I sit up against the headboard, wondering if this is a dream. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
“Can’t sleep,” he says, in a tone that sounds heavy with sleep nonetheless. His voice is thick because of it—drawn-out, rounded vowels, like the wind caught in the long grass of the moors. And it isn’t that Jude can’t sleep; he just doesn’t want to.
Almost a year after his family died, Jude told me a little of his nightmares. How sometimes he’ll find himself on the cliff’s edge, watching again as their boat is torn apart; or he’s lost at sea, tossed back and forth by the waves, the sky pitch-black above him. On those nights, the sirens take him—tearing at his skin until he screams himself awake.
I pat the sheets beside me. “Come here.”
Jude pads across the room, his bare feet soundless on the wood. I tuck my feet up, and he sits down on the bed, tipping his head back against the wall.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
“How are you feeling?”
Lifting a hand, he tips it side to side. “Fine for now. How about you?”
“Fine for now.”
He turns his head to look at me. Lightning flashes across his face. “We can fix this,” he whispers. “I promise you. We still have time.”
“And if we can’t? What then?”
So much effort has been put into demonizing the sirens—years spent turning them into something nightmarish—that some have forgotten not all monsters are found beneath the waves.
Islanders can be monsters too.
Jude swallows. “I’m sorry, Moira.”
It’s a very clear echo of my words to him yesterday evening, and that fact alone squeezes the air from my lungs. I press my hand against the mattress, fingers digging into cotton. In that same echo I say, “Not surprising, is it?”
Jude makes a soft sound in the back of his throat. “Perhaps I can convince them,” he says. “If I tell them—if I speak to Mr. Earl…”
I let out a sigh. “You’re just one person, Jude.”
He cups my cheek, brushing his thumb over my cheekbone. “That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”
Pushing back the blankets, I shift until I’m sitting beside him. I draw him down, and he rests his head in my lap. Carefully, I run my fingers through his curls. His hair is not soft, but stiff from salt air, which pleases me. It marks his place here, his work, as well as his calloused hands.
“Do you know the story,” I begin, “of the couple who lived in a lighthouse upon the cliff’s edge?”
“My lighthouse?” he asks.
“No. This one was much older. A lighthouse on an island that did not yet have a name.”
Lightning illuminates the room. There’s a crack on the opposite wall I’ve not noticed before.
“The husband was its keeper, but his wife was the one who cherished it,” I tell him. “Except the lighthouse was not built well, and there came a day when the wife leaned too far across the gallery railing only to have it snap beneath her. She fell to her death, leaving her husband to grieve—all alone in his lighthouse by the sea.
“He worked hard every day afterward, rebuilding the tower so there was not one crack left behind. It’s said his wife haunted him until he died, and continues to wander the cliff side even now—singing laments to the sea that took her.”
“Not a very happy tale,” Jude comments, sitting up.
“Nor is this a very happy island.”
His hand finds mine in the darkness. “Sometimes,” he says, sounding quiet and shy. “Sometimes it is.”
I smile. “Once there was a boy who loved the lighthouse that he cared for. And then a delightful violinist girl came along, and the two fancied themselves detectives.”
“Much better,” he says. I can hear the answering grin in his voice.
“But that story doesn’t have an ending.”
Jude sighs, very softly. He says, “Not yet,” and I hope he’ll finally allow himself to sleep.
I’m still awake when his breathing evens out, his head lolling to one side. I study his face in the dim light. I’ve never really noticed how fine-boned he is, or how his ears stick out a bit. I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Jude,” I say, “you oughtn’t sleep like that.”
He drags his eyes open. “Hmm? Oh. Sorry. I’ll just…” He shuffles off the bed. I watch him go, some part of me still wound tight with worry. How will we ever prove the crimes of Thackery and Dylan? How will we do it before sirens pay the cost?
At the door, Jude pauses. Rain pounds steadily outside, wind gusting hard against the windowpane. He says, “We’ll figure something out,” as though I’ve spoken my thoughts aloud.
I set my jaw. The hours and days we’ve spent investigating stretch out in front of me, worn thin, almost to the point of breaking.
“Good night, Jude.”
“Good night.”
He heads back down the hall, and I lie in bed, left to fight whatever nightmares await in the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TWILLENGYLE IN THE MORNING is made of mist and rain. Dark greens and browns paint the moors, rocky hillsides pitted with shadows. My violin rests snug against my shoulder as I slide the bow across its strings. It’s a slow song, haunted, singing of melancholy and grief. I’ve been playing for the good part of an hour, pouring out all the music welled up inside me.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, I set the violin down and begin to pack up.
“Have you even had breakfast?” asks Jude.
I’ve been on the cliff since sunrise. I watched the tide come in, clouds gather on the horizon, four sirens bask in the shallows before diving into deeper water.
Yes, I wanted to call to them. Swim far away, so deep they cannot find you.
This island is no longer a safe place for your kind.
Behind me Jude says, “I can make tea, if you like.”
I glance around to where he stands, arms folded across his wool sweater, before looking back at the beach. I dig my teeth into my lower lip. Violin case in hand, I stand up, and Jude walks over to take my free hand in his. His cheeks are a little pink from cold, his eyes dark as autumn.
“I think,” he says, “I know a way to expose Thackery.”
A gust of wind off the sea tangles his hair, just as it tugs at my dress. My mind whirls back to Connor and Nell—always, always Connor and Nell—and I can’t stand the possibility of their deaths going unanswered for.
I couldn’t let the sirens be held accountable for that particular cruelty.
I squeeze Jude’s fingers and say, “I’m listening.”
In the kitchen we sit down across from each other. Jude taps two fingers on the table, and I look at him, expectant. He says, “We’ll catch him in the act.”
He gives me a moment to mull over the words.
When I have, I frown. “How do you mean?”
“I can send him a message to meet me on the beach. I’ll tell him I’ve proof of the murders.” Jude skims his fingers across the tabletop. “He’s bound to want to get rid of me after that.”
Leaning forward, he continues. “Then we notify the rest of the police department, tell them to head down to the beach as well. If I can stall Thackery long enough, they’ll see what’s going on, and”—he presses his hands together, opening them like a book, palms up—“we have him.”