The rift between the Goddesses and Marta had become a crevasse far deeper than the one at Proctor’s Ledge. It may have been Rose who had recited Sarah Good’s name that night, but Marta, Sarah Good’s true descendant, could just as easily have spoken the name herself, because she’d been there all along, Callie realized in horror. The curse that Rose heard that night hadn’t come from the banshee, it had come from Marta just before she pulled the blade across Susan’s throat. When Rose told the police that she had seen the Goddess turn, she hadn’t been referring to the one who’d been trapped in the oak, she’d been talking about Marta.
God will give you blood to drink…Callie heard the words she’d long ago erased from her memory.
“I have another name,” Marta said again.
Callie stared at her. “You killed my mother…and the others.”
“They deserved to die.”
“And Paul…”
“Paul is not worthy of you. He’s a Whiting. He would have betrayed you, the same way Finn betrayed me. It’s what they do, the Whitings, generation after generation.
“I tried to warn you. You shouldn’t have come back, Callie. You should have taken my advice and run for your life.”
Callie stared at her. “You loved him. I know you did.”
“Once,” she said. “A long, long time ago, when I was a stupid girl who thought love conquered all. You were there, you know my name.”
Callie felt the floor fall away. She was going to be sick.
“Say it.”
“Morrigan.”
Callie could see the blood dripping down the walls now, the same blood she had seen that night, first at the castle and later in the woods. She vomited violently, and Marta, with a look of revulsion, took a tiny step backward.
Summoning her strength, Callie got to her feet and rushed toward the elevator. Marta grabbed her, sliding the silver blade across her throat as Callie threw her voice against the wall, and it bounced back hard, throwing Marta off balance. Instead of skin, the blade caught the oak rosary, slicing it and scattering its beads on the stone floor. She slashed again wildly, and Callie felt the skin on her arm slice open, felt the blood running down her fingers as she fell back, slamming into the sea well. She grabbed at Marta as hard as she could, and they both tumbled backward into the frigid tidal waters fifteen feet below.
Rafferty walked the beach, peering at the granite cliff, searching for the opening that had to be there. When the beach ended, he found himself in water, first at knee level, then up to his hips. Incoming waves made it difficult to maneuver, and finally impossible, so he climbed, reaching a jutting plateau five feet above the water. The ledge was only a few inches wide, and he placed his feet sideways, holding on, white knuckled, as he inched along, looking for the way in.
He didn’t see it until he had almost passed it. A few feet higher on the cliff, where the rock formed a natural indentation, was an opening of about fifteen inches. It looked like erosion, or a storm gash where the rock had tumbled to the sea below. He almost rejected it until the light from his phone revealed a stairway. There were no decent footholds to hoist himself with, and the first one he tried crumbled under his weight, sending rock falling into the black churn of turning tide.
He repositioned and pulled himself upward until he reached the split. Crawling inside, he saw a tiny opening, barely child-size. Burrowing, making himself as small as possible, and pushing his hand out in front of him in the darkness, he felt his way forward. A centipede skittered across his arm, sending a shiver down his spine.
He counted his steps as he moved, ten in all before he reached a framed opening and found himself in what could only be described as an upright coffin: wooden, musty, and damp. He could go no farther. He’d reached a dead end.
There is not one culture, nor is there one individual who does not harbor a prejudice against those they consider “other.”
—ROSE’S Book of Trees
Callie was deep inside the frigid blackness, kelp lining the sides of the ancient oak, its hollow trunk slimy with marine vegetation. Severed limbs stretched from the hollowed trunk of the sea well as the tide receded to dead low. The sides were too slick to climb, and so she floated, losing blood, certain she could feel it flowing out of her, as if the frigid seawater was pulling it. She could feel the nightmare creatures Paul had described to her, their bony fingers grabbing at her, touching her from one side and then another. She thrashed, spinning around to face them, but each time they vanished before she could see them.
What had Paul told her about hypothermia? Struggling made the blood rush to the extremities, causing death much more quickly. She should wait for the tide to lift her, the way Paul had done, but that wasn’t possible. She had to keep moving to get away from the bony fingers that reached for her.
She was almost relieved when she felt Marta’s human hands until they found her neck, tightening, and dragging them both under.
Callie fought her way to the surface, struggling for breath, only to be pulled under once again, as a vision overtook her.
They were standing at the edge of the void, nothing but emptiness stretching before them. She couldn’t breathe or move. She was trapped with Marta in the abyss, the emptiness that was eternal. No, she thought. Not like this.
Callie ducked her chin to her chest and grabbed Marta’s tightening fingers with both hands, forcing them both deeper underwater, sliding one hand to Marta’s elbow and loosening her grip, then using Marta’s wrist and arm as a lever to turn her, until the two women came face-to-face. Callie looked into the empty eyes that stared back at her and saw for the first time what Rose had seen that night on Proctor’s Ledge: not Marta, not the banshee, but the turning itself.
Callie didn’t close her eyes against it, but made herself look.
It began slowly, a falling feeling as in a dream. She felt the water recede, leaving behind the scent of oranges. Then the music began, single notes. Was that the plucking of a harp? As quickly as she recognized the sound, the plucking stopped and was replaced by other notes, both distant and dissonant, tones she had never before been able to hear.
What had just moments before been Marta’s bony fingers were now a braided witch hazel switch.
Every lash Marta had ever received, Callie now felt. The whipping became a rhythm, and as the switch struck, the emptiness deepened, the dissonant sounds became louder, first in disjointed disharmony, then crystallizing into words.
“What have you done?”
Strike.
“Nothing, Mama.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
Strike.
“I love him.”
“They have taken everything from us. They can’t have you, too!”
Strike.
“He loves me.”
“He will betray you! The Whitings always do!”
Strike.
“He wants to marry me.”
“You stupid, stupid girl.”
Strike. Strike. Strike.
Callie felt the pulse of blood rushing to the reddening welts on Marta’s bare thighs.
“He will betray you again and again! The same way his father betrayed yours, and his father before him!”
Strike.
And, for the first time, Callie understood the real meaning of Rose’s phrase. Marta had courted the strike. By standing alone with a Whiting and against her family, she had incurred the rage of generations.
Strike.
The music of the lash was rhythmic. Callie felt her body convulse with each strike.