Petra knew all about it. Petra might even have done it. When she looked for her again, the woman was gone.
All at once Laine felt very alone. She was among strangers, any of whom could be a killer, or a changeling horse spirit, or both. She swallowed carefully, forcing down a wave of nausea.
She said, “Look, I’m really freaked out by this. Can I go?”
“Just a few more details first, miss. We’ll find out who she is, don’t you worry.” DI Watley beckoned a constable over and directed him to take Laine’s information and a brief statement. Laine suspected it was woefully incoherent. At least Watley had chosen to ignore her case of nerves, and assumed her pallor was normal at a time like this. “I must ask you to stay in the area, Miss Summerhill. Just until we get this sorted out.” His voice was comfortable, reassuring.
Laine did not feel at all reassured.
She promised to bring her passport to the station as soon as possible, then was allowed to head to the inn for a nice hot bath and something to eat. Part of her light-headedness was simple lack of coffee, she realized.
An hour later, feeling much better in dry clothes, she was in the inn’s dining room, which by now had filled up with chattering people enjoying tea and crumpets while speculating on the death. News traveled fast. Laine looked in vain for a table, until Mrs. Griffin spotted her and bustled over. “Oh, dearie—there you are—” She puffed and stalled in front of Laine like a small steam engine, pushed back her flyaway hair and said, “I’ll find you a spot, never fear. You’re one of us now, aren’t you then!” Taking Laine’s hand in hers, she pulled her to a corner, unfolded a small side-table and yanked an unused chair from a neighboring table. “There you are. Coffee? I know how you Americans like your coffee!”
Not bothering to correct the woman—which would be churlish considering her effort—Laine said, “Oh, yes, please.” She sat gratefully and then felt herself shrink, overwhelmed by what she’d seen. She wiped away some regretful tears. If she was right and that woman had been the horse, locked in the stable and frantically trying to get free, she had lost the chance to rescue her.
Mrs. Griffin came back with two cups of coffee, placed them on the table and pulled up a stool onto which she climbed nimbly. With a direct look, she leaned close to Laine and whispered, “Tell me everything.”
Laine doctored up her coffee until it was good and sweet. Mrs. Griffin did the same. It took only minutes to recount exactly what she’d experienced that morning, leaving out her personal fears. And her odd reaction to the water. Mrs. Griffin held a hand to her heart, listening hard. Her mouth turned down when Laine described the woman, and she crossed herself, muttering a few words in a language Laine did not understand. It sounded like Te merel amaro kuro o lasho. Not Latin; she would have recognized that.
When Laine asked her, she said, “I’m Romnichal—Romany is the term most people know. Though I’ve been away from the life for years, still the old words come back.” She shook her head. “That poor girl.”
Romany? Mrs. Griffin, the first “little person” she’d ever met, was a Gypsy? Another first. Laine cocked her head, her interest piqued. Visions of fortunetellers and pickpockets came to mind. “What do the words mean?”
The woman looked away and crossed herself again. The motion was fast and natural, as if performed for years, which no doubt it had been. Laine had read most of the Traveler folk were Catholic. “Just a phrase, dearie. Literally it means May our favorite stallion die.” She licked her lips, watching Laine. “It’s a sarcastic saying, meant to ward off the anger of vengeful sprites. Like knocking on wood or spilling salt. It’s all a rakli like you need know.”
“Rakli . . . ?” Laine’s tongue stumbled over the word.
“Non-Gypsy girl, dearie.” Mrs. Griffin tossed her head in her characteristic gesture and slid off the stool. “Some of us have work to do,” she said with a smile, and bustled off.
Fortified by the coffee, Laine got herself a heaping plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and marmalade from the buffet table and wolfed it all down hungrily. Despite what she’d seen that morning, she was famished. She felt significantly better afterwards.
And significantly more suspicious. Mrs. Griffin knew more than she was saying, even couched enigmatically in the Romany tongue, and for some reason she wanted Laine to understand this. Why else would she have said what she did? Our favorite stallion. It couldn’t have been a simple slip; she could have easily lied about the words’ meaning.
Laine wondered how long the woman had been away from the Gypsy life, and how long she had been living here at Blackhorse Inn. Mrs. Griffin was well entrenched in the local society of landholders, shopkeepers, and commuters, that was apparent. She must know a lot of secrets. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind sharing a few: for instance, about just who was doing the shape-shifting around here.
She needed some hard data, but Mrs. Griffin had no time to chat now. The woman had work to do. Was her job cover for another life? Laine rubbed her temples in frustration. She needed to see Innis, look into his eyes and demand the truth. Laine was pretty sure she could read her brother’s expressions well enough to know if he were lying about something so serious as murder.
She also wanted very much to see Arren, but had no illusions about her ability to read him. He was unlike anyone she had met in her old life. She had wasted her time naively searching for evidence of magic, studying old books, and traipsing around in the woods of Ontario. That life was far away now and meaningless as a dream of childhood.
She’d wanted magic, but not like this. Savage magic that killed.
Arren didn’t appear. He must have forgotten their plan to meet. She hoped it was as simple as that.
Chapter Eleven
Arren Tyrell stood in the dawn light and brushed dirt and leaves from the knees of his khaki pants, contemplating the disturbed ground at his feet. When he’d first spotted the woman floating downstream, his instinct was to jump in and try to save her. And to hell with the consequences.
She’d appeared through the mist, drifting like a white ghost along the strong black flow. He’d thought at first that she was a swan. She was nothing so pretty as that. A moment’s observation—with eyes, ears, and nose—told him the young woman was dead. Torn, silent, and tainted with the scent of fear and blood, she floated by, another victim of cabyll madness.
Arren’s guts knotted at the memory of Delsie lying on the morgue slab, torn and mutilated as this victim was. He’d been the one to identify her body, knowing her parents, who had adopted him, would be devastated by the sight. He had wanted to spare them, but suspected they knew exactly what had done this to their child.
He couldn’t save Delsie, and he hadn’t saved this unidentified girl either. He should have tried harder to track the woman trapped in horse form in the stable. This was most likely her, unless the killer was becoming even more rapacious. She might have been saved had he listened to what the Canadian girl was telling him.
The floating corpse would eventually be found, and it would be easier all around if he were not the one to raise the alarm.
The sun was rising as he began backtracking along the bank, hoping to find where she’d been dumped into the water.
He looked for broken branches, trampled brush, scuffed leaves—anything to indicate a struggle or a body dragged to the riverbank and tossed in. Several hundred yards upriver he had a hunch it was time to cross to the other bank. He knew better than to enter water so freshly tainted with death, but knew of a bridge not far off. In less than half an hour, he was on the east bank.
His hunch paid off. It might have been a combination of a faint scent of blood and subtle disturbances to the lush fringe of weeds along the waterline, but he’d sensed something wrong and had found what he was looking for.
Arren stood straight and stretched his back, trying to ignore the nauseating smell of fear—thickened by the lingering residue of blood—still hanging in the air. He doubted any creature other than a trained hunting ho
und, or another such as himself, could have detected it. Yet it soaked into his gut and left a gnawing hurt that was a kind of hunger. The blood-madness could so easily take over. He ran a hand harshly over his face, then forced himself to study the muddy bank and the tracks leading into the water. No human prints were to be seen, just the crescent shapes of horse hooves. Different prints overlapped; how many individuals he couldn’t tell.
Either the victim had been in cabyll form when she was driven into the river, or as a human she had been forced to ride her captor into it, unable to break free of the magic—and deadly—connection.
The killer or killers were long gone. The riverbank was silent but for the rush of water, the gentle rattle of leaves moving overhead, and the distant sound of the motorway. Arren shook his head to clear a vicious desire for revenge from his thoughts.
He tracked the prints as far as he could, but they ended at a paved road. The tang of fear in the air had faded into a general unease that still made his skin itch.
Arren turned to trudge back to the inn, where by now Laine Summerhill must be feeling stood up. Good, he thought bitterly. Perhaps she’d never speak to him again.
He forced regrets out of his mind. She had never been far from his thoughts, if only to be glad she had not been there to see the mutilated body. Yet if she had, it might scare some caution into her.
If she were still waiting, he’d tell her some pale version of the truth and do his best to shoo her back home where she belonged.
Even if Jaird Fallon wasn’t the cabyll ushtey committing these killings, he had proclaimed himself her brother’s sire and would expect control over Laine too, as it was in the old days. The young man would obey his father in anything he was told to do; as a member of Fallon’s herd, he was bound to obedience. And if it wasn’t Jaird Fallon, another cabyll just as dangerous would want the delicious Laine.
And she was delicious. He’d inhaled the scent of her hair and almost tasted her lips, but then the damned boy had arrived.
Thank God.
What would have happened if he and Laine had become entangled in lust? What if he had let himself go?
Except for one disastrous time, Arren Tyrell had never allowed himself to shift to cabyll ushtey form.
But there had been times when he’d awakened miles from home, naked and exhausted, with no memory but that of running, running while moon-shadows whipped him on. He had awakened human and could remember nothing else. He could have been human and run so far; it was physically possible . . . there was no real evidence he’d shifted.
He had seen others shift, of course, and listened to their descriptions of how it felt, and how sensations gathered through the senses of an animal differed from those of a human. He was part animal even now; his enhanced senses told him so.
But he needed to be human, and he was going to stay that way.
As he threaded his way along the riverbank and approached the town, Arren saw a slow parade of flashing lights: police and ambulance vehicles heading toward the main road. His heart clenched until he realized the dead woman must have been found.
He made himself walk the last few hundred yards, trying to compose himself.
The deputy coroner, Dr. Judy Polk, was pulling out in her white Accord, heading back to her office to tackle the mountain of paperwork that he knew she faced. When he’d met and talked with Dr. Polk about Delsie, he’d seen that she was a good and methodical official, but with absolutely no imagination. Her eyes had been flat, her words banal. She expressed regret at his loss, but he could tell she cared nothing for the deaths she recorded.
Imagination and speculation were well represented in Little Syning. Scanning around for Laine but not seeing her, he joined a group of villagers and quickly caught up on what had happened. Apparently Laine had found the body. “She jumped right in and swam across,” proclaimed a gray-haired woman clutching a tiny white dog, which snuffled at him excitedly. “Brave lass. I called for help straight away, of course.” Pleased with the attention, she lifted her chin and preened.
Arren felt his assessment of Laine shift. He’d been hoping to protect her from harsh reality, and here she was literally jumping into the middle of it. She had a lot more nerve than he’d assumed. He felt his heart swell with pride, then squashed the feeling down.
A large man in a suit, clearly in charge, ambled over and eyed Arren shrewdly but without rancor. Arren, trying not to show undue wariness, introduced himself, learned that this was Detective Inspector Watley, and asked for details. As expected, he got few. “A visitor, a Miss Summerhill, was the first to see the dead woman,” Watley said. “As far as I know.”
Arren let that comment, and its veiled question, pass. “Laine Summerhill is an acquaintance of mine. I’d better go check on her.”
“Yes,” said the DI, though Arren had already turned and jogged off. “You do that.” Arren could feel the man’s eyes on his back, suspicious. He didn’t mind that at all. At least someone was doing his job.
Laine had likely returned to the inn. Arabella Griffin, she of the glinting eye and the eternal coffee pot, would know her whereabouts. He could make that eye soften and those pursed lips smile. He’d done it before and he’d do it again, but right now he wanted information. And coffee.
He got both simultaneously, though Mrs. Griffin refused to smile. “Another girl killed. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I can’t say business is bad—the news stories bring people here . . . the wrong sort of people.” She scowled fiercely, her cheeks pink. She worked at her lower lip with her teeth and stared at Arren, her eyes accusing. “If anyone can stop it, they had better get busy is all I can say.”
She said a lot more, sounding flustered and unhappy, but Arren was able to deduce that while Laine had been here, eaten breakfast and looked pale but lovely, she had left a few minutes ago.
He was willing to bet that she’d be at the stables.
She wasn’t going there of her own volition. She was being drawn there.
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,” snapped Petra. “She’s just a woman. A stranger. I’m sorry she’s dead, but why should I know anything about her?”
Though she felt like shouting, Laine reined in her temper and tried to modulate her voice. “She wasn’t just a woman. Surely you’ve heard of the cabyll ushtey. You must have—everyone else around here has.” She stood her ground though Petra was on the defensive. The woman’s knuckles were white as she clutched a bucket of oats.
Thumping the bucket down onto the stable’s freshly swept floor, Petra clenched her fists. “Of course I’ve heard the legends. Absolute bollocks. I suppose you believe in the tooth fairy as well. Only an ignorant tourist would fall for stupid scams like that.”
“Tourist or not, I’ve seen too much.” Laine wondered if she should watch her mouth. Petra looked not just angry but cornered. She was going to stick to her story, Laine could see that. But why? Petra herself might be the next victim.
Petra’s eyes wavered as if she were seeking an escape. “I don’t have time for this. I’ve got work to do. Why don’t you hop in your rented car and sod off?”
“People are dying. You can’t tell me you don’t care at all.” Petra was doing her best, but Laine had spent years penetrating Bethea’s lies about alcohol and drugs. She knew when a person was hiding something. She counted to three and tried again. “I just want some evidence that the filly I saw here yesterday is safe somewhere. Can you tell me anything at all?”
Petra picked up the bucket and pushed Laine aside. “None of your business.”
“Oh, but it is. Do you know what that poor woman looked like when I found her? It was like something had tried to rip her into bite-sized chunks.”
Petra hunched her shoulders and kept going.
Exasperated, Laine debated following her, but a deep voice interjected. “She won’t tell you anything.”
Arren.
She rounded on him, feeling her face flush pink, whether from irri
tation at his lateness or simple pleasure at laying eyes on him she could not decide. A bit of both. He looked as if he’d been tramping through the woods, his shoes muddy and a stray leaf in his hair.
“Well,” she said, “here you are at last. You missed all the fun.” She held her tongue on any further comments. Turning into a shrew in moments of stress was not a good tactic. As Petra disappeared into the tack room, slamming the door behind her, Laine admitted, “You’re right, she wouldn’t tell me a thing. But I’ll bet she knows what’s going on.”
“And what is going on, exactly?”
He was wearing that stick-up-the-ass look again. Laine gritted her teeth, took him by the arm and steered him out to the stable yard into the sun. She still felt chilled from the river. In the paddock a couple of horses stood idly, their ears pricked in curiosity. One was a gray, its muzzle whiskery with age as it chewed hay, the other a neat, plump bay gelding with a small dished face. Neither of them looked like show horses. The gray snorted and dropped her head to lip up more hay.
“You must have heard what happened.”
“I did. I also heard that you tried a rescue operation.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “Anyone would have gone over to check on her. There was nothing I could do but wait for the police. Though the police, in my opinion, are looking in all the wrong places.”
“Oh?”
“Come on. They must assume it’s some psycho with a grudge against women. Garden- variety serial killer. They’re just following up the usual angles.”
“The Detective Inspector thinks I might have something to do with it,” Arren said, leaning against a fence pole and crossing his arms.
She crossed hers too, reflecting him. “And do you?”
“Of course not. They suspect everyone, including you, I imagine.”
“Let them.” Laine’s anger came surging back. “I don’t get it—why aren’t the cops searching the forest, looking for signs of wild horses? Why can’t they see what’s going on? It’s the cabyll ushtey doing this.”
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