I
“I’ve done it,” Brodie says as soon as he climbed up the rocks. “I told Rowan it was over.”
She studies his face, scared to believe what he is saying. “You told her.”
He nods. “Aye. I told her.” He kisses her again, his tongue quick and searching. She pushes him back.
“And what did she say?”
“She wanted to know . . . if . . .”
“If what?”
“If I was in love with you.”
“What did you say?”
He looks away. “I said, yes. I’m in love with you.”
His tone isn’t convincing. “And was that it? She was OK with it?”
“Aye. She was fine.” He grins, slipping his hand under her shirt. “Now, about that payment you promised.”
II
The next day is Samhain. Saffy doesn’t go to school. She feels like a coward, but the thought of seeing Rowan’s sullen face, stained with tears, no doubt hissing to everyone in earshot how Saffy stole her boyfriend, doesn’t exactly appeal. And at least she’d not have to endure any more poetry.
And she needs to process what had happened with her and Brodie, the so-called loss of her virginity. She didn’t feel like she’d lost anything. It had felt like a violence to her body, and that was really what she needed to process—why an act of love should feel so much like violence. He hadn’t even kissed her, hardly even touched her. Just pushed her knickers to one side and shoved himself in, and she’d whimpered for him to stop but he kept going, panting like a dog for thirty seconds until it was over, and she felt blood wetting her legs.
Only then did the fear set in that she might get pregnant.
“Did you use a condom?” she whispered as he buttoned himself up.
He shook his head. “Pull-out method. Just as safe.”
She had no idea what the pull-out method was. She’d ask Machara, once she went back to school.
She spends the day in the hut in the woods, smoking and listening to music. She doesn’t need food or water. She doesn’t feel hungry at all, isn’t even cold despite the shade of the trees and the damp clinging to the walls of the hut. She’s stopped bleeding but inside she feels bruised and uncomfortable. She tries to quell her misgivings about sex by recalling Brodie telling her that he loved her. The weak look on his face when he’d climaxed, and the way he’d laid his forehead against hers, as though they were the sole survivors of a cataclysmic event, bonded by the agony and ecstasy of sex. Perhaps the ecstasy part will happen for her, one day. For now, she hopes she doesn’t have to do it again for a long time.
She doesn’t hear the first couple of knocks on the door of the hut. She is absorbed in her book, the grimoire. She’s learned about wildlings, and she wants to tell the whole community of Lòn Haven that they were wrong. Or at least share the book with them. Maybe it was fictional, but it was very convincing.
Another knock. Luna, she thinks. Or maybe Liv. She removes her earphones and stands up, yanks the door open, and makes to pull her little sister into a hug.
But it isn’t Luna. And it isn’t Liv.
“Hi,” Rowan says. Saffy’s stomach drops. She looks over the figure in her doorway, dressed in a long black cape over a purple velvet dress. She doesn’t look upset or angry. She looks calm, even friendly. As though she’s popped by for a chin-wag over a bottle of vodka.
“Hi,” Saffy says warily. “How did you know where I was?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Saffy hesitates. She feels suddenly trapped. Why had she even opened the door? She straightens. “What’s this about?”