The Lighthouse Witches(41)

“I don’t like it,” Clover said flatly. Always to the point.

“How come?” Isla said.

“We don’t do any science, just collecting leaves and building dens in the forest.”

“Well, that can be scientific, can’t it?” Isla countered.

“By ‘science,’ I think Clover means they don’t set stuff on fire,” I said. Her school in York had a science lab, and Clover had shown a slightly worrying interest in exploding things.

“I like the school here,” Luna said. “We made puppets yesterday.”

“What about you, Saffy?” Isla said. “Rowan said you’ve settled in well?”

Saffy’s cheeks reddened. “It’s OK,” she said to the plate.

“Will you be taking the girls guising, Liv?” Rowan asked.

“Guising?”

“Trick or treating,” Isla translated.

“It is not trick or treating,” Rowan said, mock-offended. She shook her head at me. “Guising’s a very different matter. You dress up to disguise yourself so the spirits think you’re one of them. And you perform for your neighbors to bring them good luck.”

“So you don’t get sweeties?” Clover asked.

“You might,” Rowan said. “But if the neighbors give you something, it’s to ward off bad luck.”

“Can we still dress up as Egyptian mummies?” Luna asked.

“If you like,” Rowan said lightly.

“What about bobbing for apples?” Clover added.

“It’s a pagan ritual,” Saffy said, and Rowan turned to her in surprise.

“Dookin’ for apples is a pagan ritual?” Isla asked. She cocked an eyebrow at Rowan. “Did you know that?”

Rowan’s cheeks flushed. “?’Course I did,” she said, but she’d hesitated a second too long for it to be convincing. Saffy threw me a quick smile, proud of herself for one-upping Rowan.

Isla’s husband, Bram, came in then, late from work—Isla said this was usual—and sat down at the head of the table. I said hello, but he didn’t answer.

“Remember Liv?” Isla said, trying to get his attention. He was busy pulling off his tie and adjusting his shirtsleeves. “We met her at the bothy. You’ve already met Saffy, and the younger ones are Clover and Luna.”

Bram merely raised his eyes and gave us all a disinterested stare. I wondered if we’d come at a bad time. He was a good deal older than Isla, mid-sixties, with a ruddy face and heavy-lidded, unimpressed eyes that flicked at me from beneath woolly eyebrows. Isla brought out his plate and set it in front of him, and immediately he said, “Are you trying to kill me?”

“What’s wrong?” Isla asked. He was looking at the plate as if he’d been served a human head.

“Are you blind?” he said, gimlet-eyed.

Isla looked puzzled, then seemed to realize her mistake and tutted. “Sorry. Forgot you’re off meat at the moment.” She rose from her chair and whisked the plate away. Rowan picked up her conversation about Samhain—Halloween—and the conversation moved on.

I thought it odd that Bram was so rude, especially with company present. I knew he was chief inspector on the island; perhaps he’d had a bad day. Isla never mentioned it afterward.

Rowan came to the lighthouse the next day after school to “cleanse” the place. Isla brought her as well as a flask of hot tea to share with me, while she indulged Rowan’s lighting of a piece of sage and wafting it around the place while chanting something in Latin. I’ll admit, I felt better once she’d done that, and yet I usually wouldn’t have given heed to such things. Fear, combined with a touch of desperation, makes you much more open to buying into otherwise unwise practices.

Later that night, once I’d put the girls to bed, a knock on the window made me jump. Isla and her ladies, I thought, come to collect me for a night swim. It was dark, and I could only see a shadow falling up the garden path. It didn’t seem the caller was Isla and her ladies after all. Three more knocks at the front door.

“Mummy?” Luna called out drowsily from her bedroom. “Is that you?”

I stood in front of the door and took a deep breath. Maybe it was Finn.

“Go back to bed,” I called to Luna. Then I opened the door.

Standing on the front porch was a little girl, about four or five years old.

Her pale hair was wild and matted, and her face was covered in mud and scratches, as if she’d fallen.

It was pitch-black, but from the glow of the light of my living room I made out that she was wearing nothing more than a filthy rag wrapped around her waist and that she was barefoot, overgrown toenails black with dirt. Also, she was shaking with cold.

“Are you all right?” I said. “Come in, come in. It’s freezing out there. You’ll catch your death.”

Her teeth were chattering and I could see her eyes were glassy. I placed a hand on her bare arm, frail as a twig. I realized she must have been the child I’d spotted in the Longing. That child had this same white-blonde hair to her shoulders. But that was weeks ago. My mouth ran dry at the thought of her being out here alone all this time.

She spotted the fire and lunged toward it, holding her hands close to the flame. The rag that was wrapped around her waist loosened and fell to the ground, and I saw something between her legs. A penis. She was a boy.