Epilogue - Fable
Three Months Later
“Fable.”
His warm palm at the center of my back steadies me.
I feel him,everywhere,every day now.
Our existence isn’t typical. We spend our nights making love and our days huntinghim.
Allistaire Macgregor Maclean.
He is never far away, just over the crags and tucked into the eastern edge of the loch. And it explains so many of the missing women.
“Fable.”
Alder threads my fingers with his to catch my attention.
“Do you think it’s him?”
“I have no doubt.” Alder’s voice is somber, as if he doesn’t want to be here.
It’s not like I want to do this either, but I have no choice, knowing what I know.
I suck in a breath, trying to gather my limited senses and focus on the part that comes next. The part where I’ve thought of over a thousand different ways to torture the man who’s hurt dozens of women at least.
After the split, Alder spent the first few hours holding me as the sun beamed down on our little basalt platform near the salt caves. By noon, I had enough energy in my muscles and mind to gather the strength to walk back to his cottage. Alder refused to let me walk the entire way, carrying me three-quarters of the distance before setting me on my feet to walk the path to his house alone. I was shiny and new, not what I had been, but somehow better. Over time, my senses continued to grow. My ability to perceive the physical realm changed a little each day, with the brightest days often the hardest because the blinding glare of the sunshine in my oversensitive eyes caused physical pain.
And so, we hunted by night.
At first, I’d pursued my goal of finding the women who’d vanished. With my now near-superhuman ability to swim against the sea waves, I managed to explore the depths of the salt caves over the course of the first weeks in my new form. I slipped between realms now, not fully and not always at will and certainly not with as much as ease as Alder was able to, but I had some small ability to impact the broken ones walking the physical plane.
In two weeks, I had gathered hundreds of fragments of bone, carrying them up to the surface in a small net, while Alder catalogued and studied what he could. We tracked everything, before leaving them in a hidden alcove protected from elements. Next, I visited Harris at the Hazelwood. I sat in a corner, his ability to perceive me completely absent now that the split was complete. I watched him with fondness, wishing we could have one more conversation. It felt good to hear his laugh, but he wouldn’t be laughing long. I needed him to help me, even if he wouldn’t know it. I sat at the Hazelwood for four hours, praying for Harris to find the remains of the women near the salt caves. I meditated on our memories, mulling over them as I watched him intently, willing his mind to see what mine did.
It must have worked, because once or twice, his eyes lingered on the corner he subconsciously felt all that energy coming from. The next morning, he was in the headlines. He’d found the remains after a late-night walk to the caves after he’d closed down the Hazelwood. We’d done it. We’d helped locate four of the missing women who’d disappeared from Skye over the last six decades.
The lone detective working the dozens of missing women cold cases had no evidence to suggest a perpetrator or anything more than accidental drownings.
Alder and I were the only ones who knew the truth.
“He looks so weak,” Alder finally muses about his father, bringing me back to the present. With the sliver of moon lighting the old man’s silvery hair, he looks as if he crawled out of the grave to be with us tonight. I smirk, knowing he’ll soon be crawling into one. I think of the pain he thrust upon my family with his careless actions, the innocence he stole so coldly, like evil itself ran in his blood. I’ve imagined his own painful death countless times, the various ways I could torture this man who tore apart a bond between two sisters. The eldest drawn into the burden of bitterness, while the younger turned to graceful tragedy as a means to stop the dark cycle of abuse in its tracks because she could see no other way.
The old, frail man before me had stood strong and broad in my dreams as he juggled the tender hearts of two girls with a double-edged sword. The scars he’d caused had resurfaced generations later like a tsunami reawakening to even the tide. All the incarnations of this man’s evil had escaped justice, life trudging unfairly through decades as he inflicted more pain and loss, leaving more genetic trauma in his wake than happiness.
This man was the reason my great-grandmother had used her curse to reawaken the spell. As the Salt Witch had, she’d done her best to warn the women off love in this town—because love lured them to the water’s edge and left them in the clutches of evil all too often.
“It’s time.” I stand from my crouch behind an old tree, but Alder’s palm at my back stops me.
“I won’t have this on your conscience.”
“It won’t be, trust me. He victimized and murdered hundreds of women over countless lifetimes. I’ll sleep just fine.”
“I’ve arranged something else.”
“Alder, no. You’re spoiling the fun! He deserves to suffer. You know what he did. I shared every moment with you.”
“I know, Fable. I know. I’ve arranged somethingbetter.”
