Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“So, what do I do now? Now that I know what he is.”
Now that I know he’s a killer. That he killed forty-seven women in the decades before, plus four women this year, plus who knows who else.
Not to mention being immortal.
And also…the horse thing.
“That is up to you,” she says.
“Aren’t I in any danger?” I ask.
She rubs her lips together, weighing it. “To be truthful with you, I don’t know. He’s never hurt a Galloway. He’s always needed them. He needs you in many ways and he’s used you in many ways. But no Galloway has ever let him in like you have and I don’t know what that means for him…or for you. If the bargain is broken and the threshold is gone, what is left to tie him to his humanity?”
I think about what Alasdair had warned me about. When this happens between us—when you let me have all of you—things will change. When you let me have all of you, the version of me you fall asleep next to won’t be the version you wake up to. Do you understand?
I didn’t understand. I really didn’t understand.
“He was controllable before,” she continues, her eyes taking on a hard gleam. “Then Effie died, and he started ratcheting up, still bound, but freed slightly by her death. Now the bargain is gone completely, and there’s no telling what he will do. So, no, I can’t tell you if you’re in any danger, but I think you should start acting like you are.” She pauses. “I can tell you have some hard decisions to make.”
That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.
I get up, my legs a little shaky from the conversation or maybe the whisky, and give the sincerest smile I can muster.
“Thank you.”
“Aye.”
“I’ll come back when I’ve figured out what to do.”
“I know you will. You stay safe now, alright? Best to keep salting those doors and windows and keep them locked. You let him inside once—you don’t have to do it again, you hear?”
I hear. I don’t bother telling her I’ve let him in more than once, including that very morning on the rug in front of the woodstove.
I head out of the shop and into the empty street. The afternoon has rolled on; the gulls wheel and cry overhead.
I get into the car. I sit in it for a long moment before I turn the key.
Then I drive home with my hands white-knuckled on the wheel, a man named Eachann Alasdair MacCoinnich—Mackenzie—each-uisge, the white horse, the man across the bay, the man I let into my body, sitting in the passenger seat of my head, looking at me, waiting to see what I will do.
Chapter
Twenty-One
Isit at the kitchen table all afternoon, and the day moves past me in shows of light across the loch, changing from silver, to pewter, to bronze.
The tea has gone cold three times. The kettle’s been refilled twice. I’ve tucked into a bottle of Speyside whisky I bought when I first got here, and even though it’s tempting to keep going and down the whole thing, I know I need to stay sharp. I know I need that more than ever if I plan on figuring out what to do.
I glance at the salt jar on the counter. I think about the back step. I think about Alasdair telling me, leave the salt at the back step and I’ll know to keep going. I think about him saying it just this very morning, when I still thought he was a man humoring my aunt’s habits. I think about how his face looked when he said it, that he didn’t look like he was humoring anything, that he looked absolutely grave.
He’s been waiting for me to know the truth; to find it out on my own. He’s been waiting for me to know for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe years. He knew there would be another Galloway, just like my great-aunt, and that I could be the one that would finally give him what he wants.
And I did just that.
I gave him what he wanted.
That thought sits in my chest like a stone.
The betrayal is real. It doesn’t feel like it did with Ryan, but it’s still there, still this acidic thing that’s eating away at my ribs, trying to get at my heart.
Mhairi was right—he used me. None of what he said was real, he was just trying to get into my pants, just trying to break this age-old bargain so that he could be free to…what? Continue his murder spree?
And what did he do with the victims anyway? Why were they only females? Why was the liver left behind? Did he just kill them or did he…
I push back from the table, refusing to think about that. Of everything I just heard at the shop, we didn’t discuss how he killed or why, and I don’t want to know what he did with the bodies. All I know is whoever they were, they became the drowned women of this loch. The drowned women were real, which meant that gull I saw in the water the other day might have been one of them. That woman swimming, beckoning me in? That might have been one of them, too.