Reckoning

Sweep Series, Book 13

Cate Tiernan

Prologue

October 15, 1888

Two days have passed since Mother died. The neighbors do not come by to pay their respects. I watch them hurry past our house and shiver, as if the misery here were like a cold hand pressing then away from our front gate.

My thoughts remain entirely on that fatal night. It sticks in my mind like a nightmare too horrible for any detail to be forgotten.

The house was quiet. It was so still and peaceful that I could feel the gentle pulsing of the waves on the shoreline almost a quarter of a mile away. The cats were sleeping by the fire. Then Mother came rushing in. She was naked, and her hair was wild.

"Máirin," she cried, her eyes glistening, "It is done."

I had experienced far too many strange night since Mother had been ill to be completely shocked. Calmly, so as not to frighten her away, I crossed the room to cover her. When I got close, however, I saw that her hands were covered in blood. She had pricked both of her thumbs, and there were smears of blood all over her body. To be skyclad and to show signs of letting one's own blood—these are signs of the darkest magick. This was not something I had encountered before.

"What have you done?" I gasped.

She reached up and began gently stroking my face in reply. As I tried to put the blanket over her shoulders, she ran away from me, up the stairs. She moved with unnatural power and speed. As she ran, I heard her yelling out. She was spelling, that I knew, but her voice was crazed and unintelligible.

I had not time to take a lamp to guide me, and I stumbled up the dark steps after her. I found her on the widow's walk, on her knees, calling out to the moon in words I could not recognize. She went limp as I approached and seemed to lose interest in whatever it was she was doing, and I had a terrible feeling that she had just had time to complete whatever it was. Again I begged her to tell me what she had done.

"Soon," she said, "soon you'll know."

She allowed me to lead her back downstairs, where I washed away the blood and dressed her in a nightgown. She kept calling her own name over and over again, "Oona…Oona…," dragging the words along in a pitiful moan until the act of repetition exhausted her.

When I came back to the parlor, I passed by the glass and saw myself. On my face, sketched out in blood, were hexing signs—that's what she had been doing when she touched me. Horrified, I ran to the basin of seawater that I kept in the kitchen for scrying and washed them away as quickly, as I could.. I stayed up half the night, trying to dispel whatever it was that she had done. I burned rosemary and uttered every purification and deflection spell I'd ever learned.

The next morning her bed was empty.

A fisherman found her yesterday. She was about half a mile from the house, washed up on the shore. She had gone out during the night and walked into the water. She still wore her nightgown.

Now the house shudders. This morning the windows broke for no reason. The mirror in the parlor cracked from side to side.

Mighty Goddess, guide her spirit and have mercy on me, her daughter. May I break my voice, lose it forever from my lamentations and weeping. My mother, Oona Doyle, of Ròiseal, is gone, and something dark has come in her stead.

— Màirin

1. Omens

June 14, 1942

The ghosts are angry today. They smashed a vase in the front room, and they knocked over a lamp. The lamp almost hit our cat, Tady. He ran and hid under the sofa. Mother told us to be brave and not to cry, so I have been trying very hard. I have not cried once, even though the ghosts started banging the door of my room open and shut. My little sister, Tioma, is not as brave as I am. She hid in her closet and sobbed. She does not understand that we must prove to the ghost that we are not afraid. That is the only way we can get them to leave.

— Aoibheanm

Finally, some peace and quiet.

Hilary, my father's girlfriend, is pregnant. Since she'd moved in a few weeks before, I had been more or less treated like a pet or a piece of furniture, just something to deal with or moved around while they were getting ready for the «real» child to come.

Among her many awful ideas, Hilary had major redecoration plans. These included taking up a lot of the carpet, painting all the walls in a color called "aubergine dream" (also known as "scary purple"), and putting our sofa into some kind of white bag. My father was letting her redecorate to her heart's content, and I had to stand back and watch as everything familiar to me vanished. Despite my protests, she'd recruited me to help. All of my free time seemed to be spent helping Hilary with her painting, her relentless scrapbooking, and the wedding plans. It was like being forced to dig my own grave.

But tonight—a reprieve. They'd decided to go out and see a movie. I lived for nights like this one, when they were out of the house. I was supposed to be doing our homework, but I had to savor the time I had one my own. It was far too precious to waste. So instead of doing math, I watched reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When I heard the car pull into the driveway, I switched off the TV and pulled my algebra book into my lap—the classic I've-been-studying-all-night trick. No one falls for it, but everyone tries it, anyway.

The door opened, and my dad came in making faces talking baby talk to Hilary, and of course she was talking baby talk right back. It was probably the most awful thing I'd ever seen in my entire life, and let me tell you, I'd seen some bad stuff recently. When they turned and saw me gaping in horror, they looked genuinely surprised.

"You're home…," My dad said, suddenly looking embarrassed. "You're up."

Well, hello? It was nine o'clock on a Wednesday. Where did he think I'd be?

"Yeah," I said, reaching for a pencil, which I was considering using to poke out my eyes so I wouldn't have to witness any more of this unbearable cuteness. "Just doing my homework."

"Have you cleaned out your room yet?" Hilary asked.

"No."

"You know we have go get it ready," she said, dropping her spreading butt onto the bagged couch and picking through her crocheting.

Another sore point. Because it was next to my dad's—or their room—Hilary had set her sights on turning my bedroom into a nursery. She wanted me to move to the little room at the end of the hall.

"I'll do it when I have time," I said, suddenly finding my factoring exercises totally engrossing. "I have a quiz tomorrow."

"I know you don't want to switch rooms, Alisa," Hilary said with a sigh, "but when the baby comes, I'll need to be able to get to him or her quickly in the middle of the night. This is as much for you as it is for me. The room at the end of the hall will be less noisy."

She had to be kidding. The room at the end of the hall was a glorified closet. In fact, it wasn't even glorified. It was pure, plain closet. It had a tiny window, too small for normal blinds or curtains. It was more like a vent. I looked at my dad for support, but he just folded his arms over his chest.

"Hilary's been asking you about this for over a week now," he said, getting into his stern voice.

"I said that I'll do it," I replied, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. Algebra never looked more appealing.

"You'll do it after school tomorrow," he said, "or you're in all weekend."

I definitely wasn't going to let myself get stuck in the house with Hilary. Rather then say something I would later regret, I nodded, grabbed my things, and got out of there as quickly as I could. At that moment Hilary's pregnancy scrapbook tumbled off the table, scattering photo's and papers everywhere.