Chapter 15 #2
The possum immediately tried climbing back up, and Rhiannon moved around Prudence to look up the wide opening. In the soot-covered darkness, two green eyes stared back at her.
“Boleyn!” The cat was in her arms in seconds, grimy and shivering, but whole. Safe. Alive. A cat who had never touched soot or dirt. A cat who didn’t even like the damn fireplace.
Rhiannon crouched next to Prudence, still holding her chortling possum.
“I take it this is your handiwork, Ms. Patience Petunia Fowler? Getting my cat all dirty like this? Teaching her how to climb chimneys?”
Rhiannon could swear the possum’s expression was sheepish. Prudence opened her mouth to protest. Rhiannon reached and booped Patches’s snoot.
“All my garbage to you, Trash Queen. Thank you for saving Boleyn, who’s way too cultured to have ever considered hiding in the chimney.”
Boleyn meowed indignantly, jumped out of Rhiannon’s arms, and tail in the air, stalked up the stairs to the living quarters, Patches on her heels.
“Well, that was…” Lachlan came down the steps and scrubbed his palms over a tired face.
“Close. That was close.”
It was Ceridwen who finished his thought, and Rhiannon narrowed her eyes.
“Close?”
“You’ve been making waves since you arrived, Rhiannon. Your encounter with Lisa, for example.”
Pru laid a steadying hand on Rhiannon, and Ceridwen’s eyes followed the movement closely.
“Ceri, are you implying Lisa did this? Killed a bird, hanged it? To what end?”
“It’s September in Massachusetts, girls and boys. There’s always an end for a crow in a Massachusetts September.”
The tendons behind Rhiannon’s eyes were like violin strings pulled taut, the headache turning to migraine on a dime.
Lachlan took a piece of discarded tarp and approached the bird.
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Rhiannon—” It was Ceridwen, always Ceridwen, stopping her, standing in front of her. Shielding her…
Where have you been, Ceridwen? Where have you been all these years?
Rhiannon could feel her thoughts getting tangled, running amok in her feverish brain. She needed to get out of here. Get the bird and… What?
“I…” She reached for it, her fingers black with soot, already in mourning for this soul.
So small. The fragility of it finally breaking the dam of her own restraint.
When tears came, she barely noticed them.
She carried the little lifeless body outside.
For one treacherous moment she wished for her storms, to cleanse, to take her away.
The power in her growled, deep, angry, blaming her, accusing her.
The hunger of it, teased by Prudence’s presence, by the connection that baffled and confounded, snapped at its taut leash.
Her backyard was quiet, the silence hanging like an ax before an execution. In the distance, the wind howled. The island was angry.
Well, join the club.
She closed her eyes and murmured long-forgotten words.
Of a goodbye, an old-as-time chant for an end, for a passing.
Even whispering them scorched her soul, the roar inside her growing deafening.
Once the earth settled on the black feathers, she stood up.
The rain came, washing her face, her hands, the stench of death.
Inside, Lachlan was cleaning up the remnants of the images Rhiannon knew would return in her dreams.
“So what are we going to do about Lisa?”
Ceridwen’s voice was like a string, one that would snap at any moment and score anyone in her proximity, unpredictable and sharp.
Prudence’s lips trembled with doubt. Rhiannon could almost hear the words arguing against this particular culprit fall off that pale mouth. She smiled, the skin stretching painfully.
“Before Prudence chokes herself trying to contradict the assumption that this was Lisa—”
“Who else could it be? Been in any other fights recently?”
Ceridwen set her jaw, and Rhiannon would’ve rolled her eyes if she wasn’t so certain it would cut right through her already aching mind. She needed to get these people out.
“What did you mean by September in Massachusetts, Tory?” Lachlan asked, and Rhiannon made a face and would’ve laughed at hers probably being exactly the same as Ceridwen’s. All incredulous shock.
“What did you call her?” Ceridwen’s question conveyed that shock very well.
“He brings me flowers every morning and he thinks I am royalty. He gets to call me anything he wants to.” Victoria patted Lachlan’s scruffy cheek.
He snatched her hand and kissed her knuckles.
Christian cleared his throat, and his usual quiet authority had everyone turning to him as he slowly cleaned his glasses, clearly trying to choose his words.
“I’ve known Lisa her entire life, and while the handwriting on the note is very close to hers, I don’t think—”
“What note?” Several voices chimed in in unison, Ceridwen’s the loudest.
Christian pocketed the handkerchief and gave Rhiannon a somewhat sheepish look, his hooded eyes staring at her imploringly from behind the thick horn rims. She sighed.
“I got a note a few days ago.” Rhiannon unlocked her phone and handed it to Victoria, who snatched it as if her life depended on it. Then she just huffed in disgust before handing it over to Ceridwen. Rhiannon prepared herself for the scolding. She didn’t have to wait very long.
“And you chose to keep this to yourself?” Her sister’s voice was shrill.
“I didn’t. I asked Christian for help. As you see, he has been helping. He taught half the town in Sunday school once upon a time, and now as the magistrate he knows everyone. What more do you think I should’ve done?”
Rhiannon regretted asking the moment the words left her mouth.
“Tell me! Tell Victoria! Call the sheriff!”
Rhiannon rolled her eyes. The histrionics were too much. She took her phone back and pretended to dial.
“‘Hello, Sheriff? Yes, someone left me a nasty note, would you come over and pull their ear?’ Ceridwen, get a fucking grip.”
Her headache was verging on vicious, nausea nearly overwhelming her. She needed to get all these people out, and she needed her darkness and her silence.
“The note, the wording…” Victoria’s voice was pensive. “They did a lot of hanging in September in Salem, Rhiannon, and you really should’ve known better and called us.”
The sheer violence of the images conjured by Victoria pierced Rhiannon’s skull, and she grabbed the redwood counter for support.
The cries of “Hang the witch!” were loud and the braying crowd chasing Gwendolyn desperate in their blind, raving hatred. They strung up the innocents one by one as she watched, as she prayed. It would be her turn soon. September was here. September 1692.
The wood came alive under Rhiannon’s fingertips, with warmth, with strength. Too late. Too late, as she hit the floor and darkness took her deeper into the violence and the pain.
Rhiannon opened her eyes in the shadows of her bedroom. She knew this ceiling. She had stared at it plenty of nights in the last weeks. It was perfect; not a crack or fissure marred the pale ivory. And despite all the work, all the familiarity, it felt foreign.
There was a sound coming from down the hall, and she stretched, her bones weary and still carrying the fatigue of a migraine. Absently she wondered how late it was. She must’ve fainted, and Lachlan was probably puttering in the apartment kitchen after carrying her upstairs. He had done so before.
But when she squinted at the low light of her stove, it was Prudence setting down two bowls on the floor, Patches, clearly the least finicky of the two creatures, almost stuffing her entire head into the bowl with Boleyn taking a few suspicious sniffs first.
Something shifted inside her. Something that had been sprained had righted.
As if Prudence, by standing there watching the animals eat, bathed in the pale light of Rhiannon’s kitchen lamp, reached into her and set the joint.
Straightened the crooked bone. It snapped into place with a low groan, leaving Rhiannon breathless.
A breeze caressed her face, gone in a second, and she felt tears sting the back of her eyes.
“You stayed.”
Prudence turned, gasping silently, clearly surprised by Rhiannon’s quiet entrance, and the worry in her eyes almost made Rhiannon’s tears spill. Had anyone ever looked at her like this? Like she was precious? Like she mattered? Like she mattered more than the world itself?
“You’re awake.” Pru’s smile was bashful. “Well, duh. Of course you’re awake. How do you feel? You’ve been out of it for a bit.”
Rhiannon frowned.
“How long?”
Prudence came closer, and the palm she laid on her cheek was warm.
Rhiannon was grateful for her fatigue, because the magic that accompanied their touches when she was unguarded like this did not bring more than a gentle hum to her skin.
She was so open, so broken, one look, one touch would tear her apart.
“Two days.”
Rhiannon lifted her face so fast her head spun.
“Two days? But…” She looked around herself, the words eluding her.
“Lachlan took care of the Atelier, he chose some smaller tasks as to not make too much noise and let you rest. I stayed with you. Well, and they did too.”
Patches and Boleyn sat next to each other looking at their humans, the possum’s expression cheerful, the cat’s pensive.
“I made sure they were fed. If I gave Boleyn something she wasn’t supposed to eat, I guess we will know soon enough. I never had cats, so…”
The rambling was adorable. The sincerity, the touching concern. Rhiannon’s heart thudded in her chest. She closed her eyes and chose the easy way out.