Page 61 of The Women of Wild Hill

Turning the Tide

Brigid’s death was confirmed by New York City’s top cardiac surgeon, who held two fingers to her carotid artery and loudly declared her innocent.

The joke broke the tension and a cheer went round the crowd watching from the beach.

The men who’d administered the test loaded Brigid’s sodden body into a boat tied to the Geddes dock, where it lay spread out on the deck while the victors returned to their party.

Now the somber affair turned raucous as bottles were opened and corks were popped.

With no one to serve them, they raided their host’s kitchen, confiscating trays heaped with food and passing them around.

Nothing fueled their hunger like winning.

Nothing made them feel more alive than death.

In the midst of the revelry, no one wondered who had made the food—or questioned where the caterers might have gone.

Those who had caught a glimpse of Phoebe and Sibyl had already forgotten them. They were just women, after all.

Sibyl watched the men from the shadows outside. “Let’s go,” she told her mother.

The black catering uniforms meant to make servers blend into the background provided perfect camouflage as they slipped unseen through the dark. The men were all indoors, and there were no security guards keeping watch. It was probably bad form to bring a bodyguard to a witch trial, Sibyl thought.

When they reached the boat, they found Brigid, her long red hair slicked back, her arms crossed over her chest, and her beautiful black dress fanned out around her.

Brigid’s colorless face wore the peaceful expression of a graveyard angel.

Sibyl let loose a sob while Phoebe dropped to her knees beside her dead sister.

The woman who’d been given the darkest of gifts, yet had somehow saved Phoebe’s life twice.

“Start the boat,” Phoebe told her daughter. “We need to get her home.”

Trying to keep out of sight, Sibyl crawled toward the captain’s wheel, where she came face to butt with a man on his knees. Liam Geddes appeared to be frantically searching for something in a storage locker. Sibyl pulled a corkscrew from her pocket and jabbed the sharp point into his thigh.

“What the fuck!” he yelped, twisting around to confront his assailant. “Stop that!” he whispered when he saw Sibyl.

“Why are you here?” Sibyl hissed, pressing the corkscrew into his inner thigh.

“I’m looking for the keys! I always keep a set hidden. I must have hidden them too well this time.”

“Find them and get out before I sever your femoral artery and toss your traitor ass over the side.”

“For fuck’s sake. Do I need to say it again? Bessie sent me!”

“What?” Sibyl demanded, as if the mere suggestion had insulted her intelligence. Liam might have gotten uncorked if Phoebe hadn’t appeared at that moment.

“He’s okay,” she told her daughter. “He needs to live. Apparently, this is his path, too.”

“He let them drown her!” Sibyl cried.

“Shhh!” Liam ordered.

“Are you fucking—” Sibyl started before her mother clamped a hand over her mouth.

A man had emerged from the mansion and walked to the edge of the deck and whipped out his pecker. Then he must have seen movement. “Who’s that down there?” he called. “That you, Geddes? What the hell are you doing?”

Liam stepped out of the captain’s cabin and walked around to the bow. “Who’d you think was going to dispose of the body?” he called back. “Use the fucking toilet, you twat.”

The man giggled and aimed his stream in Liam’s direction. It caught the light from the house and fell to the beach in golden drops.

“Watch the house,” Phoebe ordered her daughter once the man was gone. “Find the keys,” she told Liam. “I will stay with Brigid.”

“Can you fix this?” Sibyl asked.

Phoebe didn’t answer. When she returned to the back of the boat, she lay down beside her sister and closed her eyes.

There, just as she’d known they would be, were the ancestors.

Sadie, the redheaded matriarch, dressed as the huntress in a short white tunic and sandals.

Ivy and Rose, the golden twins, one fair and one feral.

Lilith, the dark, in her somber tweeds and red lipstick.

And Flora, in a gown of flowers that left an alluring scent in her wake.

“We’ve followed the path,” Phoebe told them. “Is this where it ends? Is it time for us to join you?” The sight of her sister’s corpse had stripped her of whatever hope she’d had left.

Lilith shook her head. “Your duty must still be done,” she told her granddaughter.

“You asked what your role would be,” Ivy said. “This is it.”

Rose pointed at Brigid’s body. “You are a healer, aren’t you? Then heal her.”

Phoebe curled up beside Brigid. She placed one hand on her sister’s cold chest, over the heart that a surgeon had declared lifeless. She felt its stillness, sensed its arteries hardening and blood congealing as though it were turning to stone.

“She’s been dead for too long. I can’t do anything.”

“For fuck’s sake, you haven’t even tried!” Sadie chided her.

“What did I tell you when you were girls?” Flora stepped forward and smoothed Phoebe’s hair. “Did you forget?”

She’d said so many things, but somehow Phoebe knew exactly what she was talking about. “That our gifts are meant to complement one another. And together we would be unstoppable.”

“There you go,” Lilith said.

“Get to work, darling,” Ivy told her.

Phoebe returned her hand to Brigid’s chest. Then she took one of Brigid’s hands and placed it over her own heart.

She didn’t know where to start, so she returned to the very beginning, conjuring from the depths of her memory the sight of Brigid’s face going cross-eyed as she leaned in to kiss Phoebe right on the nose.

They were only toddlers, but Phoebe knew there was something special about this girl who liked to cuddle up next to her for warmth—and would instantly cool her down when she got overheated.

Phoebe giggled just as she had back then—amazed and amused and completely thrilled that this person belonged to her.

Then she saw them both as little girls with wicker baskets in hand as they gathered treasures from Ivy’s garden.

Beautiful beetles with iridescent green wings clung to Brigid’s black sundress, and ghostly white cabbage moths fluttered around her head.

A ladybug landed on Brigid’s nose and she passed it to Phoebe. “Make a wish,” she told her sister.

They were lying on the rocks off the Wild Hill beach, long, lanky girls of fourteen and fifteen.

It was the first warm day of summer, and they’d swum across with all their clothes on.

Brigid reached into her pocket and pulled out an apple and took a bite.

Phoebe was silently wishing she had one, too, when Brigid passed hers over.

She’d briefly wondered if her sister had read her mind.

Then she decided she didn’t care. Brigid was welcome inside her head.

One by one, Phoebe sorted through the memories she’d always kept stored in her heart.

She could feel the energy circulating through her system, exiting her own body through the fingers pressed against her sister’s skin and returning again through Brigid’s palm.

With every cycle, she lost a little of her own warmth.

And that was okay. She was happy to give it.

SIBYL TALKED TO THE OLD One as she kept an eye on the Geddes house.

She knew the Old One didn’t need prayers—Lilith had taught her that.

But she hoped if she kept up a conversation, the Old One might not abandon her mother and aunt.

She was regaling the goddess with stories of all the good Phoebe had done back in Texas, when she saw the first man at the party go down.

He was standing right by the windows when he dropped to the floor, knocking over a side table and splattering the glass with the Scotch in his hand.

Sibyl suspected there was a platter of hors d’oeuvres nearby.

The party didn’t pause, aside from two men nearby who turned to laugh at his clumsiness.

Sure enough, one of them had a half-empty platter of her mushroom bruschetta in his hand.

He was still sneering at the first man when the friend beside him collapsed. Within seconds, he, too, was dead.

“Oh shit,” Sibyl said. “Find the fucking keys!” she called to Liam.

It went quickly from there. Billionaires, captains of industry, politicians, and tech gurus dropping like flies.

But not all of them. A dozen men remained on their feet.

Stepping over the bodies of their friends, rivals, and fellow oligarchs, they gathered in the middle of the room like prey seeking safety in numbers.

Huddled together, they were clearly sharing notes, and one of them seemed to have an idea who was responsible for the body count.

The man who’d taken a leak off the deck was pointing in their direction.

“They’re coming!” Sibyl shouted to Liam. “Get this piece of shit moving!”

“Well, look at that!” Lily was there beside her. “Excellent work! You got almost all of them. Just a few more to go!”

“What do I do?” Sibyl cried when the boat still wasn’t moving.

“Nothing for the moment.” Lily was calm and cool as always. “It’s best if they’re all outside.”

“For what?” Sibyl demanded.

“There we go.” Lily gestured at the men streaming out of the house. “Let’s get started.”

The boat’s engine turned over and Sibyl thought she might faint with relief.

Once they were away from the dock, she rushed around to the back of the boat to keep watch.

There, she found her mother and Brigid lying curled up, side by side, Phoebe’s hand on Brigid’s heart—and Brigid’s held to Phoebe’s.

She couldn’t tell if they were breathing and there was no time to check.

Several men on the beach had pulled out their phones.

“I need to do something,” Sibyl said. “They’ll send people after us. What should I do?”

“What was prophesied,” Lily replied.

“I don’t understand! No one gave me my mission!” Why was she being so stubborn? “Just tell me!”

“What is The Third meant to do?” Lily asked.

Sibyl racked her brains. All she could find was the only line she’d ever heard. “The Third is meant to turn the tide.”

Lilith smiled. “So do it.”

“I’ll help.” Sadie appeared and took her great-great-great-granddaughter’s hand.

“Once you get the hang of it, you’ll have no trouble at all.

It will come as naturally to you as an orgasm.

I want you to breathe in deep,” she told Sibyl.

“Breathe in all the air and water. Breath in the stars and the heavens and universe beyond.”

Sibyl closed her eyes and pulled it all inside her until she felt as though she might burst.

“Now let it out all at once,” Sadie instructed. “As you do, aim it straight for the shore.”

As Sibyl exhaled, she felt their little boat rise as though climbing a very steep hill.

Then the boat slipped down the back as the rogue wave kept rolling, getting higher and higher as it neared the beach.

The men on the dock turned tail at first sight of the swell.

But there was no way to outrun it. It ripped the wood out of the water and washed the men away.

Sibyl watched the water slam into the house, shattering the glass, knocking down walls, and sending roof tiles flying into the air.

Less than a minute later, when the wave pulled back, there was no trace of the Geddes mansion or the men who’d been in it. There was nothing left but sand and surf. The ocean had licked the earth clean.

“Holy shit.” Liam had come out of the captain’s cabin.

“What did I do?” Sibyl marveled. But the ancestors were gone.

“Looks like you started a revolution.” It was Phoebe. There was something different about her now, Sibyl noticed. Her mother seemed almost human.

“Is Brigid . . .” Sibyl was too scared to say any more. She noticed Liam had disappeared to the back of the boat.

“She’ll survive. I gave her half of everything I have. I don’t think she’ll need to worry about death following her around anymore.”

“And you?” Sibyl asked. “What does it mean for you? Can you grow strong again on Wild Hill?”

“Maybe. But right now, I’d just like to go home to your father,” Phoebe said. “I think Wild Hill will be in very good hands.”

Phoebe peeked around the captain’s cabin and saw Liam and Brigid wrapped up in each other’s arms. She nudged Sibyl and gestured with her chin. “I think that’s what my mother saw,” she told her daughter. “I think Bessie showed her this moment. Brigid with Liam. You with me.”

“A hundred billionaires beneath the sea,” Sibyl added.

Phoebe laughed. “It truly can’t get any better.”

But, of course, it could.

A FIGURE STOOD ON THE shipwrecking rock off Wild Hill’s beach with a lantern held in her hand. A trim redhead, she was dressed as if she’d just come from the gym.

“Who the hell is that?” Sibyl asked her mother as Liam navigated the boat to the beach.

“I’ve never seen her before,” Phoebe replied. “Looks like she brought friends.”

The beach was crowded with women. Two came forward to meet the boat. One was a strange figure with wild hair. The other a pretty woman with curls. The tall woman was the first to speak.

“You return triumphant. I had no doubt you would.”

“Harriett,” Brigid greeted her. “Meet my sister and niece.” Then she fumbled. “And, um, Liam Geddes.”

“The man of her dreams,” Liam added, reaching out to shake Harriett’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Who are they?” Phoebe asked about the women behind Harriett.

“They’re the others,” Harriett told her. “They’ve been called here. I hope you and Brigid will allow them to make themselves at home on your estate.”

“Wild Hill belongs to all of us,” Phoebe said. “And Sibyl is its caretaker now.”