Page 144 of Bonetide

“I’ll not make you say it.” She holds my gaze, steady, unflinching. “A man came round these parts asking after the missing women, and now there’s a quiet where his asking was, and I’ve lived on this coast my whole life, I know what that kind of quiet means. So, hear me. If you bind that thing and end the killing, if you stop our women being walked into the loch, then whatever happened to that policeman happened nowhere near you. You came to me for bread that day, and this day, and nothing else. Are we understanding each other?”

“You’d lie,” I manage to say. “For me.”

“I’d lie for the women he doesn’t get to take next year. You’re only the hand on the leash. Don’t go thinking it’s about you.” But there’s no unkindness in it, and something almost like sorrow underneath. “Now. You wanted it exact. Every step, every word, the iron and the hide and the willing. So, listen close, hen, for I’ll say it the once.”

And she tells me.

When I come out of Mhairi’s, the light’s gone dark grey with storm clouds brewing and the afternoon’s half spent. I stand on the narrow road lined with stone walls and quaint shops, the soothing waves lapping the pier. The whole conversation keeps replaying in my head—every step, every word, the iron, and the hide, and the horse, and the willing—the cost of it all sinking in my chest.

I came here ready to give him up. I drove over rehearsing a goodbye, bracing to be told the only way to stop the killing was a wall between us forever.

And I’d have done it. I’d have grieved him across the bay for the rest of my life and called it the right thing to do, and I would have hated it, and then myself, because who hates themselves for doing the right thing?

Instead, I’ve been handed something worse, because I don’t have to give him up at all. He’s the one who has to give it up, give everything up. I only have to take a blade to him while he stands there and lets me. He has to want it and can’t ask for it. And when it’s done, he’ll start to die. I mean, so will I, eventually, as everyone does, as I already have been since the moment I was born. But it will be the both of us together, into the same ground, into that same end.

And that’s the happy ending. That’s the best version on offer. That’s the thing I’m going to drive home and lay in front of him like a gift.

I just have no idea if he’ll see it as a gift.

Because who am I, really, to ask a man to give up his immortality? I’m just Iris Galloway. Plant nerd, young divorcée, an immature, chronically ill, neurodiverse weirdo who kind of stumbled upon this next stage of life. I didn’t know what I was doing before I got here, and I certainly don’t know what I’m doing now. And somehow, I have to ask Alasdair to give up being the incredible—albeit terrible and bloodthirsty—creature that he is, his eternal life, all for meeeeee. I mean, would I be willing to give up being a horse for him? He’s living out all my childhood dreams.

I take a deep breath of sea air and get in the car. My hands are steady now, which is somehow worse than if they shook. Like I know exactly what I have to do, because I do.

I have to go home and tell him I’ve found the way.

And then I have to find out whether he’ll stand the horse for me, and let me cut it loose.

Chapter

Thirty

The rain starts before I’m even out of the village, a fine mist at first, the kind that doesn’t fall so much as hangs in the air and waits for you to walk into it. By the time I’m on the road that hugs the loch home, it’s turned to something with weight, drumming the roof of the car, smearing the headland into grey.

I drive half-paying attention to the road, half drowning in my thoughts about what I have to do and how the fuck I’m going to convince Alasdair to do it, so that I don’t see the blue lights until they’re right behind me.

My stomach drops straight through the floor of the car.

This is it. They found the car, they found Sinclair, they followed me from Mhairi’s, they know.

Every catastrophe arrives in my brain at once, and my hands go slick on the wheel as I pull onto the verge with the rain coming down in earnest. I watch in the mirror as a figure gets out, hunches into the weather, and comes up alongside me. I put the window down and the cold, misting rain comes straight in, beading on my sleeve, on the dash.

It’s Constable MacRae. The one who first came out to see me after I made a complaint about someone chasing me down in the woods. My god, that feels like a lifetime ago.

“Evening.” He dips to my level, rain running off him. “Miss Galloway, if I remember? From the Galloway cottage out the headland.”

“That’s me.” My voice comes out almost normal. I’ve gotten frighteningly good at almost normal. “Nice to see you again.”

“Aye. Didn’t mean to put the heart across you with the lights.” He says it almost apologetically. “It’s just your nearside taillight’s out. Back left. You’ll not have known, but it’s a wee bit dangerous on these roads in the dark, especially in this.” He tips his head at the rain. “Will only get worse as we head into a proper autumn.”

The relief is total, a rapid loosening behind my ribs that leaves me lightheaded. A taillight. It’s just a fucking a taillight.

“God, no, I had no idea. Thank you. I’ll get it fixed ASAP.”

“You do that.” He glances past me into the car, the back seat, the way they do, and I’m suddenly aware of everything that could be in a car. In fact, I have the library books in the backseat since they’re already overdue; I just keep getting distracted. Story of my life.

Luckily, he doesn’t seem too interested in the mythology books. “This a hire car?”

“It is, yeah.”