Sean glances at me, an eyebrow raised. “True enough. Privett lost him four years ago when he fell in the races. He beat me twice on him before that.”
“He won’t beat you this year,” I say.
Sean doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to; I know he’s thinking about losing Corr. I stir the chicken. It’s done, but I don’t want to have to sit at the table yet.
After a pause, he says, “I was thinking. No one will want the inside, since the sea will be bad on the first of the month.”
“So I should hug the sea because Dove won’t care.”
Sean’s done slicing the bread, too, but he rearranges the pieces as if he still works at it.
I say, “I was thinking, too, that I should hang back. Save Dove for the end.”
“And maybe the pack will have thinned?” Sean considers. “I wouldn’t wait too long or hang too far back. She’s not strong enough to come up from too far back.”
“I want to steer clear of the piebald, and she’ll be at the front,” I say. “I’ve seen the way Mutt rides her.”
Sean narrows his eyes; I can tell he’s pleased that I’ve noticed, and I’m pleased that he’s pleased.
“Blackwell’s the other one,” Sean says. “He’s the one whose stallion tried to take you down, but he got a replacement horse. This new one’s a fast bitch.” He says it without malice.
Of course, there’s one horse that I know will be a contender. But I’ve never seen him in a real race and I’ve never seen his rider give me the slightest hint of how he likes to pace himself.
“Where will you and Corr be?” I ask.
Sean presses two fingers along the edge of the counter, sweeping crumbs into a pile. I notice that his fingers are permanently dirt-stained like mine. He says, “Right next to you and Dove.”
I stare at him. “You can’t risk not winning. Not because of me.”
Sean doesn’t lift his eyes from the counter. “We make our move when you make yours. You on the inside, me on the outside. Corr can come from the middle of the pack; he’s done it before. It’s one side you won’t have to worry about.”
I say, “I will not be your weakness, Sean Kendrick.”
Now he looks at me. He says, very softly, “It’s late for that, Puck.”
He leaves me standing at the counter looking into the sink, trying to remember what I was supposed to do next.
“Puck,” snaps Gabe. “Your soup!”
The dumplings are boiling over and for a moment it appears that we may have flames for dinner, but I manage to snatch the pot and get the heat off.
The boys all hover around the table now that the presence of food seems imminent. Tommy says, “You’re right, Gabe, she does make a mean chicken. Tried to bite her.”
“Ah, but Puck bites back,” Gabe says.
Finn begins to dole the dumplings out into bowls while I swipe up the spill. Tommy chatters on about how his uisce mare lets herself get pushed around by the other horses but perks up when she sees their asses. Gabe gives everyone a glass of water whether or not they asked for it. And all the while I try very hard to keep my eyes from darting to Sean because I’m quite certain that no one at the table will be able to miss how I look at him and how I find him looking back.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
SEAN
I wake to the sound of crying. I got back too late; it took sleep too long to come to me. For a moment, I just lie there. Exhaustion makes me unwilling to fully wake, and yet: the crying.
The sound resolves itself into an agonized keening, and I am awake. I am awake and I have my jacket and my boots and I am in the stairwell with my flashlight.
The stable is dark, but I hear the sounds of movement, not from the aisles, but from the stalls. The horses are awake. Either the sound has woken them, or someone has been here. I keep my flashlight switched off and make my way in the dark.
The moaning grows louder as I creep down to the main floor. It’s coming from Corr’s old stall, the one I just put Edana in.
I slide down the aisle as quickly as silence allows. The crying has gone silent but I’m certain now that it’s Edana. In the darkness, I can barely see inside the stall. The night outside throws some dark blue light in, just enough for me to press myself against the bars and look in.
When she keens again, I start back. She’s right by my face.
Her head lies against the bars, neck pressed against the wall, nose pointed toward the ceiling, jaw cracked open.
I whisper her name and she cries back to me softly. My eyes follow the line of her neck to her sloping withers and the slanting line her h*ps make low to the ground. I’ve never seen a horse stand like this. There’s a sick knot inside me as I pull open the door and step into the stall. Now, her body silhouetted against the light of the window, I see that she leans against the wall with her head and neck, sunk down onto her haunches like a dog. Her back legs splay out as if the ground is slippery.
I touch her shoulder; it’s trembling. I have a terrible feeling rising inside me. I run the flat of my hand from her withers down her spine, and then, crouching to keep searching, around the curve of her twitching haunches, and down toward her hamstring. Edana whimpers.
My hand comes away soaked. I lift it toward my eyes, but I don’t need it any closer to smell the blood on it. I snatch my flashlight from my pocket and flick it on.
Both of her hamstrings have been sliced.
The top edge of the wound curves up like a ghastly smile, and blood pools around her hocks.
I go to her head and she struggles, trying to get her legs under her. I stroke her forelock and whisper in her ear. Be still. Don’t be afraid. I wait for her breathing to become easier, for her to believe me.
She’ll never walk again.
I can’t understand it. I don’t understand who would mutilate Edana, a horse that wasn’t in the races, a horse that was no threat to anyone. And like this, this savage cruelty — I was meant to find her and be sickened. I can think of only one person who would want to hurt me like that.
I think I hear a rustle somewhere in the depths of the stable.
I flick off the flashlight.
In the dark, in his stall, Edana’s bay coat looks very much like Corr’s blood-red one. It would be very easy to mistake them if you were expecting Corr and were concentrating on getting into the stall without getting hurt.
There’s movement again, farther away in the stable.
I scramble out of the stall and into the aisle. I stand and wait, listening. My heart has already raced ahead of me. All I want is for the sound to be from anywhere but the back seven stalls. All I want is for Mutt Malvern to have guessed wrong when he went looking for Corr. There are five other stalls equipped for the capaill uisce. He could have gone looking in any of them after he discovered Edana was the wrong horse.