Chapter Thirty-Three #2
His eyes are dark and endless as he repeats my words.
“Not even God can keep you safe from me.”
He kisses me again, this time hard, his lips bruising mine, then breaks away abruptly and pushes past me, striding toward the staircase without looking back.
Rattled, I stand alone in the middle of the basement, listening to the echo of his footfalls slowly die and gazing around the empty space and the strange Medieval cages, until something catches my eye. Frowning, I walk over to the enclosure at the farthest end of the room.
Embedded high into the stone wall is an object.
Long, curved, and black, it’s stuck in the seam between two chunks of rough-hewn stone, about eight feet up from the floor. Light glints off its glossy surface, the wink that caught my attention.
I climb the iron bars until I can reach the thing, then stick my arm through the bars, grab it, and try to wriggle it out of the wall. It’s embedded deeply, but finally gives after a few hard tugs.
I drop back down to the floor and look at the object I’m holding.
It’s larger than my hand, easily over eight inches in length, curved like the crescent of a moon and narrowing from a thick base to a wickedly sharp pointed end made for piercing flesh.
Its polished ebony surface isn’t disturbed by any markings or blemishes.
It’s smooth and perfect, as heavy and cold as a chunk of obsidian in the palm of my hand.
It’s a claw.
The hair on my nape rising, I glance around at all the other cages, thinking now that maybe they weren’t installed to hold people or dogs, but something far more monstrous.
On my way out of the church, I notice something I didn’t on the way in. Four tracks of slim tire impressions in the dust on the floor lead to and from the basement.
They were made by a wheelchair.
When I return to the house, it’s with a brittle, pasted-on smile that probably won’t hold up to any scrutiny.
Thankfully, only Q is around, chopping wood outside the greenhouse. He doesn’t notice me come in, so I head straight upstairs to check on Bea.
She’s still sound asleep.
I sigh in relief, then lock myself in my bedroom and conduct an online image search for anything that might match what I found in the church basement cage.
Wolfhounds are immediately ruled out as their claws are nowhere near as large. And even if the hound it came from had been enhanced with some kind of doggie steroid, the claw is an entirely different shape.
The only other animal claw that comes close in size is that of grizzly bears, but their shape is different, too, more elongated than like a scythe.
I sit with it, turning it over in my hands and thinking of my strange conversation with Ronan.
He told the truth about not knowing I worked at the museum. Of that, I’m almost sure. But there are still layers of deception to him. Layers that run so deep, I doubt I could ever find the bottom.
Why would he do everything to get close to me, then do an about-face and say I should stay away from him, only to give me whiplash by threatening that I’ve got a few days to leave or else I’m his forever?
The way he said it, he made belonging to him sound like a prison term.
Or a death sentence.
Deep in thought, I go into the bathroom, needing a shower to clear my head. As I’m undressing, I discover my pistol is missing.
Either it’s in the church basement, dropped when I tumbled down the stairs, or Ronan took it when I was unconscious.
I think I know which.
A quick check of the mirror shows no bruising on my face, though both wrists hurt and my neck is sore. Turning the shower water to hot, I step under the spray and close my eyes, letting the water stream down my skin and chase away the knots in my muscles.
As I relax, a dark vision forms beneath my eyelids.
I see acres of grave markers stretching into a gray distance. They stand watch over empty graves, black earth piled up on the grass beside them in mounds. A massive flock of ravens circles above in an iron-gray sky, shrieking like harbingers of the apocalypse as they soar above the empty boneyard.
A group of ravens is called an unkindness, for reasons I don’t want to know.
I shake my head to clear the sinister vision and focus on the next steps.
With no bodies to perform autopsies on, the coroner can’t determine what caused my mother’s and other relatives’ deaths.
Until the authorities can catch up with Mr. Anderson, I can’t find out anything more about how my grandmother was taken from the mortuary.
The mystery of the missing male offspring in our family line is one I have no idea how to solve, considering everyone else in the family is dead but the aunties, neither of whom ever gave birth and who seem to be ignorant about some important aspects of the family’s history, namely that we all die by random accident.
I’m no closer to solving any of these mysteries, but I can’t stay in Solstice indefinitely. I have to return to work. Bea needs to go back to school.
Time is running out.
I turn off the water and step out to dry myself. As I’m pulling on a pair of clean jeans, I hear a knock at my door.
I tug on a sweatshirt and open up to find Auntie E standing there in her usual simple black gown and fresh face.
“Good morning, love.”
“Good morning.”
“Will you be down to breakfast soon?”
“Yes, in just a few minutes.”
“Good. Until then, we’ll keep entertaining your friend.”
I freeze, horrified she might be referring to Ronan. But no. There’s no way they would have let him into the house.
“What friend?”
“Ezra.”
The room tilts. My mouth drops open. What is he doing here?
Seeing the shock on my face, Auntie E smiles. “What a handsome young man. Charming, too. Shame on you for keeping him a secret. But I think you should move fast, love, because Davina seems to have taken quite a liking to him.”
She winks, then turns away and glides down the corridor, leaving me staring after her in dismay.