Free Bourn’s Edge by Barbara Davies

feet. “Very well. I will convey it to the Queen.” She crossed to the back door, then stopped and looked back. The formal messenger’s mask had gone and now she spoke as one Fae to another. “She won’t like it.”
    Tarian sighed. “I know.”
     
    “YOU’RE QUIET THIS morning, dear. Everything all right?”
    The landlady was studying her, Cassie realised. She forced a smile. “I’m fine, thanks. Just tired. I didn’t sleep very well.” She didn’t mention why sleep had been elusive, the images of death and carnage that kept surfacing.
    “She fed you all right, then?” Liz began to clear away the breakfast dishes. Cassie had only picked at her bacon and eggs.
    Fed me? Cassie gathered her scattered wits. “Oh. Yes. Boar casserole. It was very nice.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “She showed me round her studio too.” Before it became a crime scene .
    Tarian had said forensics would find no trace, but that wasn’t possible, surely. Not for a human .
    Cassie climbed the stairs to her bedroom in a daze and gazed at her reflection as she brushed her teeth. Her face was pale, her eyes dull and panicked.
    An image of the heavy spear protruding from the man’s chest surfaced, and she shoved it aside. Maybe I’m going crazy. Maybe nothing happened the way I remember. Maybe . . . Who the hell knows?
    She put the wet toothbrush back in the beaker and wiped her mouth on the towel. The best thing to do was to confront her fear. She should go back to Tarian’s house and see for herself. If something really had happened last night, if it hadn’t all been some weird nightmare brought on by a dose of food poisoning, there’d be evidence. But what would she do if there was ?
    She felt the urge to surround herself with the mundane. She would go shopping. But a chime of church bells put paid to that idea—in Bourn’s Edge the shops weren’t open on Sunday.
    She went to her bedroom window and peered out. Several of the villagers dressed in their Sunday bests, among them Cath the postmistress and Dr. Reynolds, were hurrying up the road. On impulse, she shrugged her jacket on and hurried downstairs to join them.
    “Going out?” called Liz, as she passed the open kitchen door.
    “Thought I’d go to church.” Then Cassie was out the front door, through the garden gate, and following the worshippers streaming by ones and twos towards the shabby spire.
    It was years since she had been to church, and it had been a different denomination. But she needn’t have worried about not knowing the ropes. As she ventured into the cool of the interior, Dr. Reynolds in his role as usher handed her a hymnbook and pointed to an empty pew. She nodded her thanks and sank onto it. No sooner had she sat down, though, than everyone else in the congregation stood up.
    Simon Wright took his place in the pulpit. And after a brief prayer, the service got underway. Afterwards, Cassie didn’t remember much about it, except that she hadn’t disgraced herself. It was a matter of doing what everyone else did, standing then sitting, murmuring the required responses, singing the vaguely familiar hymns as best she could. But all the time her mind was engaged elsewhere.
    Oh Lord, don’t let me be mad , she prayed. And please don’t let Tarian be some kind of demon . For some reason this last point was important to her. Her instincts had told her the artist was a friend. And hadn’t Tarian saved her life? But she was so savage about it, so primitive .
    Shut up , she told herself. When the bald man sitting next to her in the pew turned to her in surprise, she realised she must have spoken aloud. “Sorry,” she whispered, embarrassed.
    The ritual of the service did help to calm her, though, and by its end she had plucked up courage to walk to Tarian’s house and ask her for the truth.
    She shook hands with the vicar, who said how pleased he was to see her, and stepped outside, then stopped in surprise. Just outside the porch stood a