Effy’s stomach felt hollow with disappointment. But she said back, quietly, “Good night.”
She watched him as he walked back to the car, and watched the car until it had vanished into the darkness, taillights blinkering away. Only then did she go into the guesthouse and lie in the green bed.
If she went back outside, would she see him? The flash of white between the trees, the long, slick black hair? He had appeared to her so clearly, so many times, since that very first night on the bank of the river. Now she knew it was truly just her imagination. A sad little girl’s effort to make sense of a world that was insensibly cruel.
She felt her eyes start to brim again, and she squeezed them shut to stop the flow of tears. There was nothing left to do except try to be good now. To swallow her pills dutifully. To simply look away if she saw the Fairy King in the corner of her room. No more iron, no more mountain ash, no more fanciful girlish tricks.
No more Angharad.
Myrddin was dead now, in more ways than one. It was time to let him rest—or rather, it was time to bury him. They had the letters, the diary, and soon, the photographs. The truth would fall on top of his lifeless body like grave dirt, and maybe then she would be free.
Effy fumbled for the pill jar on the bedside table. When she closed her fingers around it, she felt a searing sense of relief.
Only this time, she didn’t take the sleeping pills to stave off thoughts of the Fairy King, or Master Corbenic, or Myrddin’s letters, or the girl from the photographs. She took them because otherwise, she would have lain awake all night, wondering what might have happened if she had refused to let Preston go.
Even though Ianto had initially encouraged her to leave, and even though they had technically made it back before midnight, the next morning, he was not pleased. He glowered at them over his coffee as water dripped steadily from the ceiling, over the glass chandelier, and pooled on the dining room table.
Seconds ticked by, punctuated by the falling of those large droplets.
“There’s a big storm coming, you know,” Ianto said at last, setting down his cup. “Two days from now. The biggest in a decade, the naturalists are saying. The road down to Saltney will be washed away until Saints know when.”
“I thought winter was meant to be the dry season,” Preston said.
“Not in the Bottom Hundred. Not anymore.”
Silence again, save for the water falling. Effy wondered what was leaking from upstairs, how the water had gotten in. She had forgotten how strongly Hiraeth smelled of the sea—salt and rot, sodden wood.
She thought of the time she had turned over a fallen log in her grandparents’ back garden: the wood had disintegrated right there in her hand, and she’d stared down at the slimy dead leaves, the white mold, the fungi that had sprouted up like flower heads, each one shaped and striated like an oyster shell.
Trees didn’t die when they were cut down, did they? Their dying took months, years. What a terrible fate to endure.
“I suppose you’ll want to board up the doors and windows,” Effy suggested mildly.
“I don’t need a Northern girl to tell me how to weather a storm, my dear,” Ianto said. His tone was light despite the bitterness of his words, but there was the faintest gleam in his eyes—something knifing through the muddled paleness. Effy’s skin prickled. “What I do need are your blueprints. Wetherell has been hounding me for days. Where are they?”
She exchanged a look with Preston that she hoped Ianto didn’t see. Two days until the storm meant they had two days to discover the house’s secrets. They could not allow themselves to be trapped up here on the cliffs indefinitely.
Trying to keep her voice cheery, Effy said, “They ought to be done in two or three more days.”
Ianto let out a low breath. “Once the blueprints are done, we will still need to hire contractors, builders, search for supplies . . . I had hoped to begin construction before the end of the year.”
For all that she’d teased Preston, Effy felt a bit guilty lying to Ianto now. “That’s definitely still possible,” she said. “I promise. Two days, and it will be done.”
“All right,” Ianto said. But his pale eyes had grown sharper. “I hope you both had a . . . gratifying trip.”
He was trying to goad them into confessing something, but Effy wasn’t sure what. Could Blackmar have called Ianto and exposed them? Or did Ianto merely have a vague suspicion that they might be lying, and hope to hit a target just by chance?
Effy remembered the look of jealousy on Ianto’s face as he had watched them drive away. It was somehow the most sinister emotion she could imagine. Her heart pattered in her chest.