But she is curiously stuck on the cobbles of the High Street right now.

It feels like everyone is walking right through her as a stretcher comes out the close.

– One body found in No. 10, just at the entrance way…

The policeman calls it into his boss.

All of the structures are guilty and built on beds of bones. It’s time to knock down all the walls. Dot feels wind go right through her – she hears light cloven footsteps, they have come back for her – a hand reaches out to take hers, on the long walk home.

Epilogue

AFTER WE had hosted the waken, after the first lift was carried out, and his body put in the casket and the table cleared and the men had left with his corpse. After I had put the rest of his tobacco in a pouch and got a raw fish from the store. After all of that – I walked down toward the clifftops. I had two small horns growing on my head. The nubs grew longer the minute he died. I poisoned him. It was the least he deserved. I had to take the coffin he built for me down to the shore. No boats would have taken me. On account of my father we were considered an unlucky family and I was the only one left. I found his body rammed into a crevice. The men had dropped him down there the night before. My father was an evil man. He was no fallen angel and even if he was – his acts in this life meant that fact would have made little difference to me anyway. He was the devil himself and he had come back to this earth every other time he’d died before. He put the people around him through hell time and time again. I had to take my part in his history – his sins were not my own but it does not mean I was without obligation. I knew that. My teeth were sharp. His skin no tougher than a goat’s.

There was only one way to stop him coming back to these shores.

My name is Jessie MacRae.

I am the devil’s daughter.

I committed an act to stop my father from rising back up from his grave.

I ate my father’s heart.

Please believe me – it was the least of my duty – it had to happen and it had to be me who did it and no matter what becomes of me after this day – I have no – regrets.

About the Author

JENNI FAGAN is an award-winning novelist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright. She is the author of two prior novels, The Panopticon and The Sunlight Pilgrims, as well as a collection of poetry, The Dead Queen of Bohemia. In 2013, Jenni was the only Scottish writer to be on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list. She lives in Edinburgh.

Also by Jenni Fagan

The Panopticon

The Sunlight Pilgrims