All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

are still lying face up. The light pools and shimmers, forming a tight circle around them.

The chants continue.

The patterns on the cards begin to shift, the ink rearranging itself. I stare, the chant going dry in my mouth. My candle is moments away from drowning itself in its own molten wax.

There is still enough light left, however, to see that the three cards I had picked out – the Three of Pentacles, the Chariot, the Eight of Wands – have now all changed to three identical Housekeepers. A jackpot on the universe’s worst slot machine.

I haven’t seen the actual card in so long that it takes me a moment to recognize it. The wedding dress, the dog, the knife in her teeth. The splashes of blood on the end of her gown. The little touches that make her truly terrifying.

I look to Roe and Fiona, who are still deep beneath the warm, rosy, gold light of the spell. I could scream their names right now and they wouldn’t hear me.

Whatever happens next, it’s up to me to face it.

I bring my eyes back to the centre of the circle, and she’s there. I’ve seen a lot of the Housekeeper lately: in moments of terror, or anger, or jealousy. But I’ve never been this close, and I’ve never been this calm upon seeing her. In many ways, it feels like we are being introduced for the first time.

Ladies, meet the Housekeeper card.

CHAPTER FORTY

I EDGE CLOSER TO HER, DIRT SCRAPING AGAINST MY KNEES. The ritual site isn’t a cute project any more, a Wiccan daydream that you might find on Tumblr. It’s pools of hot wax, and air so thick from burned herbs that everything smells like lamb. The white silk knots are sloppy and covered in dirt. And the Housekeeper, with a knife in her teeth, is staring right at me. I look to Roe and Fiona, whose eyes are still closed. How can they not have sensed her presence? Is she only here for me?

I gaze at her for the last time, her face strangely unlined, her lips without crease. Eyes not made for expression. Even calling her a she feels strange. She is not a person; she is an it. All this time, I’ve been thinking of things she might think, need or desire. But there are no thoughts, no feelings, no spite. Just a spirit with a singular purpose, briefly inhabiting human form because that is the best way to deal with humans. She is a cosmic messenger, a virus, an imbalance. She does not hate me, any more than I can hate my instinct to close a door after I open one.

I gaze into her eyes, my face a silent plea.

Please.

I wait for a reply.

Please. I’m begging you.

She gazes at me steadily and without feeling. She merely takes the knife from her mouth and gives it to me. I take it in my hand. The hilt is heavy, the blade slick. It’s a good knife. A knife for killing things humanely. I measure the weight of it for a moment, and in that moment, the moon comes out.

Out, and full, and on a night where there is supposed to be no moon. Winking at me. Urging me on.

“Please,” I say out loud. “Please, if there’s another way, please tell me what it is.”

I start to cry as I ask her, the tears making my face slick and cold. There is no point being brave about this now. Do I really have to do this? Is this really what it’s going to take?

“Please. There has to be another way.”

The Housekeeper’s face becomes more blurred through the veil of tears. Roe and Fiona are completely still, eyes closed, as if paralysed by the Housekeeper’s presence.

I feel as though time itself has slowed down, so that every micro-movement goes on for ever and ever. Brushing the tears from my eyes seems to take hours. The candlelight on Fiona’s face, which flickered about her just seconds ago, lies flat as though it were a golden tattoo.

I gaze at the river. There are no quiet sounds of lapping water, and the bank is so still it looks like a black line across the earth.

“It’s like Lily wrote,” I plead. “Nobody swims, nobody drowns.”

I hold the knife in my hands and whisper, both to myself and the Housekeeper. “Nobody has to die.”

“Yes, they do.”

Her voice is deep and young, an indifferent, exhausted sigh of someone watching yet another tourist tie yet another padlock to a buckling bridge. I don’t look up in time to see her mouth move, and I’m glad. It’s bad enough hearing the Housekeeper speak. I don’t think I could stand anything else.

“I do this, and it’s all over?” I say, following an internal sense of fairy-tale logic that you should never make a bargain unless you know the exact terms. “Lily comes back?”

“Yes,” she answers.

At the sound of his sister’s name, Roe starts to stir next to me.

I wipe my tears away with the heel of my hand. It’s time to stop playing around.

This is it. I raise the knife, ready to cut down. To cut down, and end this, and bring Lily back.

The skin on my arm kisses the blade. Blood falls on the satin. It’s crimson, and not the deep black blood I know the Housekeeper is going to want. I try to dig the blade in deeper, but start to lose strength in my hand. At least there’s not much pain. That’s something.

Clouds of blackness start to stain my vision, and I look up to find the Housekeeper, desperate for her approval. But she’s gone, along with the golden light of the spell.

“Maeve!”

And Roe is on top of me, trying to wrestle the knife out of my hands. He pins me down, his knees on my thighs. My heads rolls in the dirt, hitting something hard.

“Roe, stop it. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“What is going on?” Fiona starts to scream. “Roe, why