Sheila nodded. "And when the survivors of the Ruby grew fat and healthy, grew complacent, she took her revenge. She came to Ledbetter—he'd made himself mayor by then—she came like a wraith in the night and slaughtered his first-born son in front of him. She drank his blood. She bathed in it. And it kept her young."

The two of them stood watching each other, waiting for the other to add to the story. But it seemed the fairy tale had reached its end.

"How could we know all this?" Martin said finally.

"The stones told us. And not just that. Martin, I know who your mother is. It's not Ruby Savage. Her name was Rosalee. And your name was Stephen."

He tried the name on. It didn't fit.

"Your mother, the woman you call your mother—she's much older than any of us could imagine. Older than Dr. Mulligan thought. Older than the barrows. Older than Ireland. They held the thing—this demon in the body of a green-eyed, redhaired Irish girl—they held her down while they smashed her little sister's head on a rock. She couldn't do a thing to stop them. There were too many. But she bided her time. She waited years. Until that first child was born. And after she killed them all, when she stood among the ashes of their community, bathed in the blood of their first-born child, she named herself Ruby to spite them."

Sheila peered up at the stones, eyeing them cautiously. It seemed as if the stones were looking back.

"Ruby Savage is an ancient demon, an eater of children," she said. "But she's not your mother. Someone put these stones here to worship her, long before the Ruby washed up here. The thing that she was. The thing still inside of her. The Midwives are her daughters. Five stones for five demons."

If Martin hadn't experienced it all when he'd entered the circle, he wouldn't have believed a word of it. But everything he'd seen and heard since they arrived in Barrows Bay pointed in one direction—the woman he'd called his mother was some kind of demon.

A monster from a fairy tale.

This Chadrach, whatever that was.

"So what does all that make me?

Sheila turned from the stones, fear in her eyes. "I think it makes you a very big problem."

19

Fetch

FOOTAGE OF THE crash aired on the nine o'clock news of every local affiliate. No deaths but plenty of injuries, and only two passengers unaccounted for, though no one could remember what the couple looked like. Not a single reporter, crew member or viewer saw the circle of stones on the shore.

The standing stones only existed to those who wished to conceive, to the creatures who fed upon the blood of the innocent.

By the time the coast guard and first responders from Barrows Bay arrived on the scene, Martin and Sheila were long gone. They followed a clear path up the side of the wooded bluffs to County Road 8, the same road he'd walked the night Ruby St. John died, the same his birth mother had walked to escape her pursuers, with little premature Martin—then Stephen—cradled in her arms.