LOGINFREYA'S POVHe kissed me back.For one second he didn't move at all, and then both his hands came up and took my face and his mouth came down on mine and it was nothing like the corridor. It was worse. It was slower and harder and his thumbs were pressed into my jaw and he made a sound against my mouth like a man setting down something heavy.The stone went hot against my throat, my chest and then the world tilted and I was somewhere else.The ward. The window with the bars on it and the grey light and the drip stand and the smell of antiseptic.He was in the chair. He had his elbows on his knees and his head down and he was holding my hand with both of his."I should have told you sooner," he said."Told me what?""That it was me. All of it. The flowers on the ward and the books and the—" His voice quited. "I've been coming every Thursday for four years, Freya. Four years.""You never said.""You never looked at me."He lifted his head and his eyes were gold and wet and he said, "I'm
FREYA'S POVThe fire cracked.Everybody looked at me.My mother. My father. Kade. Dr. Ewan. Corin Vance at the back with his hat in his hands."Told them what?" my mother said.I sat there with my hands in my lap and my mouth shut."Freya," Dr. Ewan said. "They've earned it. They've been in the water and in the trench and in the dark and they've asked for nothing but the truth. Give it to them."I looked at my mother."I died," I said.She didn't move."I died in a hospital ward when I was thirty-four years old," I said. "I had white hair and I couldn't shift and I had been sedated for three years and I had two children who were dead and a husband who had thrown me away and a woman who had taken my place and I died screaming for children nobody believed existed." I breathed, feeling like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. "And then I woke up in a pool at Lincoln Prep and I was seventeen years old and I had a second chance."I remember everything," I said. "I remember the marri
FREYA’S POV"I took her out of the chamber on Tuesday night," Corin said, his eyes moving over every one of us like he was waiting to see if anyone would protest. "I took her out and I put her in the chapel and I said a prayer over her and then I put her in the ground in the churchyard with the right date on the stone and the right name and the right words." He looked at me. "She's been waiting eleven years for a proper grave and she's got one now.""You broke into a sealed chamber," Dr. Ewan said."I opened a sealed chamber." Corin Vance's mouth pulled. "I didn't break anything. I've been waiting eleven years to open that chamber and I did it the first night I could.""And the van?""The van was an accident." He said it without apology. "I heard the pump stop and I knew somebody was coming down the hill and I took the van because it was there and I put it in the water because I had to get off the hill and I went up the far side on foot. I didn't hurt the boy. I put my hand on his che
FREYA'S POV"Waiting for me," I said."For you." The old woman's eyes did not move. "You've got the stone. You've got the name. You've got the boy with the three bars on his father's ring and you've got a doctor who knows what the stone is and you've got a pack that will follow you if you ask it to." She paused. "That's a great deal for one girl to be carrying. And it's a great deal for a man in a vicarage to be watching.""Who is he?""I don't know his name." She said it without apology. "I know his father's name and I know what his father wanted and I know he's been sitting in that house for five days with a tray on the step and nobody's seen him. That's all I know.""Then we go and ask him," my father said."You'll go and ask him and he'll be gone." The old woman's mouth pulled. "He's been there five days. He'll be gone before you get down the drive.""Then we go now."The old woman leaned back in her chair. "But before you go, Ellis, I'll say the thing I brought you up here to hea
FREYA'S POVI had never met my grandmother on my father’s side.That was the thing I kept coming back to, standing in the doorway of that warm room with the fire going and the old woman in the chair. I had never met her. She had sold the house and shut the door and never come back to it, and my mother had said you didn't ask her things, and Aggie had said she was a woman you didn't cross, and I had built her in my head out of other people's fear.She was smaller than I had built her. That was the first surprise. Small and old and folded up in a chair with a blanket over her knees, and her hands were thin and spotted and folded neat in her lap, and she looked at me like she had been waiting a long time and had known exactly when I would come."Come in," she said. "Shut the door. You're letting the cold in."Dr. Ewan went in first. My father went after her. Kade stayed in the doorway and I stayed with him."All the way in," the old woman said. "I'm not going to bite. I haven't got the t
FREYA’S POVThe light on the landing flickered again, and this time it didn't come back."Lamp's out," Kade said."Then we've got one between us," Rudd said, and lifted the storm lamp.Dr. Ewan stood at the top of the stairs with her hand on the rail. "Mrs. Everhart. Mr. Rudd. The vicarage. How far?""Half a mile past the green. On the rise.""And the vicar?""Vicar's been dead two years. It's the curate lives there now. Young lad. Keeps to himself.""Then that's where the car is and that's where the man is." Dr. Ewan turned to my father. "Alpha. We've got three hours till light and a thief on the hill and a car at the vicarage that nobody's seen the driver of. I want to know who's been sleeping in that house for five days while a body was dug out of the ground behind it."My father looked at her for a long moment. "Then we go at first light," he said. "All of us. And we go quiet.""Quiet," Rudd said, "is how you get yourself killed in a flood."He set the storm lamp down on the hall







