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his concern. Frank turned on his heel and left.
    Mrs. McClaren lingered and cast a knowing eye over all the things Frank had missed: the crack in the wall, the drooping shoulder of Beth’s blouse, her white knuckles still clutching the iron bed frame.
    The old woman sat on the edge of the mattress, her expression puzzled. “He let you go. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
    “Do you know him? Conn?” Beth loosened her grip on the iron headboard but found she wasn’t ready to let go altogether.
    “That one, no. He hasn’t been about since before my time. His kind, yes. And I can tell you this: they’re as rotten inside as they are beautiful without. I always envied my sister her looks, until she captured the fancy of one of them. She went off with him in sixty-eight. They could hide in plain sight in those days, with their fancy clothes and their long hair. But our mother knew what he was. She tried to warn her, but my sister wouldn’t listen. When I finally caught up with her, she was living on the street in Dublin, nothing but skin and bones. Wouldn’t eat or drink. Didn’t sleep. Just sat there waiting for him to come back. There was nothing to do but bring her home to watch her waste and die.”
    Then she looked Beth straight in the eye and said, “Lord only knows what possessed him to let you go tonight, but you can’t count on his mercy if you should meet him again. Run. Now. As far and as fast as you can.”

Chapter 2

    S o you packed up and ran away from the biggest find of your career because a hot local tried to pick you up?”
    “When you put it that way,” Beth admitted, “it sounds crazy.”
    “How else would you put it?” Helene Whitney, director of development at the museum where they both worked and Beth’s best friend, picked a leaf of wilted lettuce out of her salad. The museum cantina was awful, but it was quick and cheap.
    Beth couldn’t say what she was thinking. That Conn hadn’t felt like an ordinary local. That his glamour, his power, had seemed real. At the time. And she certainly couldn’t tell Helene about the voice that had emerged from her mouth and thrown a grown man across the room. Helene knew about Beth’s talent for finding sites, but she ascribed it to instinct coupled with hard work and research. Not supernatural woo-woo.
    “You had to be there,” Beth said at last. “His clothes, the dagger, the torc . . . everything about him was pitch perfect. He wasn’t just some gothed-out poser. No ordinary reenactor could have produced that level of detail. If it was a prank, it was a pretty elaborate one.”
    “If I had been there, I wouldn’t have passed up a night of wild sex with a handsome stranger.”
    Beth sighed. “You don’t need handsome strangers.” Helene was tall, blond, slender, and gorgeous. “You can have any man you want.”
    “You wouldn’t have any trouble attracting men if you didn’t spend all your time in your office or in a hole underground.” Claustrophobic Helene shuddered at the thought. “You haven’t dated anyone since the divorce. How long has it been? Three years now?”
    “Four,” Beth admitted.
    “Not every man is like Frank. There are good ones out there.”
    “This was not one of the good ones,” Beth said, remembering the way he’d licked his own blood off his hand. She knew a bad boy when she saw one.
    “Have you considered,” Helene said carefully, “that Frank might have been behind this? Think about it. You find a horde of Celtic gold in the morning, and the same evening the tomb’s supposed owner shows up in your bedroom and scares you all the way back to Boston.”
    Beth thought back to the incident in the tomb, the hand brushing her breast. Frank flicking on the flashlight from the other side of the chamber. She felt like a fool. “He played me,” she said. “Earlier that day. In the tomb. He pulled this trick where he groped me in the dark and tried to make me