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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I don’t suppose you talk, friend?”

The trow blinked up at her.

Small surprise. In all the years H?ra had been dropping off his breakfast, she’d never attempted to engage him in conversation.

Unseen creatures weren’t known for being chatty, least of all outside their own species.

The trow and H?ra might both be unknown to humans, but that didn’t mean they had much in common otherwise.

In fact, given her species’ proclivity to eat anything meaty that moved, the trow’s current suspicious expression was justified.

“Sorry.” H?ra ran a hand through her hair.

“I just wanted to thank you for protecting the farm. I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be here.”

The trow raised his eyebrows.

“I thought I’d tell Jonathan about where to leave your food. That’s my human friend. You can trust him.” H?ra hesitated.

“I won’t tell him about the beer, though, so you might start getting juice instead.”

The trow glared.

“It’s the best I can do.” H?ra’s shoulders slumped.

“I ask for your generosity. I’ve put a lot of work into the farm. So has he. I don’t like to think of him losing your blessing when I’m gone.”

Now the trow cocked his head to one side.

“I don’t know when. Perhaps not for a while, but it could happen quickly.” If a human asked the wrong question.

If one of her kin saw her.

“And I might not be able to say goodbye. I haven’t…” A lump filled her throat, and she swallowed around it.

“I haven’t got a place like you have. I’ve only got the sea.”

The trow said nothing.

He clearly didn’t intend to.

Perhaps he couldn’t talk at all.

“You’ll get your usual tribute until I’m gone,” H?ra said roughly.

“When Jonathan shows up instead, you’ll know it’s happened.”

She turned on her heel and marched toward the Gator.

When she was about halfway there, she turned, unable to help herself.

The trow was gone, returned to his home with the meal she’d left him.

So much for shared understanding and allegiance.

She should have known better.

They weren’t the same.

H?ra threw herself back into the Gator.

Several meters away, Brodie watched mistrustfully.

The smartest of the dogs, he was the only one who accompanied H?ra on her morning rounds because he knew to leave the trow alone.

When she gunned the motor and drove away, he ran alongside the vehicle.

She’d gotten a late start today.

She needed to return to the farm and work with Connor and Jim.

They undoubtedly wondered why she’d been less present the last few days.

Or perhaps they’d put it together after meeting Madeleine.

Maybe they’d realized H?ra’s life had changed, even if they couldn’t know how.

It didn’t matter. She had a job to do until she couldn’t do it anymore.

She’d just have to trust she’d recognize that time when it came, assuming she had a choice in the matter.

As she approached the farm, Connor came forward, waving.

She stopped next to him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I hope. Jon just said you should see him before you start work. He’s in the office.”

“I already started,” H?ra snapped.

“What does he want?”

Connor raised his eyebrows.

“He didn’t say. Did you two have a row?”

“No. I expect I’ll be out soon.” She pursed her lips.

“I know I haven’t worked as much lately.”

“Lady who helped buy the farm can take a day off. It’s not as busy as lambing season. Jim and I will see you when we see you.” At that, he turned and ambled back toward the barn.

H?ra headed to the house and banged open the rear door.

She wasn’t in the mood to be subtle or chat business with Jonathan.

Her body needed to move, whether in the fields or the barn, until the anger and doubt that had plagued her for hours sloughed off in sweat.

She growled, “Connor said?—”

Madeleine and Jonathan looked at her from the kitchen table.

H?ra stopped dead in her tracks.

Her heart seemed to stop too.

“Good morning, lass,” Jonathan said.

“Look who’s dropped in.”

Jonathan had offered to leave Madeleine and H?ra in the kitchen for privacy, but even with the cold, Madeleine had needed to be in the open air.

Now she and H?ra walked away from the house, and she gathered her courage.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me.” Madeleine zipped her jacket all the way up to her chin.

“And I’m sorry for how I behaved yesterday.”

“Is that why you’re here?” H?ra asked.

It would be easy to say yes.

Now that Madeleine was actually here, surrounded by the everyday business of a farm, it seemed impossible to talk about magical creatures as if they were real.

But then, she’d built her life around believing in things many said were impossible.

Maybe some of those specific things had been wrong, but she stood by the general principle.

“Not just for that,” she said.

They were walking across the yard toward the field, to the same fence where they’d talked on the night Madeleine first came to dinner.

“I wanted to talk to you about something that happened to me last night. After we…” Kissed until I lost myself.

“Uh, parted ways.”

H?ra gave her a quick look, appearing startled.

“About something that…happened to you? Afterward?”

This was going to be tough.

There was no way for it to sound believable.

Madeleine would sound either like she’d imagined the whole thing or was lying.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll warn you—it sounds beyond strange. You might think I’m making it up or that I hallucinated. All I can say is, I swear it happened.”

They reached the fence.

She leaned forward and rested her elbows on a rail.

Easier to look at the white sheep in the distance than at her companion.

“All right.” H?ra sounded wary.

“Tell me.”

Given the go-ahead, Madeleine suddenly had no idea how to proceed.

She’d been rehearsing this during the bike ride.

Now her carefully planned retelling fled her mind.

How was she supposed to begin, again?

She could only do her best. “Like I said, it sounds impossible, and I…I don’t know if I’m ready to tell you all the details yet. But remember how you told me about that creature that lives under the mound? In your field?”

H?ra said nothing, so Madeleine turned to look at her.

H?ra’s expression was completely neutral, but her eyes pierced Madeleine like a lance.

“The trow.”

“Um, yes, the trow. So I figure, you must know about…um, legends and creatures, and…”

She definitely had no idea how to begin this, much less end it.

Can you tell me whether kelpies are real?

Have you ever seen one?

Would you like to refer me to a good therapist?

“I saw one,” she blurted.

“Last night. On the beach. Not a trow, a…I think it was a kelpie.”

H?ra’s eyes widened.

“That’s what they’re called, right? The water horses?” Madeleine waved her hands helplessly, as if they could describe the creature.

“It was all by itself on the beach, and I don’t know if Jonathan told you this part, but on the night I fell in the water, I was trying to rescue?—”

“A kelpie .”

Madeleine’s words stumbled to a stop, maybe because H?ra’s lip was curling.

She looked completely disgusted.

So much for finding a sympathetic ear.

Madeleine’s cheeks scalded at her own foolishness.

Telling H?ra had seemed like a halfway decent idea while her hangover was still wearing off.

Clearly, hangover ideas weren’t much better than drunk ideas.

Fine, let H?ra think she was nuts.

It didn’t change the truth.

“I know it sounds unbelievable, but…”

“Kelpies live in fresh water. They’re afraid of the ocean. And there aren’t many left.” H?ra bared her teeth.

“Mainly because they’re stupid .”

Madeleine blinked.

H?ra turned her glare toward the pasture.

“Whatever you saw wasn’t a kelpie. Trust me.”

“Then what was it?” Madeleine demanded.

“Because it wasn’t a regular horse. It was huge, and it had—it had these teeth , and it acted like it was trying to push me into the ocean.”

“But it didn’t. Clearly.”

“Don’t tell me I’m imagining things!” Madeleine curled her hands into fists.

“I admit it—I was drunk. I went to the Kestrel after I left you because…”

“Drunk,” H?ra interjected.

“There, you see?—”

“No! I’m not making this up, and I didn’t imagine it. I went to the beach where everything happened the first time. That beach.”

“I told you to stay away from there.” H?ra’s voice dropped into a growl.

“I told you it was dangerous.”

“You did, yes, and…” The lightbulb went on.

“Do you know something about that beach? Is that why you warned me away?”

H?ra inhaled deeply.

Her nostrils flared.

Madeleine’s heart, already beating quickly, tripped into overdrive.

She stepped forward, her face getting hot.

“Well? Is it? Is there some local legend that everyone just decided not to tell me about?”

Maybe so.

There were hundreds of stories about places that held supernatural secrets protected by locals.

Madeleine might have stumbled onto a Jorsayian secret not meant for outsiders to know.

That might be why Jonathan said he also didn’t know what had happened.

“Would you believe me?” H?ra snapped.

“What about your Bible and your saints and all the rest? How would such a legend square with who you are?”

“The Bible and my saints have even stranger stories to tell, and I don’t know who I am.” The words felt rough and hot in her chest. Her eyes pricked.

“That’s why I’m here. I think you’ve figured out that much, and I know it’s got something to do with that beach and whatever’s there, I know—I know?—”

“Madeleine…”

“I know I have to face it!” Madeleine cried.

H?ra’s mouth snapped shut.

It was just as well, because now that the words had started, they didn’t want to stop.

“My life’s totally different, don’t you understand? I chose that. I’m not going to look away now, even if it scares the daylights out of me.”

H?ra said nothing.

Her face was still again, as impossible to read as the stone cliffs looming over the sea.

“You said, last night, that you were one of my answers,” Madeleine whispered.

“You have questions too. I know you do.”

After a pause, H?ra said, “Yes. I do.”

“Can you help me?” Madeleine stepped forward and looked up into H?ra’s eyes.

“I’m not saying I deserve it, or that you owe me something, but…”

“Owe you something,” H?ra said softly.

“I just said you don’t,” Madeleine growled.

Couldn’t H?ra let her get through this?

“I’m asking anyway. Just talk to me about this. And after that, you don’t ever?—”

Her breath caught on the next words, but she had to say those too.

“You don’t ever have to talk to me again, if you don’t want to,” she said thickly.

“I wouldn’t blame you, honestly.”

How could she?

Nobody could blame H?ra for not wanting to talk to a woman more than a decade her senior who’d pushed her away after a few kisses and was now talking about a supernatural horse.

H?ra said nothing. She looked into Madeleine’s eyes, seeking something that Madeleine must let her find, no matter how frightening the thought.

“You have great strength,” H?ra said, after an endless pause.

“No, I don’t. If I did, this would have happened before.” Madeleine swallowed hard.

“But it’s happening now.”

“Because now you’re ready.”

“I am not ready. That’s not the point.” Madeleine shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.

Her right shoulder was chilly from where the horse had torn the fabric off.

“But I’m doing it anyway. Will you help me? Can you?”

H?ra turned to look at the pasture for a long, silent moment.

Then she returned her gaze to Madeleine.

She pursed her lips.

Inhaled through her nose.

Closed her eyes. “Wait here,” she said.

“I’ll be right back.”

“What? Where are you going?”

“To get something.”

Without further explanation, H?ra returned to the house, her shoulders slumped and her hands in her pockets.

Madeleine stared after her.

What could H?ra need to “get” in the middle of this conversation?

Maybe she was going to tell Jonathan that Madeleine needed to be taken into professional care right away.

Let her, then. Madeleine knew her truth, or was beginning to.

She set her jaw, crossed her arms, and leaned back against the fence post, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the closed door.

Whatever came through it, she was ready for it.

As it happened, only H?ra came through it a few minutes later, still with her hands in her pockets.

This time, she held her head higher, and she strode more quickly.

In fact, she made for Madeleine like a ship cutting through water, her eyes hard with purpose.

When she got closer, Madeleine said, “So what did you?—”

“I brought you this.” H?ra pulled her left hand from her pocket and held it out.

Wrapped around her palm was a string of wooden beads ending in a cross.

A rosary.

Madeleine looked at it in confusion.

What was this? Was H?ra telling Madeleine that she was actually a Catholic or something?

That made no sense after…

“Recognize it?”

Startled, Madeleine looked up to see H?ra’s amber eyes slicing into her.

A lean and hungry look.

“No?” H?ra said. “I thought you would. It was yours.”

“Mine?” Madeleine looked back down at the rosary.

It looked like a thousand other rosaries.

Plain lacquered wood, with a…

With a chip on one of the beads from when she’d dropped it during the second year of her novitiate.

Mother Gertrude had advised her to take better care of her things.

Then she’d gone and lost it during her first trip to Orkney after she’d fallen off the dock and…

The rosary blurred as she looked at it.

So did everything in her peripheral vision.

She couldn’t move.

A second thing appeared in front of her.

H?ra’s right hand, with something else in its palm.

A torn, blue scrap of jacket fabric.

Madeleine’s fingertips went numb.

Her whole body went numb.

Maybe she was having a stroke.

Maybe all of this was one last hallucination before she died.

She looked up, barely breathing, and ran smack into H?ra’s gaze again.

That gaze was no longer sharp as a knife.

Instead, its edges had rounded and softened.

H?ra’s hard mouth had softened too, into a smile that looked a little sad.

“I’m not an angel, but I am your answer,” she said quietly.

“And I always knew you would return to me.”