A finer end - Deborah Crombie [115]
As she read, Faith knew with certainty that it was this force that had brought her to the Tor, and that Garnet must have known it too. With unsteady fingers, she opened the handwritten pages.
She might have been my daughter. She has come to me, a gift from the gods, redemption contained in her innocence. I will bring her child into the world … in return for the child lost, a life for a life.… If only I can protect her from the power that awaits this birth.
So that was why Garnet had watched over her with such fierceness! She had known the thing that pulled and tugged at Faith for what it was; she had meant somehow to shield her from it. Fingers trembling, Faith opened the clipping, peering at the faded newsprint. A photo of a child, a little girl, then a headline: TRAGEDY ON THE TOR, beneath which ran an all-too-brief story. Four-year-old Sarah Jane Kinnersley was struck and killed yesterday evening in a hit-and-run accident on the slopes of Glastonbury Tor. The tragedy occurred at dusk in Wellhouse Lane, just below the Kinnersley farm. Sarah’s parents realized something was amiss when Sarah did not—
Faith looked up. A sound—she’d heard a sound. The clipping fluttered to the floor as she strained her senses to catch the sound again. But there was nothing but the spattering of rain against the windowpane, and she saw that the lowering sky had obliterated all but the last vestiges of daylight. She felt a rush of panic—was she late? Had she missed Duncan?
Looking at the clock above the stove, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was not yet five o’clock. She was all right. She would go down the hill and she would try to make sense of what she had read. But just now all she wanted to do was get out of the house, so empty without Garnet’s presence, and back to warmth and light.
Her hand was on the kitchen lamp when the sound came again, this time unmistakable—a footstep, the groan of weight on the bottom step. Had Duncan discovered her missing from the café and come looking for her?
But surely she’d have heard the swish of the car on the wet pavement, and the squeak of the gate. There was another creak, and a shadow against the curtained window.
The fear that gripped her was deeper than thought. She looked round wildly for a place to hide, but it was too late. The door swung open and the last voice she had expected to hear said, “Hello, Faith.”
Gemma had slept fitfully, waking several times to check on Toby, tossing and turning in between. When the dull light that presaged dawn began to filter through her blinds, she gave up trying to sleep.
She sat at the half-moon table in the quiet flat, looking out at the garden, as the sky grew brighter. As she watched the familiar lines of tree and shrub take shape, she thought again about her conversation with Erika Rosenthal.
Dr. Rosenthal was a rational woman, a scholar, and yet she had spoken of Old Gods and elemental powers without reservation. If she were right, Gemma’s perceptions had been more than an overactive imagination, and Faith had indeed been in danger. Yet Faith had been drawn to the Tor before Garnet even knew of her existence; had the danger not been Garnet herself, but something else that had not yet run its course?
That thought made Gemma so uncomfortable that she stood and began to get ready for her day, but she worried at it restlessly throughout the morning. No matter how much she tried to rationalize it, she couldn’t shake the instinct that Faith was still at terrible risk.
At noon, she called in her sergeant and informed him that she would be out for the rest of the day. Her guv’nor was away on a training course—she’d have to