(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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