The Lighthouse Witches(92)

Hey, officer. The girl you found might have time-traveled from 1998. Can I have her address in case she’s my sister?

The ferries are back on; Cassie follows behind as Luna drives to the port. As she drives, she thinks of Isla, her hardened stare. She remembers running from the people in the woods, from her mother holding the knife. She remembers the fear and confusion that felt like a living creature, a monster with its teeth bared, snarling after her.

And she remembers finding a grove of trees and stopping there, exhausted, sinking down behind a large trunk to catch her breath. But she wasn’t alone. In front of her was a girl. The other Luna, still wearing her nightie. She was afraid. Why was she here? Was she something to do with the reason her mother had tried to kill her?

The other Luna had looked worried for her.

“It’s all right,” she’d said. “They’ve gone the other way.” She’d held out her hand.

“We have to take hands, remember? That’s how it works.”

At that, she’d remembered what Saffy had told her the night she asked about the book of spells. If you see yourself in human form, you have to take hands. One of you is from the future, and one of you is from the past. If you take hands, you become one again—in the present.

She’d reached out and closed her eyes, clasping hands with the other Luna.

When she’d opened her eyes, she was alone. The other Luna was gone.

No, not gone, she’d thought. Inside her memories. Her memories, she thinks, have combined both versions of her.

One and the same.


III

Ethan is waiting for her at Cromarty. Cassie says her good-byes at the port.

“I don’t think I can let you go,” Cassie says. “You’ve only just got here.”

“Promise you and Lucia will visit us in Coventry,” Luna says.

Cassie nods. “I’ll do my best to find out where Saffy is. I’ll ask around.”

“No, don’t do that,” Luna says, remembering the night she encountered Brodie. “I don’t want to put you in danger. Promise you won’t.”

Cassie cups a hand to her face. “As long as you promise me, dear friend, that you will tell Ethan the truth.”

“That I wasn’t rejecting him,” Luna says.

“Exactly.”

She smiles. “I promise.”

Cassie waves her off as Luna gets into the car and pulls away, ready to drive onto the ferry. Foot passengers are queuing to board, the engines roaring.

As the car in front moves forward, Luna spies a figure among the foot passengers walking beside her. There’s a girl there, a teenager, tall and skinny. Her blonde hair is piled up in a messy topknot and spiked with a pen. She’s wearing nine-hole Doc Marten boots and a lumberjack shirt underneath a denim coat. She has a familiar walk.

Before she knows what she’s doing, Luna’s stepping out of the car and shouting, “Saffy! Saffy!”

The girl turns. She removes her sunglasses and squints at Luna. Then she breaks into a run toward her.


IV

I have done a lot of wrong things in my time, and I’m sorry for most of them.

But doing what I needed to do in order to find Amy? No, I’m not sorry for that.

And as I said, I was a skilled butcher. I had learned anatomy, both animal and human. The woman I had mistaken for Amy would live.

Her bones completed the spell, and for that, I wish her a long and happy life.

After I took her ribs, I placed tall branches all around the sides of the Longing and set them alight. As the flames climbed to the windows, I rushed through to the end of Witches Hide, diving deep into the water and coming to shore.

I tore off my clothes from 1998 and began to race toward the forest. I recognized Lòn Haven as it had been, that raw, wild landscape dotted with white crofts, the forests thick and lush again.

But a scream stopped me in my tracks.

I turned back and saw smoke rising from the bay. The broch squatted there, bleak and ominous as it had once been. I ran toward the broch and was astonished by what I found: Stevens and his men tying Amy to the stakes, her head bloodied and shorn, just as I had left her.

Amy was already dead, I thought, her body limp. My knees buckled and I sank to the ground, the horror that I had arrived too late to save her thudding in my bones.

“Bring her down,” a voice called out. It was Father Ross, newly installed at the kirk after the death of Father Skuddie. “She has not stood trial.”

I lifted my head from the cold rock and watched as the men laid Amy’s body on the stone. A moment later she coughed, and relief flooded through me. She was yet alive. I inched forward toward her. Stevens spied me and raised a baton to knock me down, but Father Ross prevented him.

“Douse the flames,” Father Ross said, and though the men grumbled, they did as he asked.

“This woman bears the markings of a wildling,” Angus said, lifting the blanket that I’d placed upon her to reveal the livid numbers there. “You know the mandate as well as I do, Father. No trial is needed to deal with a wildling.”

“Wildlings take the form of children,” Father Ross replied, looking over the marks. “These markings look like they were self-inflicted. I have seen such on the limbs of those who are in mourning.” He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. I had taken the bones of an innocent woman to get here and I would lie to a priest. Anything to be with Amy.