Page 8 of Two Hit Wonder

"So, do we really want to do this?" Ellie asked. "Or are we going to quit right now?"

Iona stared at the ceiling, which was covered in the same egg cartons as the walls. Someone had drawn a rude picture on one of them in marker pen. It seemed fitting, somehow.

"We've got no choice if we want to go ahead," Ellie said finally. "We have to get Maeve back."

Iona gritted her teeth, then nodded. "Alright, I'll go." They could leave it, couldn’t they? Just walk away from everything. But now that they were actually here, actually doing something, Iona was… almost complete in a way she hadn’t felt for longer than she cared to remember.

"You can phone her," Cam said.

Iona snorted. "Like she's going to answer the phone to any of us. I told you, I'll go."

"Why you?" said Ellie.

Iona just looked at her.

The question hung in the air between them, surrounded by egg cartons and bad lighting and the ghost of everything they'd once been. Iona sighed. "You know why."

Chapter Four

The song wasn't coming.

Maeve glared at the notebook in front of her as if the blank page had personally offended her, which at this point it rather had. She'd been sitting at the window seat for the better part of an hour, guitar across her lap, pencil in hand, and all she had to show for it was a single line that she'd already crossed out twice.

The morning light falls soft on—

Falls soft on what? The hills? Overdone. The heather? Cliché. Her own rapidly deteriorating sanity? Accurate, but difficult to rhyme.

She set the pencil down and looked out the window instead. The view, at least, never disappointed. Rolling Scottish hills, gray-green under a moody sky that couldn't quite decide if it was going to rain or just threaten to. The stone wall that marked the edge of her garden, or sheep-prison, if you preferred.

Eejit was currently attempting to eat the remains of what had once been a lavender bush.

Other than errant sheep, though, the garden was calm. Her life was calm. Her world was calm. Which was just how she liked it. Just how she needed it, even. She wasn’t at all sure she could function in any other way at this point.

Movement on the path caught her eye.

Someone was walking up toward the cottage. A woman, from the look of it, though she was still far enough away that Maeve couldn't make out details. Dark hair, shorter than Maeve, moving with purpose.

Council, probably. About the water. They'd been sending increasingly stern letters about the drainage situation, which Maeve had been ignoring with equal determination. As if she had any idea how to fix nineteenth-century pipes on her own. That was Glinna's department, technically speaking, though Glinna had enough on her plate with six children and several hundred of her sheep that actually stayed where they belonged.

The woman reached the garden gate.

Maeve watched, mildly curious, as the stranger lifted the latch and stepped through. Eejit raised her head from the ravaged lavender, considered the newcomer with what appeared to be great interest, and then…

Bit her.

"Christ!" The word carried clearly through the closed window.

Eejit, having made her point, returned to the lavender.

The woman was clutching her hand now, staring at the sheep with an expression of profound betrayal. And something about the way she stood, the angle of her shoulders, the particular set of her jaw as she processed this unexpected assault…

Maeve's stomach dropped.

No.

The woman turned toward the cottage, and Maeve saw her face clearly for the first time.

No, no, no.