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VI

In Scotland, there are different kinds of rain.

Gentle drizzles and steady storms, and driech days where the air is wet though the water never seems to fall.

But the day they bury Catty, the rain comes raging down. It pummels the earth and plasters the grass, turns the cemetery rows to mud, and beats its fists against Alice’s umbrella as she stands at the foot of the fresh grave that sits beside her mum’s.

C ATHERINE A BIGAIL M OORE.

The name on the tombstone looks wrong. A name she didn’t even like, now carved in stone. Her life, stopped at seventeen.

“Daft girl,” whispers their father as Granddad grips his shoulder and Dad grips hers, and El has one hand on Alice and the other on Finn, all of them holding on to someone as if without the holding they might fall, all of them but Alice, whose hands are knuckles-white around the wooden grip of the umbrella.

Whose boots are sinking into the muddy earth, as if trying to grow roots.

Afterward, the town huddles like sodden crows around the tables of Granddad’s pub talking gently, as if the world is made of glass, and Alice can’t stand the soft looks, the kind remarks, the way the whole brittle room makes her want to take a bat to all of it, and Alice is afraid that if she stays inside a moment longer she’ll start to scream, so instead she gets up and walks out into the rain.

And at first, the shock of the cold makes her gasp, the way it did that spring they plunged into White Loch, but then the shock wears off, and for the first time since she heard about Catty’s death Alice feels like she can breathe again.

She closes her eyes and spreads her arms and waits, as the rain soaks through shirt and skin and down to bone—

Waits, as it batters her open hands—

And she can pretend—

To feel her sister’s fingers closing around hers.

Now Alice stands beneath the water, waiting.

Waiting, until she hears the whisper of a lace dress being shed. The clink of chain mail slipping to the tiled floor.

Waiting, until Sabine’s bare feet cross the bathroom, the steam so thick she doesn’t see the place the counter of the sink is cracked, the jagged line where a slice of slate the length of a hand has been shaved off. Broken free.

And then Sabine is there, behind Alice, in the shower.

Her arms fold around Alice, the necklaces tickling the skin between her naked shoulder blades, and in that moment, she remembers.

She remembers being on the edge of sleep.

Remembers the cold weight of Sabine’s body holding her down against the bed.

Remembers the way the hair wound like weeds around her throat.

Remembers the scent, like iron and wet earth and dead flowers.

Remembers the sound her heart made when it failed inside her chest.

She remembers, and then she turns in Sabine’s arms, and looks up into her eyes, and drives the jagged piece of slate between her ribs.

Into her heart.

Sabine doesn’t scream.

She doesn’t fight, she just looks down at Alice and frowns, bemused, opens her mouth to say something that never comes out because she’s already crumbling, collapsing into ash and rot and whatever’s left after five hundred years.

One moment Sabine is wrapped around Alice, and the next she is gone.

The piece of slate clatters to the shower floor, ash swirling round it to the drain.

Alice stands and watches until there’s nothing left of Sabine but a dozen tokens on weathered chains, pooling on the tile floor.

Her fingers shake a little as she finds the knob and turns the shower off.

A low tremor of fear leaving her body as she takes a towel from the wall, and dries herself, and gets dressed again, boots hanging from her fingers as she pads barefoot back into the main room, the damp heat of her steps leaving ghosts on the concrete floor.

Alice reaches the sofa, and her knees go out.

She sinks onto the suede, breathes in, then out, a single, shuddering breath as she lets her head fall back, and closes her eyes and waits and waits and waits to feel alive again, water dripping from her hair with the steady rhythm of a heart.