The Selkie Spell (Seal Island Trilogy) (4 page)

“As early as you want.”

“Okay,” Tara said, finally resigned.  “How about six?”

“Six?”  Caitlin’s eyes went wide.  “In the morning?”

“Too early?”

“Believe me.  You do
not
want to see me at six in the morning.”

“Okay.  I’ll get here at six and finish cleaning and you come in when you’re ready and we’ll work on breakfast.”

Caitlin shook her head.  “I’m not leaving you alone with this.”

“It’s my mess.”

“It’s
our
mess.  We made it together.”  Caitlin sighed when Tara reached for another plate.  “Okay, okay.  We can meet here at six.”

Tara set the plate down.

“You’re as stubborn as he is,” Caitlin muttered.

“Who?”

“Nobody.”  Caitlin shook her head, holding open the back door.  “Come on.”

Tara took one last look at the dishes and reluctantly followed Caitlin out the door.  “Where’s the closest B&B?”

“It’s closed.”

“Closed?”

At the look of panic on Tara’s face, Caitlin pulled out the keys and jingled them.  “Don’t worry.  I’ve a place for you.”

“You have a place I can rent?”

“Dominic does, actually.”

Tara stopped walking.  “Does he know about this?”

“Of course.”

“But he didn’t want to give me this job.”

“I know.”

“Then how does he feel about renting me a room?”

“Well, it’s not just a room. It’s a cottage.”  Caitlin motioned for Tara to follow her.  “I just renovated it for him.  That’s what I do.  Fix up the ruined buildings on the island and turn them into holiday homes.  You’re our first tenant.”  She smiled, leading Tara through an alley to a small red hatchback.  “This is me.”

“Is the cottage far?”

“Not very,” Caitlin said, sliding behind the wheel.  “Just on the outskirts of the village, but it’s up the hill aways and frankly I don’t feel like walking.”

“Fair enough,” Tara said, buckling herself into the passenger’s seat.

Caitlin eyed the belt, amused.  “You worried about my driving?”

“Habit,” Tara explained.  “I guess there won’t be too many other cars on the road.”  She gazed out the window, watched the village recede as they crept up the hill toward the cliffs.

“Is there much traffic where you’re from?”

“Compared to this, yes.”

“And where is that?” Caitlin pressed when Tara drifted back into silence.

“Oregon,” Tara lied.

“West coast, right?  Cold, damp?”

“That’s the place.”

“If that’s the case, you should fit right in here.”

Tara forced a smile.  Fitting in was the least of her worries.

“Is that why you chose it?” Caitlin asked.  “Because it felt like home?”

“Maybe,” Tara answered, gazing back out the window.  And in a strange way it had.  From the moment she’d set foot on Irish soil she hadn’t wanted to leave.

The road narrowed and Caitlin maneuvered the tiny car up the bumpy hillside.  Her headlights flashed over a small white cottage on the edge of the cliff and she braked to a stop in front of the house.  “Here we are.”

Tara gazed out the windshield at the lone cottage settled onto the soaring cliff and felt the shock of recognition.  “I saw this house earlier today, when I came in on the ferry.”

“Really?  I’m surprised you could see it through the mists.  You can see it on a clear day, but not when the air’s as thick as it was this afternoon.”

Tara gazed at the purple shutters, the freshly whitewashed walls.  It had looked so desolate from afar.  “Nobody lives here?”

Caitlin cut the engine, shook her head.  “Been empty for years.”

“I thought I saw a woman here earlier.”  Tara squinted into the darkness.  “But it was only for a second.”

“What did she look like?”

“I can’t remember.  Long, dark hair?  Maybe…  She might have been wearing a white dress?”  Tara turned toward Caitlin.  “But that’s crazy, isn’t it?  Who would wear a white dress when it’s this cold out?”

Only one person she could think of, Caitlin thought, gazing at the dark windows of the cottage.  But that was just a tale for the tourists, wasn’t it?  She pushed open the car door, shaking off the crazy thought.  “Want to see inside?”

Tara nodded.  But when she reached for the handle she felt that same jolt of energy she’d felt when she stepped off the ferry earlier.  Gazing down at her hand, she shook off the strange sensation and pushed open the door.

***

Caitlin’s tail lights faded down the hill and Tara turned away from the window, taking in the cozy furniture, tidy kitchen and charmingly mismatched throw rugs.  Colorful bowls of seashells were scattered throughout the room and stained glass pendants hung from the windows.  Tracing a finger over the shiny surface of the breakfast table tucked into the nook beside the fireplace, she flashed back to the places she’d slept for the past few weeks.  The damp basement in Amsterdam.  The drafty attic in Rome.  She breathed in the silence.  There were no horns honking, no sirens wailing, no trash bins in the alley below.  There were only miles of ocean and cool, clean air.

Pinch yourself, Tara.  Pinch yourself and wake up.  And all of it will be gone.

A movement, a silvery flash out the window caught her eye and she crossed the room. Drawing the gauzy curtain aside, she saw nothing but the fog slithering across the ground and she turned away, but another flicker of light caught her eye and when a shadow passed over the sill, a chill ran down her spine.

Sliding the knife out of her back pocket, she crossed the room and quietly opened the front door.  Stepping out into the darkness, she crept around to the back of the house and lifted the blade, her knuckles white around the handle.  But when she rounded the back wall, she froze.

A woman, a whisper of white against the night, stood with her toes curled around the edge of the cliff, gazing out to the sea. Hundreds of feet below, the ocean broke over the cliff wall, spilling over sharp, jagged rocks. With each crest the woman inched closer to the edge and the pearls sewn into her dress unraveled and fell, rattling and rolling over the edge, tumbling into the sea.

Seaweed wrapped around the woman’s wrists, dripping green-tinted water onto the grass. Glittering seashells sprang up at her feet. Sea water dripped from her long black hair, sand spilled from her pockets, and when she turned, Tara saw the tears falling from her cold green eyes.

But it wasn’t the tears that had Tara’s blood running cold.  It was the woman’s face—Tara’s face.

The woman stopped, looked at Tara, and seemed to see all the way inside her. Her dress whipped around her ankles like darting silver-fish. Her hair caught the wind, wrapping like thick, wet ropes around her neck. Tara stood, barely breathing, as the woman turned, and stepped from the edge.

“Wait!” Tara cried. But instead of falling, instead of plunging to her death, the woman vanished. And there was only the ocean. The wind. And the terrible crunch of seashells as Tara sank to the ground.

It was a dream.  Tara wrapped her arms around her stomach.  It wasn’t real.  She made a change today, a huge shift in her plans. Instead of looking for work in Galway, she came here and, within a matter of hours, she met a man who didn’t want her here, landed a job whose duties she couldn’t perform, and accepted the keys to a cottage she couldn’t believe was really hers.

She gazed down the hill at the sleepy village.  Smoke curled up from the chimneys of a few of the homes, the last blocks of peat warming the hearths for the night.  It had been a long day.  That was all.  It was late and her eyes were playing tricks on her. The wind cut through her thin shirt and she shivered, pushing to her feet.

Whatever she’d just seen—it wasn’t real. She would go inside. She would lie down. And tomorrow she would forget all about the woman she’d just seen step off the cliff.

She walked around to the front of the house and let herself in.  Closing the door behind her, she locked it.  Just to be sure.

***

Outside, in a garden dead for centuries, in ground still frozen with winter’s kiss, a rose bloomed in the moonlight.

Blood red and out of season.

It climbed and twisted, its thorns like knives piercing the whitewashed walls of the cottage, cracking paint as it coiled around the doorway.

Someone was coming.

He planted roses the color of murder, the color of blood.

They grew like weeds, like wild-fire.  Their black stems coiling around the doorway, creeping up the sides of the walls.  Their roots ground deep into the earth, twisting, tangling with the knotted soil as their thorns sunk into the pale walls of the cottage, tore at the thatch of the roof.

Their scent was drugging; their odor sickening.  Their smell seeped in through the cracks in the door, filling the house with their scent.  Sweet madness.  Sweet insanity.  There was no escape from it.

She clawed at the bushes, stabbed at their roots, hauling armfuls of the fat, fragrant blooms to the cliff edge.  But no matter how many times she tossed them, watching their long stems fall end over end until the surging ocean swallowed them, no matter how fast she hacked at the thick stems, they grew like snakes.

Their thorns were like knives, piercing her flesh as she dug in the dirt for her seal-skin, for her freedom, for her link to the sea.  Digging, always digging.  Always searching for her pelt.

She would never stop.

In her madness, she tore at the bushes, slicing her hands on the thorns, on the petals, sharp as ice.  She clawed at them until her palms were raw and bleeding, until her arms and wrists were lacerated.

In her desperation, she scratched at the floorboards, hacked at the walls, tore at the thatch of the roof.  But the roses pushed their way in through the windows, breaking the glass, forming a wall around the house.  Until she was caught.  Like prey.  Trapped in a web.  Bound by their scent.

Sweet sickening madness.

Her mind grew weaker, her thoughts more and more desperate.  She slipped from the cottage at midnight, sinking to her knees before the bush, fingering the scarlet petals, begging to be set free.  In the moonlight, when the smell of the roses left her weak and powerless, dew dripped from the petals like cold red tears.

And as she picked the petals, one by one from the giant bush, they curled and turned black in her hand.  No more than ashes.  No more than dust.  The wind tore what was left of the petals from her fingers, the crumbles swirling into the cold black night.  Fading into nothingness.

And as she stared at her palms, where the petals had been, there was only gray ash, and the thin webbing between her fingers that was slowly fading.

And as the nights passed, then the months, then the years, she lost all hope, all belief that she’d ever return.

This was all there was now.

This was all there would ever be.

***

Caitlin heard the buzz of the alarm and slapped at the clock, burying her head in the pillow.  What was she thinking, offering to meet Tara in the kitchen and hold their first cooking lesson first thing on a Sunday morning?  She glared at the clock, grumbled a few curses and kicked her way out of the tangle of sheets.

She’d walk over to the pub and tell Tara she needed another hour of sleep.  A woman needed an extra hour of sleep on a Sunday.  Something about that beauty rest thing.  Spying her reflection in the hall mirror, she cringed.  God knows she needed it.

Shoving her feet into slippers, she opened the door, ducked down the alley, and fumbled with the doorknob to the pub.  When she saw the light spilling out from under the doorway, she pulled open the door, and blinked.  The pots and pans were all hung in their proper places from hooks on the walls and ceilings.  The floor was spotless.  The counters were shining.  The stove was gleaming.  “What time did you get here?” she sputtered at the woman standing on the other side of the kitchen.

“A couple of hours ago.”

A couple of hours ago?
  Caitlin struggled to do the math.  “That would mean you woke up at four?”

“Something like that.”  Tara offered a hesitant smile.  “I made tea.  Would you like some?”

Caitlin stared at Tara.  “You
do
know it’s Sunday?”

Tara nodded, handing Caitlin a mug.

Caitlin blew on the boiling water, eyeing the stack of books sitting on the counter.  “What are those?”

“Cookbooks,” Tara explained.  “I found them in one of the cupboards.”

Caitlin pushed at one of them with her finger.  “What are we supposed to do with them?”