her how important it was she remain pure.
At the time she’d thought it was because a pregnant guardian of the gateway would be next to useless in battle. Which was true. But somehow she’d missed the underlying reason even after reading the texts hundreds of times. And it was so simple and obvious she actually smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead.
Shane could help her after all. He might be the perfect person to do it.
She needed to have the virtue fucked out of her.
Chapter Seven
After leaving the bar, Shane had done his own reading.
He’d sat on his living room floor and switched back and forth between a text called Ancient Druidic Weapons—which didn’t give him the warm and fuzzies for Siobhan’s family—and the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Goblins and trolls and griffins and hydras, oh my. He knew it wasn’t a decisive collection of real monsters, but if the first two were real, he was betting some of the other shit in the book might be legit too.
It helped to be prepared for anything.
A soft knock on the door announced Siobhan’s arrival. Shane grabbed a wrinkled Iron Maiden shirt off his fourth-hand couch and tugged it on, covering his bullet scar and tattoo. He did up the button on his jeans as he was pulling open the front door.
“I’ve been doing some research on these dru…” His voice drifted off when he looked at her.
Instead of the tough-chick, all-black, warrior ensemble she’d been rocking the previous night, it seemed like a different woman was standing in his doorway. She wore a pretty—if old-fashioned—blue floral dress cut short above the knee and had a plunging neckline that drew his attention right to her breasts. Her red hair was styled in waves, and he couldn’t help but see she was blushing. It made her freckles stand out. Freckles—he noticed—that covered her shoulders and peppered the otherwise creamy skin on her chest.
He swallowed hard.
“Hi,” she said, an unfamiliar shyness in her tone.
“Hi?” he ventured, unsure of what he should be saying. “You look…pretty.” He prepared himself to be punched by stepping back into the apartment. Instead of unleashing her fury, Siobhan took the move as an invitation and followed him in.
“Thanks.” She looked down at her ensemble and blushed a deeper shade of red.
Shane pushed past her and shoved a pile of old chip bags and dirty socks off his couch onto the floor. “Wanna sit down?”
Siobhan shuffled nervously. “I…”
“Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“I’m not saying I’m an expert in what’s normal for you, seeing as I’ve known you all of twenty-four hours and all, but you’re acting a bit weird.”
“I did some reading this afternoon.”