To Catriona, I say, “I’m here to see Russell Hendry.”
“He hasn’t been put on remand for you to harass him.”
“I’m not here to harass him.” I put a bit of steel into my voice.
She returns her attention to her typewriter, typing something and pushing the carriage back. “I can give you an hour with him. If he agrees to see you.”
My mouth quirks in a half smile. “I’d be much obliged.”
An officer escorts me to the cells just as when I came to visit Jude. I walk down the now-familiar hall, unnerved by that familiarity. It’s worsened when I realize Russell has been placed in the same cell. He sits on the wooden bed, leaning back against the wall. I can imagine Jude seated in the corner as before—the memory impressing upon reality until I see him there, head ducked, one knee to his chest.
That ghost of Jude Osric looks up to hold my gaze.
On the bed, Russell folds his arms. A shard of sunlight enters through the barred window, casting lines over his pale face. He leers at me in such a way that my hands curl into fists.
“What do you want, Moira?”
“To talk.”
He looks away, eyes half-lidded. “That so?”
I bare my teeth as he did at the harbor. When his attention slides back to me, I level him with a glare. “Tell me where you got that siren poison.”
“Told you on the dock it was none of your business.”
“It wasn’t your business to kill two sirens,” I snap. “But you went and did it anyway.”
He grips the edge of the bed. “I heard tell you paid Wick a visit in here,” he says.
I swallow. For some reason the words twist my stomach, quickening my pulse. That phantom likeness of Jude is still pressed against the wall. He watches me, waiting for my answer.
“That’s the truth,” I reply.
“Aye.” Russell rubs the stubble on his chin. “I reckon they see rightly now.”
“What’s that?”
“No human person killed Connor. It’s our blood in the sea, but we’re not the ones to spill it. Those sirens will pick us clean off this rock if we let them.”
My insides roil. “We’ve spilled more of their blood than they have ours.”
“I’m not arguing with you about this.” He scoffs. “I know what you’re like. What your father was like. They’ll have hunting parties organized soon enough, and you better stay out of the way.”
I imagine the boats going out with harpoons and poisons, returning with siren bodies piled on deck. I was so young when they were hunted; the occurrences seem closer to myth than the here and now.
Fear snares me in its claws. How could I play music on the cliffs while others sharpened their knives the very same morning? How could I sell pastries at my mother’s stall as vendors hawked necklaces strung with siren teeth?
I ask Russell, “Did someone give you those cans?”
Sitting straight, he scrubs a hand through his hair. His eyes fix on the floor, his profile split between shadow and light.
Beyond the jail corridor, a door slams open like a thunderclap. The sound sets my heart pounding, and I turn my head toward it. Voices echo from the lobby, rising in volume.
I take off without another word.
When I open the door, my lips part, the sight before me prickling the hair at the back of my neck.
Jude Osric stands in the center of the room.
At first I think it’s another apparition, but no—this is the real Jude, flesh and blood, breathing hard like he’s run across the moors. It’s plain he left the lighthouse in a hurry. He wears neither coat nor hat, his work shirt rolled to his elbows and missing a front button. A streak of ash marks the curve of his jaw.
“Moira.” He takes me by the shoulders, wide-eyed. “Are you all right?”
I frown up at him. “How did you know I was here?”
He looks around, eyebrows drawn together. “I—I got a note. It said… you’d been arrested.” His gaze returns to my face. He breathes in, exhales. “I see… I see now that’s not the case.”
“No.” A sense of unease creeps over my spine. “I only came to speak with Russell.”
Jude steps back, his expression now mirroring my confusion. I watch his Adam’s apple shift as he swallows, and the unease I feel transmutes into something akin to dread.
Why would someone leave Jude a note like that? Deliberately false, so easy to expose, unless they knew he’d race over as a result? Unless they just wanted him gone.
Numbness seeps through my skin, through my bones, down to the very marrow.
“Jude,” I say, “I think we ought to get back to the lighthouse.”
* * *
We pass the walk through town and over the moors in painful silence. Recovered from his initial fright, Jude seems to recall his grievances against me. He sticks his hands in his trouser pockets, his eyes on the ground. The wind picks up, freeing strands of hair from my bun, and dense clouds gather above us, predisposed to rain.
“Weather’s turning,” I say.
“Yes,” says Jude, without looking up.
It’s my one and only attempt at small talk.
The lighthouse looms ahead, austere before the gray sky. Jude quickens his pace, then takes off, breakneck. I speed after him. He skids to a stop on the path, staring at the cottage door, and raises a hand to cover his mouth.
Deep gouges mar the wood in a crisscrossing pattern. Stepping closer, Jude presses his fingertips to them. He makes a faint, distressed sound and pulls his skeleton key from his pocket, hands trembling as he tries the lock. It clicks open, the door swinging inward. A folded bit of paper lies in the entryway, as if slipped through the mail slot. Jude picks it up, looking it over. His eyes widen. “Moira,” he chokes out. “Moira.”
I take the paper from him. On it only two words are written.
Stop looking.
Connor’s killer was here, today, just moments ago. I glance around, half expecting to see them in the distance, as I saw that figure walking toward us on the moors. Instead, my gaze latches on to something else. Part of Jude’s garden is just visible from here. I see green sprouting from the dark soil—alongside a grooved stick of polished wood. “What’s that there?” I ask.
Jude sets his sights on where I point. His mouth turns down at the edges. We head over together, and he kneels, pulling the object free.
The blade of the knife is grimy and stained brown. It could be dirt, but the smear across the steel looks more like blood. Jude stares, frozen. It’s another moment before he uncurls his fingers from the handle, the knife dropping with a thud.
“In my garden,” he whispers.
I crouch beside him. “It’s meant to scare us. That could well be animal blood.”
Jude doesn’t appear to hear me. He says, “They put this in my garden,” and pushes his fingers into the earth, trying to tether himself. His breathing turns shallow, ragged at the edges.
Anger coils about me. Someone sent Jude off so they might damage his home, leaving a bloodied knife for him to find. The longer I dwell on it, the more furious I become.
“They’re watching us,” Jude gasps. “They know…”
“Breathe, Jude. Just breathe.”