I wince. “I can—”
“No.” With the hand not gripping the washboard, my mother gestures sharply. “I’ve no desire to hear excuses. You think you can leave the dance with Mr. Osric and no one notices? I assume you spent the night at the lighthouse?”
“Yes, but—”
“I try to give you space, Moira. Really I do. Ever since your father…” She takes a breath. “And I know Mr. Osric has always been a good friend to you, but you’re not children now. Either of you. I would expect—”
My own temper sparks in response. “My comings and goings are my business,” I tell her. “There’s no need for you to worry over me.”
She sighs, rubbing chapped fingertips against her temple. It irks me how concerned she seems about islanders gossiping. Rumors unfurl from a glance, a whisper. They mean very little altogether; they simply give people something to talk about.
“Moira,” she says, and the vitriol in her tone has disappeared, replaced by fatigue. “I just want—”
I take a step back. “Please,” I say. “Please—just let me alone.”
I turn away, run into the house, and slam the door shut. My heart pounds against my rib cage. I’m shaking with the knowledge I hold, the secrets I’ve kept from my mother. Two people were murdered, and Jude and I are trying to catch the killer; Dylan Osric tortured a chained-up siren, and we released her out in the bay.
So many secrets.
In my bedroom I slip on simpler clothes: a long-sleeved dress of pale-blue cotton. I walk over to the kitchen and steal a seedcake from the batch on the counter. Heading back out, I edge around the opposite side of the house to evade my mother.
Sparrows flutter from branch to branch as I start on the path to Dunmore. I break off pieces of cake for them, and their whistles follow me until I reach the brick buildings and narrow cobbled streets.
The market is slow today, as it often is the morning after a dance. Young women in neat shirtwaists and skirts stroll arm in arm, heads bent in private conversation. Mothers pull their sleepy-eyed children from shop to shop. Men go about with their caps tugged low, hands in pockets.
Brendan Sheahan stands just outside the bakery, smoking. Even from across the street I see his red-rimmed eyes, his face white as paper. I swallow, avert my gaze, and continue on to the hall. I pull the door open and silence envelops me.
Without music, without people to fill it, the place feels ghostly. Dust motes drift in the light shining through the tall windows. As a child I believed the golden specks to be faerie dust, something able to grant wishes if only I could catch them. I step out from the shadowed entryway, stretch a hand toward the rectangle of light, but the particles slip away, too intangible to grasp.
Someone coughs. I look up, suddenly self-conscious, and find Peter Atherton leaning against the doorway to the back room. Sunlight threads into his dark hair, lighting the angles of his face. It warms his eyes to amber just as it does Jude’s.
“Morning, Moira.”
I head over to him. “I’m here for my violin,” I say. “I left it behind last night.”
“I noticed. Your coat, too.” He lets me pass into the small room. “You and Wick cleared out quick as anything. He didn’t bring you down to the beach, did he?”
“And what if he did?”
“Dear God, Moira, you’re not the police.”
“Nor is Jude Osric, last I recall.” My coat and violin case are set on a chair next to the piano. I open the case, taking stock of my instrument.
“No, but he is keeper. I wouldn’t have troubled him if she wasn’t at the shore.”
I run my fingers along the neck of my violin, down to the bridge, the graceful spruce front. I think back on Jude winding up his sister’s music box, the melancholy tune of it. I close the case and snatch up my coat.
“Moira, listen,” says Peter, “the Council’s not best pleased. Apparently there’s been discussion over the hunting ban, whether they should be looking at the restrictions.”
I predicted as much, suspected it at least, but hearing him voice the situation puts a hard lump in my throat. “Why?” I ask. I don’t know what else to say.
The look he gives me is a sympathetic one—the kind given when there’s nothing left to be done. It’s the look I received from nurses when they told me my father was dying. “You know why,” he replies. “Two islanders are dead and the month isn’t even out. They can’t ignore that.”
Curious, I hold his gaze. “Don’t you think their deaths odd, Peter?”
“You’re still going around imagining it’s murder? I’d let that idea sink.”
I tighten my grip on my violin case. “I’ll do what I like.”
He rests a hand on the doorknob, releasing a sigh. “There’s going to be a meeting about it—they’re holding it here, a few days from now—if you want to attend.”
I nod and walk back out onto the sunlit dance floor. I feel Peter’s eyes on me as I leave. Specks of dust still hang suspended in the air, and I want to trap them all in the palm of my hand. But I need more than just fanciful wishes now—I need a miracle.
* * *
A hard wind gusts over the moors as I make my way across it. I tuck my chin against my coat collar, the hem of my dress flicking back and forth. My eyes set upon the blue-and-white tower of the lighthouse. Heading up the path, I try the doorknob, on the off chance Jude has left it unlocked.
Of course he hasn’t.
I knock my knuckles against the wood. I wonder if he’s still up on the gallery deck, if he’s within the glass walls of the lantern room. Minutes pass. I knock again, my fist hammering the door of the cottage. I look around to the empty garden, the hillsides beyond it. A dark melody whispers at my pulse, quickening my heartbeat.
Jude knew I was coming back. I’d told him so, hadn’t I?
The wind changes direction. It pulls strands of hair from my chignon, stings my eyes, and I put my violin case down, turning from the door.
Against the sun’s glare, I track someone coming up from the harbor. My breath rushes out of me, relief sinking in. Jude must’ve been needed at the docks.
I step forward and raise a hand to shade my eyes. As the person nears, however, I realize it’s not Jude at all. A smaller boy runs through the heather in my direction—Terry Young, red-faced and wide-eyed. He almost crashes into me.
“Miss Alexander.” He stares as though seeing something terrible in my place. “Oh God, they told me to find you.”
Fear pricks my heart. Jude still hasn’t answered the door—and I don’t think he’s inside to answer.
“What’s the matter?”
Terry leans over, hands on knees, panting. “Wick,” he says. “Jude Osric.” He glances up. The terror in his eyes is black and hard as stone. “He’s been attacked.”
And the alarm bells sound, high and clear, from the harbor.
Sirens.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG—I was perhaps nine, Jude eleven—our fathers set us to the task of fixing broken lobster pots. We sat together on the floor of the boathouse, and I threaded twine with a needle, while Jude took up hammer and nails to set the frame to rights. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard it when he slipped, slamming the hammer against his thumb rather than the nailhead. He inhaled, sharp, shocked, right before his mouth opened in a silent scream.