Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
L uke’s head was still spinning from whatever Kate had thrown at him. He had been in the stockroom, looking for his mobile. Having not been able to get Esme on the landline, he had decided to send a text message to everyone on the island, figuring that would give him the biggest and quickest chance of success. The next thing he remembered was something hitting the back of his head. He had gone down hard, which must have been when he smashed his face and split his lip. He had definitely lost consciousness for a few moments and he hoped he had escaped without a concussion.
He drew in lungfuls of cold, clean air and felt his blood rushing in his veins. However muzzy his head felt, they were all alive. And the shop wasn’t on fire. After he had manhandled Kate Foster out of the building, he had been joined by Hammer. Luke didn’t know how he had known to come to the shop, he hadn’t had time to finish his text messages before he had been knocked out by Kate, but he was extremely glad to see the man-mountain. Even more grateful when Hammer had simply taken charge of his hissing, spitting captive. He hadn’t even had a chance to be irritated by how easy Hammer made it look. His attention had been taken by the more pressing need to find out why Esme wasn’t directly behind him. He had gone back to the shop entrance and thought his heart was going to explode from fear when he saw her on the floor, struggling to move. It was as if a physical force was preventing her from leaving, the same force that didn’t seem to want him back inside. He tightened his arms around her, as if reassuring himself that she was really there. Whole. Unhurt. Apart from the wicked cut on her palm where she had sliced into her hand.
Hammer was standing a little way up the street, Kate Foster against the wall of one of the houses, his arms boxing her in. He wasn’t touching her, but he had formed a human cage and she was leaning against the wall, staring at him with hatred. She was no longer kicking or screaming into his face, so that was something.
Esme was in his arms. Something he had dreamed about for months. Her body was pressed against his and her hands pressed against his back, anchoring herself as if he was a lifeboat and she was drowning.
That snapped him out of his romantic reverie. She was traumatised. She was only holding onto him because he was her friend and she needed comfort. He told himself, and his body, to get a fucking grip.
And then she went up on tiptoe and kissed him. It was on the cheek, her lips brushing his skin so quickly he could almost have imagined it.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and he forced himself to meet her gaze.
‘I think I should be thanking you. Did you know you could do that?’ He knew he should release her now. She felt steady on her feet and was no longer in imminent danger.
She wasn’t letting go of him, though, and he decided he would stop holding her the moment she stopped holding him.
‘What’s the play here?’ Hammer called over his shoulder.
‘Call the police,’ Esme said, glancing over. She saw Kate’s hand dip into her pocket and then up to her face. ‘Stop her!’
Kate Foster had something at her mouth and then it was gone.
‘Shit,’ Luke said, dropping his arms and moving toward them.
Kate was already crumpling to the ground, her eyes rolling back in her head.
‘Call nine nine nine!’ Esme was on her knees, getting Kate onto her back and tilting her head back to open her airway. She swept fingers inside her mouth, even though she knew Kate had already swallowed the pill or poison or hexed object, whatever it had been.
‘Causeway is out,’ Luke said.
‘They’ll send the air ambulance,’ Esme replied, starting chest compressions.
He hesitated for another second. He wasn’t as good a person as Esme. She had snapped into action immediately and was trying to save the life of the woman who had, moments earlier, tried to kill them all.
Hammer watched the air ambulance touch down on the scrubby ground of the car park. He and Luke had carried Kate Foster on the stretcher down the track to the car park and there was a relief to pass the burden to the paramedics.
Two calm and highly efficient people moved in synchronicity, speaking to Kate Foster and to each other in the shorthand of their business.
‘Has she taken anything, do you know?’ One of the paramedics asked.
Hammer shook his head. ‘Maybe. Don’t know.’ He wasn’t lying. Esme had said she had seen her put something in her mouth in the moments before she collapsed, but Hammer didn’t know anything for sure.
The woman on the stretcher looked very small, now. Her perfect skin had a waxy appearance and the colour had drained away. Hammer knew that people could bounce back from worse. He just wasn’t sure that would be a good thing. It had occurred to him when Luke had dialled the emergency services that it might be better not to bother. To let Kate Foster’s unconscious body slip quietly into the sea. It wasn’t a kind thought. Not a moral impulse. But Hammer had never pretended to be otherwise.
He watched the paramedics work. They clamped an oxygen mask over Kate Foster’s face and one of them, a woman with short brown hair and a tiredness around her eyes, told Hammer which hospital they were going to and that he and Luke needed to clear the area. And then they were loading her into the helicopter and the rotors were moving.
The news about the events at the bookshop, and Luke and Esme’s narrow escape, flew around the island. Esme didn’t feel up to a meal at the pub, with everybody asking questions all at once, but Seren brought around a foil dish of casserole with instructions to stick it in the oven for half an hour. ‘I was going to take one to Luke, too, but he’s made it to the pub.’
Esme accepted the food gratefully and ate in her warm kitchen. Most unusually, Jet curled up on her lap, as if he wanted to be close to her. She stroked him and felt the residual tingling in her fingers and arms from the spell in the bookshop. The palm she had sliced open was covered with an adhesive dressing and the wound throbbed a little, but otherwise she felt perfectly fine.
Bee sat in the centre of her mirrors and steeled herself. Diana was in the garden behind the house and Lucy was elsewhere. Bee didn’t like to think about her youngest sister and the ways she whiled away her time so, as a general rule, she didn’t. The three mirrors, silvered and misty with age, rose to her left, her right, and straight ahead. She closed her eyes for a moment and brought the bookshop to her mind: the tall shelves, packed with books, and the old wooden counter with The Book Keeper standing behind it. Then she opened her eyes and looked into the future for the bookshop. She was content with what she saw.
Cleaning the aftermath turned out to be a bigger job than Luke had anticipated. Seren had popped in while he was standing in the front room wearing a pair of rubber gloves, taken one look around the place, swore, and then left.
Esme had called to see if he needed her help, but he told her that she should rest. Truth was, he didn’t want her to see the place until it was all cleared up. She’d been through enough. On the phone, she had still sounded slightly dazed.
‘We were looking on the mainland for the murderer, and she was right under our noses. I can’t believe it. I mean, my instincts were right, there was something off about her, but I didn’t listen to them.’
‘Well, you’re clearly smarter than me,’ Luke said. ‘I didn’t pick up on anything.’
‘You were probably blinded by her extremely smooth skin.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ Esme said quickly, ‘ignore me.’
Luke pushed a hand through his hair. ‘Did you think I was interested in her?’
‘No. Maybe.’ Esme’s voice was strained. ‘She was very-’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Good. Okay. Good.’ He heard her take a deep breath. ‘Not that it’s any of my business…’
‘It is your business,’ Luke said quietly.
Tobias offered to help clear the sodden books from the shop, but Luke had called in a specialist cleaning service. ‘I promised I would do my best and I think my best is probably engaging competent professionals.’ They had dowsed the place with a powdery substance which had soaked up the petrol, before clearing it away. And Hammer had turned up with his woodworking tools and helped Luke to remove, repair, and re-lay the broken floorboards. He had understood, without Luke needing to explain, that they needed to re-use as much of the original boards as possible, and Hammer spent hours trimming down the splintered edges, filling and sanding cracks, and adding in small sections of hardwood from his own stash to fill the unsalvageable places.
Tobias looked at the repairs with approval, shifting the corner of the rug to examine the boards, before moving to inspect the rest of the shop. ‘The new window looks good.’
Luke had gone onto the mainland to a builder’s merchants and a glazier and had the window built. Instead of the one large pane of glass set in peeling woodwork, he had ordered a smart wooden frame, freshly painted in satin black and with three little panes along the top, all of which opened so that he would be able to let a little fresh air into the shop whenever he felt the need.
The smell in the shop was almost back to normal. There was still the faintest whiff of petrol, but Luke thought he might be imagining that. It might be the memory of the smell, the way it had clogged his throat and burned his eyes.
A lot of the books in the front of the shop hadn’t been salvageable, but they had been easy enough to replace. Not all of them, of course, not the older editions, but he would track those down given time. Alvis had kept a meticulous stocklist, so he knew exactly what was missing.
Even luckier, having now found the hidden stockroom, he had been able to refill the gaps in the shelves from the books in storage. The shop didn’t look empty or unloved. Luke had cleaned all the shelves a second time, after the specialist cleaner had dealt with the petrol, waxing them with the tin of polish and cleaning rags he had found in the kitchenette. Finally, after long days of labour, he could detect the faintest hum: the sound of a contented shop.
Esme was resting after her yoga and meditation session with Bee. It was strange to be back in the house and acting as if everything was normal. Luke had been busy tidying up the bookshop and refused all her offers of help, saying that she had ‘done more than enough for the shop’ and that she should ‘chill’. She was trying to take him at his word and not interpret it as a sign that he needed space from her.
Bee brought two mugs of tea over to the cushioned seating area and handed one to Esme. ‘You did better today,’ she said.
Esme accepted the tea, but she couldn’t accept the praise. ‘My mind still wanders.’
‘That’s all right. The spaces in between the wandering are what matters.’ Bee regarded her for a long moment. ‘Out with it.’
‘What?’
‘Whatever it is you want to say.’
‘Will Kate Foster wake up?’
‘I don’t know. I could look if you really want to know, but I don’t think it will help. It’s not the question you truly want to ask.’
Esme shook her head. There was no point trying to fool Bee. She ought to know that by now. ‘What is she?’
‘A woman. A very unhappy woman.’
‘But she didn’t look human. I saw her. At the castle. I thought it was my sight coming in and that I’d seen her true form. I guess I was hallucinating or something. Imagining things.’ Even as she spoke, Esme knew that wasn’t true. It was her old thought patterns kicking in. Self-loathing always waiting in the wings, desperate to take centre stage. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and let the darkness fill her vision. When she meditated with Bee, that darkness had become her friend. It meant calm. It meant safety. Somewhere along the line, she had created – or found – something that was separate to her panicking, spiralling thought patterns and the fear and self-doubt that she had always assumed filled that place behind her eyes. Now she knew there was something else. A centre of calm that was immune to any of that noise. Bee had promised her that, with practice, she would be able to summon it at any time. Or, more accurately, go there whenever she wanted. In that moment, Esme knew that Bee had been telling the truth. And she knew, too, that she had been right.
She opened her eyes. ‘She had just invited me to join her. It was a clear night and she was close to the fire, so there was enough light. She didn’t transform, but it was like a filter had been lifted and I was suddenly seeing the truth. And she wasn’t human.’ Esme pictured the creature she had seen, its pale wrinkled skin and large eyes. She described it as best she could.
Bee nodded. ‘I have seen that before. Maybe not as advanced a case, but something like it…’
‘Advanced case?’
‘Some people are born with particular abilities. Perhaps they belong to one of the old magical Families or perhaps some recessive genes have got together and randomly thrown in some affinity or potential. It probably happens with regularity in the human population. I mean,’ she smiled, ‘there are a lot of you.’
‘You think she was human?’
‘Definitely. Now ask me what happens if a human with a lot of motivation and a little latent affinity dabbles in magic.’
‘But I’m human,’ Esme said, suddenly feeling sick.
‘You are our Ward Witch,’ Bee said as if that was the definitive answer. And maybe it was, but Esme could feel the fear rising.
Bee patted her arm. ‘You have to understand, you are not using magic in the way that Kate Foster had to have been using magic. Like anything, there’s a safe way to do things and the other. You can’t blame the hammer when you hit your thumb with it.’
‘She really didn’t look human. For a moment, at least.’
‘She was wearing a glamour spell. I don’t know how long she had been using it, but daily magical use, even something low level like that, takes power. And if you don’t have any of your own, you have to get it from somewhere. You know how you got juice for that dehexing?’
Blood. Esme felt ill.
Bee looked serious. ‘If a person takes power, uses blood magic they don’t fully understand and are not powerful enough to control, it will exert a price. And that will twist them. It’s like they are slowly hexing themselves until the only thing being fed is the desire for magic. All other desires, wanting food or sex or sleep, fall away. The creature you saw was Kate Foster. It was a person, but a starved and exhausted one. Seen in the flicking light of the fire she must have seemed like a monster.’
‘She said she hardly ate,’ Esme said. ‘I thought she was being… I don’t know…’ An awful thought hit. ‘Do you think she was asking for my help?’
‘If she had asked you would have helped her,’ Bee said.
‘But what if she was asking and I missed it?’
Bee shook her head. ‘It’s not your responsibility to divine what people need. Just because you have the ability to do so, doesn’t absolve people of their personal responsibility. You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped. You are missing something more important, though.’
Esme still felt sick to her stomach. She wrapped her arms around her torso and squeezed, trying to comfort herself. ‘What?’
‘You saw past her glamour. That’s the sight.’
‘I thought the sight was seeing the future.’
Bee was smiling. ‘Don’t knock it. Seeing the present clearly is just as useful. Maybe more so.’