Dances With Demons - A Phoenix Chronicle Novella Read Online Free PDF

saw why. The steering wheel was on that side of the car.
    “Right,” I muttered. “You drive on the wrong side of the road.”
    I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the fellow’s scowl deepened. “Leave it to an American to decide which side is the right side.”
    He had a point. I scooted around the rear of the car and got in. The man struggled to set the heavy box behind us. I reached out a hand, and he jerked it away, before rising onto his knees and placing the heavily taped container on the backseat. He was starting to get on my nerves.
    “I was just trying to help.”
    “’Tis my responsibility.” He faced front and quickly merged into traffic.
    “Seems heavy to be dragging around.”
    He lifted one shoulder. “It’s too precious to be out of my sight.”
    “What—?” I began, and he interrupted.
    “I’m Ben.”
    “Short for Benjamin?”
    “No,” he said shortly. “Just Ben.”
    “No last name?”
    “Screwed.”
    I blinked. “Your name is Ben Screwed?”
    “With a ‘K.’” He made an annoyed sound at my continued confusion. “S-k-r-e-w-d. Skrewd.” He gave the word a bit of an Irish lilt. I still had to cough to keep from laughing.
    “Just Ben it is,” I managed. “Have you known Quinn long?”
    “All of my life.”
    An odd statement. Ben appeared old enough to be Quinn’s grandfather. He’d probably meant to say “all of his life.” Considering his perpetual scowl, I decided not to correct him. I might be slow, but I could be taught.
    Silence settled over us, broken only by the chug of the engine. I felt compelled to fill it. Maybe I couldn’t be taught after all.
    “Do you know what Fiat stands for?”
    Ben slid his dark, button eyes in my direction before returning them to the road.
    “Fix it again tomorrow,” I said brightly.
    Nothing.
    “My... uh... husband had one when we first met.”
    Max had hated that car—a lemon from the day he’d bought it.
    “I can fix anything with an engine,” Ben said.
    Which would explain the grease on his shirt.
    We’d left the city and headed into the rolling countryside, which was a lot less green than I’d imagined. Weren’t the hills of Ireland supposed to be so green they made your eyeballs hurt?
    “How far to Quinn’s place?” I asked.
    “He told ye it was his place?”
    “Isn’t it?”
    The old man shrugged. “Not more than forty kilometers or so.”
    A partial answer. I wasn’t surprised. Ben seemed to dole out words as if they were precious gold. I had a sudden image of him in a leprechaun suit with a pot of the stuff. I coughed to cover my inappropriate giggle. It would only get me into trouble.
    As would my admission that I had no idea how far forty kilometers might be. To say so would mark me again as a typical American, with little to no knowledge of or interest in the metric system.
    The road became less of a straight highway, more a winding trail, the farther away from Dublin we went. In the distance, the sea swelled with whitecaps.
    I enjoyed the scenery and kept my mouth shut until we crested a hill and headed into the village that filled the dale. The cloud cover was so low the place appeared shrouded in mist.
    “Like Brigadoon,” I murmured.
    “That’s Scotland.”
    “Glocca Morra?”
    “There ye go. Though that was imaginary too.”
    I was surprised a cranky old coot like Ben knew anything about the musicals of the 40s and 50s. Though he’d no doubt been around then. I just liked them.
    I was about to ask the name of the not-Brigadoon-nor-Glocca Morra village, when a sign flashed past naming it Doras Dearg . As every sign I’d seen thus far was printed in both English and Gaelic, I was able to read the translation: Red Door .
    “Weird name,” I said an instant before we reached the town proper, where every door was red. “Or not.”
    Ben continued through the village in the direction of the white-capped sea. The road curved so much, and the hills and the dales were so numerous, that it