The Last Sin Eater Read Online Free PDF Page B

from those mountains.”
    “Could be he lives up one of them hollows.”
    Glynnis shook her head. “Couldn’t hear nothing if he did.”
    “Well, maybe someone tells him when someone’s died. Who says he hears the bell?” Cullen said.
    “Who’d it be?” I said.
    “Gervase Odara maybe.” He shrugged. “She’s the one who’d know if someone was dying, her being the healer and all. Maybe she tells him.”
    I thought about that. Maybe I could talk with her when she was visiting with Elda Kendric. She was there every few days with a remedy to ease the old woman’s swollen joints. “She used to come by our house and visit with Mama, but that was a long while ago.”
    “Your mama don’t make people welcome no more,” Glynnis said. “Mama said she’s so deep in grieving over her dead that she ain’t got time anymore for the living.”
    They all looked at me. I wasn’t comforted by their attention. I hadn’t come for pity but to find out anything I could about the sin eater. It appeared to me they didn’t know much more than I. Everything they’d said so far was guessing, and I could do that all by myself. I looked up at the mountains to the west and wondered if he was up there somewhere. “Seems a lonely place . . .”
    “Maybe he ain’t far away at all,” Cullen said.
    Fagan got up and washed his hands in the river. “Cullen could be right.Who’s to say the sin eater stays up on a mountain. Maybe he comes down and watches people.”
    “He could be watching us right now.” Glynnis shuddered and looked around, face paling. “I wish you hadn’t said that, Fagan. I ain’t going to sleep nights now wondering if he’s peering in our windows.”
    “Maybe he knows when someone’s going to die.” The thought clearly troubled Fagan.
    Cullen tossed his fish bones into the fire. “Maybe he’s like the wolves sensing when an animal’s sick. He can smell death coming and prowls around until he can feast on it.”
    “He dinna come when Elen died,” I said.
    Fagan sat down again. “There was no need. She wasna old enough to have done anything wrong.”
    That was not the only reason, of course. But he was kind enough not to say it.
    I blinked back tears. “Granny told me once that all of us are sinners. They taught her that back in Wales.”
    “If he dinna come, it must mean she dinna have any sins big enough to need eating.” Fagan’s tone was soothing. “He knows when he’s to come, Cadi. The night of your granny’s funeral, Mama said the sin eater knows when he’s needed.”
    Did he? Was he out there somewhere watching us? Were his eyes fixed upon me?
    “You going to eat that fish?” Cullen said to me. I handed him the stick with the half-eaten fish.
    “Why don’t we look for him?” Fagan said.
    Cullen’s head came up. “If he so much as looks at you with his evil eye, you’re dead.”
    “No you’re not,” I said before I thought better of it.
    Three pairs of eyes turned on me, wide and questioning. I blushed and put my head down on my knees.
    “You looked at him, dinna ye?” Fagan said.
    I’d opened the door to more grief and disregard. Would he tell my brother first chance he had?
    Glynnis drew back slightly. “Dinna ye know you’re not supposed to look at him, Cadi Forbes? Dinna anyone tell ye?”
    “I cudna help myself! He sounded so sorrowful.”
    “He gave you the evil eye, didn’t he?” Cullen cringed back.
    “Oh, you’re in it now. You’re in it.”
    I jumped up, standing over them. “He dinna have red eyes. And his hands were fine and clean, not claws at all.”
    “And his teeth?” Cullen leaned forward. “What about his teeth?”
    “I dinna see his teeth.” My passion was spent and I looked away. “He was wearing a hood with eyeholes and a flap over his mouth.”
    “He was probably hiding them,” Cullen said and sank his teeth into the rest of my fish.
    “He must be a monster for all the sin he’s eaten,” Glynnis said.
    “That must be why he