Morrigan, Book 1: Emergence

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

“Over my dead body are you leaving the house looking like that," roared her father up the empty stairwell where Mo had fled following a heated confrontation in the kitchen. Slamming the door and instantly regretting it, she could now hear him scaling the stairs two at a time before bursting into her room.

“Did you slam that bloody door?”

“No, it was the wind,” she said with more confidence than she felt, all the while sticking her chin out a little in defiance. He glanced toward the bedroom window where thankfully one of the small side windows was ajar, though not a tree or shrub stirred in the garden below. He had the measure of her but his bark was worse than his bite and he usually regretted it quickly when he let his temper get the better of him. He walked out of the room without a word and Mo was left with only her own image staring back at her from the full length mirror. As it was October and the rain had finally cleared, she had opted to resurrect her green dress, lowish cut with three quarter length sleeves, a cinched in waist, which then flared out into a swishy finish that skimmed the knee by a few inches. The idea was to wear it with a tailored black jacket; sexy but by no means slutty. She suspected that it was the push-up bra that had sent her father off the deep end; he could probably tolerate the minimalist make up and four inch, knee high boots, but conspicuous boobs were too much for him. On some level he still believed she was pre-pubescent for God’s sake! Surely he couldn’t object to the mermaid curls that had taken hours to do with the straighteners and a YouTube video tutorial. Too bad for him if he did.

“Anything for a quiet life," she sighed aloud and took a pair of black jeans and an inoffensive floral patterned t-shirt out of the wardrobe. She changed outfits quickly, leaving the boots on under the jeans, and carefully rolling up the dress pushed it down to the bottom of her handbag and went downstairs.

“Where is he?” she whispered theatrically through the crack in the door to the living room where her mother was now sitting watching TV.

“I’m here," came her father’s voice from behind the door making Mo jump comically and draw her hand to her throat.

“Come in and let me see what you’re wearing. I want to know where you’re going, who you’ll be with and what time you’ll be back.”

“Jesus dad, trust me will ye!”

“I do trust you. That’s why I’m letting you out of the house until eleven o’clock at night.”

“You said midnight," complained Mo.

“I never said midnight, chancer! No daughter of mine is gonna be out roaming the street till all hours of the night like some kind of street walker.”

“Great. So now I’m a prostitute. Just because Sinead got in trouble it doesn’t mean.”

“You’re on thin ice, Mo," her mother interjected. “You always have to go too far. You’ll be going nowhere at this rate.”

Mo did actually know when to stop—despite what her parents believed—and another word about Sinead would put an end to her rendezvous with Robbie. He had sent her a text that morning saying that he was counting down the minutes to seven o’clock and that she better not be late. She did her best not to let her excitement show as she mentally prepared for the grilling her father had taken to giving her every time she went out at night over the last month or so.

“So, once again. Where are you going?”

“To Sinead’s to watch a DVD.”

“I’m not really keen on you going into Dublin by yourself at night.”