by Siondalin O’Craig
(Celtic Magic, Book 4)
Action Adventure, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal Women’s Fiction, Romance,
Suspense, Urban Fantasy
Date Published: June 16, 2023
A grant to do doctorate work in a bleak corner of Northern Ireland is Penny
Gallagher’s last chance to find her wings and break free of her
oppressive industrialist boyfriend.
When she finds her time there has been engineered for her boyfriend’s
profit, it takes a voiceless giant of a man to help her discover her own
magic.
Excerpt
Copyright ©2023 Siondalin O’Craig
Penny
The Giant’s Causeway
Sean Feeney took another long drag from his pocket flask. Heavy gold chains
around his wrist grated against the flask’s metal rim. Penny Gallagher
watched him sway unsteadily in his skinny designer jeans and black Converse
high tops.
He reached out and draped his bony arm around her shoulders. She
couldn’t tell whether it was to keep himself from falling over or an
awkward maneuver meant to be making a pass at her.
She hoped it was the latter. First off, they were standing at the top of a
cliff. Not just any cliff, but a bare, windswept cliff tumbled with black
hexagonal stone columns jutting out into the North Channel of the Irish Sea
between the north coast of Ireland and the west coast of Scotland. If Sean
dropped onto those lichen-pocked rocks it would mean a fatal mess involving
a lot of paperwork and long, dim conversations with uniformed authorities.
And if I fell… no, she told herself firmly, we’re not going
down that line of thinking right now.
Secondly, she hadn’t gotten laid since James Carbill threw her over
six months ago for some new interior designer he had fallen for. And to tell
the truth, she had not been laid decently for months before that.
James’s steel-blue eyes had started wandering elsewhere long before
that ugly day when he’d told her that she needed to move out of the
Beacon Hill apartment he had been keeping her in, and that both of her
positions — as his personal assistant, and as his sexual partner and dinner
party arm candy — were terminated effective immediately.
James had softened the blow a bit by pulling some strings to secure this
grant so she could finish her doctorate degree in psychology from
Boston’s Fauntel University, and that’s how she wound up
standing on top of a windy cliff, watching Sean’s long, shaggy blond
hair blow into his eyes, which were fixed vacantly on the horizon.
She reached up to her shoulder and twined the fingers of her right hand
with Sean’s, hoping to lower the odds that they’d both go off
the cliff. The smell of salt spray on stone mingled with alcohol fumes. She
reached for his flask with her left.
“Give me a hit of that,” she said, raising her voice over the
wind. “You can’t have all the fun yourself.”
He handed her the flask absent-mindedly, its cap dangling from a little
silver chain. She took a swig. Smoky, peaty whiskey seeped into her tongue
and the flesh of her throat, straight into her bloodstream. She would swear
it never even hit her stomach.
“All this,” Sean said, gesturing broadly with a wobbling sweep
of his arm. Penny braced her feet, but they did not topple over. “When
you write your… your… thing.”
“My thesis.”
“Your thee, your thing. On all this. You’ll make millions of
dollars. We’ll all make millions of dollars. Because everyone will
want it.”
Penny took another hit of the whiskey. It felt mellower this time, as if
she and the whiskey were getting acquainted. “No one ever made
millions of dollars on their psychology doctorate thesis,” she
said.
“Oh, but you will.” Sean turned around, his face close to hers,
and poked her hard in the chest with the point of his index finger.
“You will. I will. Everyone will. Because this,” he swept his
arm out again along the horizon, “this is the Giant’s Causeway.
You’ll write about why it makes people feel so good — you feel good,
right?”
Penny nodded skeptically. He didn’t wait for her response before
rambling on.
“Because it makes people feel so good that they will all want to live
here, and I’m selling my land to the American developer who will give
them all a place to live. And everyone else will too. Just as soon as you
are done.”
Penny smirked and shook her head. It’s true that her doctorate
proposal had talked about the intersection of landscape and psychology, and
the grant that James had helped her secure had sent her to this bleak,
forsaken, vertical drop-off to write about it. But in point of fact, she had
not yet started writing, and now that she was here, she could not for her
life figure out what to write about.
“Sean, you handsome devil,” she said. “It’s a pile
of rocks.” Basalt, she noted to herself, recalling one of the
guidebooks she’d read on the plane. Lava from a volcanic episode,
cooled slowly, formed hexagonal columns. Why do people find the myths more
interesting than the science?
About the Author
Siondalin O’Craig writes romance with the slow burn of a peat fire on
an autumn night deep in the woodland hills. Sip a glass of Irish whiskey,
turn the page, and let the magic overtake you. Siondalin lives in the
mountains of New England where she walks under the trees celebrating the
wheel of the year, grows a luscious garden full of magical herbs, and plays
a wicked Irish fiddle. Follow her on Facebook and email her at
siondalinocraig@gmail.com to sign up for her newsletter.
Publisher on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram: @changelingpress
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