Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
A s they walked back toward their respective homes, Hammer and Esme were mostly quiet. Esme was watching her feet and mourning the loss of the electric atmosphere she had felt on her way out to the bay. Clouds scudded across the sky, intermittently hiding the glorious moon, but it wasn’t the only change. Whether it was the adrenaline rush and subsequent anger, or whether it was because she now had company, she could no longer feel the sea and the moon in the same way. They had seemed sentient In a way she could barely put into words.
It was almost three in the morning, and they had a brief conversation about whether they should wake Tobias up or meet in the morning.
‘I’ll clean the wall first thing,’ Hammer said. He had already offered, but Esme had said she wanted to help.
‘I’ll meet you there. Is nine too early?’
He nodded in agreement. ‘First, we need to tell Tobias. He’ll know what to do. But he might want to see the paint first.’
Esme didn’t disagree. And what was the point in having a mayor if you didn’t take your problems to him?
Tobias opened the door looking slightly rumpled in a dressing gown and slippers. He still looked glowingly healthy, especially for a man of his years, but there was a distracted sadness around him. He waved away their apologies for disturbing him in the middle of the night. ‘I don’t sleep much this time of the year. What’s happened?’
Hammer bulldozed straight onto the topic in hand.
‘Let me put the kettle on,’ Tobias said. ‘Or I have whisky if you want something warming.’
‘Whisky,’ Hammer said at the same time as Esme said that she was fine.
In Tobias’s cosy living room, the fire crackling in the grate and the frost patterns traced across the inside of the windows, she could see that Tobias hadn’t, in fact, been in bed. There was a tartan blanket over his favourite chair, his reading glasses on the side table, and Winter was in front of the fire.
Hammer walked over to the sideboard where the whisky decanter and glasses sat and Tobias picked up the blanket, folding it up neatly and offering Esme a seat.
Winter lifted his head. He tried to get up and greet Esme, but his legs buckled and he lay back down.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’ Tobias said sadly, stroking the dog’s head.
Esme knew the answer was probably ‘old age’ but there was no cure for that and very little comfort, so she didn’t say the words. Instead, she asked about whether he was eating and drinking and all the usual calming but useless queries we make when we just need to make some soothing noise, to show that we care and to fill the awful silence.
‘He’s not a young dog,’ Tobias said. ‘But I thought I would have more time.’
And that, in a nutshell, was life. Esme felt a pool of deep sadness well up beneath her. It dragged at her ankles, and she knew it could pull her under. Life was passing her by. She had been so focused on staying safe that she had stopped paying attention to anything else. She was furious that Kate Foster had defaced the castle walls, but another part of her was jealous. Not for defiling the stonework, but for the freedom and excitement and curiosity that Kate Foster represented.
Pulling her mind back to Winter, she joined Tobias in stroking the dog. He turned his eyes up to her and gave a soft whine. There were tears in Esme’s eyes but she wasn’t sure if they were for Winter, Tobias, herself or all three.
‘Now, start again,’ Tobias said, accepting a glass from Hammer. ‘What’s this about Kate Foster?’
Hammer sat on the floor, his back against the sofa and legs stretched out. ‘She defaced the castle’, he said. ‘With paint.’
Tobias frowned.
The heavy cut-glass tumbler was comforting in Esme’s hand. She wasn’t a big drinker, but the slightly medicinal smell felt appropriate. ‘And I know why she has been able to stay on the island.’
Tobias raised his eyebrows, turning to give Esme his full attention.
‘She’s not human,’ she said.
He nodded, his expression smoothing out. ‘That makes sense.’
‘Does it?’ Esme felt the wild urge to laugh bubble up inside. She clamped down on it. ‘Right. Well. What do we do?’
‘About what?’
‘Her. I saw her tonight. She had a fire at the castle. She turned into something in front of me. Before I left. And that’s when she must have used the spray paint. Symbols on the walls, some of them looked pagan.’
‘She shifted form?’ Tobias’s tone was calm, like he was inquiring after somebody’s hair colour or accent.
Esme took a beat to regroup. She took a breath before replying, trying to calm herself. ‘No. Not exactly. She looked different for a moment. But I don’t know if that was me seeing things or her physically changing. If it was the latter, it was very quick. And then she changed back again.’
‘I see.’
‘You don’t seem very shocked.’
‘Don’t I?’ Tobias steepled his fingers together.
All of the retorts that Esme had lined up dissolved on her tongue. His reaction was perfectly reasonable. It wasn’t really shocking. Fiona was a selkie and shifted into the form of a seal. Her son, Euan, was probably the same. She was a witch. The bookshop produced the book you wanted, but only if you asked it nicely.
‘The question,’ Tobias said, ‘is what do we do as a community? I had considered the possibility that Ms Foster was able to stay more than two nights because the island wanted her to take up a position here. Like it did for Luke.’
Esme frowned. ‘But what position?’
‘Perhaps when Luke was ill, the island opened the door for a replacement.’ Tobias shook his head. ‘But that doesn’t quite work. Ms Foster had already shown an interest in the cottages before Luke was hexed.’
‘Luke didn’t die,’ Esme said. ‘He’s the Book Keeper.’
‘Indeed. Which is why your supposition that Ms Foster isn’t human makes the most sense at this point. We have been a sanctuary for the more unusual members of society for centuries. But this is a community decision. I won’t impose my will on the group.’
‘You want her to stay?’
‘I want her to be able to stay. If that is what she needs.’
Esme wanted to say that Kate’s true form had looked evil, but she realised that could be prejudice. There were more things in this world than she had ever dreamed possible and some of those things might look alarming, while being perfectly benign. Or not. That was the small voice at the back of her mind, the one that had kept her safe during a turbulent life.
After Hammer and the young witch had left, Tobias returned to his chair by the fire. Winter struggled to his feet and leaned heavily against his legs. His tail thumped the floor with a couple of half-hearted movements.
‘I know,’ Tobias said. He felt tired. This was his most energised time of the year, but it was one more turn of the wheel and he felt the creak of it in his bones. It would keep on turning, he supposed. Until the sun exploded or whatever the latest prediction from science suggested. He remembered when the prevailing wisdom said that the giant world snake would devour the earth. Throughout time, there had always been the awareness that existence would end eventually. Even for him.
He stroked the soft fur on Winter’s head and sent a prayer to the gods that had long since died. His old playmates from the long-ago beginning. The time before the island was an island, and before he stood between the earth and the sky and felt the sting of the salt air. The time that, in truth, had grown hazy even for him. He knew that Winter was an animal and that his ending would come before Tobias’s final sleep, but he prayed now, with a burst of fervent energy. Not yet.
The next morning, Esme was still furious. Painting the ruins was disrespectful. And she was frightened, too. But Tobias was right. This was a place of sanctuary. And just because Kate Foster’s true form, or her spirit or whatever, had looked pretty terrifying, didn’t mean she was a bad person. Creature. Whatever.
The fact remained. The island had allowed her to stay for more than two nights. She had left the place and remembered it enough to come back. The wards were all intact, but still Kate Foster was here. That had to mean the island was welcoming her. And if the island welcomed her, then Esme, the Ward Witch, ought to do the same.
She shoved her personal feelings down. The churning jealousy at the thought of her spending more time with Luke and the fear that he would fall for her obvious charms. You weren’t going to do anything anyway, she told herself sharply.
A screeching meow broke the peaceful quiet of the kitchen. Jet was glaring at her and she went to the fridge to get him some cooked chicken. ‘Spoiled beast,’ she said as she pulled apart a few small pieces and put them onto a saucer on the floor.
Jet fell upon the food as if he had been starved for a week. He made the growling noises of satisfaction as he ate and Esme wished, for a moment, that she was a cat. Simple life. Simple pleasures. That made her think of Luke leaning slightly toward her as if he was considering kissing her. Which brought with it the crushing sense of failure. She had missed her chance, been too slow and too nervous.
And now Kate Foster had arrived. Luke was a confident man. And he looked like a Viking god. Kate was a whole and healthy woman, one who wasn’t terrified of men. Soon, they would be making naked, beautiful, confident love.
She felt sick.
‘This is unworthy of you,’ she said out loud.
Jet, who was licking the saucer so that it scooted across the tiled floor, didn’t look up.
‘And that is unworthy of you.’ She picked up the saucer and dumped it into the washing-up bowl. Jet sat back on his haunches and began an ungainly wash-session. Esme couldn’t help feel it was directed at her.
It was wet and windy outside, so she layered up with a waterproof coat and slipped a small pebble from her collection into her pocket. She often picked up interesting stones on her beach walks and kept them around the house. Her latest borrow from the bookshop had a section on charms and she thought there was no harm in trying a couple. She would have thought it absolute nonsense in the past, witch or not, but now that she had dehexed a book, she felt differently.
The wind smacked into her body as she rounded the corner of Strand House. The cottages weren’t far away and Esme could already hear the loud snapping of the tarps lashed around the roof and windows. Kate had presumably discovered that the old building wasn’t weather-tight, and Esme couldn’t help being impressed by her practicality.
Satisfied that she wasn’t going to be interrupting a group of builders, but questioning whether Kate could really be staying in the cottage in this state, she knocked on the front door. There was no answer, which wasn’t a surprise. She was pretty sure that the sound of her knuckles on the painted wooden door had been swallowed by the flapping tarp and the howl of the wind.
It ought to be different for a person inside, she reasoned, so she tried again, hammering with the side of her fist this time.
She waited for a minute, listening intently for sounds from within. Caught in a moment of indecision, she scanned the front of the cottages. It was a short row of three. The first was in the state of renovation, and that was why she had chosen to knock on its door. Next door was in the condition it had always been. Dilapidated. The roof sagging and the windows blank. The one next to that was even worse. The roof was bowed inward and tiles that had long since given up the fight lay on the ground around the exterior walls. The front door was boarded up and had been since Esme could remember.
She crossed the small front garden to the middle cottage and knocked on that door. When there was no answer there, she put her hands up to the glass in the downstairs window and peered inside. Although there were no curtains up, it was still hard to see anything. It certainly didn’t appear inhabited.
Although, on second look, there were candles in the middle of the room. And a camping stove. Esme tried knocking on the door one last time.
Kate clearly wasn’t home and she ought to come back later. Esme hesitated, wrestling with her desire to see the woman. Part of her wanted to face the creature she had seen at the castle, to confirm for her own mind that there was something wrong. Another part of her wanted to welcome Kate Foster to the island, to try to forge a connection. The island had allowed Kate to stay. That had to mean something.
She tried the door. It wasn’t locked and opened easily. There was an inner door that was ajar. Closing the outer door behind her, she pushed through and into the main living space. ‘Hello?’ She called out. ‘Anybody home?’
The cottage was all on one level. There was an attic space with a hatch for access, but the living quarters comprised a tiny vestibule, which mainly provided a double door system for warmth and shelter from the weather, the second door opening into the living room. It was a good size and you could place a small dining table at one end and still have room for a sofa and a couple of comfy chairs. The original chimney and fireplace were extant, but in clear need of renovation. A hall led away from the living room, and there was a small bathroom and a double bedroom off it. At the end, a compact kitchen that hadn’t been touched since the nineteen sixties. It still had the original Formica surfaces, sliding door cabinets and a tall cabinet with thick ribbed glass doors. Esme knew she had little excuse for looking around the cottage, but she felt a compulsion she didn’t want to examine too closely.
It was even colder in the kitchen and Esme could hear something scurrying under the units. She could see how lovely it could be with a bit of care and attention, though, and she understood what Kate had seen. It was a shame to let a home fall to ruin like this. With people in the world without a roof over their head, it was downright immoral.
With a new perspective on Kate Foster’s role on the island, Esme took a notebook and pen from her bag, intending to leave a note for the other woman. She would leave her number and hopefully Kate would call. They could clear the air.
Next to the kitchen there was another door and Esme opened it, expecting a linen press. Instead, it was another bedroom. This one was much smaller than the first and it was completely devoid of furniture, except for a single blow-up mattress on the floor.
It also contained a dead body.