The Price Guide to the Occult(37)

Reed drew Nor to him. When they pulled apart, he kept his hands on her face. “Ask me what I’m thinking,” he murmured.

“What are you thinking?”

He hooked a piece of her wet hair with his finger and tugged on it gently. “That you are so beautiful.”

Nor blushed. “Oh, shut up.”

“You are so beautiful,” Reed continued, ignoring her. “No wonder it hurt to look anywhere else.” He kissed her good-bye, pressing his lips to the scars on her wrists.

Nor scooped up Bijou and hurried into the house. Once upstairs, she plopped the little dog onto the bed and threw her sand-filled combat boots into the corner.

Moonlight flooded the room with its opalescent light; from up there, the rest of the island was just shadows, as foreboding as a fairy tale. Monsters may very well have been hiding in those shadows, but with the briny scent of the ocean still on her skin, Nor couldn’t imagine how any nightmare could possibly find her that night.

Nor was dreaming again. In her dream, she was standing in a cold and unfamiliar room. The walls and floor were made of stone. The room had a foul odor to it, a mix of rot and decay, and the metallic scent of blood. The only way out was up a winding stone staircase. The only light poured in from a solitary window at the far end of the room.

Nor tapped her red-lacquered nails against her arm. Green fern tattoos spiraled across her pallid skin. Her stilettos clicked menacingly against the cold stone floors as she paced.

Catriona held the victim down and covered the woman’s mouth with her hand. A plain girl so used to being overlooked, Catriona had proven to be very useful, devoted, and reliable.

Madge had turned out to be far too fainthearted for such work, Mohawk too stupid. But Catriona, well, she was far too eager for it. She’d probably rip out the woman’s tongue with her bare hands if Nor let her.

The woman kneeling on the floor in front of Catriona emitted a pathetic moan, more animal than human. She had the same nose as her son and the same fair hair. And the same too-familiar expression: instead of seeing love in his eyes, there was only ever fear and contempt, a constant reminder that, no matter what she did, time and again what she wanted continued to slip through her hands like frayed rope.

“What do you want?” Bliss’s voice was a strangled whisper, as if the grip Catriona had on the back of her head affected her ability to speak. Perhaps it did.

“You have nothing I want,” Nor snapped in that voice that did not belong to her, “but you do have something I need.” When she was finished with Bliss Sweeney, she would be sure to have carved out any resemblance remaining between mother and son. She would make a point of it.

“Is it the girl?” Bliss asked. “I swear I only spoke to her about the spell once!”

Nor’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

Bliss hesitated. “I — I asked her about casting a spell for me. I haven’t seen my son in years. I was desperate. You have to understand, a mother’s love is —” She stopped.

“And what was the girl’s response?” Nor snapped.

“She insisted she couldn’t cast it.” Her voice wavered. “Should she be able to?”

“That,” Nor said in that honeyed tone, “has yet to be determined.” She ran the razor-sharp point of a red fingernail along Bliss Sweeney’s soft jawline. “But thank you. You’ve been more helpful than I expected you to be.”

Much later, the blood of Quinn Sweeney’s mother trickled across the floor. As promised, there was nothing left of her that resembled her son. There was nothing left of her at all.

Nor wiped the blood from her face. She turned to Catriona, who had a new fern tattoo coiling up her arm like a snake. It was splattered with blood.

“Now,” Nor said, “let’s talk about the girl.”

The frantic beat of Nor’s own heart filled her ears as she pounded down a faint pathway near the southern shore of the island. No one had maintained this trail for years — Nor wasn’t entirely sure she’d known it existed before now. The hems of her pajama pants were torn and muddy; there were rips in the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d worn to bed, and chestnut burrs were caught in her hair. Her hands and face were smeared with dirt and blood. The wintry air burned her lungs and turned her breath to mist.

A little fox raced through the woods parallel to her, his thoughts moving in and out of her head. He sped in front of her, and Nor could feel the racing of his heart, the cold air in his lungs. The farther away he got, the harder he was to hear, and all too quickly he was gone, leaving Nor alone in the woods.

Nor yelped as she jammed her bare foot on a rock in the trail. She sank to the ground to assess the damage: a jagged gash on the heel of her right foot. She pressed her hand to the wound, just as she’d watched Judd do a thousand times, but she couldn’t get it to mend. Perhaps it was too deep. Perhaps she was too scared.

“What are you doing out here?” a gravelly voice asked. Startled, Nor looked up to see Reuben Finch looming over her.

“I don’t know,” she answered hoarsely. One minute, she was falling asleep in her own bed. The next, she was waking up in a pile of frost-covered leaves and mud on one of the island’s abandoned trails with no memory of how she’d gotten there. And the dream she’d had in between? She was quite certain now that this dream — and the last one — hadn’t been dreams at all.