“It’s not too late. You can still make it right. Catrice…who killed her? You must have some idea.”
“I swear I don’t know,” she said desperately. “Don’t you see? That’s the way we planned it. None of us would know…except the killer. We lured her up there and then we scared her into running off. It was like a game of hide-and-seek. We split up and searched for her. Whoever found her first…” She trailed off. “We would all be complicit, but only one would have blood on their hands.”
“But what about the fire?”
“That was just a cover. We all panicked when we realized…when Freya never turned up, so Luna went to Pell. She convinced him that Edward had killed Freya. Naturally, he took care of everything. The fire, the funeral arrangements. Everything.”
“How did Tilly burn her hands?”
“Somehow she got word of the blaze. A lot of people had gathered to watch the building burn, but no one tried to do anything to help. When Tilly got there, she tried to get Freya out. That was hard to watch because Freya was never inside. She had already been killed when Pell had the fire set.”
And Tilly knew that. So why had she rushed into that burning building?
“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to put Freya’s body in the building?”
“That would have given the killer away because no one else knew where the body was. And we promised ourselves we’d never tell a living soul. We’d just forget what had been done. Forget about Freya.” She touched a hand to her forehead. “But someone must have seen. They dug up the body and delivered Freya’s baby. It had to be Tilly. No one else could have done it.”
I pictured that lonely grave in the laurel bald. Freya’s grave. My grave.
“If Tilly knew Freya was in that grave, why would she try to get her out of a burning building?”
“Maybe she was already unhinged. Or maybe…” Catrice had gone very pale. “Maybe she knew that was what we would have expected her to do. Maybe she didn’t want us to know that she’d found the body because she was afraid for you. She burned her hands trying to protect you.”
I went very still. “You know who I am?” I asked in a strained voice.
“You have a certain way of turning your head…a certain way you smile. I see Edward in you.”
“Who else knows?”
“Luna, Bryn and Hugh. Pell, of course, because he’s the one who brought you here. You’re his last hope of producing an Asher heir. You and Thane.”
I stared at her in shock. “What do you mean?”
“He arranged to have you brought here so that Thane could seduce you.”
“No. That’s not true. He wouldn’t have anything to do with that.”
She looked at me with pity. “It is true. But Pell selfishly put you in danger because the fact that you’re alive proves Freya didn’t die in that fire.”
“Thane didn’t know,” I said numbly.
She put a comforting hand on my arm, but I jerked away from her.
She searched my face. “Don’t you understand?” she asked softly. “He’d do anything to solidify his position in that family. I think he might cut off his right arm for the chance of giving Pell Asher a grandson.”
I thought of Tilly’s warning about Thane. He covets what can never be his. And I thought about that night we were together in the cemetery, how the evil had found a way in through his weakness.
Terror washed over me at what might already have been done. “I’m calling the police.”
“You can’t,” Catrice said. “Not the local police. Wayne is too afraid of the Ashers to help us, and it’ll take too long for the state police to get here. Or even the county patrol. They’d have to come across on the next ferry because the back roads will be flooded by now. In this weather, it could take hours for them to get here.” Her gaze slowly lifted. “We’re completely isolated.”
Thirty-Five
I don’t know why I headed to the laurel bald, to Freya’s grave, but I had a strong sense that Tilly had gone there. Maybe I’d inherited her uncanny intuition, or maybe I could somehow hear her calling out to me. Maybe it was Freya’s ghost that guided me. I only knew that the pull was too powerful to ignore. And I knew of no place else to look for her.
It was raining again by the time Angus and I reached the cemetery. As I charged through the woods with my mace and a handful of tools—make-do weapons—I’d grabbed from the back of my car, I told myself it was foolish to think that I could save my grandmother single-handedly. Or that I could trust anything that came out of Catrice’s mouth. By her own admission, she had helped plan a murder. And yet…what choice did I have? Freya was lost to me forever. I didn’t want to lose Tilly now that I’d only just found her.
As Angus and I crested the hill, I tried yet again to call the state police, but I still couldn’t get a signal. I thought about calling Thane, but what if Tilly was right? What if he’d been in league with his grandfather all along?
The thought of his deception cut like a knife, but I didn’t have time for self-pity. Later, I could look back and dissect our every conversation, searching for clues and nuances that might have given him away. But now was not that time. Not with Tilly’s life on the line. She’d brought me into this world, and she’d never once hesitated to protect me. How could I not do the same for her?
I scrambled down the overhang, and my heart started to pound as I approached the grave. My grave. Angus was acting very strangely. He sniffed the leaves and pawed at the ground, and I thought perhaps he’d picked up my scent. But when I called his name, he whirled with bared teeth and feverish eyes.
My stomach tensed as I watched him warily. “Angus? What’s wrong, boy?”
He answered with a low growl, and I drew back on a gasp. What had come over him?
He crouched and circled as I stood frozen, Papa’s terrible warning thundering in my head: Those closest to you are the most dangerous because it will try to use them to weaken you.
“Not you, Angus,” I whispered.
He continued to circle, hair bristled, until I had no choice but to slowly back away. He returned to the grave then, but he kept his agitated gaze on me. He didn’t try to approach or attack. I wondered if he only meant to scare me away.
The rain was still coming down, and I could hear the steady drip on the leaves. And something else. Something familiar and instantly alarming. A splintering sound…
I couldn’t identify the noise, but I knew—somehow I knew—that the killer was just beyond the overhang, just beyond my line of sight.
I remembered something Catrice had told me once. The three of them—she, Bryn and Luna—were like blood sisters, and they knew these hills like their own backyard.
And what of Hugh? Could he be out there searching for me, too?
Like Freya before me, I had been drawn into their dastardly game, but I couldn’t let myself think about my birth mother’s gruesome end or the horrifying way I’d come into this world. I couldn’t think about Thane’s duplicity or Angus’s betrayal. I had to keep a clear head—
A silhouette appeared at the top of the overhang—black-clad with ax in hand—and I turned with a gasp, plunging recklessly through the bald. I almost expected Angus to lunge after me, but he stayed at the grave, watching over something that I couldn’t see.
Limbs whiplashed my face and yanked at my hair as I ran blindly, driven by pure terror and the memory of Freya’s ghost. I kept up the pace until the mountain laurel thickened, the branches becoming so tightly entwined I could barely claw my way through. Any light that might have shimmered through the rain clouds was completely obliterated by the low-hanging canopy, and I was soon hopelessly lost.