Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
“He sounds like a great man.”
“He was. He could be really annoying but also amazing and great. To hear Amanda tell it, the man walked on water. She dearly loved my grandfather.”
“I bet you thought he was annoying because he made you think before you acted,” Lorne said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Am I right?”
“What? No.”
He scoffed. “I think he and I would have gotten along just fine.”
“Probably so,” I groused at him.
“You’re a bit transparent but I like you anyway,” he assured me. “And one of these days you have to tell me how you and Amanda are connected. I don’t get that at all.”
I smiled at him. “I will.”
“So.” He exhaled deeply. “What now?”
“I’m fairly certain that a hundred years ago, the cultists, followers of Threun, had thought they found the rift in Osprey, somewhere on the land we’re standing on. Subsequently, they murdered all those people in preparation for their god to cross over. But it turned out that the rift on the Phoenix Farm was too small for a god to come through.”
“What do you mean, too small?”
“Gods are very powerful, so for them to cross from their worlds to ours, the opening has to be big enough.”
“That seems crazy to me, since they’re gods or goddesses. Shouldn’t they just be able to go anywhere they want?”
“Well, it’s similar to electricity, in a way. You can’t plug a generator for a hospital into the wall socket at your house. The plug and the outlet have to match. Same idea for powerful deities crossing from their realm into ours.”
“So then the cultists who murdered those people, they were under the impression that by killing enough of them, they could make the rift expand to accept the crossing of their god from his reality to ours.”
“That’s my assumption, yes.” I liked how he took my hand in his, cranking up the Jeep’s heater to keep us both warm. “But once all those people were killed, they realized there was no change. The rift remained the same. They had failed.”
“And the bodies stayed here, in limbo, kept intact…” Lorne trailed off. “Why would they do that? Why keep them if it didn’t work?”
Sometimes you just had to be asked the right question in the right way for your brain to kick in. “Because Rulaine was the one in charge, the one who tried. And after, once she knew it didn’t work, she’s the one who created the hoard to hold the bodies in stasis so she could try again once she found the bigger rift.”
“But how did she know there’s a rift on your land?”
I sighed deeply. “Because of Mattie.”
“Who’s Mattie?”
“She’s an ancestor of mine. Dom Aoki was telling me today that he thought of Mattie as an avenging angel, stopping the cultists after they killed Spencer. He’d helped fortify our house with iron in the bricks, in the ground, to ward the fae, and he probably did it without question, just like Amanda would help me, because they weren’t just friends…”
“They were best friends,” Lorne concluded. “Spencer Phelps was her best friend, and when he was killed, she went after the cultists and wiped them all out.”
I looked at him. “As a rule, witches don’t kill for vengeance, only to protect. I think by the time Mattie got here, to the farm, they were already dead.”
“You mean the cultists.”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Lorne said, nodding understanding. “Those aren’t random townspeople down there in the hole; those are the members of the cult. They killed Spencer, were going to kill more, never realizing that they themselves were the sacrifice, until Rulaine—oh, she was smart—who’d brought them all together in the first place, turned on them.”
“Yes. I think that’s exactly what happened.” I shivered with cold and dread. “Mattie came here to search for Spencer, and somehow, after finding him, in her pain, she tipped her hand and revealed that the real doorway was on our land.”
“She was furious, I’m sure. Screaming at the dead people, taunting them over their stupidity for trusting the wrong person, and maybe she confessed something she shouldn’t have. Or maybe Rulaine was there, and they fought, and Mattie yelled it at her, and when it was over, Rulaine slunk back to the fae realm through the rift here.”
“We’ll find Mattie’s journal when we get home,” I said, “but that sounds about right.”
“What I don’t get is, Rulaine knew she couldn’t increase the size of the rift that’s here, so why keep the bodies? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because Corvus is warded, but everyone can come onto the land. I have to tell the land that it’s in danger, that’s why a guardian is needed.”
“Because it’s not aware of intentions.”
“That’s right. Rulaine had no trouble being on the grounds. She just couldn’t come into the cottage. And though she couldn’t kill people on my land, she could bring corpses there and stack those on my side of the rift.”