The air of knowledge thickened between us until it had weight and heft and color. I finished my chips and dropped the refuse into the white bag it had come in, and he took it from me and walked it down to a bin. As he walked back, I thought I’d never really stopped missing him, not ever, that swing of his arms and the loose-limbed cadence of his long legs.
He sat down again beside me, and the air of expectation swallowed us. He picked up my hand between both of his palms, making a sandwich of my fingers. His palm lay against mine, and when he moved it very slowly, I felt the skin-to-skin slide as a shiver through my arms and down my spine.
I looked up, and his eyes were lowered, focused on our hands, then my breasts and neck and face. I raised my hand and touched his cheek, shaved cleanly, and his cheekbone. My thumb gravitated to his lower lip, and I brushed the pad over it, back and forth.
The air was still. All the days we had spent together and all the days we had lost were there with us, part of this moment when we were trying to get the nerve to take the leap.
With a quick moment, he captured my thumb in his mouth, pulling it into the wet and heat of it, and I couldn’t help making a soft noise.
“Mmm,” he said, “salty.”
And finally he slid closer and pulled me into the circle of his arms and bent his head and kissed me.
It was like coming home after a very long, wearying trip to a hostile place. The color behind my eyelids was a soft green, and I snuggled in closer beneath his arm, into the warmth of his body. He felt sinewy, strong, beneath my hands.
We angled to fit our lips into a position that would allow us to kiss long and deep, lips sliding, smoothing, bumping, tongues meeting, dancing, flickering, diving.
We kissed. Sitting in the cool wind of a May afternoon on a river that smelled coppery and more than a little dank, on a bench that was cold beneath my legs. We kissed.
Kissed until we were both panting a little, and shaking with desire. He discreetly moved his hand up my ribs until my breast rested against his fingers, and I edged my hand inside his shirt, stroking hot skin.
“Jesus,” he whispered, lifting his head slightly, murmuring the words against my mouth. “I’m about to spontaneously combust.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Will you come back to my house with me?”
“I thought you didn’t want to get mixed up with me again.”
He touched my face with one fingertip. “That ship sailed a while back.”
I nodded, rubbing his bare skin with my fingertips. “I wish we could find a transporter.”
He kissed my mouth, then my chin, then my forehead. “It won’t take long.”
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Poppy
I was feeling emotional and exhausted, unprepared for the festival in just a few days, when Lillian called. She didn’t sound querulous, which could be patted into quiet, but imperious, which was always a sign that she was frightened.
“Poppy, my love,” she said. “I need you to come over. I’ve managed to get Zoe out of the house for a few hours.”
“Now, then?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the shop work surface, strewn with flower buds and herbs and bottles and little velvet bags, and took a breath. She was my mother. She took precedence over anything else. “Is Isa there?”
“Yes.”
I promised her I’d be there within an hour. Foot traffic was slowing, thanks to a storm gathering on the horizon, and Mia could keep an eye on things by herself while continuing to work on potions. We’d finished the love potions, the money potions, and the sleep potions. Today we’d been working on those that would help retrieve lost things, dream manifestation (which came with a spell: the more steps the better, when one wished to build belief), and a handful of others I’d felt moved to include, prompted by something tickling me. One was strangely specific—the retrieval of a passport. I assumed whoever needed it would pick it up. I’d mixed it in a yellow bottle.
I packed up tiny bags and envelopes, powdered herbs and flower petals, and an array of possible extras and carried it all to my car, then drove up the hill. Flashes of lightning laced through distant clouds, but by the feel of the wind, it was on its way here.
My mother needed me. Me, specifically, which made everything I’d done the past seven years make sense. At least one of my relationships might be healed.
She brought me upstairs to her tower and showed me a page she’d written the day before. It seemed, at first, to make sense, with commas and periods and a regular cadence of words. And the words themselves were actual words, just arranged in an order that didn’t immediately make sense.
Her eyes filled with tears. “What will become of me?”
“Oh, Mother!” I bent and hugged her tiny, shrinking form. “You’re going to stay right here, writing away, with people who love you.”
“I’m frightened. I don’t know who I’ll be without my brain. It’s been everything.”
I thought of Ravi, his body disappearing bit by bit, and his fear that I would leave once he became a wizened version of himself. “I’ll be here to remember everything for you,” I said, rocking her a little back and forth. Suddenly, my wish to stay at Greencombe held no weight against my mother’s needs. “I’ll move back in and we can have meals together, and I’ll make sure you don’t wander off, and you can entertain me with flights of fancy.”
“I don’t deserve that, the way I treated you.”
“Oh, Mother, you don’t have to earn my love. You’ve just got it.”
She wept a little then. “No one ever wants to face death,” she said at last, pushing me away to wipe her eyes. “And yet, it’s the one thing that we will all know.”
“Or not know, in your case,” I said, and laughed.
For one long second, she stared at me, then joined me in a good belly laugh. “Poppy, my dear,” she said, taking my hand. “I do not deserve you.”
“You made me,” I said, brushing the hair from her forehead. “And I love you.”
Love, I thought. It takes so many forms.
I found Isa in the kitchen, editing photos on a tablet. “What are you up to, my dear?”
She raised an eyebrow, and in the gesture, I saw with a jolt my own face. It wasn’t vanity, just recognition, like seeing yourself in a strange time mirror. “Just going through some of my photos.” She gave me a mischievous grin. “Want to see one of my granddad?”
“Sure.” I bent over to share the screen with her. She smelled like strawberries and herbal shampoo, such a young and exhilarating scent, and I inhaled it with pleasure. People always complained about teenagers, but I liked them—all the angst and drama and rolling eyes. They charmed me, each and every one.
She clicked on a thumbnail, and a photo of Ben filled the screen. He was laughing, and he had that look in his eye that let me know he’d told a joke he didn’t think anyone would get.
He was devastatingly handsome, still.
“Wow,” I said. A sweetness moved through me. He was such a kind and gentle man, and I had hurt him badly. “He is very handsome, isn’t he?”
“Yep. But he never has a girlfriend, even though they try. Pretty hard.”
I chuckled. “I’m sure they do.” I pointed. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on?”
“Okay.” She clicked to a new folder, then opened a bunch of pictures of the hill fort in bluebell splendor.
I leaned in to see the thumbnails. “Ooh, I love the close-ups of the flowers. Looks magical.”
“Right? The whole time I was there, I kept thinking it seemed like a place fairies would be, like the trees were alive and having conversations when I wasn’t looking.” She clicked through, showing me various shots—close shots of bluebells and through the grass to the trees. I saw a thumbnail of two men. “Who is that?”
“Just some random guys,” she said, but she clicked on it. “I only shot their picture bec
ause I was by myself, and if they dragged me off into the woods to rape me and kill me, I wanted evidence.”
I touched her shoulder. “Let me see it.”
She clicked on the series of the men, going slowly through it. One of them wore a yellow-checked shirt and had the worn face of an old coyote, a Romanian I’d seen around. He worked at the yacht club.
“Do you know them?” Isa asked.
“Not really. This one works in the kitchen at the club, I think. What were they doing?”
“Nothing. They just talked in another language—Romanian, I guess—and then that guy”—the yellow shirt—“went back toward town, and this guy went to the parking lot.”
I studied the photo, trying to discern what my gut wanted me to see. I kept looking back to the man I knew, sorting through any other images I had of him in my memory. Just seeing him. At the grocery store, smoking in the street, talking to some of his friends. Nothing very much.
But my gut was insisting there was something here. “Leave that photo up, will you? I’ll be right back.”
In my car, I kept a tarot deck in the glove compartment. It was one I’d used for a long time, and it was wrapped in a piece of a sari scarf that I’d worn with Ravi. I kept it cleansed for moments just like this. I grabbed it and headed back inside, and as I turned to face the sea, wind slapped me, sent my hair into a spiral over my head. I smelled angry ocean and the freshness of rain. Thunder boomed, still in the distance. It was going to be quite a storm.
Lillian had come down, her face repaired, and she stood at the sink filling the kettle. “Quite a wind out there.”
I smoothed my hair back. “It is.” I wiped the table off and dried it, then sat down next to Isa and her computer, which was floating with screen saver pictures. “Can you get that photo of the men back full screen?”
She slid her finger along the touch square, and I looked at it for a long moment, absorbing whatever it was I needed to see, and then shuffled the tarot. It was old and soft and responded easily to my energy. Going with the prompts, I laid out three cards, side by side. Eight of Cups, Ten of Swords, the Fool.
I frowned, feeling the heaviness. Cups were a cheery suit, but this was a card of exile or leaving. The Fool often indicated a young person, eager and untested and unaware of danger.
Ten of Swords. I sighed. One of the darkest cards of all, a knight flat on his face with swords—
I flashed on a vision of a body, floating.
—Shot in the back.
“What?” Isa asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe,” I said, and I looked at the photo again. In the distance, almost too distant to make out, was the shape of a person in the trees behind the man I didn’t know. “Can you zoom in on this part?”
Isa zoomed in on the figure, but it still wasn’t very clear. A person, that was all you could really see. “He might have shown up in another picture,” she said, and she clicked through the others, looking closely. Nothing until: “Oh, hey. This is better.”
She zoomed in on the figure, and a lot more detail showed up, though still not clear enough to recognize a particular feature. A girl, probably, with very long dark hair, and jeans. “I didn’t see her, but maybe she was trying to keep out of sight.”
“It might not mean anything,” I said, and I turned over three cards because my gut disagreed. Queen of Cups, King of Pentacles, Six of Cups. One more. The Tower.
The image of the floating body returned, and I let it in this time instead of wincing it away. Hair floating, arms. No face.
But the cards told me who it was. Cups were the homely arts, happiness and family. Diana. The Tower was there again, as it ever was in her readings. A tightness burned in my throat, because I would not say aloud what I saw.
Six of Cups showed children. Reversed. I frowned but didn’t see how it fit. Diana didn’t have children.
Children. Lost children? Abused children?
And the King of Pentacles. “This is an interesting card,” I said to Isa. “It’s a man of wealth and power who loves his material comforts.” I wondered to myself if it might mean Henry, because it seemed this reading was about Diana in some way.
I looked at the cards again, searching for other patterns. Youth, maybe. Exile. Death.
“If it’s telling me anything, I don’t know what it is,” I admitted. “It was worth a try.” I stuffed the cards together and dropped one on the floor.
Isa retrieved it. The King of Pentacles again. Maybe I needed to find Henry. Perhaps Sage had a phone number for him. Or . . . even more likely, Inspector Hannaford.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Zoe
As we climbed into the Range Rover, Sage said, “One rule on the way.”
“Okay?”
“No talking about anything bad. Not now, and not in the past.”
“I wasn’t really thinking about talking,” I said, running a hand up his thigh.
He caught my hand with a laugh. “I have to drive.” He kissed my palm. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” I whispered.
In the end, we didn’t talk much. He played the radio, and we drove toward the farm on a back road, watching as clouds billowed up on the horizon, thick and serious clouds. “I should tell my family where I am,” I said. “But I don’t really want to let anyone else in.”
“Just tell them we have to make a stop at the farm to pick something up.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Make it up.”
“Matt?”
“Sure.”
I texted Isabel. And added:
Is Poppy still there? Everything good with Gigi?
Yes. Gigi is good. Poppy is here.
I hesitated. Then texted simply:
K
At the farm, I suddenly felt shy and strange. “Is this a good idea?”
He came around, took my hand, and pulled me toward the front door. “Yes. No thinking.”
Without a word, he led me inside and up the stairs to a bedroom that had once been his mother’s. I’d never been inside it, but the second we were there, Sage was unbuttoning his shirt, and then he’d stripped it off and was standing there in only his jeans, and I was stunned into a hush of desire. His body was mature now, his shoulders broad, his belly lean. His skin was the color of honey, with hair the same pale wheat across his chest.
“Are you going to undress?” he asked, unbuckling his belt. Before I could respond, he was standing there naked, aroused, beautiful, and I was frozen, my arms crossed over my chest.
“Romance was never your strong suit,” I said.
He spread his arms in offering. “I’m all yours.”
But I felt terrified. The last time he’d seen my body, I’d been seventeen and perfect. “I’ve had a child, you know. And I don’t weigh a hundred fifteen pounds anymore.”
“I don’t care.” He inclined his head. “Are you shy with me, Zoe Fairchild?”
“Yes!”
A slow, very wicked grin bloomed on his mouth. “That’s silly.” He crossed the small space between us. “Don’t you want to touch me?”
“Of course.”
“Go ahead.” He settled his hands on my shoulders, stepped in a little closer, and angled his head to kiss me.
And there he was, more than six feet of naked, sinewy male, smelling of musk and heat. I raised my hand and skimmed his hip, raising my mouth to his.
“There you go,” he said, and he tugged the hem of my shirt. I raised my hands and let him take it off, and then I kicked off my jeans. He bent and kissed my shoulder, the curve of my neck, and I reached around and unhooked my bra. He let my underwear alone for the moment, gathering me up, bending in to kiss my mouth, my shoulders, my breasts, his big hands on my rear end. I was trembling with emotion and desire, but I touched him, too, exploring his long back, his hips.
“You’re never a stranger,” he said.
“No.”
We kissed, again and again,
skin to skin, and found our way to the bed and tumbled down. Outside, it began to rain. Hard. Inside, we renewed our knowledge of each other’s bodies, slowly, and quickly, and in every possible way. When we were spent, weary and sweaty and shaking with expending so much energy, we collapsed into a position we knew already—Sage on his back, me curled into him, my head in the curve of his shoulder, his arm around me. He pulled the duvet over us, tucking us together like kittens.
“I don’t believe I shall be moving for a month or two,” he said.
“I know.” I stretched a leg over his luxuriously, taking pleasure in the crisp rustle of hair against my inner knee. “I’m having trouble even bringing up words for a sentence.”
“That won’t last long.” He scratched my shoulder softly.
I laughed a little. It was true that having sex often turned a talking switch for me. “I used to feel so alight after we had sex,” I said, tracing a circle around the middle of his chest. “Like I could see all the connections in the world, all the molecules.”
“Not anymore?”
I sighed, tilted my head so that I could look at his face. “Honestly, I haven’t had sex in . . . I don’t even know.”
“Me either,” he said quietly.
“What about Cora?”
“Mmm. I forgot about that. Still, it was a while ago.”
“Not as long as me.”
He tumbled me over sideways. Kissed me. “Why now?”
“Because . . .” I dug my finger into his hair, silky and soft, the curls winding around my fingers like ivy. I met his eyes. “Because you’re you, Sage.”
He closed his eyes and bent into my neck. “I planned to keep you at arm’s length while you were here, but the minute I saw you at the market, I knew we’d end up here.”
“You didn’t act like it.”
“I missed you, Zoe. I had so much pride, back in the day.”
“I missed you too.” I wanted to say more, that the world felt right with him beside me, in a way it never did without him, as if he were some key to the universe that I couldn’t access any other way.
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