Page 104 of Bonetide

I can’t even think about it.

“And so when Effie died…”

“The line went dormant. He has been losing the bargain in stages since the spring. The four this summer are what happens when there is no anchor.”

“Eighty years…” I can barely breathe.

“Effie was the longest keeper of the line. She refused him at the threshold when she was twenty-two, and she refused him every year of her life after that; the refusing held the bargain longer than it had ever been held.”

“And now I’m here.”

“Aye. That you are.”

“And I…have not refused him.”

She does not answer. She does not need to.

“I tried though,” I plead. “I didn’t know what Effie meant by keeping everything salted, but I did it anyway. I didn’t know she meant Alasdair—I feared she meant Alasdair—but…I didn’t invite him in. Yet…”

“Yes?”

“This morning, I woke up in my bed and he was there. He brought me there overnight from the castle. He came in through the front door. The wards did not hold. Shouldn’t they have held?”

“Hen,” she murmurs gently, placing a cool hand on top of mine. “You did let him in.”

“I didn’t. The door was locked. He unlocked it with the key but I know I didn’t…I was asleep but I know I wouldn’t have…”

“I do not mean the door, Iris,” she snaps sharply.

I frown. “Then what are you talking about?”

She gives me a pointed look.

“Your body, my dear.”

The shop tilts, and I suck in my breath to keep from going with it.

Don’t let him in.

“The bargain has not been about doors, at least not all of it,” she explains. “The salt at the windows and the rowan at the step have been the small theatre of a much older rule, and the older rule is that the Galloway women keep their thresholds closed.”

But if the threshold is also her body?

Effie kept hers closed for sixty years.

And I have decidedly not.

“Oh. Oh fuck.” I gasp.

“Aye, hen.”

“Oh my god.”

“Aye.”

“Mhairi—”

“I know.”