“You idiot,” Tom shouted. He wrenched away from the fire, nearly breaking Kylie’s arm in the process. By then the handcuffs were searing into their flesh, and sparks flew. They both had burned their flesh above their left hands. Tom fumbled with the key in his pocket and unlocked the cuffs as quickly as he could, cursing as he did. As soon as he did, Kylie grabbed the book and ran. She stayed clear of the poison he had set out for any intruders; she all but flew. She didn’t care about the burning circle coiled around her wrist. She didn’t care that she was far away from home. All she had to do was follow the rules of magic.
She heard Tom Lockland call for her to stop, but she was a runner and she always had been. She was barefoot, but that didn’t matter. She’d run barefoot in the summers all around Leech Lake and now she was glad she had. The farther she ran, the clearer her head was. She had the one thing she needed, the book that would end the Owenses’ curse. The sky was blooming with red clouds; the air was on fire and the red rain fell on her as she left the forest and found her way to the road. She went past the old trees as their leaves dropped into red, muddy puddles. She breathed in the red droplets, knowing what the bargain was. A life for a life, that was the cost. She’d lost her way, but now she was herself again, and for this she thanked the ghost of the girl in the manor who had told her with a single look, Run.
III.
Jesse was the first to see the rain. She hadn’t expected anything unusual; she’d taken for granted it would be another ordinary day and had dressed accordingly, in jeans and a blouse she especially liked, gray with a frilly white collar, to be worn under her apron in the pub. They were serving meat pies and macaroni and spinach salad for those who wanted lighter fare for an early lunch. She’d been busy all morning because Rose, the woman who usually came to help clean up, had called in sick. Really, she’d had a fight with her husband, she’d admitted to Jesse, and had been up all night and now there was horrid weather moving in from the west.
“Don’t come in,” Jesse had told her. “Catch up on your sleep.”
Jesse tried to be supportive of her coworkers, although it was annoying to have the work of two laid upon her. She was taking out the trash when a black dog ran past. She thought it might be Matt Poole’s sister’s retriever, but then it disappeared like a shadow. When she looked up she saw that the sky had turned red. There was a mist in the air, and it seemed to be moving through town. And then all at once the rain came down in sheets, a rain as red as blood. Jesse tossed down the dustbin and fled back to the kitchen door, but the eerie fog that accompanied the rain followed and she rushed inside and locked the door behind her, and even still the red mist did its best to get under the door, which thankfully had been caulked only a few weeks earlier.
The bar was crowded as it always was at the lunch hour, and people were staring as Jesse came in, then doubled over coughing. The bartender, a fellow named Hal, went to look out the window. He saw the clouds, their red tendrils dipping into the treetops and a rain spattering down so hard it shook the leaves from the trees. He called for everyone to remain calm and stay inside; they should phone their loved ones and tell them to do the same. Perhaps there’d been an accident at the power plant three towns over. The windows were hastily closed, but the mist had stuck to the soles of Jesse’s shoes and had dusted the folds of her clothes; it was there in every cough and already spreading.
Two men in their eighties, who’d taken refuge in the bar, now collapsed and Gillian, who’d come down for some lunch, was ministering to them, demanding the kitchen staff bring her lemons and ginger and salt and hot water. She knew a curse when she saw one. She grabbed the bar of black soap she carried in her purse, then washed her hands and insisted everyone do the same. All through town people had succumbed to the illness and those who listened carefully could hear crying. Matt Poole had climbed into his van and locked all the doors when he saw people running into their houses, screaming for their children to leave their toys and hurry inside. He started driving at top speed, barely able to see through the mist, skidding as he went, hoping to outrace the haze. He could swear that he saw his sister’s dog, but it was only the shadow of a cloud. When he reached the town limits he noticed that the red sky went no farther, but rather hung above the fens where it thundered down. The curse was Thornfield’s alone.