Chapter Stones #2
I watched the small movements of the muscles in his jaw before his head slowly turned. “Seen what, exactly?”
“The demon, or whatever it really is. I’ve seen it at least twice, but I think three times. First, the day I found Mr. Roscoe. I glimpsed it in the mist on the other side of the wall. I saw the branches and thought it was a stag. Since then I’ve seen it twice from the garden behind our cottage.”
His gaze remained fixed and flat. When he spoke, his tone was quiet, but I had learned by now that this meant the inside of his head was anything but. “You’ve always seen it on the estate?”
I nodded. “I think it might be the creature that attacked me. And the one that’s done the killings.”
Brow furrowing, he said, “What makes you associate the creature responsible for the attacks with the one in the painting? That bell tower is centuries old.”
“I know how it sounds. But I saw it, Harker. In the painting there’s a woman with a wound in her neck, and her blood is pooling on the ground. Maybe the creature is a kind of vampire.”
His fingers trembled as he reached up to touch the burn at his throat. “That is a detail I missed.”
“You and your ancestors are—forgive me—blood-drinkers who’ve lived unnaturally long lives. Could this creature and your family be connected somehow?”
His expression was one of wonder and shock. I tried to give him a moment to think. But my own brain was still working, and patience wasn’t exactly my strength.
“There was something else, too. Someone had scratched a word into the wall, just above the door arch. ‘Goosevar.’ Does it mean anything to you?”
For a moment, he seemed not to react. Then his eyes locked on mine. “You’re certain that was it? ‘Goos-evar’?”
“I made a point to remember in case it was important.”
“It’s important,” he said softly, and I caught a quaver in his voice.
“You know what it means?”
“You said it just a moment ago. ‘Blood-drinker.’ But in Cornish.”
No wonder I hadn’t recognized the word. No one spoke Cornish anymore. No one who isn’t nearly a hundred years old.
“It seems you may be right about the connection with my family,” he said. “How it is connected is something I would very much like to know. Yet if this creature has been on the estate for centuries, why has no one seen it before now?”
I frowned. “We don’t really know they haven’t.
People might make the same guesses I did—a deer, or a trick of the fog.
Or they’d keep it to themselves, afraid no one would believe them.
And Harker”—he looked at me—“the face of the creature in the painting has mostly chipped away, but the jaw is long with pointed teeth, like a wolf.”
His eyes shone above the smoky lenses. “Goosevar could be the source of the old stories.”
“The real Wolf of Roche Rock.”
He raised his hand, fingers gliding along his own jaw.
“And these killings . . . Heaven knows the Tregarricks before me were not always careful. But it’s been more than five decades since my family was responsible for a death, so it’s hard to imagine that these recent attacks and your sightings of the creature aren’t connected.
Especially considering you found a victim . . . and then became one.”
At that moment a bird fluttered down to the slab—another magpie—startling me.
“I imagine all these recent shocks are taking a toll on you,” said my companion, noticing.
“I suppose they are.” Though in that moment I felt safe. With him. Even if not entirely safe from him. Which made no sense at all. “I saw a magpie in that same spot before I was attacked here. I saw one in Mr. Roscoe’s leaves, too.” One for sorrow . . .
“As a tasseographer, you must be a believer in signs.”
I slowly shrugged. “I don’t know that I ever was until recently, though my mother often spoke of them.” I looked again at the bird, whose head tilted from one side to the other as it watched us. “A magpie is said to be a messenger from the spirit world.”
“Perhaps it’s your mother looking out for you.”
My eyes drifted back to his face. His words had been soft, and his eyes were kind. “I hadn’t thought of that. I do believe it tried to warn me before it flew off, though I didn’t understand it at the time.”
A tapping noise drew our attention—the bird had gotten hold of a snail and was knocking it against the rock. When finally the shell broke, the bird nipped the creature out and flew away.
“I know you think me reckless,” I said, looking at him. Again I watched a movement in his jaw. “Jack does, too. He speaks to me like I’m a child who ought to know better. But I have no wish to die.”
“It had occurred to me to wonder.” My raised eyebrow brought a slight smile to his lips, and I felt a tickle of warmth in my belly. “But I believe I’m coming to understand you. You’re simply comfortable taking risks to help others.”
Heat rose to my cheeks. “No more so than anyone else, I don’t think.”
“On that, we may have to agree to disagree.”
His gaze wandered back to the pool, and I was able to breathe again. “Well, none of this means I’m not frightened. I still see Mr. Roscoe’s face when my eyes are closed.”
“I can imagine. My violence must have frightened you, too, though you seem to have forgotten it.”
My heart drummed. “I was frightened at first. But it wasn’t what you might expect. After a few moments, I began to feel . . . calm.” It wasn’t quite the right word, but I found I couldn’t speak of the other sensations that had come with that calm feeling. Not to him.
“I think that’s meant to happen,” he said grimly. “A spider injects a venom that paralyzes its prey.”
I shivered, not caring for this picture. “Do you realize that when you talk about . . . about your nature, you don’t describe it as if it were a disease? You compare yourself to creatures. To animals that hunt.”
He eyed me. “You’re thinking again of Goosevar, and how he might be connected to my family.”
“I guess I am. It does feel as if there’s something we need to uncover there, though I’m not sure how to go about it.”
He stiffened. “You must leave that to me.”
Silence filled in between us like fog, and I began to dread his leave-taking. I had never expected to see him again, and I feared this time might really be the last. I had helped him all I could. It was for him to find the creature on the heath. My presence would only distract him.
If this was the last time, I’d have nothing to lose by asking a very personal question that had been turning in my mind the past few days.
“What does it feel like to you?”
I watched his chest rise and fall slowly, and he clasped his hands behind his back. I wondered whether I would have to explain what I meant, but he said, “I don’t like speaking of it, though I suppose I owe you an answer.”
“Well,” I replied mildly, “I have spoken of it.”
His gaze drifted to the birch coppice a short distance away. I heard the infant-like cry of a rabbit, caught by a fox or snare.
“I don’t know if I have the words,” he said.
“It feels like . . . everything. Or like the only thing that matters. I hope that you have never gone hungry, but if you have, it’s really the only thing I can think of to compare it to.
Food to a starving man. Yet it’s not at all like eating.
It’s more like breathing, where breathing is . . . an act of worship.”
I stared, feeling the hot surge of blood beneath my skin—knowing he must feel it, too. His eyes came again to my face, fevered, like in the moments before the attack.
But his voice was even as he said, “Yet there is nothing reverent about it. It is a violent, selfish, unforgivable act.”
“I forgive you,” I said faintly.
His brows knit, and he quickly looked down.
“I’m frightened for you, Harker.”
There was an edge of disbelief to the dry laugh that escaped him.
“Now that they’ve found another body,” I went on, “I worry what people will be saying in the village. Jack is the worst of them all. There’s no question in his mind you are to blame for these attacks.”
Harker let out a long breath. “In this century, I’m more concerned about the views of the constabulary than the mob. And I don’t think Mr. Hilliard believes I’m his murderer.”
“Has he been to see you again?”
“He came yesterday, after they found the other victim. He’s a reasonable and intelligent man, but people are pressing him for answers and action.”
Feeling fatigue catching up with me, I sat down on the edge of the slab. Its cold seeped through my layers of clothing, just as Harker’s had when he’d held me.
“What will you do now?” I asked.
Stooping to pick up a stone, he said, “I must find this creature before he kills again.”
“But you thought you were looking for a man like you before. Someone you could reason with.”
He frowned, turning the stone in his fingers. “If Goosevar is somehow connected with my family, that may still be possible. I don’t see another option except to go to the constable with the truth.”
“I fear that instead of believing you, he’ll think you’re the madman he’s looking for. Or—”
“He will believe me and think I’m the madman he’s looking for.”
I gave him a hopeless nod.
He threw his stone, and we watched it skip a couple of times on the pool’s dark surface before the fog swallowed it.
“The creature I saw was larger than a man,” I said. “I know you’re fast and strong, but could he hurt you if he wished to?”
Harker looked at me, the softness in his eyes causing a now-familiar flutter. “It’s kind of you to worry. You needn’t.”
“But could he?”
“If you’re asking whether Tregarricks are invincible, the answer is no. I have cut and burned myself many times in the laboratory. Though my wounds healed very quickly before I began denying myself blood.”
This did nothing to ease my worry. “Do vampires have blood of their own?”
“We do. But it’s dark and sluggish. ‘Dead’ blood, my father called it.”
Catching a low murmur of voices then, I glanced toward the birchwood.
“They sneaked in from the other side to retrieve a snare,” Harker said quietly.
His young poachers. I forgot sometimes how aware he was of everything around him. “You should frighten them,” I said.
He shot me a questioning look.
“They aren’t scared of you. Or at least not scared enough. You should do something to change that before your monster gets them. They’re sweet boys.”
“I wouldn’t like to see them harmed,” he agreed. “But I’m not sure how I’m to frighten them when I can’t even frighten you.”
I failed to hold back a little snort of laughter, which made him laugh, too—a real laugh this time, one that escaped before he could crush the life out of it.
“You must try harder, sir.”
He bowed his head. “As you wish, madam.”
A giddy warmth that had no place in this discussion bubbled up from my belly. I felt like I had at The Wolf’s Head, forced to drink a glass of sherry.
As I watched Harker stoop to pick up another stone, something occurred to me.
“Do you suppose Goosevar is somehow bound to the estate? The victims were found just along the edges of it. And of course there are the wolf stories.”
He rubbed his thumb over the stone, considering. “It might explain why he hasn’t tried to attack you again in his recent visits. The cottages in Carbis are just beyond the boundary of the property, though of course the Tregarricks once owned all of the parish.”
“It might be that Mum’s cross has protected me.”
He looked up, holding my gaze, and my breath stopped. “I will forever be grateful to you for wearing it.”
His attention drifted back to the pool, and my chest filled again.
“I can’t help feeling it’s more than chance that you keep seeing him,” he said. “If we don’t count the shadow I saw before you were attacked, I haven’t seen him once in eighty years. It’s as if something has been drawing him to you since the night you found Mr. Roscoe.”
His whole body turned toward me now, eyes pinning me to the spot. “Promise me, Mina, that you will never approach him.”
I nodded. “Yes, I’ll stay away from him. Except . . .”
Harker’s jaw clenched, and he tossed the skipping stone aside.