Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
T obias stared into the small mirror offered by the old woman. He saw his own eye and in that eye was a truth he had somehow forgotten. In an instant, he remembered who he was. What he was.
He awoke with a splash of cold. He was no longer in the dark green prison of the false forest, but deep underneath the cool salt water. The old woman had gone, but he felt the lingering sense of gratitude for her help.
Sunlight was filtering from above and the scene wavered. He was standing on the rock of the seabed, a dark mass that stretched out for miles in every direction. He wasn’t under the sea by the island. To have this much unbroken vista, he would need to be really deep in the ocean and then he wouldn’t see the sunlight. This place wasn’t off the coast of Northumberland, this place was somewhere else.
He had stepped between worlds, he realised. Like putting his foot through tissue paper, he had broken through the thin place Unholy Island guarded. It was hard to explain in words. None of them quite did the thing justice, but it was easiest to think of it as a doorway. And doorways could be used in both directions.
That was a comforting thought. He clasped it gently, like he was cradling a moth.
Esme couldn’t get the smell of Tobias’s house out of her nose. She had even made a steam inhalation with cloves and ginger to clear her sinuses, imagining the scented steam scouring away any lingering odour particles, but kept catching the scent. It was in her mind, she knew, and that wasn’t so easily scrubbed clean.
Hamish was safe and well. The baby was back with his mother. She closed her eyes, thinking about all the people packed into the house, the people who weren’t so lucky. Fiona had told her that Matteo had spoken. That the people in the house had done what he had told them to do, and that was how he had cleared enough of a path to get to Hamish. But that by the time they were leaving, the effect had worn off and they were pushing back into the house. Their need to be close to Lewis overriding whatever magic Matteo held in his voice.
Matteo wasn’t the answer. Esme looked at the pile of spell books from the shop and knew that there was no point in her reading them again. The things she had tried hadn’t worked. The wards were broken and she hadn’t managed to fix them. She was only human, and had never felt it so keenly. She needed help.
Taking the long way around the village, to avoid walking close to Tobias’s, Esme arrived at The Three Sisters’s house. She knocked on the door several times, keeping her fingers crossed that it would be Diana and not Lucy who answered.
Once inside, she asked to see Bee.
Diana raised an eyebrow. ‘That is not possible. You know what she is doing.’
‘She is still asleep? I need her.’ Esme had allowed herself to hope on her way to the house. She knew that Matteo couldn’t keep all the people away from Lewis and she had begun to believe that Bee would be able to help instead. She tried to explain to Diana. ‘Lewis, or whatever is inside him, is affecting everybody. It’s like an infection. We can’t just treat the symptoms, we have to treat the cause.’
‘Cut it out at the roots,’ Diana said. ‘I understand.’
‘But I can’t do it. The wards have broken.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I need help.’
Diana dipped her chin. ‘Bee is looking for Tobias. You know this, witch.’
‘It’s been days,’ Esme said, another thought hitting her. ‘You have to wake her up. It’s been too long.’
‘We can’t.’ Diana was gentle and sad. It was worse than anybody shouting or stamping.
Esme had been so engrossed in the Lewis problem that it hadn’t hit her immediately. Now it did. Diana was upset. Her eyes reflected a pure pain that terrified Esme.
‘We can’t,’ Diana said again, her voice almost a whisper.
‘But she will die if she doesn’t eat. If we can’t wake her, we need to get her to hospital. They’ve got the equipment to keep her hydrated and… everything.’ Esme had been going to say ‘alive’. But that conjured the opposite word and that couldn’t apply to Bee, so she refused to say it.
‘You know we’re different?’ Diana’s voice was still soft.
‘She still has a body,’ Esme said stubbornly. ‘And a body still needs to be awake and moving and drinking water.’
‘She’s in between.’ Diana made a gesture with her hands. ‘We can see and touch her physical presence, but she’s not fully here. Part of her is Elsewhere and that means time isn’t passing for her body in the same way that it is for us. She isn’t hungry or thirsty.’
‘She can stay like that forever?’
A look of regret passed across Diana’s beautiful face. ‘Forever is too far to see. But a very long time, yes.’
Esme was sitting up late at her kitchen table. Jet was not a lap cat, but he pressed against her legs in a companionable way. She picked up her mug of tea and discovered it was cold. Luke was upstairs in her bed. Asleep with one arm thrown above his head. He looked so vulnerable. Her Viking. Her giant of a man. His face was barely relaxed, even in sleep. He had been looking pale and drawn for days as his concern about Lewis grew.
Lewis was pulling people to him, and the thing inside was draining them of their energy. But Lewis himself hadn’t looked good, either. When she had seen him at the house, surrounded by his adoring fans, he had clearly lost weight. He looked haggard, with dry skin that was cracked and peeling at the corners of his mouth. She wondered how long his physical body would hold up and what would happen when it failed.
There was a sudden noise from outside. It sounded like a woman’s voice, but it could just as easily have been a fox. She got up and opened the door. Moonlight spilled across the back step. The garden was still, not a leaf stirring in the unnatural quiet. And then a figure unfolded from the shadow of her rowan tree.
‘We need to talk.’ Lucy stepped lightly across the damp grass, almost dancing.
‘Where is Diana?’
Lucy waved a hand. ‘With her plants. She’s upset. She doesn’t understand why you aren’t helping.’
‘I don’t know what I can do. I can’t go to the Elsewhere.’ What Esme wanted to ask was why didn’t Lucy go in after Bee, pull her back out? But perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps that was Bee’s skill. She still didn’t really know how The Three Sisters worked. She knew they were connected. She knew they weren’t human. She knew they were terrifying. Lucy most of all. And now Lucy was standing in Esme’s garden, her head tilted to one side and an intensity to her gaze that made Esme want to run and bolt the door.
‘My sister will come back when she is ready. Where is The Book Keeper?’
The change of subject was alarming. Esme didn’t want Lucy to focus on Luke in any way. He still owed her his life and Esme was worried for the day when Lucy would decide to collect. ‘Asleep,’ she answered.
‘Good. He won’t like this.’
Esme was shivering. She hadn’t noticed and wondered when it had started. ‘What won’t he like?’
‘You know,’ Lucy said, her gaze intense. ‘You know what we must do. What you have to do.’
‘Lewis is still a person,’ she said weakly. ‘And it’s not his fault.’
‘There is a hungry spirit inside that man. It must be stopped.’
Esme didn’t need to ask what Lucy meant by ‘stopped’. She shook her head, as if that was going to help.
‘It will never be full. Never be satisfied. It will eat and eat and eat until it consumes everything.’
‘The island?’ Esme felt sick.
‘Certainly.’ Lucy smiled, showing far too many teeth. ‘Perhaps the world.’