“Moira?” Jude says. “What is it?”
I shake my head even as dread creeps over my spine. “Nothing,” I murmur. Releasing his sweater, I try my best to smile. “Just my eyes playing tricks on me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AFTERWARD, SLEEP DOES NOT COME for either of us. I hang Jude’s oilskin jacket on its peg in the entryway, climb the stairs, and settle into bed in the guest room. His iron ring presses against my skin. I draw it off, leaving it beside the oil lamp on the nightstand. The hours pass erratic and fitful, all twisted sheets and half-remembered dreams. Throwing back the blankets, I step out into the hall. It’s there, against the heavy morning silence, that I hear muffled bars of music playing. I follow the tune over to Jude’s bedroom.
It takes only a moment for me to place it. I recognize this music: slow and mechanical, off-key and dolorous. It’s the tune of Emmeline’s old music box. My heart feels weighed down by the knowing, and even as I close my eyes to listen, I try not to picture Jude on the other side of the door, holding the tiny box that once belonged to his sister.
As he winds it a third time, I turn away. This, I won’t intrude upon. After the murk and melancholy of last night, Jude deserves a moment to himself. I head to the kitchen and make us both a cup of tea.
Jude shuffles down the stairs soon after. He appears in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. When he catches sight of me, his mouth curves in a small smile.
“Oh.” He takes the tea I offer with careful fingers. “Thank you.”
“What’s the time?” I ask.
“Just past nine. I’ve observations to do on deck, if you want to join me.”
We start up the lighthouse and step out onto the narrow gallery deck. A breeze tugs at the hem of my dress. It’s a clear day, clouds streaked thin across the sky, sunlight dazzling the sea.
It’s been mere hours since we released a siren to those waters. During the night, the two of us had knelt together in the empty harbor, Jude’s sorrow piercing my heart as he cried into my shoulder. Now it’s morning and the past is just a memory. Connor Sheahan and Nell Bracken will be added to this year’s record of siren deaths, their names pressed into the pages of a book and forgotten. I grip my teacup, its heat warming my palms. Far below, white-capped waves break over rocks near the shore. Jude sits with notebook and pencil, but his page remains blank. I think perhaps he has trouble observing the weather when he’s busy observing me.
I turn and give him the first real look since last night. His dark eyes are still shadowed, auburn hair still tangled. Still Jude Osric. Just something about the way he carries himself has changed. He’s grown up from the soft-cheeked boy he once was. And I realize, too, I am no longer that little girl who came visiting alongside her father.
The past has altered us into something altogether new.
He blushes under my gaze, tearing his own eyes away. He begins writing things in shorthand: visibility and wind direction and tide conditions. It’s a routine worn into him, passed down to him, from father to son. The lighthouse is as much a part of him as the moors and cliffs are part of me. Despite the dangers of this island, the horrors of it, there are few who know how to leave. I imagine those who manage it spend the rest of their lives trying to knock Twillengyle soil out from the soles of their boots.
Twin flashes of silver catch my eye. I look over the gallery railing, but there’s nothing to see. Perhaps a glimpse of sirens as they slipped between the waves. To the west, a group of them bask in the shallows. I can’t tell how many from this distance, but there’s a peace to them, a stillness, the cool composure of hunters at ease.
“Jude.” I turn my gaze on him, his notebook propped on one bent knee. “How did your uncle capture that siren?”
His pencil comes to a stop. After a pause he says, “With a net and iron, I imagine.”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“We didn’t discuss the particulars, no.”
I lace my fingers over the rim of my teacup. “I’m only wondering,” I start, “if perhaps he had help. It would’ve been difficult to accomplish on his own, don’t you think? Even more so to keep her hidden away.”
Jude looks stricken. He sets his pencil down, staring at the open page of his notebook. “That’s certainly a possibility.” He splays a hand over the words he’s written, his voice dipping into a whisper as he says, “You don’t suppose it’s connected, do you? To Connor’s murder? To Nell’s?”
I recall the shadowy figure who followed us from the pub, the light I saw from the harbor. That person couldn’t be Dylan Osric simply because Dylan Osric wasn’t in Dunmore at the time. It wasn’t his handwriting on the note left in Jude’s entryway.
Stop looking.
I bite my lip. “We ought to visit Imogen,” I reply. “If Nell was waiting for a suitor, it could’ve been the killer. Imogen likely knows the person.”
Jude lifts his head, looking out toward the cliff’s edge. “My uncle has wanted the ban dismantled since the day my family passed,” he murmurs. “But you must know I’ve never… I’ve never blamed them, Moira. The sirens. I never wished to hunt them, to hurt them as he did.”
“I know.” My fingers loosen around my teacup. “I know.”
Jude closes his notebook and stands, tucking the pencil behind his ear. He still gazes at the sea, at the sirens by the shore. I press my palm against the railing.
“I need to fetch my violin,” I tell him. “I left it at the hall.”
He looks over. His face is awash in sunlight, his cable-knit sweater snug across his shoulders. If it weren’t for his bloodshot eyes, I might be inclined to believe last night was nothing but a nightmare. “What of our investigation?”
Stepping toward the gallery door, I say, “I’ll come straight back from Dunmore.”
Jude smiles. He tips his head down, the gesture shy, and fidgets with the pencil behind his ear. “All right, then,” he says.
I hurry down the stairwell to the cottage. In another few hours we might have our answers.
* * *
Halfway across the moors I realize I’m still wearing my evening dress from last night and decide to stop at my house in order to change. I would’ve preferred to avoid my mother in the interim, but I find her doing laundry by the side of the house.
She stands next to the wooden tub, her hands wet and soapy, as she rubs a sheet against the metal ridges of her washboard. Several tin baths are scattered on the ground nearby, filled with water and rinsed clothes. She pauses in her work as she catches sight of me.
“Come here, Moira.”
A vitriolic edge accompanies my name when she says it.
This is precisely what I don’t need right now.
I walk toward her, keeping my eyes on the tin baths, the sides of the tub. I can feel my mother’s gaze on me like the prick of a hundred needles. “Yes, Mother?”
I chance a look at her face. She glares, anger emanating like the heat off our stove. I duck my head, penitent, in the hopes of deterring the worst of it.
“You don’t seem to realize,” she starts, “how many eyes this island has.”