“That’s kind of you, but I always walk. Don’t want to risk any unwanted presences hitching a ride in a car. It’s easier to shake them if you’re on foot.”
Margot turned to Kant. He caught her look. “I’ll call Don to pick you up in the laneway outside the property.”
“Don’t bother that old fool.” Witchety hitched the leash a loop tighter around her wrist. “He hates being near this place.”
“I’ll still call him.”
She made a discontented noise. “If you’re so determined. Take care until next time, understand? The earth feels bad. And it’s growing worse. I can only do so much. You hear me, Margot? Stay safe. Don’t go far from your home at night. Don’t provoke anything you don’t want to know better.”
Margot didn’t know what got under her skin more: the words or the complete sincerity they were delivered with. She managed a cracked smile. “Probably good advice for all of us.”
Witchety turned her head a fraction, the heavy eyelids shielding her murky eyes as she surveyed Margot. The pure-white eyebrows twitched down a fraction. “I am sorry.”
“What on earth for? You’re very welcome here—”
“I was supposed to come last Friday. But I was sick. Couldn’t leave my bed. Couldn’t perform the blessing like I was supposed to. And now your parents are dead.”
Margot’s mouth opened and then closed again. She felt as though the breath had been stolen from her lungs.
Witchety’s bony hand found hers. It was clammy and felt desperately fragile, but she still squeezed Margot’s wrist tightly enough to ache. “Be safe.”
Then Witchety turned, Marsh at her heels, as she made her way toward the driveway.
A breeze, warmed by the sun, tugged at Margot’s loose jacket, grazing across her skin like questing fingers. She should have been warm, even overheated. But all she felt was cold.
The image in the mirror. The bells. The nooses.
Witchety’s warnings should have been easily dismissed. Witchety was an unusual woman with a preoccupation with the occult. If she made an income from performing blessings, it was in her best interest to leave foreboding little tidbits, warning that danger was on the horizon and that her services were the only thing keeping it at bay. Logically, Margot should have no reason to put any stock in those premonitions.
Except…
She remembered that half-second image of her corpse, staring out of the mirror, meeting her eyes. Shriveled and swollen and bleached a toxic shade of death.
No one had been able to adequately explain her parents’ deaths. And Witchety’s words were blending with her own moments of panic, thickening and solidifying into something she wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.
“Kant…”