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CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Glasgow

May 2024

CLEM

Clem takes the A9 from Glasgow toward Inverness, the book in the changing bag on the passenger seat beside her. Freya was extra clingy, and Clem has been missing her. After an hour of babbling, she falls asleep in her car seat. Quinn rings six times, eventually leaving her a voicemail that Clem resolves not to play until she parks up at the byre.

She has voices in her head, shouting at her the whole way to Thurso.

The police will arrest you at the ferry terminal.

What if Erin’s infection gets worse?

You’ve brought Freya to deliver an evil book to violent pagans. What are you thinking?

She has no idea if she can even trust the Triskele.

She is utterly convinced that the book will disappear of its own volition by the time she gets to Orkney, vanishing once more into thin air as it did in the hospital bathroom. But it’s there when she stops for petrol in Dingwall, when she boards the ferry at Thurso, and when she stops to buy food for Freya in Stromness. And then, as the moon appears in the sky, she pulls into the same field that she and Quinn fled just four nights ago. She can still see the tire marks running through the grass from where Quinn veered wildly toward the exit.

As she parks up, she feels nervous. She doesn’t have Edina’s phone number, just this knowledge of the byre—the Triskele’s meeting place.

She takes Freya out of the car seat and tucks the book under her arm, trying to swallow back the tight knot of fear in her throat. The voices of panic in her head are louder now, but when she hesitates, Erin’s shouts return to her mind, the terrible scene of her bashing her hand again and again on the metal bar, until it bled. Erin is under sedation, recovering from surgery, she reminds herself, and if she doesn’t stop this bizarre behavior, God only knows where she’ll end up.

If she hasn’t already managed to infect her wounds.

But as she approaches the byre, she sees two figures moving through the woods behind her. Freya begins to cry, and she holds her tighter. The figures are silhouetted, but the way they move toward her—stealthily, one of them holding something—sends shivers down her spine. She glances nervously at the car parked down the bank.

She’s come too far to make a run for it.