I nod, not entirely understanding his train of thought. “Of course.”
Jude nods too, as though steeling himself. His eyes look black in the darkness. “There’s something I need to show you,” he says. “Something secret.”
I pause, thinking of the cracks in the lighthouse walls, running through white plaster, each said to hold a secret. I think of Jude standing on the cliff’s edge, watching as he threw a slip of paper into the sea. I think of Connor knowing something he shouldn’t and someone taking a knife to his throat.
“All right.”
And we continue on, walking toward the glow of the lighthouse beacon.
* * *
It doesn’t occur to me what secret Jude could be referring to until he leads me through the cottage, to the door at the end of the hall. It’s the space below the guest room, one that echoed with thumps and voices in the night. I turn to Jude. His hand trembles where it rests on the knob.
“I heard you that night,” I tell him. “You said you weren’t talking to anyone. That I was dreaming.”
Fear darkens his eyes. “I must confess I lied.” Then he asks his previous question, but in reverse. “Do you trust me?”
“With my life.”
The words surprise me. With my life. It’s true, yet I wonder just how long it’s been that way.
Jude’s gaze falls from mine as he knocks twice, softly, against the wood. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a key. It looks smaller, older, than the one used for the front door. He turns it in the lock. I hear the faint click as it catches. Glancing back at me, he says, “I’m sorry, Moira.” He swallows and lets the door swing open.
I stare into the room.
It is cold inside, and dark, the one and only window shuttered up. Moonlight sneaks through the gaps, sliding across the floorboards in silver lines. Dust hangs in the air, and it’s as if the chamber has been forgotten: an unused space that has fallen through the cracks. The space, however, is not empty.
I stare into the room for a long, long time.
When I look back at Jude, he hangs his head, though I cannot say whether it’s in shame. He seems to be waiting—for me to shout at him, or hit him, or run down the hall and out of the cottage entirely. Instead, I am frozen. Slowly, unwillingly, my gaze returns to the darkness of the room, to the figure cast in pale light by the moon.
Jude Osric has a siren locked away in his lighthouse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SHE IS THIN, her skin ghost white, long black hair matted with knots. It is not these features, common enough among sirens, that are unusual about her appearance. It’s the look in her eyes, hollowed and empty—lost in a way I’ve never seen a siren to be. She sits against the wall, atop several quilts laid out on the floor. In the corner, there is a length of rope, the glint of a chain. They must’ve once been used to manacle her. Pale scars mark her face and arms, the long, straight edges of a blade. I turn away.
“Please tell me… you did not do this.”
“My uncle,” says Jude. His voice sounds unsteady. “I didn’t know anything, Moira. I tried to…”
I take a step into the room. The siren watches me with dulled interest, tilting her head to one side.
“How long?” I ask.
“Just… just over a year.”
Another step, and the siren pulls back her lips in a quiet hiss, revealing thin and pointed teeth. I’m afraid to ask why she does not sing, why the shuttered window is not cracked through from the sound of her voice. But I say it anyway. “Why hasn’t she begun to sing?”
Jude is very still behind me. If I didn’t know better, I would think he wasn’t there at all.
“Her tongue was cut out.”
Yes. Yes, that would do it.
I walk out of the room, pausing in the arch of the door. I look at Jude, but he doesn’t meet my eye.
“And you did nothing?”
He looks up at that, indignation sparking in his gaze. “I tried, Moira.” His fingers knot around his shirt cuff, his breath shuddering out of him. “I was sent over to the offshore light for a few months after Mr. Irving took ill. When I came back, my uncle—he showed me what he’d done.” Jude stares past me to the open doorway. “He said he did it to avenge Da, like… like an eye for an eye, but this is the last thing Da would’ve wanted. I know that.”
I swallow hard. “Your uncle is gone, Jude. Why is she still here?”
“That’s what our argument was about. Before he left, I told him we should let her go, give her back to the sea.” He shakes his head. “He laughed, said it wouldn’t matter even if we did; she wouldn’t survive a day. What with…” Jude gestures with one hand, as if trying to convey the damage inflicted upon the siren, everything she has endured. It’s a rather poor attempt.
“When I saw those dead sirens on the dock, it just reminded me of her being trapped in here.” His mouth twists. He scrubs hastily at his eyes. “I bring her raw meat from the butcher’s. I try to… I try to give her a bit of peace.”
I grit my teeth. “She is suffering.”
Jude looks at me with a lost expression. His shoulders sag, as though the heaviness of his burdens is the weight of an anchor, pulling him down into the cold blackness of the sea. “What else am I supposed to do?”
My heart thuds inside my chest, the steady rhythm at odds with the rest of me. I place a hand on his arm. “We’ll return her to the sea,” I say.
“She’ll die out there. We can’t—”
“Sirens are not solitary creatures, Jude. They’ll care for her. I’m sure of it.”
He closes the door, shutting the siren away. His hands are still trembling, but his expression is no longer so bleak. His eyes shine bright and feverish. “And if we’re caught? What then? We’d have to carry her all the way down to the harbor. The police might still be on the beach.”
I tip my chin up. “We shan’t get caught.”
Jude laughs, a single, broken exhale.
I forge on. “We’ll have few better chances than tonight. Most are still at the dance; the harbor will be empty. We’ll go without a light and take your rowboat out.”
Closing his eyes, he links his hands around the back of his neck. I watch him in silence, the downward tilt of his head, the tense line of his shoulders. He swallows and says, “Very well,” before reaching under his shirt collar, drawing out the plain iron ring he wears on a length of cord.
I narrow my eyes. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll not touch her wearing iron,” he says, looking over. “Do you have any on you?”
After a pause, I shake my head, realizing I’d left what iron I had in my coat at the hall. Jude passes me the corded rope. “Take this, then. It’ll have to be enough for both of us.”
I bite my lip, uncertain, even as I slip it on. “Jude, you can’t get into a boat without iron. The sirens—”
“I know,” he says softly, “but I won’t—I won’t hurt her.”
I curl my fingers around the ring. Never would I imagine that Jude might head out onto the water iron-less, as his family did all those years ago. Never would I imagine that I might let him.