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I sat on the closed toilet lid whilst Lilith soaked in the bath. Despite her protestations that she was perfectly capable of washing her own hair without drowning thank you very much Strachan you complete drama queen, I wasn’t about to leave her alone for a second. Also if I were totally honest it was never a hardship to sit and admire Lili’s naked body, whatever the circumstance.
We both started when my phone rang. I looked at the name on the display. “Shit, it’s Niamh. Ah God, they’d better be safe.” I swiped to answer and put the phone on speaker so Lilith could hear the call too.
“Tack? Oh thank God. Where are you?” Niamh asked.
“We’re still at the hotel, love.” There was a panic in her voice that made my stomach lurch. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah yeah, we’re here at the airport in one piece. Have you seen the news?”
“What?” That wasn’t a question I was expecting. “No, I’m carrying out my lifeguard duties while Lili has a bath.” I grinned and stuck my tongue out at Lilith as she gave me the finger. “Why?”
“Father McKenna’s dead. The cleaner at St Cuthbert’s found his body in the sacristy this morning. He wasn’t even meant to be near the place with the investigation and everything, and the Gardaí are treating it as suspicious. They think he was murdered, Finn!… Hang on a sec…”
We listened to Feargal shout something unintelligible in the background and there was a muffled scratching noise as Niamh put her hand over her phone to respond to him.
“Oh fuck, that’s not good,” Lilith mouthed to me, her face grave.
Niamh came back on the line. “Tack, they’ve just called us to board before they close the gate. Do you need us to stay here, or -”
“No. Get on that fucking plane, Niamh,” I ordered. “Now. Just get to safety; there’s nothing you can do here love.”
“Yeah, but what about you guys?” she asked. “I mean, I’m praying it’s got nothing to do with what’s going on with us but with everything that Lilith said yesterday, you know, about watching out for trouble and all, it just seems an awful coincidence that we saw him yesterday and now he’s dead...”
“It’s okay, it’ll all be fine,” I reassured her, whilst feeling that things were most certainly neither okay nor fine in the slightest. “This time tomorrow we’ll be strolling on the beach with you all. So look, just have a safe flight, and give Sol a big kiss and a hug from us both, yeah?” The call dropped and I looked down at the phone in my hand as though it were radioactive.
“Oh fuck,” Lilith repeated, and slowly submerged herself under the bathwater.
“Was it me?” I asked. Blood pounded in my ears and my voice sounded like someone was speaking far, far away.
Lilith resurfaced and frowned at me over the rim of the bathtub. “Was what you?”
“McKenna. What if I killed him, Lili? What if I went mental like last time and murdered the bastard when I was out last night?”
Lilith
I stared at Finn and waited for the punchline, but none came. “Fucking hell, you’re serious,” were the first words out of my mouth, before I could think of something a little more sensitive.
“Back in the spring I spent half a day running around Santa Marita biting chunks out of the masonry and I can’t remember a bloody minute of it,” he said. “What if seeing him yesterday triggered another episode and I went to his church last night and just... murdered him? I mean, I was out for hours and I still couldn’t tell you exactly where I went.”
“Finn Strachan, look at me right now,” I ordered. He finally stopped staring at his phone long enough to meet my eye and I reached over the edge of the bath and gripped his hand. “You’re not a killer for fuck’s sake. Even when you were in the very teeth of a psychotic hurricane the only person you hurt was yourself.
You drank the best part of a litre of dodgy absinthe and emptied your sister’s medicine cabinet just because you thought about the abstract concept of harming Sol, and as terrifying as those events have been to watch, I have never been scared for my own safety. Not for a single second.”
Finn shook his head, unconvinced. “Yeah, but what if this time I went too far, Lili? Maybe every time it happens I’m going to get worse, and that was me last night?”, he asked desperately.
That all-too-familiar doubt had returned to his expression and I could only hope my words would get through before he started to spiral beyond my reach.
I linked my wet fingers through his and kept going. “Because your name isn’t Doctor Jekyll, Finn. Being capable of the level of violence required to kill a man and actually having the kind of hidden alter ego where you act it out are two entirely different things. Hell, the only dormant personality that emerges from your subconscious when you’re howling at the moon is some kind of superpowered self-flagellant.”
Finn gave a wry smile and to my relief he seemed to be starting to accept what I’d said. “I can’t imagine Marvel picking up that particular franchise, somehow.”
“Really? I would totally watch that movie. But back to Niamh’s point,” I continued. “I don’t think there’s been a single coincidence involved in any of the shit that’s happened since McKenna showed up at the wake and I’m bloody furious with myself for not piecing things together earlier. The sooner we can get home the better.”
“You’ve already figured out far more than anyone else would love, if we’re talking about self-flagellating,” Finn said. “And talking of movies we’d want to see, now you’re no longer auditioning for that remake of The Exorcist, we’ll be on our way in no time.”
I rolled my eyes. “God, you projectile vomit over the love of your life once…”
Finn finally smiled. “That’s good to know.”
