Seven

Seven

Angharad is a difficult text to place. Certain passages read as lurid and vulgar, more befitting an erotic tale or a romance, while others have exquisitely rendered prose and great thematic depth. It is not uncommon to see housewives paging through their copies over a pile of laundry, or commuters hunched over their paperbacks on the tram. And yet it is just as common for Angharad to appear on the syllabi of the university’s most advanced literature courses. No other book in Llyrian history can boast such universal appeal.

From the introduction to Angharad: The Annotated Collector’s Edition, edited by Dr. Cedric Gosse, 210 AD

When Effy first came to Hiraeth, she would never have expected to find herself, at the bright hour of seven in the morning, poring over a dead man’s letters with Preston Héloury. Yet that was exactly where she found herself the next day.

“Well,” Preston said, “I suppose you’ll want to know where I’ve left off.”

She nodded.

“I suppose I’ll explain the basis for my theory, then. Myrddin’s family were refugees of the Drowning,” said Preston. “It would seem intuitive for his works to paint the natural world as inherently perilous, unstable, even malicious. Much of his poetry personalizes nature in that way—”

Effy cut him off. “‘The only enemy is the sea.’”

“Precisely. But Myrddin’s father was a fisherman, and his grandfather, too. Master Gosse was the first to bring up that apparent contradiction. Myrddin’s family depended on the sea for their livelihood, yet it’s only ever painted as a cruel and vicious force of evil in his work.”

“That’s not true,” said Effy. “In Angharad, the Fairy King takes her out to see the ocean, and she says it’s beautiful and free. ‘Lovely and dangerous and vast beyond mortal comprehension, the sea makes dreamers of us all.’”

Preston gave her an odd look. It was the first time she’d seen him look bemused, quizzical. “Finish the quote.”

“Hm.” Effy racked her brain to remember the passage. “‘I looked to the Fairy King behind me, and the ocean before, the two most beautiful things I had ever seen. They were both creatures of rage and salt and foam. Both could strip me to the bone. I wanted nothing more than to tempt their wrath, because if I were brave enough, I might earn their love instead.’”

“You really do know it cover to cover,” Preston said, and this time, Effy was certain—there was admiration in his voice. “But I don’t think that paints the sea in a very charitable way, either. The Fairy King is Angharad’s captor. Myrddin portrays the sea as a trickster god, luring Angharad with its beauty, but always with the potential to destroy her utterly.”

“He loved her,” Effy said. She was surprised at the vehemence of her tone. “The Fairy King. He loved Angharadmore than anything. She was the one to betray him.”

She’d never had the chance to speak about Angharad like this, to defend her position, to present her own theories. There was something exhilarating about it, and Effy expected Preston to challenge her. Instead he stared at her for a long moment, lips pursed, and then said, “Let’s move on. The metaphoric resonance of one particular passage doesn’t matter right now.”

“Fine,” Effy said. But she felt let down.

“So anyway, Gosse published a paper discussing the irony of it, but he didn’t make any specific claims about Myrddin’s authorship. That was a few months ago, when Myrddin was freshly dead. Since then, scholars have really begun to dig into his background. Gosse wants first crack at it, but he didn’t want to spook Ianto by coming himself—the intimidating effect of being the preeminent Myrddin scholar and all that. So he sent me instead.” Preston frowned at this, as if expecting her to berate him again. “There’s no schoolhouse in Saltney, as you saw. Myrddin had some informal schooling from the nuns, but that stopped definitively at age twelve. His parents weren’t literate. We have several documents from the Myrddins—including the lease from their house—and they’re all signed with a mark.”

“Where is their house?” Effy asked. She thought of the shepherd retreating toward the green hills. “I didn’t see very many homes down there.”

“Oh, it’s gone now,” Preston said. “Several of the older homes in Saltney, the ones closer to the water, have already fallen into the sea. I almost don’t blame the locals for their superstitions about the second Drowning.”

She felt a thud of vague, confused grief. The house where Myrddin had grown up, where his mother had tucked him into bed at night, where his father had rested his scarred fisherman’s hands—swallowed up and eroded, lost to the ages. Effy had listened for the bells under the water that morning, but she hadn’t heard a sound.

Would she be responsible for further eroding Myrddin’s legacy? Her stomach twisted at the thought.

“That still doesn’t prove anything,” Effy said. “Look at all of Myrddin’s letters here. Clearly he could read and write.”

“But look at them,” Preston emphasized. He picked up the nearest one, its edges curled, paper turned yellow with time. “This is dated a year before the publication of Angharad. It’s addressed to his publisher, Greenebough Books. Look how he signs his name.”

Effy squinted at the page. Myrddin’s script was quite careless, difficult to comprehend.

“‘Yours sincerely, Emrys Myrddin,’” she read aloud. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Pay attention to the surname,” Preston said. “He spells it Myrthin, with a th. That’s the Northern spelling.”

Effy took the paper from him and ran her finger over the signature. The ink was old and faded, smudged in places, but the th was clear.

She didn’t want to admit how much it baffled her, so she merely said, “It could have been a simple mistake.”

“Strange mistake, to misspell your own surname.”

“So what?” she challenged. “Being a poor speller hardly equates to illiteracy.”

“Regardless, I don’t think Myrddin wrote it at all. I think it’s a forgery.”

Effy gave a derisive laugh. “Now you’re sounding as nutty as those superstitious Southerners you have so much contempt for.”

“It’s not unprecedented.” Preston sounded almost petulant. “We’ve seen instances of literary forgery before. The trick of any good lie is just finding an audience who wants to believe it.”

Effy chewed her lip. “Then who is the audience for Myrddin’s supposed lie?”

“You said it yourself.” The corner of Preston’s mouth turned up into a thin half smile. “Superstitious Southerners who want to believe one of their own could transcend his common origins and write books that make even Northern girls swoon.”

“I’ve never swooned in my life,” she said crossly.

“Of course not,” Preston said, completely straight-faced again. “But there are other people who stand to profit from the lie. Myrddin’s publisher, for example—Greenebough makes a killing from royalties, even now. Half of Myrddin’s appeal was this compelling backstory: the impoverished provincial poet who turns out to be a genius. There’s a lot of money to be made off that myth.”

Preston had a way of speaking with such eloquence and certainty that for a moment Effy found herself half-convinced, and too intimidated to argue. When the fog lifted, she was angry with herself for being so easily swayed.

“You’re condescending,” she said. “Not all Southerners are backwards peasants, and not all Northerners are snobs. I bet you hate it when people paint Argantians in such broad strokes. You know, most Llyrians think Argantians are cold, leering little weasels who believe in nothing but mining rights and profit margins. I can’t say you’re doing much to dispel those beliefs.”

Even as she spoke, Effy regretted indulging the same old stereotypes. Mostly, she was frustrated with herself for failing to come up with a better argument against him.

“I don’t see it as my duty to refute Llyrian clichés.” Preston’s voice was cold now. “Besides, it’s a fact that the South is economically deprived compared to the North, and that deprivation is felt most acutely in the Bottom Hundred. It’s also a fact that Llyrian political and cultural institutions are dominated by Northerners, and have been throughout history. That’s the legacy of imperialism—the North reaps while the South sows.”

“I didn’t ask you to educate me about my own country,” Effy snapped. “Statistics don’t tell the whole story. Besides, Argantians did the same thing. Cut up your northern mountain villages into mining towns and coal tunnels, only you let your myths and magic fade into obscurity instead of celebrating them. At least Llyr doesn’t try to hide its past.”

Preston looked weary. “Some might call it celebrating; others would call it flouting a colonial legacy—oh, never mind. We can argue about this until the entire house falls into the sea. I’m not asking you to buy my narrative wholesale. But you did agree to help, so can you at least try not to fight me at every turn?”

Effy ground her teeth and looked down at the pile of letters on the desk. She had agreed, but she was finding it harder than she anticipated, what with Preston’s snooty attitude. She would try her best to bear it, for now. Once she had secured a place in the literature college, she could spend the rest of her university career trying to undo the damage she’d done to Myrddin’s legacy.

“All right,” she said at last, scowling. “But you have to promise to be fifteen percent less patronizing.”

Preston drew a breath. “Ten.”

“And you think I’m the stubborn one?”

“Fine,” he relented. “Fifteen, and you don’t swear at me again.”

“I only did that once.” She was still convinced he’d earned it. But he was right; there was no use arguing with every breath.

Yet it all tasted bitter to swallow. She had abandoned her principles to get what she wanted, to improve her standing at the university, to earn some academic honors. To escape the sneers in the hallway, the whispers, and that green chair. What did that make her? No better than Preston, in the end. At least he was committed to the vaguely noble principle of truth.

Mortified by this realization, Effy fell silent.

Preston folded his arms across his chest. “Anyway. Before I came here, Gosse and I compiled a list of vocabulary used across all of Myrddin’s work and cross-referenced that with his letters.”

Immediately forgetting her previous promise, Effy blurted out, “Saints, how bloody long did that take you?”

“It’s my thesis,” Preston said, but the tips of his ears turned pink. “It turns out there’s very little overlap between the vocabulary he uses in his letters and in his novels—specific phraseology that appears over and over again in his books but never occurs in his letters. If it didn’t all bear the name Emrys Myrddin, you would never imagine they were written by the same man. And then there’s the problem of Angharad.”

Effy was instantly defensive. “What’s the matter with Angharad?”

“It’s an odd book. Genre-wise, it’s hard to classify. Myrddin generally belongs to a school of writers credited with reviving the romantic epic.”

“Angharad is a romance,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “A tragic one, but still a romance.”

Preston hesitated. Effy could almost see him turning over their agreement in his mind, calculating how to moderate his tone by around fifteen percent. “Romantic epics are typically written in the third person, and always narrated by men. Heroes and knights whose goals are to rescue damsels and slay monsters. But the Fairy King is both lover and monster, and Angharad is both heroine and damsel.”

“And of course you can’t simply credit that to Myrddin being a creative visionary,” Effy said, scowling.

“There are just too many inconsistencies,” Preston said, “too much that doesn’t sit quite right. And Ianto is so cagey about it. It only makes me more suspicious.”

Effy looked down at the scattered papers again. “Don’t tell me this is all you’ve managed to find out.”

“I said I needed your help,” he said, and he didn’t manage to not sound miserable about it. “Ianto is keeping me in the dark. Wetherell was the one who gave me these letters. He asked around for them from some of Myrddin’s correspondents, his publisher and friends. But there have to be more.”

“More letters?”

“Letters. Diary entries. Rough drafts of bad poems. Half-finished novels. Shopping lists, for Saints’ sakes. Something. It’s like the man has been erased from his own home.”

“He has been dead for six months,” Effy pointed out. She thought again of what Ianto had said: My father was always his own greatest admirer. She’d heard a hint of resentment there.

“Still,” Preston said, “I’m convinced Ianto is hiding something. This is an old, confusing house. There has to be—I don’t know, a secret room somewhere. An attic, a storage area. Something he’s not showing me. Ianto swears there’s not, but I don’t believe him.”

Effy thought of the door with the pulse of the tide behind it. “What about the basement?”

Preston turned pale. “I don’t see any use in asking about that,” he said quickly. “It’s flooded. And besides, Ianto guards that key with his life. I wouldn’t even bother.”

She detected a note of fear in his voice. She had never heard him sound even remotely afraid before, and she decided not to press him on it. For now. Besides, something else had occurred to her.

“The widow,” she said. “You told me she invited you here.”

“I’ve never seen her,” Preston replied, looking slightly less pale and relieved to have changed topics. “Ianto told me she’s ailing and prefers to keep to herself.”

Effy couldn’t help but wonder about her. Myrddin had been eighty-four when he died; surely the widow was not much younger. Perhaps ailing was a euphemism for mad. Men liked to keep mad women locked up where everyone could comfortably forget they ever existed. But Ianto hadn’t seemed to harbor any malice toward his mother. Effy shook her head, as if to banish the thought.

“All right,” she said. “But what do you want from me?”

Preston hesitated, and didn’t meet her gaze. “Blueprints for the house,” he said after a beat. “I’m sure they exist somewhere. Maybe Ianto showed them to you already.”

“He didn’t.” And Effy hadn’t even thought to ask, which was a bit embarrassing. “It would be a very reasonable thing for me to request, though. I can ask.”

“Right. Ianto wouldn’t suspect a thing.” Preston’s eyes flickered behind his glasses, but his expression was unreadable. “Just be careful. Don’t—”

Effy sighed. “I’ll be perfectly polite, if that’s what you mean.”

“I meant the opposite, really.” Now Preston was flushed. “I would keep him at an arm’s length. Don’t be too?.?.?. obliging.”

Effy couldn’t tell if he was trying to admonish her or warn her. Was it her he didn’t trust, or Ianto? It made her skin prickle. Surely he didn’t think she was so incompetent.

Preston looked so flustered that she knew there had to be something else he wanted to say, but couldn’t. Effy kept her gaze on him to see if she could determine it, but she only succeeded in flushing, too. In the end, she merely replied, “I’ll be careful.”

“Good,” he said, straightening up, his tone cool and clipped again. “And, of course, I’ll be discreet. I take all my notes in Argantian so Ianto can’t read them.”

“Except for one,” Effy said. She had spent all last night thinking about seeing her name scrawled down the margins of that page in Preston’s precise, tidy script. Effy Effy Effy Effy Effy. Maybe it was just meaningless marginalia. Maybe it was something else. She didn’t want to embarrass him, but she didn’t think she could stand not knowing the truth. “Why not that note, too?”

“Most of what I write doesn’t really matter.” Preston’s gaze was on her, unflinching, though his flush had not entirely faded. “It’s just whatever errant idea goes through my head. I know I’ll just throw them away later, so I don’t have to bother translating them from Argantian into Llyrian. I suppose I thought that one was important.”

It took Effy the rest of the morning to work up the courage to talk to Ianto. Over and over again, her mind replayed that moment where he’d laid his hand on her shoulder. She had slipped so quickly into that deep-water place. She paced the upper landing and shook her head, trying to cut the memory loose. He’s always been kind to you, a voice said. Eventually she convinced herself that the gesture had been fatherly and nothing more.

Ianto was taking his tea in the dining room, under that perilously dangling chandelier. Cobwebs stuck to the empty candleholders like spun sugar, and the glass shards seemed to ripple, even absent of wind. When he saw her, he immediately rose to his feet and said, “Effy! Please sit. Can I get you some tea?”

She held the back of a chair in both hands. Instinctively she wanted to refuse, but she had come there with a purpose. Slowly, with her belly roiling, Effy slid into the seat.

“Sure,” she said. “Tea sounds lovely.”

“Excellent,” Ianto said. He hurried off to the kitchen and Effy sat there, palms slick, trying to keep her mind from slipping away from her. Trying not to think of how heavy his touch had felt.

Ianto returned several moments later, carrying a chipped porcelain cup. He set it down before her. She took a small, experimental sip; immediately, unmixed sugar gathered like grit on her tongue. She put the cup down again.

“I was just wondering—” she began, but Ianto held up his hand to stop her.

“I feel I know so little about you, Effy,” he said. “You’re an architect, you’re a fan of my father’s, but surely there’s more to you than that.”

“Oh, I’m not very interesting,” she said, with a short, uncomfortable laugh.

Ianto captured her gaze and held it. “You’re very interesting to me. Are you originally from Caer-Isel?”

“Draefen.” Effy rubbed the heel of her hand against her stockings. “I came to Caer-Isel to study at the university.”

“A Northern girl through and through,” Ianto said with a smile. “I could have guessed as much by your name.” He squinted at her for a moment, as if trying to remember something. “You don’t happen to be related to the banking Sayres of Draefen.”

Effy felt her muscles relax slightly. These were easy questions to answer. “Yes. My grandfather is the bank manager. My mother is one of his secretaries.”

“Clearly architecture doesn’t run in the family. What inspired you to study it?”

Effy considered how to reply. She didn’t want to express her true lack of enthusiasm for the subject, so she merely said, “I like a challenge.”

Ianto gave a delighted chortle. “Well, you’ve taken up the right project, then.”

Feeling more at ease, Effy took another sip of tea and tried to smile along. She even allowed herself to meet Ianto’s eyes. They were very unusual eyes, she realized, almost colorless, like water. No matter how his expression changed, no matter whether he was smiling or frowning, his eyes seemed not to shift at all. It was like looking into one of the tide pools, the Fairy King’s false mirrors.

Very abruptly, Ianto stood up. “You know,” he said, “this is hardly the right atmosphere to have a lively conversation. Did you have a chance to visit the pub while you were in town yesterday? I’m sure you’d like another chance to return to civilization, such as it is in the Bottom Hundred.”

And that was how Effy ended up back at the pub in Saltney, sitting across the table from Ianto Myrddin.

The windows of the pub were opaque with fog and rainwater left over from the earlier downpour, and the lights inside glowed sallowly. Ianto was smiling, making small talk with the bartender, who only looked as grim as ever.

Effy tried to order hot cider, but Ianto quickly procured two glasses of scotch instead. In an effort not to be rude, Effy feigned taking tiny sips and watched him over the rim of the glass. His damp hair brushed his shoulders, and his arm was braced over the back of the booth, as if to hold himself in his seat.

She set her glass down, fingers trembling slightly. She tried to look around the pub curiously, so as to give the impression that this was the first time she’d seen it.

“Thank you,” she said. “You were right. This is lovely.”

“It’s nice to be out of the house,” Ianto said.

His voice had taken on an odd tone, lower and raspier. Effy was sure she was just imagining it.

“I know it’s no comparison to the fare in Caer-Isel,” Ianto went on, his voice still slightly off pitch, “but the steak-and-kidney pie here is very good.”

Effy was planning to politely tell him she didn’t care for steak-and-kidney pie, thank you, but there was no use. When the bartender returned, he immediately ordered two of them.

Once she had shuffled away again, Effy cleared her throat. “So, about Hiraeth—”

“You said you’re a girl who likes a challenge,” Ianto cut in. “I can see why you threw your name in the hat for this project.”

Effy drew in a breath. Clearly getting the blueprints was going to be more difficult than she thought. “Yes,” she said. “And you know how much respect I have for your father’s work.”

It wasn’t technically a lie, but it felt like one, considering the agreement she’d just made with Preston. She said a quick, silent prayer to Saint Duessa, folding her hands in her lap. The patroness of deception with good cause (arguable) was getting a lot of her solicitation lately.

“Of course,” said Ianto. “But the task is monumental. I wouldn’t blame you if you had to find some unfortunate orphan to bleed out.”

Effy blinked, so taken aback that she was momentarily lost for words. “What?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard of that old myth?” Ianto looked pleased, but there was something eerie under his smile. “It’s a rite here in the South, dating back to the pre-Drowning days. Spilling the blood of a fatherless child on the foundation of a castle was supposed to ensure its structure was sound and strong. Blood sacrifice—I suppose you Northerners would think it very brutish.”

As a fatherless child herself, Effy found it both brutish and oddly fascinating. Luckily, their food arrived before she could choke out a reply.

The steak-and-kidney pies were steaming, the same golden brown color of varnished wood. Effy picked up her fork reluctantly. Preston was asking quite a lot of her, to feign enthusiasm for kidney.

But to her surprise, Ianto didn’t touch his food. He was looking at her intently. He said, “You’ve been spending time with the Argantian student lately.”

Effy’s heart stuttered. “Not really,” she managed. “Only this morning. He’s . . .” She fumbled for an innocuous descriptor, something that wouldn’t be a lie. “He has interesting things to say.”

“I don’t get a good feeling from him.” Ianto picked up his knife. The grease-marbled blade glinted. “He’s a bit twitchy, isn’t he? A strange, skittish young man. Perhaps it’s the Argantian blood.”

For some reason, Effy felt the need to defend Preston. “I think he’s just dedicated to his work. He doesn’t waste time on small talk or pleasantries.”

“I suppose he’s very much like my father, in that way.” Ianto pointed his knife at her. “Go on, then. Eat.”

Effy’s heart skipped another beat. She sliced through the flaky exterior of the pie, steam wafting from the cut like a spirit escaping its vessel.

Ianto watched her without blinking, his watery, colorless eyes unreadable. When she was mid-bite, he said, “You’re a very pretty girl.”

The food on her tongue burned too much to swallow. She wanted to spit it out into her napkin but she couldn’t bring herself to; she could scarcely bring herself to move. Her eyes welled, and Ianto just kept looking at her, gaze inscrutable and relentless.

She didn’t think she looked pretty. At least, she had no idea whether she did or not. She was wearing stockings and a plaid skirt, with a white woolen sweater over it. It was the sort of outfit she’d worn during her first week at university. Before Master Corbenic. She regretted it now. The damp air had turned her normally wavy hair to curls and the curls to untended frizz. Because there was no mirror in the guesthouse, she hadn’t been able to put on any makeup, or even check to see how large the circles under her eyes were.

It hurt so much to hold the steaming food on her tongue, but eventually it cooled down enough to swallow. Effy put her hand to her mouth. The tip of her nose was starting to get hot, the way it did when she was about to cry.

Ianto didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were unyielding—and, she noticed, they looked clearer. Sharper.

“Your eyes. Your hair,” he said. “Beautiful.”

Effy dug her fingernails into her palm. She regretted coming here at all. But she didn’t want to fail at her task. As much as it shocked her to realize it, she didn’t want to fail Preston. So she met Ianto’s gaze and gathered up as much of a response to the insipid flattery as she could muster.

“Thank you,” she said. Her blush, at least, was not feigned. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

The door to the pub clattered open and three fishermen stomped in, carrying with them the salt smell of the sea. Even as the wind blew through the doorway, Ianto’s black hair lay flat.

Effy had brought several of the hag stones in the pocket of her coat. Still holding her fork with one hand, she touched the stones with the other. Did she dare to take one out in front of him? Would her obvious terror ruin everything?

She couldn’t wait any longer; she would only grow more afraid. So she blurted out, “I wanted to ask if you had blueprints for the house. That would really help me out a lot.”

This, at last, unlatched his gaze from hers. Surprise flittered briefly across his face and then vanished, like a bird hitting a window and then fluttering crookedly off again. Unexpectedly, Ianto reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheaf of paper.

“There you are,” he said.

Eager, Effy reached out to take it. Her fingers had only brushed the edges of the paper when Ianto suddenly grabbed her hand. His grasp was painfully tight, and she let out a small, shocked whimper.

“Ianto—” she started.

His face was as pale as the cliff stone and his eyes held no color at all. And then, as suddenly as he had grabbed her, he released her again, leaving Effy holding the papers. He rose from his seat with such abruptness that it was almost violent. His knife clattered onto the table.

“Let’s go,” he said. His voice came out through gritted teeth. When Effy only stood there staring, open-mouthed, he repeated in a snarl, “Let’s go!”

Numbly, Effy got to her feet. She tucked the blueprints into her purse and hurried after him.

Back in the car, Ianto’s gaze was trained unblinkingly at the road ahead, his enormous hands wrapped around the steering wheel.

Effy was afraid to shatter the heavy, constricting silence, afraid to imperil her precarious victory, afraid to provoke Ianto. She looked out the window instead, eyes tracing the path of raindrops sliding down the glass. Her fingers still throbbed where he had grabbed them.

The sea frothed angrily at the rocks, tongues of foam bathing the edge of the road. The water had a greenish hue today, like a witch’s brew.

Still staring straight ahead, Ianto barked out, “Did you enjoy your meal?”

“Yes,” Effy replied. The bites of steak-and-kidney pie sat queasily in her belly. Each bump in the road made her stomach churn further.

“Good. Not all girls are so grateful for chivalry, nor so humble about their own charms. In the cities up North, I’ve heard that women are starting to have very uncharitable views about men and marriage.”

Effy swallowed hard. It was true that there were more women at the university than ever, and many of them left without wedding rings. Ten years ago, the only reason a girl went to college was to find a husband. Her grandmother still inquired about this every time she wrote, asking if Effy had met any nice young men. No, Effy always wrote back, I haven’t.

The car lurched and jostled, making her heart clatter in her chest. In one last effort at civility, Effy asked, “Have you ever been married before?”

The car sloshed viciously through wet sand.

“No,” he said. “Marriage is not for all men.”

“I understand,” she said, trying to be charitable. “My parents never wed.”

There was a long stretch of silence, during which the wind wailed so loudly that the windows seemed to rattle.

Ianto was driving far, far more quickly than Wetherell had driven in the same car. Effy grasped the edge of the seat and bit down on her lip. The inside of the car smelled like brine and musk. It smelled like Hiraeth.

“Are you in a hurry to get back?” She nearly had to yell over the sound of the wind and the sand flying up to pelt the windows.

“Of course,” Ianto said. But it was closer to a growl.

The tone of his voice pinned her there, like a needle through a butterfly wing. She was filled with a vague and ominous fear, fingers curled around the handle of her purse, blood racing and heart pounding. A bodily, animal instinct was telling her: Something terrible is about to happen.

“I’m sorry,” she said. The air in the car felt extraordinarily stiff and heavy.

She had not taken her pink pill that morning, she realized.

Ianto’s gaze shifted from the road, and she had not been imagining it earlier—his once turbid eyes were now glassy and sharp. Something manic was glinting in them.

“We spoke for an hour and you never told me what I really want to know,” he said.

Effy wanted to tell him not to look at her, to keep his eyes on the road. The car was hurtling up the cliffside so quickly that her body was practically pinned to the seat.

Miserably, she managed to reply, “And what is that?”

Suddenly Ianto whipped his head around to check the road. And that was when Effy realized the car had no rearview mirror. The side mirrors were turned inward, invisible. If Ianto wanted to look behind him, he had to crane his neck backward.

How had she not noticed that before, when Wetherell was driving? Had there been mirrors then?

Her vision was beginning to blur. Not here, she begged herself. Not here, not now. She had the pink pills in her purse, but she couldn’t risk taking them out in front of Ianto. She couldn’t bear the questions he would ask about them. The hag stones in her pocket bounced jaggedly with the rhythm of the car.

“Why did you really come here?” Ianto said at last. His voice was that same low, rasping snarl. “A beautiful girl like you doesn’t need this project to pad her résumé. Any hot-blooded professor would give you highest marks in a heartbeat.”

Her panic crested like a white-capped wave, and then Effy saw him. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, where Ianto had only just been. His black hair was as slick as water. His skin was moonlight pale, and his eyes burned holes right through her, down to her blood, down to her bone. His fingers uncurled from the steering wheel and reached for her, nails long and dark and sharp as claws.

She wasn’t wearing her seat belt, so when she flung the door open, it was easy enough to hurl herself out of the car.