The Lighthouse Witches(54)

“Isla said her mother killed her baby brother. That he turned up a year after he went missing and her parents believed he was a wildling. So they killed him.”

“Fucking hell.” He stared, appalled. “That’s a new one.”

“You didn’t hear about it?”

He shook his head grimly. “I’m not part of the insider group when it comes to those things. My family never got involved with that stuff. And I’ve lived here long enough to avoid it being too much of an issue.”

He filled his bucket with fresh water from a barrel and scrubbed it out. “There’s this guy I worked with, Malcolm—he was having an affair. Not an easy thing to do in a place like this. Definitely not a smart move, either. He swore he saw Isla and her crew taking a child to the woods. Says he heard screaming.” He lifted his eyes to mine in a meaningful glance, and I pressed a hand to my mouth, horrified. I wanted so badly to believe that Isla would never do that. Maybe she believed her mother was right, but to think she was capable of doing the same thing . . .

“What happened?” I asked.

“Malc went to the police about it. Next thing, Isla’s on his doorstep, all friendly neighbor, your average smiling assassin. Basically she told him if he wasn’t careful, his wife would hear all about his affair.”

I wondered what would happen if the boy I’d seen turned up. Would she kill him, too?

“Anyway, that’s me done now,” Finn said after a while, stretching his arms.

“I think I’m done for the day, too.” I said, winding up the cable for the cherry picker. “You here again tomorrow?”

“No. I mean, the job’s done.” He grinned, then looked over the place. “All the plasterwork, finito. Looks good, doesn’t it?”

I stepped off the platform and hit the “off” switch. “You’re finished?”

I couldn’t conceal how sad I was about this. I’d grown to enjoy Finn’s company, even look forward to it, and I felt he enjoyed mine. I watched him pack up his gear, floundering for a way to maintain a connection. It seemed wrong, somehow, that this should be the end of us spending time together.

“Actually, how about you and Cassie come over for a celebratory dinner?”

He closed the lid on his toolbox and lifted it by the handle. “Celebratory? What exactly is it that we’re celebrating?”

I felt myself blush. Maybe I’d read our dynamic wrong. Maybe I was forcing a friendship that didn’t exist. “Well, you’re done, I’m almost done . . . and we’ve been to your house so often it’s only fair that we have you round to ours.” It struck me that the bothy we were staying in had been his house, and I faltered. “I mean, unless it’s too uncomfortable . . .”

He threw me a reassuring grin. “I would be delighted. And I know Cassie would as well.”


V

They came over the following evening, Cassie in a green velvet dress and Finn in a shirt, a tartan waistcoat with a thistle brooch, his beard oiled and his hair slicked back. It felt good to do something normal, to distract myself from the thick web of myth and murder that I seemed to have fallen into.

“Look at you, all spiffed up,” he said. He’d only ever seen me in paint-splattered protective clothes, or in sopping-wet jeans covered in kelp, but I’d found a pretty floral dress among Saffy’s things and borrowed it for the occasion. I’d also borrowed her lipstick and some mascara, and blow-dried my hair.

“You look pretty,” Cassie said.

“Thank you,” I said. “And look at you in your lovely dress.”

She gave a little twirl. “I can almost put my hair in a ponytail now. See?”

She pulled a blonde strand out to the side.

“It’s beautiful,” I told her, and she bounced off to find Luna and Clover.

Finn handed me a bottle of wine and a bouquet of pink flowers wrapped in brown paper.

“These are machair orchids,” he told me. “I grow them on my land. They’re native to the Scottish isles.”

I rinsed out an empty milk bottle and arranged the orchids inside. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

He glanced around the bothy. “You’ve made this place very homey, haven’t you?”

“Thank you,” I said. “Did you . . . live here in the bothy?”

“No, but my grandfather did.” He nodded at the old armchair by the fire. “That’s his chair.”

He glanced at the armchair I’d been sitting in, and at the book of Scottish fairy tales on the side table. I wondered if I should ask him about the old sketchpad I’d found among its pages, with its drawings of runes.

“Can we play in the Longing?” Clover ran in and was bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “It’s too dangerous for you girls.”

“Outside on the rocks, then?”

“You can play in your bedroom until dinner’s on the table, OK?”

She rolled her eyes and slouched off. I turned back to Finn, who’d picked up the book of fairy tales. “Studying up on your folklore, I see.”

“The girls did a project at school and wanted to know more about selkies and suchlike. And I was trying to work out how to make the mural for the Longing a little less . . .”