Bourn’s Edge (25 page)

Another satisfied customer
.

“Just the one this time, dear.” The plump woman with the dangly earrings held out her book. “It shouldn’t be overdue.” It was a battered copy of
Rebecca
.

Cassie scanned the barcode. “That’s fine. Thank you, Mrs. Sheldon.”

She sensed that the woman would like to stand and chat, and gave her watch a surreptitious glance. “Erm. I’m afraid there’s only a few minutes left.” Some stops on the route merited five minutes; others were allowed up to forty. It must depend on population density or something.

Mrs. Sheldon smiled. “It doesn’t take me long to find a book.” But she took the hint and drifted away to scan the packed adult fiction shelves.

Mrs. Norville returned to the counter clutching two large print Westerns. Perhaps she’d already read them, because she was still looking grumpy when she exited the mobile library.

“Don’t mind her,” said Mrs. Sheldon, following the direction of Cassie’s gaze. “Her arthritis is playing up.” She handed over a book, the latest by Joanna Trollope.

“It’s had good reviews,” commented Cassie, handing it back with its date stamped.

“Has it?”

She nodded and got to her feet. “Sorry. Time’s up. I’m afraid I’ve got to get going or I’ll be even
more
behind schedule.”

Mrs. Sheldon’s expression became sympathetic. “You certainly have your work cut out.” She turned and headed for the exit. Cassie followed her.

“It’ll be better once I know all the routes and short cuts.” Cassie pulled the door closed and locked it.

“I’m sure. See you in a fortnight then.”

Cassie nodded and sprinted for the driving seat.

THE WOLFHOUNDS’ EXCITED whines drew Tarian back to her surroundings. As they rose from their baskets and padded out into the hall, she glanced at the studio wall clock.

That time already?
She stretched the stiffness from her shoulders.
Where’s the day gone?

She could hear Cassie’s voice in the hall, greeting the dogs. She hadn’t heard the car drive up or the front door open. But then, she had been so engrossed she hadn’t heard much of anything.

She was putting the paintbrushes in a jam jar to soak when a thought struck her. Wasn’t it her turn to cook tonight?
Boar droppings!

A blonde head appeared round the door. “There you are.” Cassie came into the studio, the dogs at her heels. When she saw the canvas sitting on the easel, she stopped and studied it from several different angles. “That’s the watchtower on the hill, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Tarian draped an arm around Cassie’s shoulders and pressed a kiss against her cheek. “Like it?”

Cassie nodded. “The colours are perfect. Just how I remember them.” She glanced at Tarian and laughed. “There’s yellow paint on your nose.”

Tarian wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Better?”

Cassie wrapped her arms around Tarian’s waist and inclined her face for a kiss. Tarian obliged. “Better,” she said. But there were signs of strain around her eyes.

“Bad day?”

“I’ll tell you over dinner.” Cassie frowned. “
Is
there any dinner? I can’t smell anything.”

“Um. About that . . .”

“You lost track of the time again, didn’t you?” Cassie laughed. “Never mind. We’ll have salad. It’s a nice day for it.” She gestured at the sunlight spilling through the studio window.

They went through to the kitchen. Tarian got out the plates and a salad bowl and tongs, then fetched the cooked joint of pork from the refrigerator.

She nudged away Anwar and Drysi’s hopeful noses. “This isn’t for you.”

While Tarian carved slices of cold meat, Cassie rooted around in the salad drawer, assembling ingredients to slice and toss. Then Tarian used a spell to scrub and boil some new potatoes.

“We could have waited twenty minutes,” chided Cassie, as Tarian transferred them to the plates and added generous lumps of butter.

“I’m hungry.” She had forgotten to eat any lunch. She opened a bottle of white wine and poured them each a glass then sorted out food for the dogs.

Cassie finished transferring the dressed salad to their plates and glanced at Tarian. “Enough?”

“Plenty.”

She tossed the dogs a boar’s thighbone each. They squabbled over which was the largest, until she stopped them with a command. Chastened, they grabbed the nearest bone and followed her and Cassie out into the back garden.

They ate off trays on the bench beneath the rowan tree, while the dogs crunched their bones on the grass next to them. Tarian’s eyes roved. The garden looked a lot more civilised than it had, thanks to Cassie. The lawn’s bare patches had been reseeded and new flowering shrubs were growing in the borders. There was also a bird table and birdbath, and some blue tits were pecking at the peanuts.

Cassie’s shoulders relaxed, and the tension around her eyes eased. Soothed by the cooing of pigeons in the adjoining forest, the breeze rustling in the rowan’s branches, and the buzz of busy insects, they finished their dinner in companionable silence.

Tarian indulged in a languid stretch before taking the trays indoors. She returned with a choc-ice for Cassie and the opened bottle of wine. After refilling Cassie’s glass and her own, she resumed her seat on the bench and draped her arm around Cassie’s shoulders.

“You were going to tell me about your day.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Cassie broke the ice cream’s crisp, chocolate coating with her teeth. “I wish it wasn’t always such a rush. Whoever designed the library routes and schedules must have had superpowers . . . or no regard for the speed limit.”

“It’ll get better. You’re still finding your way.”

“Tell me about it.” Cassie shook her head and sighed. She concentrated on her ice cream for a few minutes. “Did you know there’s a stone circle across the valley from here? Just up the hill above Nether Hopton.”

Tarian nodded. “On a clear day, you can see it. I can sometimes sense it too.”

Cassie looked at her. “Sense it?”

“Stone circles are places of power. They focus it, concentrate it.”

“Fae power?”

“Earth power.” Tarian sipped her wine.

Cassie finished her choc-ice and tucked the discarded wrapper in her pocket. “So all that stuff about ley lines is for real?” She sucked her fingers clean.

Tarian snorted. “I didn’t say
that
.”

There was a blob of ice cream on Cassie’s chin. Tarian wondered whether to mention it.

“Quaint place, Nether Hopton,” continued Cassie. “It has a raggedy bush. I saw it while I was parked outside the pub.” She glanced at Tarian. “Which was named after which, do you suppose? The pub or the tree?”

Tarian blinked at her. “What’s a raggedy bush?”

“Alternate name for a rag tree,” explained Cassie. Tarian was no wiser. “A kind of wishing tree.”

“Oh.” Tarian let her scepticism show.

“There’s nothing to it, then?” Cassie sounded disappointed.

“Unlikely.” Their eyes met. “What would you have wished for?” asked Tarian.

Cassie gave her a fond look. “Nothing I haven’t got already.”

Tarian smiled. “You have ice cream on your chin,” she said. “No. Let me.” Cassie’s hand dropped back to her lap.

One thing led to another, of course. After they’d been kissing for a while Tarian pressed her lips to Cassie’s ear. “The turf out here is dry and springy. With a rug over it, it would be as comfortable as our bed. Want to try it? Sun-warmed skin smells different, tastes different.”

Cassie’s cheeks went a delicate shade of pink. “You’re suggesting we make love in the
garden
?” She sounded half-appalled, half-intrigued.

Tarian tried to gauge what concerned her. “No one will see or hear us except the birds.”

“All right,” said Cassie, her voice husky. “Fetch the rug.”

DUSK WAS FALLING as a man staggered across Nether Hopton’s common, a bottle dangling from one hand. Once, Eddy Spurrier had been well-groomed and prosperous, but now, as his rumpled business suit showed, he’d fallen on hard times.

Somewhere a fox barked. Streetlamps blinked into life. In the cottages bordering the common, front room curtains twitched closed, muting the glow of standard lamps and flicker of television screens.

Eddy took another swig of wine, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and refused to imagine the happy scenes of family life unfolding inside those rooms. His own was dark, neglected. Two years ago his wife had left him and taken their five-year-old daughter with her.

“All you ever think about is that bloody bookshop,” she’d shouted, dragging Poppy towards the taxi that would take them to her mother’s. “Well I’ve had enough.”

He thought it would blow over, she’d come back, but she hadn’t. And now—his lips curved in a bleak smile—the shop for which he’d neglected his family had deserted him too. Or rather it was about to. After months of threatening, the bank had called in his loan.

He stopped in front of the rag-draped tree and stared up at it. He’d tried everything he could think of to dig himself out of this hole—it had only made things worse. The second mortgage had helped for a while, but that money had gone. Friends and acquaintances crossed the road when they saw him now, he’d begged loans from them so often. He’d borrowed as much as he dared from a moneylender, even put money on the horses, but the horses he picked never won.

He raised the bottle to his lips and found it empty. Disgusted, he tossed it away. It landed with a dull thud and rolled to a halt with a clink.

There was still one thing Eddy hadn’t tried.

“After all,” he slurred, pulling one trouser pocket inside out, “what can it hurt?”

The fabric of the pocket lining was threadbare, the stitching weak. It was the work of a moment to rip it out and snag it on a branch of the tree. He stood back to admire his handiwork, sucking a thumb stabbed by a sharp black thorn—he hoped that wasn’t an omen.

“Help me,” he mumbled. “Find me the money from somewhere. Don’t let me go under. Please.”

The silence stretched and the stars looked coldly down. An owl’s hoot sounded mocking in the darkness. Eddy hunched his shoulders and jammed his hands in his pockets, startled by the brush of bare thigh against knuckles. With a sigh, he turned and lurched back across the common. Moments later, his front door clicked closed behind him.

Minutes passed, then a shadow detached itself and moved towards the raggedy bush. Moonlight illuminated a dark-haired man. Slim, handsome, and taller than the average human, he was casually elegant in leather jeans and a leather jacket.

As he studied the lining fluttering from the branch, teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Then well-shaped lips moved in a low murmur, the words belonging to no language spoken by mortal kind, and long fingers traced a shape in the night air.

By the murmur’s end, a change had come over the raggedy bush—one too subtle for human eyes to detect. Face now alight with malicious amusement, the man turned and strolled towards the pub.

Chapter 2

Cassie parked her car in one of the staff only parking bays and walked round to the rear of the Bishop’s Cross library.

The white minibus-cum-van was where she had left it last night, but gone was the coat of dust and dirt so thick you could write obscenities in it with a finger. Glass and chrome gleamed in the morning sunshine. She could even read the stencilled slogan: “Welcome to your library.” Damp patches and disappearing soapsuds dotted the tarmac.

“Morning, Miss Lewis,” called the bearded man in the grubby overalls who had just finished washing it. “Now don’t you go getting her all muddy again.” He finished coiling the hosepipe around the length of his forearm.

“Morning, Harry,” said Cassie. “I’ll try not to. Thanks.”

The maintenance man headed towards his workshop. She admired his handiwork for a moment more before continuing towards the branch library’s rear entrance.

As Cassie entered, a woman looked up from the trolley on which she was arranging books. The librarian was a couple of years older than Cassie, but her pixy haircut and an impish grin made her look younger. “Ah.
There
you are.”

“Morning, Jenny. What have you got for me today?”

“The usual.” The librarian gestured towards the plastic crate marked “Reserved Books: BC: Route 13.”

While Jenny trundled the heavily laden trolley out the exit and down the ramp, Cassie hefted the crate up onto one hip, and followed her outside. Thank heavens it wasn’t raining, she thought, as she stepped up onto the mobile library, stowed the crate under the counter, and went to help transfer books from the trolley to the mobile’s shelves.

“I’m refreshing the Westerns today.” Jenny swept the old ones off the shelf and began putting new ones in their place.

“Mrs. Norville will be pleased.”

“Is that old biddy still reading them?” Jenny used to drive the mobile library herself, but had never been keen on the driving. When a permanent position in the branch library came up, she’d jumped at the chance to switch. “You’d think she’d be sick of the sight of Westerns by now.”

Cassie laughed. “I went through a Western phase myself when I was a teenager. Must have read every single one my local branch had in stock. Towards the end, though, I was noticing a certain sameness to the plots.”

“Some people like that in a book.” With a grunt Jenny picked up half of the discarded books and carried them outside. Cassie picked up the rest and followed her.

“Not me.” Cassie tipped the books onto the trolley and didn’t bother to straighten them. “I like a bit of originality.”

“Me too.” Jenny gave her an approving look. “Dewi’s the same.” Jenny had met Dewi Price on one of the mobile’s routes, apparently. He lived and worked in Nether Hopton, and after their marriage, Jenny had moved in with him. “He never throws the same thing twice,” she added.

“Throws?” Cassie glanced up from checking her watch. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Jenny grinned. “He’s a potter.”

“Really?” Cassie debated whether to reveal more about her personal circumstances or not, then threw caution to the winds. “Tarian’s a painter. In acrylics, mostly.”