And everything and everyone was in motion. The thought that whoever did this could’ve gotten to her cat… Rhiannon pushed that thought away, because there was only so much one could handle.
“Boleyn!” She lifted her hand and everyone fell silent, listening for an answer. “Boleyn!”
Among her own ragged breathing, Victoria’s quiet chanting prayer, and Ceridwen’s whispered supplication, Rhiannon heard an almost imperceptible scratching.
“Shhh!” She grabbed Prudence’s fingers again and the power flooded her, almost lifting her off her feet.
“The fireplace!” Prudence beat her to the brick cladding by a step. The scratching grew louder.
“Patches?” Prudence’s voice was incredulous.
A grumble, a squeal, and an ash-covered possum fell out of the chimney.
“Patches! Where’s Boleyn?”
The possum immediately tried climbing back up, and Rhiannon moved around Prudence to look up the wide opening. In the soot-covered darkness, two green eyes stared back at her.
“Boleyn!” The cat was in her arms in seconds, grimy and shivering, but whole. Safe. Alive. A cat who had never touched soot or dirt. A cat who didn’t even like the damn fireplace.
Rhiannon crouched next to Prudence, still holding her chortling possum.
“I take it this is your handiwork, Ms. Patience Petunia Fowler? Getting my cat all dirty like this? Teaching her how to climb chimneys?”
Rhiannon could swear the possum’s expression was sheepish. Prudence opened her mouth to protest. Rhiannon reached and booped Patches’s snoot.
“All my garbage to you, Trash Queen. Thank you for saving Boleyn, who’s way too cultured to have ever considered hiding in the chimney.”
Boleyn meowed indignantly, jumped out of Rhiannon’s arms, and tail in the air, stalked up the stairs to the living quarters, Patches on her heels.
“Well, that was…” Lachlan came down the steps and scrubbed his palms over a tired face.
“Close. That was close.”
It was Ceridwen who finished his thought, and Rhiannon narrowed her eyes.
“Close?”
“You’ve been making waves since you arrived, Rhiannon. Your encounter with Lisa, for example.”
Pru laid a steadying hand on Rhiannon, and Ceridwen’s eyes followed the movement closely.
“Ceri, are you implying Lisa did this? Killed a bird, hanged it? To what end?”
“It’s September in Massachusetts, girls and boys. There’s always an end for a crow in a Massachusetts September.”
The tendons behind Rhiannon’s eyes were like violin strings pulled taut, the headache turning to migraine on a dime.
Lachlan took a piece of discarded tarp and approached the bird.
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Rhiannon—” It was Ceridwen, always Ceridwen, stopping her, standing in front of her. Shielding her…
Where have you been, Ceridwen? Where have you been all these years?
Rhiannon could feel her thoughts getting tangled, running amok in her feverish brain. She needed to get out of here. Get the bird and… What?
“I…” She reached for it, her fingers black with soot, already in mourning for this soul. So small. The fragility of it finally breaking the dam of her own restraint. When tears came, she barely noticed them. She carried the little lifeless body outside. For one treacherous moment she wished for her storms, to cleanse, to take her away. The power in her growled, deep, angry, blaming her, accusing her. The hunger of it, teased by Prudence’s presence, by the connection that baffled and confounded, snapped at its taut leash.
