Page 98 of Bonetide

“A long time ago.”

Of course.

“Have you seen the key before?”

His eyes lock with mine for a moment and I can see something dark pass over them. “Aye. On your aunt’s neck, from time to time. No, I never asked about it. I don’t know where it leads. That’s all yours to find out. Not mine.”

He stands up from the table.

The standing has a finality to it I don’t like. He moves around the table and stops behind my chair, and he leans down and puts his mouth against my temple and breathes in once, deeply. He kisses me there and then he straightens.

“Where are you going?” I ask

“Home. I’ll come back tonight, if you’ll have me. If you don’t want me, leave the salt at the back step and I’ll know to keep going.”

I stare at him for a moment. “That salt doesn’t really keep you out, does it?”

A ghost of a smile flits across his lips. “It’s only salt. But it’s a signal.”

“And if I want you here?” I ask.

His face changes at that. His smile doesn’t quite fade; it just becomes a touch wicked. “Then ask me, foxglove. In the daylight. With your eyes open.”

What the fuck does that mean?

But he’s already opening the door. The cold off the bay comes in over the threshold, he goes through it, and pulls it closed behind him.

I sit at the table for a long time.

The key’s still in my hand. Heavy and cold, despite being in my palm, but seeming to throb with some energy I’m probably just imagining. The empty box is open in front of me.

I open my hand and I look at the key.

It’s just a key.

And yet I know it will open to something that will finally give me the answers I need.

The only problem is, I don’t know if they’re the answers I want.

The cottage settles around me, feeling quieter than ever with Alasdair gone.

I stand up, walk to the bottom of the stairs, and stand there with my hand on the banister and the key in my palm.

I look up into the dim of the upstairs corridor.

Chapter

Twenty

The closet is not a closet.

Surprise, surprise, something I thought was something in this damn house is not the thing I thought it was.

I stand in the guest bedroom with the Gothic key in my palm, the door to the closet-not-closet open in front of me. As the cold of an unused space comes across my face, it takes me a beat to understand what I’m looking at, the area dimly lit only from the light of the bedroom.

It’s a small room, maybe five feet deep, the same width as the bedroom, but a room nonetheless, tucked behind the wall where I had assumed there was nothing but eaves and pipework. The ceiling is low because it’s under the slope of the roof, and the air inside is colder than the bedroom by a few degrees. There’s a smell coming out of it. Beeswax, old paper. Something underneath that’s sharper. Pigment or linseed oil, maybe?

I duck and step in, but I don’t get very far. It’s enough that I pull on the cord hanging from the bulb and the light comes on, illuminating everything in a stark wavering light as the blub swings above me.