Tide - By Daniela Sacerdoti Page 0,60

couldn’t kill it. The Midnight gaze didn’t work on it.”

“It can’t be!” Sean exclaimed. “The Midnight gaze works on all demons!”

“It didn’t seem like it worked on this one.” Sarah said bitterly. “I need to find it. And kill it,” she continued, her eyes hard.

“That’s what I wanted to do, but you stopped me,” said Elodie to Nicholas.

“I’d never seen anything like that. I just didn’t know what we were facing. I couldn’t let it kill you,” he replied. His words had a strange echo to his own ears. Like I really don’t want her dead.

“I’ll do this. I think it’s the demon that killed my aunt,” said Sarah.

“Sarah,” Sean began.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be stupid with it. I’ll take care, wait for the right moment. Come upstairs, Nicholas. I’ll get you cleaned up and show you your room.”

Your room? No sharing, then? thought Sean. The knot in his stomach loosened a little.

Sarah brushed past him on her way upstairs but wouldn’t bring her eyes to meet his.

30

Ghosts

I remember the little wall,

And the hazelnut trees

And how your paintbrush

Captured the scene.

Were you the woman they said,

Or someone we have forgotten?

Sarah was sitting in front of the fire in what had been her parents’ room, and before that, her grandparents’. She had gathered her legs to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. The stack of brittle, yellowed letters was laid carefully on the rug in front of her. The faint sound of Niall playing the piano was drifting up from downstairs, a beautiful, wistful melody that fit perfectly with the island. Everyone else was in the music room, listening to him. But Sarah needed some time by herself.

She had gone through her parents’ things. She’d found her mother’s clothes in the wardrobe, her father’s books in the bedside table. There were framed photographs of them on the mantelpiece, and Anne’s perfumes on the dressing table. It had been torture, and comfort, all mixed together.

She’d gone through the drawers too, looking for a picture of Mairead, but there was no sign. It was as if her memory had been utterly deleted from her parents’ lives, from their minds. But why? In the many years she’d visited Islay with her parents, she’d never seen anything belonging to Mairead, or even hinting at her existence, and now she’d searched her parents’ room as she couldn’t have done when they were alive. Still nothing.

Instead, Sarah had found a mother-of-pearl framed picture of Stewart and Fiona, Harry’s parents, and between them, Harry. Fair hair, serious eyes, a thoughtful, solemn look on his young face. In that picture he must have been no older than five. She’d run downstairs to give Elodie the picture for her to keep, and Elodie had accepted it gratefully, her eyes welling up.

“I wish I’d known him,” Sarah had said.

“You had so much in common, Sarah,” Elodie had whispered.

“Really?”

“Oh yes. He was very stubborn too.”

Sarah couldn’t help laughing.

Back upstairs, Sarah knew that now the time had come. She was going to go through her grandmother’s letters. She felt full of trepidation as she fingered the creamy paper. Something told her these letters weren’t going to be full of quaint memories and the kind of family stories that get repeated with a smile through the generations. Not many of those for the Midnights.

Sarah was afraid. After what Cathy had said about her father that terrible day – that he’d left Cathy, his wife, because she couldn’t provide an heir – and how Morag Midnight had been involved in her repudiation, Sarah feared discovering anything more about the blood that flowed in her own veins. Still, she had to know. She took a deep breath and lifted the first page, only to put it down again at once, all determination deserting her.

The fire was dancing in the hearth, and the earlier drizzle had turned to rain, tapping gently on the windows. Sarah could hear her own breathing, her own heartbeat, both getting faster. Anxiety was overwhelming her.

She laid the first letter back on top of the stack then got up and straightened her bed, trying to make the covers as smooth as possible. Next she sorted her mother’s perfumes on the dressing table, aligned the picture frames on the mantelpiece with military precision, though they were already perfectly placed. She threw all of the clothes she’d brought out of the chest of drawers and folded them again, one by one, setting them back in the drawers in perfect order. Finally she sat at