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Instead of something demonic, I surely saw desire.
“We’re not lovers,” I whispered, voice raw as if I’d been screaming. “Margaret and I. Only friends.”
He swallowed, the movement in his throat as enticing as the curve of his lip. His gaze grew even more intent, and for a heartbeat I thought he might kiss me. He even leaned closer, just a hairbreadth. My body stilled. If he tried, I knew in my bones I’d kiss him back.
He shuddered, then straightened and looked away. I lurched out of his range, stopping in the doorway, breathing hard. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I did not mean to intrude.”
His only response was to fix his attention on the little carving he’d picked up. It was a hummingbird, its wide-spread wings so thin the light shone through them. He drew a finger down its long, impossibly narrow beak, and all I could think about was how his fingers would feel on my body. A blind man’s touch would be unlike anything I’d experienced. But was he truly blind?
Before I could do anything utterly irrational, I left him alone.
Chapter Seven
Rafe absented himself for the rest of the day. He could have been in his carving room, although the windows were dark. He might not need a light, after all.
Margaret helped Della with the cooking and the washing up, while I tried to find something useful to do. The only place I hadn’t explored was the lighthouse tower. There didn’t seem to be a passage to the tower from inside the house, so after lunch, I donned my overcoat a third time and set out.
The clouds from the west had moved in, blotting out the last remnants of sunshine. A brisk wind blew off the water and cut right through the wool of my coat. White foam from the rising tide sprayed across the grass when each wave hit.
The door at the base of the tower was blessedly unlocked. Neither Rafe nor I would fare well if he caught me breaking into another place. As it was, I entered a small room with a wood floor and not much else. The bottom steps of a wide spiral staircase took up most of the space, with a column at the center that traveled from one floor to the other. A pair of oil lamps sat in sconces on opposite walls, giving me enough light to navigate the bottom stairs.
The briny smell of salt and fish seemed more concentrated here than it had out of doors.Odd. I climbed the staircase and it spit me out onto the second floor.
This was the true heart of the lighthouse. The lamp itself sat in the middle of the space, surrounded by a cage of glass. Near the top of the stairs, a handle had been mounted on a wooden box on the wall. From the base of the box, a pair of cables snaked down the wall and into the column at the center of the stairwell. This must be the mechanism that kept the light running.
Across from the stairs, a door led to a narrow widow’s walk, a porch and railing that surrounded the lamp. I stepped outside, blinking into the wind. Madam Munro’s notes had said that this body of water was called asoundbecause it was hemmed in by islands. To me it looked the same as the great Pacific Ocean, though wilder than those stretches of beach near San Francisco.
If forced to make a list of the benefits of being cut off from the rest of my family, I confess it wouldn’t take me long. I’d put the ocean near the top. Its endless expanse and its absolute disregard for human wants and desires were intoxicating to me. I envied the fishermen who threw their lot in with her every day, and for the most part lived to do it again.
If I had a mental image of the Mother Goddess, she resembled the ocean; cold, endless, and uncaring. I didn’t believe she granted me power, such as it was. Power was in the air, the ether, in unlimited supply. As far as I knew, power was meant to be taken and manipulated by those who had the gift.
I stood on that little platform, the lighthouse’s lamp blasting me from behind every few seconds, until my fingers were stiff and numb. Only then did I climb down, keeping myself open to any sign of magic, whether good or evil.
There were none, nor did I stumble over the body of Martin Gallagher. It unsettled me to think that he must be around here somewhere, but if people in Seattle didn’t know he’d passed away, there can’t have been much of a funeral procession. I hadn’t asked if Rafe and his mother had a boat of their own, though it seemed obvious that they must. They couldn’t depend entirely on the delivery boats. Could they?
At the bottom of the stairs, I found Margaret.
“There you are. I’d run out of other places to look.” Her smile took the sting out of her words, and I hung my head, abashed.
“I do apologize. I climbed up to the lamp to see if there was anything magical lying about.”
“Magical?”
“You know, the Ferox Cor or maybe the body of Martin Gallagher.”
She took hold of my arm, drawing me closer. “Martin Gallagher…” She shook her head, as if the dead man was a subject she would avoid if she could.
“Any idea how to keep him from crossing the veil?”
“No,” she said shortly. “But we must somehow prevent it.”
“My thought exactly. Which is why I’ve decided not to get on that supply boat the next time it arrives.”
She nodded, her expression grim. “I’ll need to stay longer still. Della is many things, but she’s not a weatherwitch, from what I can tell. I’d thought to climb to the tower now to see whether I can coax this storm to take its ire out of someplace less populated.”
“Surely Madam Munro will send a permanent keeper soon.”
She laughed wryly. “I’d like to be that permanent keeper. I’m well past my apprenticeship and have had more than one temporary assignment. It’s my turn.”
