A Finer End

Faith lowered herself into the rocker. Here she would have rocked her own child, if Garnet had not died. She looked round, trying to see the kitchen from Garnet’s point of view. Garnet hadn’t owned many things, but among her most treasured possessions had been her books, especially her cookbooks. They sat in the small nook above the cooker, apparently untouched by the police maelstrom.

With a grunt of effort, Faith stood and pulled out one book, then another, swiftly thumbing through them.

It was in a vegetarian tome Faith had seldom seen Garnet use that she found the papers tucked inside the flyleaf: several sheets of foolscap filled with Garnet’s spiky handwriting, pages torn from a book, and a newspaper clipping, yellowed and brittle with age.

First she unfolded the printed sheets, her eyes widening with shock as she read. The pages had obviously been torn from a primer on ancient magic, but these were not the gentle ceremonies Garnet had taught her—these were rituals that called the darkest and oldest powers up from the depths, rituals celebrating the Tor as the entrance to the Underworld, the home of the Great Mother. Participants began by walking the ancient spiral maze, the physical manifestation of the vortex of energy that would suck them up to the summit, and then down into the very heart of the Tor. Those who passed through chaos and death would emerge reborn, filled with the power of the Mother.

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.