Page 94 of The Women of Wild Hill

“She won’t get away with it.” Phoebe could barely force the words out. “She’ll be arrested. Maybe killed. No. I’m putting my foot down. I won’t allow it.”

“It has to be me,” Sibyl said.

“You don’t know that!” Phoebe argued furiously.

“I do know that. Sadie’s ghosts—the three witches King James burned at the stake—they called me back to their time and told me.” Sibyl folded her arms. She wasn’t going to give in.

Phoebe sought Brigid’s backup. “My daughter has lost her fucking mind. We can’t let her do this.”

“Okay,” Brigid said. “I agree. Calm down.”

“I have other gifts,” Sibyl told her aunt and mother. “When I see the ancestors, it’s not in dreams. I can travel through our bloodline. I know everything the ancestors know. That’s why I’m The Third. That’s why it has to be me.”

The two older women stood in stunned silence.

Bessie took the opportunity to chime in. “If it helps, I imagine the two of you will be implicated in the plot as well.”

“This is what all this has been leading to?” Phoebe asked her. “Thisis our family’s mission?”

“Killing a bunch of billionaires at a party and getting caught?” Brigid scoffed. “I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun and all but—”

“It will be the start of a revolution,” Bessie told them. “You’ll be executing enemies of the Old One. Men who have spent their lives destroying everything she created. Exploiting those less fortunate than themselves. Hoarding power and money and resources. When our kind prevails, the three of you will be hailed as heroes.”

“Deadheroes,” Phoebe said.

“Is that why the Old One brought Liam to Wild Hill?” Brigid asked.

“Yes,” Bessie confirmed. “Liam was the only person on earth who could bring all the right men together. Going after them one by one wouldn’t have worked. As you can see, they catch on quickly. Best to take them out all at once.”

“So I was just the lure?” Brigid asked. “She made me fall in love with him just so he could die?”

“Everyone has their role to play,” Bessie confirmed.

“Not me, I guess,” Phoebe said bitterly. “Brigid acted as the lure. Sibyl is supposed to poison everyone. What am I meant to do?”

“Let them,” Bessie said. “Your sacrifice will inspire others.”

Brigid still couldn’t believe it. “This is what you told Sadie when she came to America—what you showed my mother before she died. This is the destiny that’s been in store for us all this time?”

“Were you expecting a glorious reward?” Bessie asked. “In all the years you spent away from Wild Hill, did you become like them?”

“Them?” Brigid asked.

“Those who need to be promised pure bliss in the afterlife in order to do what is right in this one?”

“This is a test, isn’t it?” Sibyl asked.

“The Old One doesn’t give tests,” Bessie told them. “You either are The Three—or you aren’t.”

Trust Fail

Brigid cycled away from the mansion, dropped her bike at Danskammer Beach, and walked to the end of Culling Pointe. As she stood on the very site where Bessie had been hanged, the urge to throw herself into the sound was almost too strong to resist.

“That bad?” asked a familiar voice.

A naked woman sat sunning herself on a nearby rock like a mermaid. Beads of water sparkled like diamonds on her slicked-back hair and bronze skin. A row of pearls appeared when she grinned. Brigid briefly wondered if women like this were the inspiration for seafaring folks’ legends.

“Harriett?” Brigid asked, though she recognized the woman immediately. There was no one on the Island—no one anywhere—who looked anything like her.