Page 106 of Bonetide

I hear. I don’t bother telling her I’ve let him in more than once, including that very morning on the rug in front of the woodstove.

I head out of the shop and into the empty street. The afternoon has rolled on; the gulls wheel and cry overhead.

I get into the car. I sit in it for a long moment before I turn the key.

Then I drive home with my hands white-knuckled on the wheel, a man named Eachann Alasdair MacCoinnich—Mackenzie—each-uisge, the white horse, the man across the bay, the man I let into my body, sitting in the passenger seat of my head, looking at me, waiting to see what I will do.

Chapter

Twenty-One

Isit at the kitchen table all afternoon, and the day moves past me in shows of light across the loch, changing from silver, to pewter, to bronze.

The tea has gone cold three times. The kettle’s been refilled twice. I’ve tucked into a bottle of Speyside whisky I bought when I first got here, and even though it’s tempting to keep going and down the whole thing, I know I need to stay sharp. I know I need that more than ever if I plan on figuring out what to do.

I glance at the salt jar on the counter. I think about the back step. I think about Alasdair telling me, leave the salt at the back step and I’ll know to keep going. I think about him saying it just this very morning, when I still thought he was a man humoring my aunt’s habits. I think about how his face looked when he said it, that he didn’t look like he was humoring anything, that he looked absolutely grave.

He’s been waiting for me to know the truth; to find it out on my own. He’s been waiting for me to know for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe years. He knew there would be another Galloway, just like my great-aunt, and that I could be the one that would finally give him what he wants.

And I did just that.

I gave him what he wanted.

That thought sits in my chest like a stone.

The betrayal is real. It doesn’t feel like it did with Ryan, but it’s still there, still this acidic thing that’s eating away at my ribs, trying to get at my heart.

Mhairi was right—he used me. None of what he said was real, he was just trying to get into my pants, just trying to break this age-old bargain so that he could be free to…what? Continue his murder spree?

And what did he do with the victims anyway? Why were they only females? Why was the liver left behind? Did he just kill them or did he…

I push back from the table, refusing to think about that. Of everything I just heard at the shop, we didn’t discuss how he killed or why, and I don’t want to know what he did with the bodies. All I know is whoever they were, they became the drowned women of this loch. The drowned women were real, which meant that gull I saw in the water the other day might have been one of them. That woman swimming, beckoning me in? That might have been one of them, too.

I pick up the salt jar and walk to the back door, standing there with my hand on the latch, staring through the window at the ever-changing water.

I open the door an inch. The cold off the bay comes in, smelling of brine and fresh air and the faint smell of a campfire. I glance up at the castle and see the smoke rising from one of his many fireplaces. He’s there. He’s home.

But he’s sure as fuck not coming here.

I pour the thickest line of salt at the back step, as wide as my finger.

Then I lock every fucking door and window in this cottage and resalt everything, moving through the rooms with a manic energy in my chest.

After, I take a long bath, too hot, doused with copious amounts of salt for my screaming muscles that are angry at me for running around like a loon, and I get out after ten minutes because I can’t lie there with my eyes closed feeling so vulnerable.

I put on my flannel pajamas and make toast because I realize I haven’t eaten much of anything today. The toaster is terribly loud, the pop when it’s done making me jump, my heart racing. I butter the slice with a trembling hand and sit at the kitchen table with lavender tea; the sound of my chewing fills the cottage and my head.

Until…there’s something else…

Some other sound.

I stop chewing. I sit with the toast in my hand I listen.

A footstep on the gravel in the driveway.

Then another.

I don’t breathe.