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)
“I can’t.” I sigh heavily.
“What do you mean you can’t? You’re in your car. Drive to Inverness. Get on a flight. Come home.”
“I can’t, Maddie.”
“Why not?”
“Because I…”
I don’t have an answer she would accept.
Because the creature is bound to this loch, and I am bound to him by something he made when I let him into my body. Because there is a binding that needs to happen, and I’m the only Galloway left to do it. Because Effie left me this, and I’m not going to be the one who refuses it.
Because I’ve spent my whole life believing there was something out there for me, some purpose, something that made me special, and this might just be it?
“Because it’s not that simple.”
“Babe. It is exactly that simple. You accepted this whole fucking harebrained inheritance plot to begin with. You accepted it so fast, with so much ease, you tricked everyone into thinking it was a good idea to just randomly up and move to Scotland because you made it seem oh so simple.”
“Maddie, please. I’m asking you to trust me for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks?” she cries out.
“I have to figure something out and I have to figure it out here. I’m asking you to trust me to do it. Please.”
The line goes quiet for a long beat.
“Are you safe? Like, are you actually safe right now? This is the man you think is a serial killer, is it not?”
I think about the salt holding. I think about him not coming last night. I think about the wards I have been keeping by accident and the wards I am keeping on purpose now.
“I’m safe today,” I say, which is the truest sentence I have managed in twenty-four hours.
“Today…”
“Yes.”
“Iris, that is not good enough.”
“It will have to be! I love you. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I tell her, getting ready to hang up before things get more disastrous.
“No, you won’t,” she complains with a dry laugh as I round the last bend and turn onto my drive.
The white horse is in the road.
I brake, hard.
“Holy fuck!” I shout.
“Iris? What’s happening?”
The car stops about thirty feet from it and the tires squeak slightly on the gravel.
The horse doesn’t move.
It’s in the middle of the road where my drive turns down toward the cottage. Its broadside to the car, the long white flank of it across the path, the head turned toward the driver’s side, the eye on me. It’s bigger than it was somehow, and I don’t know if it’s my imagination, my fear, or my position in the wee car. The mane is long and pale and wet, and the wet has run down the side of the neck along the shoulder, the coat a white that is almost grey, dark with the damp.
The eye is dark—too dark—the color of the loch at midnight. Its focus is on me, and even though this one belongs to a horse, even though it’s black, not blue, it’s the same knowing eye that has been on me for weeks at a distance, on the slope, by the rocks, through the back window.
In my kitchen.
“Iris!” Maddie shrieks through the car speakers. It’s enough to knock some sense into me.
“Sorry, I almost hit a horse but I’m okay. I better concentrate on driving before I get in an accident, talk to you tomorrow.”
I quickly end the call and sit in the car with my hands on my lap, wondering what to do, my thoughts running wild.
I told him no last night. I told him no with the salt. He honored the salt. He went home. And he’s here now in this form because he wants me to see him, because he wants me to know the thing I refused.
He has come in horse form to be looked at.
At least, I hope that’s all he’s come here for.
We hold like this for what feels like a long time, though it could just be a few seconds, the engine still running, my foot still jammed against the brake.
The horse takes a single step toward me. The weight of it shifting onto the foreleg, the body coming a foot closer, the head still turned to the driver’s side. I can see its breath now in the air, as if the temperature outside suddenly dropped.
I put my hands on the wheel, my grip tightening.
The horse takes another step.
Its gaze has not left my face.
I don’t know what I am supposed to do, if I am supposed to get out and talk to him. I mean, what does he want with me in this form? Should I drive around the horse? Reverse? None of the books explained this particular situation.
All I know is there’s no way in hell I’m laying a hand on that thing.
I put my hand on the gear shift, thinking, trying not to panic.