Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Then, I put my hand on the window button and roll it down.
Stick my head out.
“You honored the salt,” I say to the horse.
The horse’s ear flicks, the movement so natural that for a moment I wonder if I’ve seriously lost it and this horse really is just a motherfucking equine, and I’m talking to it like it’s my boyfriend.
But despite that fear that I should be committed, I continue. “I asked you not to come. And you didn’t come. I heard you outside, I know it was you, Alasdair, but you didn’t come inside.”
The horse takes another step. My pulse quickens.
“I appreciated that, I really did, and I’m totally grateful you kept your word and would appreciate it if you did it again. So, I’m just going to, you know, scooch on past you now. I’m going home where I’m going to lock the door and I’m going to put more salt down. You can stand here all day if you want, do whatever horsey stuff you do, eat some grass, canter through a meadow, I don’t know, but I’m going home.”
The horse looks at me.
I put up the window and ease my foot off the brake.
I don’t dare look at the horse as I edge the car forward. I look at the road instead, as a good, non-distracted driver should. I move at a walking pace. The horse does not move out of the road, so I have to go on the verge around it. I drive past its head with maybe four feet between the side mirror and its nose, the wet flank of it slides past the passenger window and the smell of it comes in through the vent—cold water, deep loch, an animal smell underneath, something faintly sweet and rotten that I don’t let myself think about—and the eye in the side of its head tracks me as I pass.
I don’t dare to look at the eye. Instead, I drive down my lane, slowly but surely.
I park at the cottage in my usual spot, and refrain from looking in the rearview mirrors. I get out as quickly and calmly as I can and lock the car, thinking this horse might behave like the bears do in Colorado, and I’ll find it in the backseat eating garbage if I don’t.
I move swiftly over to the door, my stride quickening as I approach, relieved to see the salt is still intact where I left it. I unlock the door with shaking hands and step over the salt line into the house, closing the door behind me and locking it.
I lean against it, heart racing against my ribs.
My phone is still in my hand. To Maddie’s credit, she hasn’t called me back. She doesn’t want to interfere with my driving.
That’s when I realize that while I have my phone, I didn’t bring in the fucking books.
I go to the window by the front door to see if the coast is clear.
It’s not.
The horse is still there, far away at the start of the drive.
Then it turns, ever so slowly. It walks off the road, into the bracken, and the bracken closes behind it. The last thing I see is the wet, pale flank moving through the gorse, heading up the slope toward the woods behind the cottage, heading toward the castle.
And then it’s totally gone.
I realize I’m holding my breath and let it all out, bracing myself. I make a mad dash back out to the car, fumbling like a lunatic as I go, dropping the books a bunch of times as I bring them out of the car and to the cottage, locking everything all over again.
Once I’m certain everything is secure once more, I unload the library books onto the kitchen table before making myself a fresh pot of coffee. Then I sit down with the books open in front of me and start reading again.
I have a long day to get through and I’m going to need to read every single page before I can figure out what the fuck I’m going to do.
I can only hope I’ll find the answers.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
The clock on the bedside table reads 3:17 in red.
The creepy hour, I think distantly, my head full of slow sand, the kind of waking that comes up out of deep sleep in stages, eyes open on their own, brain trailing a few heartbeats behind.
The cottage is cold. That’s the first thing I catch up to. The wood stove I banked before bed shouldn’t be dead yet; the radiator by the wall is on low, and the room isn’t freezing per se, but there’s a current moving through it, the moving kind of cold, the kind with a source.
The second thing is the smell. The bedroom smells of the bay.
I don’t move. I keep my eyes on the ceiling and my breathing level while I work out that the cold is coming in from over to my right, the wall with the wardrobe and the window.