Whispers in the Mist Read Online Free

Seamus said, “we’re in for a sad time of it when Liam passes—God rest his future soul—because that Merrit has all the insight of a mealy potato.”
    “And a woman,” Elder Joe, another crow, snorted. He fiddled with the blue bow tie he always wore, a sure sign that he felt personally affronted.
    Joe Junior, younger than Elder Joe by all of five years, chimed in next. “What’s going to become of the festival, I ask ye? That lassie’s bad luck, you mark me.”
    Solemn assents all around.
    It was as if twelve days, not twelve months, had passed since Merrit’s arrival. The Irish loved to hang on to the past. Just their nature, Alan supposed. In those first weeks after her arrival, Merrit had managed to topple over their complacent village ways. It was like dominoes falling, her arrival and then bam —death of a leading citizen, bam —tales of bribery, bam —revelations about Liam’s dark-horse past, bam —an arrest no one saw coming. And the last, mightiest bam —Merrit as matchmaker-in-training.
    As an outsider himself, Alan knew she was in for a massive bollocking for years to come. He’d emigrated from France—he counted back—holy mother of everything, could it be gone twenty years ago now? It seemed so. He’d been an angry young lad, all of sixteen years old, and even this far along in time and maturity he still wasn’t considered a proper Lisfenoran.
    He shrugged to himself— c’est la vie —and blew in the general direction of the top shelf. A mote of dust puffed into the air. It drifted for a second, then dropped as if dejected by its shabby surroundings.
    Alan half turned to check the crows’ pints and noticed a stranger slouched amongst them, frowning into his coffee cup. Tidy button-down shirt, but unshaven and puffy-eyed. Yet another tourist after a night of festival-induced randiness. The uptight-looking ones sometimes let it go the most at the festival. Alan had long ago given up on classifying people, except if they were assholes. Male or female, assholes were assholes.
    The stranger caught Alan’s eye and asked—no mistaking his Dublin accent—about hotel vacancies in the village.
    “You might find a family willing to rent out a bedroom,” Alan said, “but I wouldn’t count on it. Let it go a little late, did you then?”
    “Couldn’t be helped,” came the response. “I didn’t know I was coming until the day before yesterday, and I didn’t have time to muddle about researching vacancies.”
    “You might try staying in Corofin or Ballyvaughan.”
    “I might, indeed, except that my car broke down on top of everything else.”
    Alan beckoned his junior barman to refill the sorry blighter’s coffee cup and turned back to the chalkboard. He’d forgotten what he’d meant to write. Every year, the festival exhausted him. It was one month out of each year that accounted for a hefty chunk of his profits, but by Christ, for that month he lived in the bar. His pub filled to capacity soon after opening, all the way through to closing. He offered the full Irish fry-up seven days a week instead of only on the weekends. Eggs, rashers, sausage, tomatoes, brown bread. The smell of it nauseated him at times, but the extra effort paid off.
    Behind him, conversation stuttered to a halt and resumed on a querulous note. Alan surveyed the pub to see who had caught the crows’ attention. He couldn’t miss the slight girl with darting eyes. If a human could be said to be slinking, then she was, like a cat trying to disappear in plain sight. He understood what bothered the crows; they were old-school enough to question the presence of a girl alone in a pub.
    Her eyes grazed over people as she passed them, then caught on Alan. From across the many heads, Alan saw their spark of intelligence, their fathomless brown depths that took in everything around her, and his heart clutched like a fool. Ah, merde. Quick as a light switch, he reminded himself that this was the festival talking. Hormones