Spells for Forgetting(95)

A single tear striped her cheek as she closed her eyes, seeing Emery there. But there was a lightness in her voice as she said it. “Air to water, water to lungs,” she breathed.

The wind picked up, pulling at her hair. She could feel the island and the sea that surrounded it. Feel it rushing in her veins.

“Air to water, water to lungs.” She said again.

Emery’s shape bent and swayed in her mind, and she focused, trying to hold on to it. When she said it a final time, the words burned in her throat. “Air to water! Water to lungs!”

All at once, the wind ceased, leaving the woods unmoving around her. Lily blinked her eyes open between heavy breaths, waiting. The sound of the starlings was in the trees. The distant hum of a car or maybe the generator at the orchard. In the sky, the black clouds had returned to white.

She exhaled, checking her watch again. 6:09. It was done. She could feel it in the air’s stillness. In the steady pulse beneath her skin.

Her hands shook as she dug into the earth and buried the candle, the pin, and what was left of the henbane. When she got back to her feet, she brushed off her dress, Emery’s necklace still dangling from her fingers.

There was no undoing it now. Emery was gone. There was finally room for Lily to find a way into August’s heart, and she would. At the very least, she’d find a way into his bed. And when Lily bore a child that everyone thought was his, she would get what she deserved. For the first time in generations, things would be set right.

It was a Morgan who’d planted the first seeds of the orchard and it was a Salt who’d pried it from her family’s white-knuckled fingers.

But there was one thing that Lily had forgotten—that the magic belonged to me.

The woods were quiet except for the sound of the starlings and Lily walked through the thick underbrush, back toward the road that led to the orchard. But before she reached it, a tightness tugged at the bottom of her belly, making her swallow hard. It was followed a few steps later by a shooting pain each time she inhaled.

Lily stopped, her brow cinching the moment she tasted salt on her tongue. When she tried to draw another breath, it wouldn’t come.

A small sound escaped her throat, followed by a bubbling. She reached up, touching the corner of her mouth, where cold water was streaming over her chin. Her heart thumped painfully in her chest as she took another step, but she was choking now. Gasping around a throat full of seawater. And when she fell to her knees, the last thing she saw was a starling perched on the branch overhead. It looked down at her, eyes black and unblinking, as Lily Morgan drowned on dry land.





Fifty-Seven


    LEODA


The last time I stood in the barn loft, we were deciding a man’s fate. Now, we would decide another’s.

There would be no tea for this meeting. Zachariah, Nixie, and Bernard stood shoulder to shoulder in the cramped room, all looking to me. But if the task at hand was one I could do myself, it would already be done.

I peered through the crack in the door, watching the stairs. The orchard had been empty for hours and Dutch had sent the last of the farmhands home, but we couldn’t afford to be seen here. Not tonight.

“What about Noah?” Bernard kept his voice low. He looked antsy.

“Couldn’t track him down.” I lied.

Emery complicated things for Noah and I didn’t trust him to see reason. It had been hard enough to get him to look the other way when we dealt with Henry’s will.

Bernard exhaled. “Probably best.”

Zachariah didn’t look as convinced. He didn’t like it when decisions weren’t unanimous. Bernard, Nixie, Noah, Zachariah, and I were the five votes of the town council, and it wasn’t just road repairs, town events, and harbor matters we dealt with. More than once, we’d taken the very fate of the island into our hands. But this would be the first time we acted without one of our own.

Nixie would be the other problem. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her overalls as she propped one shoulder against the wood beam at the center of the room. I’d almost left her out of it, too, but I needed another set of hands. And I had enough leverage to keep her in line.

She hadn’t said a word since she arrived. Not when I told them about the letter, and not when I told them about Dutch recanting his story.

“It’s no different than last time,” I said. That uneasy look that was there anytime the subject of the past came up instantly surfaced in their eyes. There wasn’t a stone-stomached one among them. “We know what we have to do.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Nixie was the first to argue, which came as no surprise.

I let out a frustrated breath, trying to temper my response. I’d have to handle this with care. “You weren’t so reluctant when Hannah told us that Calvin was abusing his wife.”

I didn’t have the loyalty to Eloise that the others did, but I understood a thing or two about order on the island. I also saw the opportunity for what it was.

“Calvin was a drunk. He was hurting Eloise,” Nixie said.

For me, it had never been about saving Eloise Salt and her baby. It was clear from the beginning that getting rid of Calvin was hitting two birds with one very well-aimed stone. One less Salt on Saoirse brought me one step closer to putting things right.

Calvin got warnings first, of course. A visit from Zachariah, Jake, and Noah. They’d hoped after a few broken ribs that he’d come to some sense, but I knew better. I knew the Salts. When he didn’t stop hitting Eloise, we dealt with it. We took care of our own on Saoirse.