Hæra could do with anything, even vegetables, if it meant Sister Madeleine sat at their table. “Yes. Does she know I’ll be here? Does she…” She swallowed hard. “Know who I really am?”

“Am I daft? Of course she doesn’t. I said my daughter would be here. That’s all.”

All right. That might be all right. Hæra took a deep breath. “How will she get here?”

“I offered to pick her up, but she said she’d rather bike and ‘see more of the island.’ She might change her mind for the ride back.”

“Perhaps I can fetch her,” Hæra mused, only half joking. She was more than capable, and not just in a car. What would it be like to assume her horse form and carry Sister Madeleine on her back to the farm?

Or elsewhere. Hæra could carry her to the sea and devour her. Her father told her that once a human rode an Each-uisge within sight of the ocean, the human could not dismount. Sister Madeleine would surely belong to Hæra then.

How strange that hadn’t been her first instinct.

She looked away from Jonathan, who wouldn’t understand such an instinct at all. He still thought Hæra was in love with Sister Madeleine. It was easier not to disabuse him.

Jonathan turned off the vacuum so he could ask, gently, “All right?”

“Of course I am. I’m always all right.”

“That’s good. Listen, go and collect yourself. Let me finish up here and get started on dinner. Shepherd’s pie, I think—our meat’s good, and we’ve got to show her what we’ve done, yeah?” Jonathan spoke in his most encouraging tone. “Won’t she be impressed?”

Would she? She ought to be. How often had Hæra imagined showing Sister Madeleine everything she and Jonathan had made? There hadn’t been a farm before. Now there was. Everyone said it was a good farm. You couldn’t do that without strength, could you? Without that strength of character Sister Madeleine had, the strength that had proven her worthy prey. Now she’d see that Hæra was worthy too.

“Oh, one more thing,” Jonathan said. “She looked different.”

Hæra, who had been turning toward her bedroom, stopped in place without turning around. “How different?”

“She was in ordinary clothes. I dunno if that means anything. I think there’s nuns who don’t wear habits anymore, so maybe her convent just changed.”

Hæra’s body prickled from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes as she absorbed the implications of this. “You saw her?” she asked quietly.