Celtic Evil: A Fitzgerald Brother Novel: Roarke Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’ve
dated.”
    “Don’t doubt it, a gra ,” Roarke smiled,
easing his shirt off since he knew it was just the two of them.
“Especially considering I really only plan on dating one
woman.”
    “Flattery won’t help you
now, Roarke,” Jessie countered, going back to brushing her hair but
watching her friend’s reflection and again seeing the white scars
that littered his back from years earlier, and knowing where the
many others were. “Roarke, are they hurting?”
    Rolling off the bed to go
close the balcony doors to stop the street noise, he paused next to
her to meet her eyes in the mirror. “Let it go, luv.” He read her
concern easily, lightly pressing a soft kiss into her hair. “I’m
fine, just a slight headache.”
    A mild lie, he knew, but
Roarke knew if he told Jessie the headache had been with him for
the past several days and had turned into a full-fledged migraine
tonight that she’d worry, and he didn’t want her to
worry.
    He sat back on the bed to
watch Jessica finish what he knew was a nightly routine. Roarke was
silently considering how to go about conning his friend into
spending the night in his room, which was something they’d never
talked about before, when something from the mirror made him
look.
    The mirror on the vanity
was a large oval one that was almost one hundred fifty years old
and was sure to look different in varying lights, but as Roarke’s
eyes narrowed to study it harder he found it more difficult to see
Jessica’s reflection as it began to cloud over.
    “What the bloody…?” he
whispered, easing forward on the bed as a form began to take shape
in the mirror and he found himself looking into green eyes that he
remembered so well. “Mum?”
    Jessica had been finishing
brushing her hair, wincing as a wound on her shoulder pulled
slightly, she glanced back to see if Roarke had noticed when she
frowned at him. “Roarke? What’s wrong?”
    Her friend was sitting up in the center of
the bed; his one hand flat on the bed while his other was reaching
toward something.
    Roarke’s skin had always been a healthy tan
from his time outdoors but right then it was a near sickly white
while his eyes were almost dilated as he stared at her mirror.
    “Roarke, what’s wrong?” she
asked, shifting on the seat to look at him fully and not liking the
sudden feeling in her room. “Roarke!”
    After trying to get his
attention for several minutes but failing and feeling an uneasy
sense of dread getting closer, Jessica keyed the in-house intercom
while keeping her eyes on her now trembling friend. “Cam! I need
you and Nick up here, now!”
    Not able to hear the
response from her friend as a sudden squealing came from the radio,
and looking at the radio to check it, she felt the cold before she
saw the shadow. “Shit!”
    Jessica started to swing on
the stool to face the growing shadow but didn’t have a chance to
move or defend herself as something cold gripped her throat,
stilling her scream and her powers.
    Very oblivious to the
events threatening his friend, Roarke was staring into the bright
green eyes of his mother as they formed in the ancient
mirror.
    “Mum?” he asked again, his usually quiet
voice going even more so as the image of Brenna Kerrigan Fitzgerald
formed in the mirror.
    “Hello my brave little
boy,” the vision of his mother spoke in her same soft accent that
he recalled so vividly and at times so painfully. “It’s been so
long, Roarke.”
    Blinking his eyes and
struggling to breathe, he finally was able to see the solid image.
“Are you real?”
    The same soft musical laugh
he’d grown up hearing and adoring until he was eleven. It was his
mother’s laugh that he could recall hearing before his nightmare
started fifteen years earlier.
    “Do you doubt your own
eyes, boyo?” she asked cheerfully, stepping fully from the mirror
and wearing a lovely, form fitting dress in a bright sunny yellow
that seem to go perfectly with her blond hair. “Can you