“Anyway, we ran all the way back here. And that’s when we found this,” she finished, pointing at the dried patch of their mother’s skin still lying on the table and the circle of runes around it.
“When was this?” he asked her.
“Just this morning,” she told him, exasperated. “Didn’t I say that?”
“And who was it that you saw?”
Eustace threw her arms up. “I don’t know that! I couldn’t tell because it was dark, and they were dressed in black. But I’m pretty sure it was a man,” she explained.
“And what were you doing out before sunrise in the dark?” Gordon leaned toward her, suspicious.
“Walking my fox,” she said defensively. “In the woods.”
“Eustace, what time was this?”
She groaned, frustrated by all the things shecouldn’tsay. “I don’t know. We were out there a long time, pretty much all night. But it was close to sunrise.”
Gordon narrowed his eyes, and Cordelia sighed. This was not going well. “You mean to tell me that you were out all night long walking your fox? In the woods? In the dark?”
Eustace huffed. “Well, it sounds weird whenyousay it.”
Maybe involving Gordon had been a mistake, but he was in danger too. They had a moral obligation to tell him, and they needed his help keeping watch. “Look, none of that is whatmatters right now. What matters is that my sister saw someone on our land. Someone who was in our house. And they left this here for us to find. Don’t you see? It’s another threat.”
This time, she could be certain it was no apparition trying to run them from the house. Morna was not to blame, however it might have seemed so before. This time, their assailant was a flesh-and-blood person—a man.
Gordon stepped over to the table. He stared down at the offending display, crossing his arms in a way that made them bulge. “What is this exactly?”
Cordelia moved to his side. “Our mother’s tattoo. It’s surrounded by her ashes. That’s what the runes are drawn in.”
He eyed her skeptically. “You mean, your mother had a tattoo similar to this design?”
“No,” Eustace insisted, waving her hands. “That is her tattoo exactly.”
Gordon rubbed his jaw. “So, she had a tattoo in thisexactdesign?”
Cordelia couldn’t blame him. She would be lost too if she wasn’t living it all. “Not this design,” she said quietly. “This ishertattoo, Gordon. Onherskin.”
He took a step back from the table, knotting his fingers on top of his head. “That’s a whole new level of fucked-up.”
“Whoever did this,” Eustace told him, “knew about our mother’s tattoo. They knew she was mutilated when she died. They knew this was her urn. And they wanted us to know they knew. They want us to know…”
“What?” he asked, eyes widening. “What do they want you to know?”
“We’re next,” Cordelia told him.
Gordon wiped his hands over his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me your mother had a stalker, who may or may not have killed her, who is now stalking you?”
“You can put it that way. Yes.” Cordelia could see the wheels of his mind spinning, trying to place each detail in this bizarre picture, to understand what it all meant.
“That’s who you think left the blood in the front hall?” He eyed them both. “This person? The person you saw walking?”
“Yes,” Eustace told him. “It has to be.”
“But why?” he continued. “There has to be motive. People don’t make idle threats.”
Cordelia took a breath and met her sister’s eyes. “We learned something recently. Something we hadn’t realized before.”
Gordon’s eyes slid from hers to Eustace’s.
