Page 114 of Woods of the Raven

It hadn’t surprised me at all.

“Let’s go home, Xan.” He took my hand. “And then I have to talk to the mayor and coordinate the town council’s response to having a doomsday cult.”

“No, I promise you, no one will ever call the people who lived out at the Phoenix Farm that.”

“Sure,” he agreed and was quiet a moment before he cleared his throat and said, “Would you like to make a bet?”

THIRTEEN

Luckily, I was not a gambling man, or I would have bet Lorne and lost. In the next few weeks, Osprey, sadly, became known as having a doomsday cult that had culminated in a mass grave. The former inhabitants of the Phoenix Farm became the Cult of the Phoenix, and the influx of tourists to the town was unprecedented. Taylor Hernandez and Dominic Aoki became overnight celebrities, speaking to every news outlet, becoming the talk of social media, chatting on early morning and late-night talk shows, with the hype finally culminating in a wildly successful podcast. They had just announced that their book would be out the following year at Halloween. It was all too much for me.

Amanda was giddy and got them in touch with Netflix. “Cultists are way better than cannibals,” she assured me.

Quietly, after I explained everything to Lorne, he arranged to have Spencer Phelps placed beside Hillary Newcastle in the Osprey cemetery. Originally, his thought was to move Hillary away from where she was, to a quiet little corner that only she and Spencer would share. But with the rabid interest in Taylor and Dominic’s podcast, that simply wasn’t possible. Placing Spencer’s newly discovered remains next to hers, was the best he could do. There was fresh interest in Hillary and Spencer’s doomed love affair, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. No one knew about Mattie’s ties to them, except the way she championed Spencer after his death, but that was all right. The important people—Hillary, Spencer, and Mattie—knew the truth. That was enough. Interestingly, the day Spencer’s headstone went up beside Hillary’s, she didn’t appear at the bridge. I never saw her again. I was guessing she was finally at rest.

Declan was over the moon with the boom in tourism, and his bistro, along with every other eatery in town, was rolling in money. Him naming a sandwich after a cult was in really poor taste, but everyone literally ate it up.

“What? The Phoenix egg on toast? You don’t love it?” he asked.

Lorne shook his head.

Amanda thought it was brilliant.

He also started serving things from the cards I’d loaned him. Lemon cake with lavender frosting, strawberry macaroons, gingersnaps that were as big as pancakes, pastel de tres leches and semitas which were both my grandmother’s recipes. They were close to hers, but were, of course, missing her magic.

Amanda and Lorne bonded over Declan’s cinnamon rolls, over their mutual love of football, and they shopped together for the solar-powered TV, connected to a satellite, that would go in the cottage. It found a home in the living room, and though at first I found it disruptive, I quickly came around, enjoying it when we watched movies together. There were hundreds I had to see, and Lorne made popcorn and we snuggled up together. I enjoyed that part the most.

When James and Cass came for Thanksgiving, Lorne made his move to the cottage official, though his brother wanted him to keep the keys for the house they’d bought together.

“Besides,” James said, shrugging, an evil glint in his eye. “What if you guys don’t work out and Lorne needs a place to move back to?”

He was kidding. I knew he was, and Lorne even chuckled, but the cottage did not find James humorous at all, and the cold breeze that whipped through the room, smacking him in the face, chilling him to the bone, was its comment on the man’s flippant words.

“You better apologize,” Lorne told his brother. “My home loves me.”

He did, quickly, and all was well.

The day after Thanksgiving, Lorne went with me to clear Amanda’s house of any unwanted energy, and he felt the negativity and jealousy actually leave.

“It feels so much better in here,” he told her.

“It certainly does,” she agreed. “Turkey sandwich with extra mayo?”

“Oh yes, please.” He grinned at her.

Later, she agreed that yes, Chief MacBain was a very handsome man. “Have his eyes always been that lovely shade of midnight blue?”

I just sighed and smiled at her.

Lorne drove to Westfield to speak to Megan Gallagher’s parents. He explained that Rulaine Marsh, the woman who had murdered their child, had been killed herself in an accident soon after. The case was closed, which was a small comfort to her parents. Megan’s father, Lorne told me, had caught him at his car before he left and asked if Rulaine Marsh had suffered before she died.

“She was in agony, sir,” Lorne promised.

Mr. Gallagher, Lorne said, seemed quite content with his answer.

Declan started dating a journalist from Manhattan long-distance, but she quickly relocated to Osprey to live with him. His beautiful newly renovated home overlooking the river, situated directly above his bistro, turned out to be the perfect place for her to write. They were getting married in the spring.

“I thought he was gay,” Amanda said to me.