Florence Vanderghast
Simon Barkersfield
Nathan Ashborne
Dad. These were the names of everyone who’d died in the strid. Once Once seen, I couldn’t stop searching until I found Laurelie’s, and once I found it I could see it everywhere, appearing more frequently, like when your mind zeroes in on a single word in a puzzle and becomes blind to all others.
“It’s everyone who drowned nine years ago,” I said.
“But what does that mean?” Kessian asked. “Did all their ghosts rise up and kill him? Why? Because he was the Keeper and the strid was his responsibility?”
“I had the same thought,” Ms. Carlisle said. “But take a step back with me. I think from here you’ll see it best.”
We followed her a few paces from the table, viewing it from a diagonal.
Up close, the glow of runic names congealed into a formless glow, but from here the runes hovered three-dimensionally over my grandfather’s chest, together making an all-too-familiar shape.
It was the wraith’s antler, tines pointed downward, some half submerged. As if he’d been gored to death on the wraith’s horns.
“That makes no sense,” I murmured almost to myself. “The wraith’s connected to me. It goes where I go, and I was nowherenearShearwater when Grandad died.”
“Are you sure?” Ms. Carlisle said.
I looked between her and Warwick, both looking at me now with uncertainty.
“This wasn’t me. It’s got to be a trick of some kind. Let me perform the spell. I want to see for myself it wasn’t tampered with.”
Ms. Carlisle pursed her lips, but she obliged me. She smeared away the remnants of her spell, the green runes and glowing antler drifting away like smoke.
I’d prepared the tithes this morning. Pulling them out, I cast the spell again, my magic less like smoke than sparks. They ignited along the same lines as those that came before, runes in tracery lines like veins, and a glut of them issuing from the spot on Grandad’s chest.
“It’s not possible,” I said again, though I couldn’t see any way this could be faked. “I was miles away.”
Warwick said, “I’m sorry, lad. It seems to me the wraith murdered him, too.”
Four family members.Four.Would it only stop once it had us all? Wiped the Ashbornes out of Shearwater?
I ought to tell them all to go, but they wouldn’t. They had the wedding, and besides, it had always been easier to make me go instead. Only that clearly hadn’t worked. Maybe it never had. I didn’t know why the wraith hadn’t taken anyone in nine years, but it got Grandad in the end.
Kessian was quiet the entire time. When I looked to him for reassurance, he still squinted searchingly at the glowing antler. He looked terrified.
Warwick noticed, too. “Do you see something else?”
He pulled me by the hand toward the spot where he stood and pointed. “There. Can you read them?”
I squinted, unsure which names he was pointing to at first. My heart stopped when I read the ones he meant.
“I’m not imagining it, am I?” Kessian said. “Those are our names.”
Chapter 24
The vision from the spring returned to me at the sight of our names burning amongst those who’d already drowned. One fatal premonition was disconcerting but plausibly avoidable. Two was pushing our luck.
I felt powerless. My instincts screamed at me to run, get in Lunaris, drive as far as I could, and take Kessian with me, but it wouldn’t help. Running hadn’t saved Grandad. It probably wouldn’t save us, either. Fleeing to Coill Darragh hadn’t gotten us any farther from this mess.
Going from my grandfather’s autopsy to a dress fitting felt foolish. Would we fit Amelia’s funeral in before or after Fae’s wedding?
I was in terrible spirits when I reached the dressmaker’s shop. It was sandwiched between a popular pizza chain and a betting shop. The weathered sign readWitches and Stitchesin a curly, barely legible font. The two sisters who owned it, Ella and Rhia, had probably dressed every bride, groom, and celebrant in Shearwater. Fae was no exception.
