Spellbound

famous? But wealth and fame carry a price.”
    She took her son’s face in her hands and studied it with a mother’s keen eye. His eyes were shadowed, she noted, his face too thin. She worried for the man she’d raised, and the boy he had been who had always seemed to have…something more than the ordinary.
    “You’re paying it.”
    “I’m fine.” Reading the worry in her eyes, recognizing it, he smiled. “Just not sleeping very well.”
    There had been other times, Sylvia remembered, that her son had grown pale and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. She exchanged a quick glance with her husband over Cal’s shoulder.
    “Have you, ah, seen the doctor?”
    “Mom, I’m fine.” He knew his voice was too sharp, too defensive. Struggled to lighten it. “I’m perfectly fine.”
    “Don’t nag the boy, Syl.” But John studied his son closely also, remembering, as his wife did, the young boy who had talked to shadows, had walked in his sleep, and had dreamed of witches and blood and battle.
    “I’m not nagging. I’m mothering.” She made herself smile.
    “I don’t want you to worry. I’m a little stressed-out, that’s all.” That was all, he thought, determined to make it so. He wasn’t different, he wasn’t odd. Hadn’t the battalion of doctors his parents had taken him to throughout his childhood diagnosed an overdeveloped imagination? And hadn’t he finally channeled that into his photography?
    He didn’t see things that weren’t there anymore.
    Sylvia nodded, told herself to accept that. “Small wonder. You’ve been working yourself day and night for the last five years. You need some rest, you need some quiet. And some pampering.”
    “Montana,” John said again. “Couple of weeks of fishing, clean air, and no worries.”
    “I’m going to Ireland.” It came out of Cal’s mouth before he’d realized the idea was in his head.
    “Ireland?” Sylvia pursed her lips. “Not to work, Calin.”
    “No, to…to see,” he said at length. “Just to see.”
    She nodded, satisfied. A vacation, after all, was a vacation. “That’ll be nice. It’s supposed to be a restful country. We always meant to go, didn’t we, John?”
    Her husband grunted his assent. “Going to look up your ancestors, Cal?”
    “I might.” Since the decision seemed to be made, Cal sipped his coffee again. He was going to look up something, he realized. Or someone.
     
    It was raining when he landed at Shannon Airport. The chilly late-spring rain seemed to suit his mood. He’d slept nearly all the way across the Atlantic. And the dreams had chased him. He went through customs, arranged to rent a car, changed money. All of this was done with the mechanical efficiency of the seasoned traveler. And as he completed the tasks, he tried not to worry, tried not to dwell on the idea that he was having a breakdown of some kind.
    He climbed into the rented car, then simply sat in the murky light wondering what to do, where to go. He was thirty, a successful photographer who could name his own price, call his own shots. He still considered it a wild twist of fate that he’d been able to make a living doing something he loved. Using what he saw in a landscape, in a face, in light and shadow and texture, and translating that into a photograph.
    It was true that the last few years had been hectic and he’d worked almost nonstop. Even now the trunk of the Volvo he’d rented was loaded with equipment, and his favoredNikon rested in its case on the seat beside him. He couldn’t get away from it—didn’t want to run away from what he loved.
    Suddenly an odd chill raced through him, and he thought, for just a moment, that he heard a woman weeping.
    Just the rain, he told himself and scrubbed his hands over his handsome face. It was long, narrow, with the high, strong cheekbones of his Celtic forefathers. His nose was straight, his mouth firm and well formed. It smiled often—or it had until recently.
    His eyes were gray—a deep, pure gray without a hint of green or blue. The brows over them were strongly arched and tended to draw together in concentration. His hair was black and thick and flowed over his collar. An artistic touch that a number of women had enjoyed.
    Again, until recently.
    He brooded over the fact that it had been months since he’d been with a woman—since he’d wanted to. Overwork again? he wondered. A byproduct of stress? Why would he be stressed when his career was advancing by leaps and bounds? He