Chapter 2
Chapter Two
T obias’s first hint that something was amiss was Winter’s sharp bark. His ears were pressed back against his skull and he let out a soft whine before another two short barks. They had been taking an early evening stroll along the coastal path that led from the castle to Coire Bay when Winter had pressed into Tobias’s legs and let out his warning.
Tobias scanned the gorse that lined the path, the rocks that led to the sea, and then the horizon. àite Marbh was a dark mass against the red glow of the setting sun. Tobias wasn’t a superstitious man. Truth be known, he wasn’t a man at all, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have instincts. At this moment his were telling him that he wasn’t seeing everything that was there. He was used to seeing the layers of the world, past realities stacked upon each other, but the sense that there was something hidden amongst all these images was new.
Down at the shore, Hammer was hauling his boat onto the dry sand. He straightened and turned at Tobias’s approach, and Tobias saw instantly that the man was shaken.
‘There are lights,’ Hammer said without preamble. ‘Over there. I went to take a closer look.’
The islanders’ habit was to avoid saying the name of the islet. More superstition, but Tobias didn’t blame them. Human superstition was understandable. Their vision was so narrow, and he knew that deep in their subconscious they must constantly feel the press of the vast darkness stretching around their tiny flames. No wonder they clung to stories, searching for rules that would keep them safe. ‘Did you go ashore?’
Hammer shook his head. ‘Close enough to see some smoke. Someone has a fire.’
Tobias considered the possibilities. In the summer, a wildfire was possible. Unlikely, but possible. In the cold damp clutches of late February, it was inconceivable. Winter pressed against his side, not making any sound, but clearly picking up on his tension. ‘I need you to take me to àite Marbh.’
Hammer crossed his arms. ‘It’s too dark.’
‘Tomorrow then. First light.’
‘I don’t know about that. No one goes there.’
‘You can stay in the boat. Just get me close enough to wade ashore.’ He felt bad, looking at the conflict drawn clearly on Hammer’s roughly hewn face, but the dead island had been quiet for centuries and he had to make sure it stayed that way.
After dinner, Luke got up to clear the plates. Esme watched him move around her kitchen, putting things away and starting on the dishes in the sink.
‘Leave those,’ Esme said. ‘I’ll do them later.’
‘You cooked,’ he protested. He began rinsing the plates.
Having turned down a second glass of wine, Esme put the kettle on to make tea. ‘You want coffee?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’
‘You won’t like it. Spearmint.’
‘Ah, okay. What’s the one that makes you feel like you’re on fire?’
Esme thought for a moment. ‘The one with ginger and turmeric?’
‘Yeah, I think so. I’ll have that, please.’
Esme would have thought that Luke would have avoided that particular feeling after touching a hexed book that almost made him combust. His fever had been so swift and so high, he had been in mortal danger, and he had said it had felt as if he was burning alive.
As if mirroring her thoughts, Luke added. ‘It’s weird that I like that sensation now.’
He had filled the sink with fresh hot soapy water and was making short work of the washing up.
‘How do you feel? In general?’
‘All better.’ He turned his head to smile reassuringly. ‘I promise.’
‘You want me to stop asking?’
‘I like that you care,’ Luke said diplomatically.
With his hands occupied in the hot water, Esme stepped behind Luke and put her own hands around his waist. He went still as she ran her hands over his t-shirt, feeling the planes of his chest and stomach beneath. Their bodies were close, she was pressed up against his back to give her roving hands access, and her front felt alive with sensation. After a few minutes, in which she wasn’t sure that Luke took a breath, Esme stepped away and finished making the tea. Luke resumed washing up.
They hadn’t talked about it, but Luke seemed to sense that she needed to feel in control in their more intimate moments. Kissing was going very well indeed, but they had yet to progress further. He seemed to be happy to let her conduct her experiments, never pushing.
Esme could feel her cheeks flaming and her own breathing didn’t seem to want to calm down. She focused on brewing the tea. Luke might not be pushing, but her own body seemed to have a mind of its own. And that mind wanted to progress things physically. If only her brain would stop throwing up panicked roadblocks. Every time she contemplated getting naked with Luke, she felt a deluge of self-doubt that doused her libido like a bucket of iced water. Ryan’s voice, mostly banished, would start whispering. She didn’t believe that voice any longer, but a small part of her was still worried that if Luke saw her without her clothes, he would be disappointed. She had seen enough of his naked body to know that it was all hard muscle and angles. Hers was decidedly squashy.
Once they were both sat at the kitchen table with their mugs of tea, Luke stretched his legs out to the side. Esme knew he was avoiding crowding her, but she hadn’t minded the way their knees had met underneath the table, his legs tangling in hers. She was determined to push Ryan’s voice all the way down again, not to let him spoil her current happiness. Besides, if she didn’t get braver with Luke, he might get tired of waiting. She gulped some mint tea.
‘You look thoughtful,’ Luke said.
‘I found a glamour spell in a book. I was thinking it was the sort of thing that Kate Foster used.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand why anyone would risk their health like that.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘What do you mean?’
Esme made a vague gesture with her hand, sketching Luke in the air. ‘You look like you.’
He smiled slowly, then. The light in his eyes making his whole face ten times sexier. ‘You like the way I look?’
‘Don’t fish. Every human with a pulse likes the way you look.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Luke said. His face creased in concern, and his tone went from teasing to serious. ‘Are you upset?’
Esme was about to say ‘no’, but she realised it wasn’t true. She grimaced. ‘Thinking about Kate Foster.’
‘Ah.’
‘I can’t stop worrying that I could have helped her. But I’m angry with her, and sort of glad she didn’t pull through and that makes me feel really bad.’ Tobias had heard via DS Robinson that Kate Foster had died the previous week. She never woke up from the coma and had, apparently, suffered a massive seizure.
‘She did really bad things before you ever met her,’ Luke said gently. ‘She was too far gone.’
He was trying to make her feel better, but Esme couldn’t take the comfort. ‘This is supposed to be a place of sanctuary. Everyone here has a past, but the island is a safe place. The island let her stay here. What if I let it down by not helping?’
‘You feel like you let the island down?’ Luke was speaking carefully, a crease between his brows.
‘You think that’s daft. I know it’s a place, not a person.’
‘I don’t think it’s daft, but I do think you are taking too much responsibility for Kate Foster’s actions. You are not the only island resident, for starters. And it wasn’t your fault. None of it. She literally took her own life when she swallowed that…’ he trailed off. ‘Whatever that was.’
Esme had assumed that Kate had cursed a small object and that had been what she had swallowed. One of the books she had found in the hidden storeroom of Luke's shop had been entirely filled with lethal curses. Ones that were fused to objects usually took days to work to their full effect, but if ingested that time was sped up considerably. They hadn't been given details from the hospital, as they weren't family. Not that she expected the hospital would have recognised what they would have found. 'How do I stop being angry with her? It doesn't feel right now that she's dead, but she could have killed you. Destroyed the bookshop.’
‘But she didn’t. Because of you.’
The next day, Tobias and Hammer were silent in the boat. They hadn’t left until long past midday, with Hammer insisting on food and then checking over his boat in what Tobias recognised as a delaying tactic. He understood that the man did not want to sail to the islet. He knew that every atom of his being would be rebelling against the thought, so he waited patiently while Hammer prepared and prevaricated.
A brisk wind had sprung up as soon as they took to the sea, blowing directly against them as if trying to turn their boat around. Winter was back on Unholy Island, safely shut in Hammer’s boat house, although he had whined pitifully when they had closed the door on him. ‘I’ll not take him to that place,’ Tobias had said, his voice leaden with a dread that had settled in Hammer’s stomach.
Hammer used the motor to get them within reach of àite Marbh, and then rowed them around to a landing spot where the islet dipped down to meet the sea.
He manoeuvred the craft until the hull scraped sand and then made to climb out.
‘You don’t have to,’ Tobias said. He didn’t have to raise his voice as the wind that had battled them for every inch of the journey had abruptly dropped and the air was eerily still. ‘You can wait here.’
Hammer answered by clambering over the front of the small boat and onto the sand. Tobias followed, and they both hauled the boat further up.
A line of scrubby trees and bushes hid the rest of the islet from view, black against the pale grey of the sky. Tobias hadn’t set foot on àite Marbh in more than fifty years, and every part of his body remembered why. Goosebumps broke out across his skin and, ancient though he was, he felt a child’s urge to run away. There was an emptiness here. An absence that was like a hole in the world.
He looked at the large man who was standing with him. Hammer was a fighter and a survivor. His face was a mask, but his skin was paler than usual and pulled taut across the cage of his skull. Tobias could sense the tension radiating from him as he scanned the environment, looking for the threat that he could feel in his bones.
Tobias spoke first, his voice leaden. ‘Where was the smoke?’
Hammer pointed to the left and they began moving together, their footsteps loud in the uncanny silence.
After a few steps, Hammer spoke. ‘It’s so quiet.’
‘No birds.’ Other small islands like this were havens for seabirds. Handa and Skomer hosted enormous guillemot breeding populations, the Farne Islands had puffins and terns. ‘Nothing lives here,’ Tobias said.
Hammer’s expression betrayed nothing, but Tobias sensed the big man’s scepticism. It would be warring with the evidence of his senses, and Tobias felt compassion for him. ‘This island might be called dead place, but it’s the other way around. A place for the dead.’
They had been walking up an incline and now they reached the top of the rise. The hidden side of the island was revealed, a bowl shape with jagged rocks rising up on the side that faced the mainland. Laid out below was a small plain of low ground with a grassy mound roughly in the middle.
‘There’s nobody here,’ Hammer said. He produced a small pair of binoculars from his coat pocket and scanned the area.
The air was still. The grass down the slope and across the mound unmoving. Tobias began picking his way down the slope to the middle of the island. Two large stones, planted upright five thousand years ago, marked the proper way to approach the cairn. This was a place for the dead. It always had been, since before there were beings sentient enough to name it as such. The mound was a monument and a resting place. Tobias knew that Neolithic kings slept inside, along with their wives and children. Their ghosts did not trouble him. Not even the smallest ones. There was something else he feared.