Between one second and the next, I push open the door.
The hall is empty.
An almost palpable relief rushes over me at the sight. Adrenaline courses hot through my veins. “Jude?” I call.
In my mind I hear a voice like my father’s: Just because he’s not here doesn’t mean he isn’t dead somewhere else. Check the rooms.
There’s a revolver tucked away in the large oak desk. I know this because Llyr Osric showed it to Jude and me one day and taught us where the safety catch was. Then he put the gun in a drawer and said, You will never touch that.
Sliding open the third drawer down, I find it there, looking much the same as it did years ago. It seems Jude has also taken to listening to his dead father’s advice.
I lift it out, careful, feeling the weight of metal in my hand. It feels like death, heavy and cold.
With shaking fingers, I load a few of the chambers and make certain the safety is on. Holding it unnerves me; I slip the gun into my coat pocket.
“Jude,” I say again, voice echoing in the quiet. “Jude, are you here?”
Thackery might be here, I realize. Yet with the revolver in my pocket, I feel invincible. It also makes me reckless, and I run up to the second floor of the cottage, checking each bedroom, before returning downstairs.
When I head into the tower, the iron stairwell echoes my footsteps. I get to the watch room and slip inside. Perhaps Jude went back to Dunmore to talk to Mr. Earl. There are any number of reasons why he isn’t here now, but none to explain why his door is unlatched.
I examine the papers and navigational charts left scattered on his desk. My mouth quirks as I think of Jude bent over in his chair, reading manuals, scribbling in his logbook.
I see a single note in particular, written in Jude’s hand. There’s only one word—inked letters scrawled hastily—but it’s enough to make the breath catch in my throat.
Beach.
I peer out at the shoreline, searching, while my brain spins out the same thought. He didn’t. He didn’t… How could he…?
Two dark figures stand between the cliff and the sea. I make out Jude’s auburn hair, Thackery’s lean frame. Light glints across the object in his hand.
Then I am running, tearing down the stairwell, because Jude is on the beach—and Thackery holds a knife.
* * *
I know how to get down to the beach unseen. Years of watching sirens taught me how to walk in the shadow of crevices, place each footfall on shifting sand without sound. My heart is a trapped bird, fluttering wildly in my chest, but I do not let adrenaline betray me.
I am a ghost in the presence of a killer.
Their voices ring clear as I edge closer. Jude says, “My uncle told me what you did—how you killed Connor for him. I thought it was time we talked.”
I gaze out from the rocky crevice. There’s a knife in Jude’s hand also, but he keeps it limp at his side.
Thackery nods to it. “That doesn’t look like talking.”
Under the veneer of calm, Jude’s face is very pale. He shifts his grip on the knife, holding it half behind his back. “I want to know why you did it,” he says. “Why kill Connor on Dylan’s behalf?”
“I was the one who helped him catch that siren.” Thackery’s voice comes out quiet and slick as oil. He tilts his head and adds, “Your uncle and I agree on quite a few things. I did think, given your history, you’d share our point of view.”
Jude exhales, ragged. “I don’t,” he says. “I don’t understand anything that involves killing someone.”
“Sometimes it’s necessary,” says Thackery. “We would’ve been found out. I daresay you wouldn’t have fared well in that outcome either. You certainly wouldn’t still be keeper.” He taps the flat of his blade against his palm. “Though, as I ought to kill you, that doesn’t much matter now.”
My pulse races. Jude looks ashen, his skin tinged gray. He doesn’t speak, but Thackery continues as if in answer. “It’d guarantee the continuation of the hunts. I’m sure you saw how many were indecisive at the meeting. If they find you bleeding out on the sand, they’ll think you really were still under the siren’s enchantment.”
“Moira knows what you’ve done. If you kill me, she’ll…”
Detective Thackery smiles. It reminds me of the smiles Dylan Osric gave: sharp and thin as a razor’s edge. “She can’t prove it,” he says. “You don’t have any proof at all, do you, Wick?”
Jude’s grip tightens around his knife. He holds it out in front of him, cloudy light flashing on steel. He says, “I could kill you instead,” and this time I hear a faint tremor between his words.
“Will you, now?”
Jude swallows. His eyes are wide, as if he can already see death rushing up to meet him. For a moment he remains like that, pale and still—before he brings his arm back, letting the knife fall to the sand beside him. “You know I won’t.”
“Yes.” Thackery raises his own knife between them. I reach into my pocket, hand coming to rest on the now-warm metal of the revolver. “I know you’re not a killer, Wick. You don’t have the heart for it.”
I step out from the crevice’s shadow. Flipping the safety catch off, there is a small, sharp click in my ears. Jude and Thackery both turn at the sound.
“But I do,” I say. And I point the barrel of the gun straight at Thackery’s head.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THREE THINGS HAPPEN in quick succession:
Jude looks at me, wide-eyed, and breathes, “Moira.”
Thackery grabs him by the collar.
A blade is pressed up against Jude’s throat.
I feel my heart beating as though it’s about to tear free from my rib cage. My hand around the revolver is the only thing to steady me.
This isn’t happening.
Thackery holds my gaze. His eyes are black as onyx and just as hard. “Careful with that, Miss Alexander,” he says.
“Let him go.” The words scrape my throat on their way out. “Let Jude go.”
“Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“The police,” I tell him, not knowing if that’s a lie. This is what Jude planned to do, and I pray to God he has. “I telephoned them before I came.”
Thackery presses the knife close to Jude’s skin. Jude lets out a small, gasped breath, and my thoughts narrow into a single stream of stopstopstopstop.
“You’re lying,” he says.
Steady now, Moira, whispers my father’s voice.
My grip on the revolver doesn’t waver. “Perhaps,” I say. “Are you willing to take that chance?”
“You think I won’t kill him?”
The truth is I know he will. The knife is a real and certain thing in his grasp, ready to slice Jude’s neck in one motion. I can’t risk firing off a shot at this distance, not with Thackery using Jude to shield himself.
Jude will be dead before the police arrive, and the last thing—the last thing I’ll have said to him is this: Just leave me alone, Jude Osric.
I draw in a deep breath. “I think you will cut his throat and leave him for dead,” I say. “But once you do, once you kill Jude Osric, I’ll pull this trigger. I won’t let you live a minute longer.”