by Kelly Powell
On our way across the moors, I thought it’d be wise for Jude to make the rounds as soon as we arrived, to talk to as many folks as possible before the Council held its vote. He’s the keeper of the light, recently recovered from siren song. Those from Dunmore will heed his words.
I start in the direction of the stage. Detective Thackery stands near it with the rest of the police department, and an uncomfortable queasiness curls my insides. The floor feels abruptly uneven beneath my feet; I concentrate on breathing past the dread blooming up through my ribs.
When Thomas Earl steps up to the lectern, Jude finds me again. There’s hope in his dark eyes, in the curve of his mouth. I clasp his hand and hold tight.
Earl’s gaze rests on Jude. He says, “Good of you to join us, Mr. Osric.”
“I’m glad to be here, sir,” says Jude, grinning back. “My father played a part in establishing the hunting ban—I feel it’s only right that I do my best to uphold it.”
There’s some murmuring at this, whispers passed from person to person. From what I can catch, it isn’t altogether disapproving.
Earl raises his eyebrows, but before he can answer, Thackery decides to speak.
He says, “A pity that Wick still sounds unwell.”
My free hand curls into a fist.
Jude’s smile falters. “Excuse me?”
Detective Thackery looks not to us, but to the Council. “It’s quite clear, I think, that Mr. Osric is still fascinated by sirens. If he were of sounder mind, he’d surely want the hunts reinstated.”
Jude pales. He says, “That’s not true,” but it comes out so quiet no one seems to hear him but me. Clearing his throat, he says again, “That’s not true, Detective.”
“And you’re to be the judge of that, are you?”
I tip my chin up. In a cutting voice, I say, “If Jude Osric were still under the siren’s sway, he’d be making for the sea, not standing here before you all.”
Yet I see the effect of Thackery’s words, the seeds of doubt they sow. I can imagine the thoughts winding through the crowd. Poor Wick. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Sirens took away his family.
With a heavy sigh Thomas Earl says, “Those in favor of reinstating the hunts?”
The ayes that follow are numerous. I stand there, holding Jude’s hand, and listen as my father’s work unravels before me, ignored, forgotten.
“And those opposed?”
Our voices are a bleak contrast to those that came before. They echo in the crowded hall, the nays too few to change the outcome.
“Very well,” Earl says, sounding like a man defeated. “The ban shall be lifted as of tomorrow.”
I stare up at him. I feel as though I’ve been dragged down into deep water—how I suppose it must feel—everything cold and endless, distorted and strange. The shadows of the hall seem to bend, twisting out of shape.
I stumble back, pulling Jude alongside. My ears ring as I push my way through the crowd, the dread I’d felt between my ribs sinking into my stomach. We reach the doors, and I yank my hand from Jude’s. I stalk away from the hall, from the people on the street.
Head down, Jude follows me in silence. I can’t look at him; I can barely breathe through the pain in my chest. Part of me didn’t believe it would happen—even now I can’t fathom that men will be hunting sirens as soon as tomorrow.
I reach the gates of St. Cecilia’s. Morning fog lingers over the yard, creeping across the grass and slanted headstones.
Without looking at Jude I say, “I can get myself home from here.”
He doesn’t move. “Are you sure you don’t want—”
I turn toward him. He takes off his cap, holding it in both hands. I can see his eyes, how soft and sad they are. “Moira,” he says, “I want to help you.” His voice wavers, and he swallows hard. “Why won’t you let me help?”
I look back at the churchyard. The wind nips at my fingers, and I feel that numbness extend to my heart.
“I’d like to be alone.”
“Moira, please…”
Turning on him, I hiss, “What did I say?” My hands are fists at my sides, and the darkness inside me surges, set on doing damage. “Just leave me alone, Jude Osric.”
He takes a single step back. With the look on his face, it’s as if I’ve slapped him. Guilt rushes in like a tidal wave, crushing me beneath its weight.
His eyes flit away from mine. In a small voice he says, “Right, then,” and his mouth twists, as though he’s trying to conceal his sorrow, to stow it away inside himself.
He brushes past me to continue down the street. I half want to call him back, but my pride is too great to allow it. Instead, I watch him go, watch as he ducks his head and buries his hands in his pockets.
He doesn’t look back.
I push open the gate to the churchyard. It’s quiet here, and cold, the smell of wet earth and stone so strong I taste them on my tongue. The stones are dark and discolored, the salt air eating at their edges. I wander through the rows until I come to the foot of my father’s grave.
In Memory of
GAVIN ALEXANDER
Loving Husband and Father
I sink to my knees, heedless of the damp. I trace over the letters carved deep into the stone and close my eyes, wondering if he sees me from where he is.
“I’m sorry, Da,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I can’t…”
A lump rises in the back of my throat.
“They’ll be going out tomorrow to hunt the sirens. I tried to stop it. I tried to keep them safe. Now everything is falling apart, and I don’t… I don’t know how to put it right.” I curl up, digging my fingers into the wet grass. “If you were here, you could fix this. I know you could.” I grit my teeth as the tears I’ve kept in check well up and spill onto my cheeks. “I need you here, Da.”
In the silence of the graveyard, I tip my forehead to the earth. “I wish you could come back. I wish the Osrics would come back. I miss you all so much. Every night I wonder if it’ll hurt less in the morning, and it never does.”
Then I start to cry. And once I start, once I let it out, I can’t seem to stow it back away inside me. I think I won’t be able to stop.
“Da,” I choke out, “what am I supposed to do?”
A long while later, when I’m worn through and shivering in my coat, I catch the sound of footsteps. I scrub my face with my sleeve and look at who’s come to collect me. She stands with her hands clasped, melancholic. Her eyes regard the headstone before settling on me.
“Moira,” says my mother, “let’s go home.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AFTER WE GET IN, I wash up, slip on a clean dress, and look myself over in the mirror. I’m still red-eyed and wan, but neither is a lasting mark. If I’m to save the sirens, it won’t be done crying over my father’s grave. I also doubt it’s something he’d like seeing.
In the kitchen, my mother has prepared tea, and I take my seat at the table. As I do, my thoughts turn to Jude Osric. I fidget with the butter dish, biting my lip. I’ll have to go apologize to him.
My mother sits down across from me. I ask her, “How did you know where to find me?”
“Mr. Osric came by the house,” she tells me. “Said I should check on you.” She holds my gaze over her teacup, and her expression softens. “He seemed quite concerned.”
“I kissed him the other day.”
I keep my voice casual, glancing away from her as I set my teacup in its saucer. The words are meant to be an olive branch between us—a secret I’m prepared to share. And I prefer to tell her of my relationship with Jude myself, rather than have her hear it secondhand from someone else.
She stills, but the pause lasts only for a moment.
“Do you love him?”
I look up, startled. It’s not what I expected her to say. Judgment, I anticipated. A lecture on impulsiveness, perhaps, a word of caution. Not questions of the heart.
My cheeks warm as I stare at the plates cluttering the
table. “I think I’ve loved him for a long while.”
My mother nods like I’ve told her something indisputable. “He seemed in much better health at the meeting. How’s he getting on?”
“He’s quite well, I believe.”
Or he was before I snapped at him. I think back on his face when I told him to leave, the hurt in his eyes before he walked away.
My heart aches as I remember I left my violin on Jude’s kitchen table.
“Tomorrow,” my mother starts, “I don’t want you going near the harbor. You’ll come into town with me.”
Imagined possibilities flare to life in my mind’s eye: the hunting boats casting off with the tide, cans of poison piled in the boathouse, siren blood staining the pier as their bodies are carried ashore.
I swallow.
It isn’t going to happen. I won’t let it happen. Jude and I will catch Thackery, and this whole business will be put to rest.
I wish I’d not missed Mass on Sunday. A few prayers seem more than in order.
Quietly I say, “You can’t keep me from the harbor forever.”
My mother purses her lips, but she doesn’t push the issue. Silence falls between us, but it feels tainted, burdened, weighed by the unknown.
After our tea I head out, making my way toward the lighthouse.
The sky is dove-gray and the first drops of rain land in my hair, but I tuck my chin into my coat collar, continuing along the path. The blue-and-white tower stands stark against the gloom, its light arcing out to sea. I set my sights on it as I cross the moors.
When I’m close, an inexplicable shiver runs over my spine. Something feels… off. I hesitate, studying the space in front of me, until I realize—the front door is ajar.
Not all the way open, just a thin gap where it hasn’t been set on the latch. Except Jude never leaves the door unlatched. Not that I can remember.
I suddenly feel very, very cold.
I’m left at a standstill when I reach the threshold, staring at the bright blue door. I imagine Detective Thackery coming to call while I was busy sobbing over what was already lost. I imagine Jude dying, Jude dead, his blood darkening the floorboards.
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.
Thack
ery 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.”
Because I am not Jude.
There exists inside me a blackheartedness that wants only for siren song and danger and blood. In this moment it’s a very present part—an arrow that sights along the revolver to the space right between Thackery’s eyes.
I’ll kill him and take immense pleasure in doing so.
“Moira,” says Jude. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Thackery grabbed him. He has to lean back from the knife at his throat. “Moira, don’t.”
Don’t what? I want to ask. Don’t kill Thackery? Don’t save your life?
Before I have a chance, Thackery pushes the knife hard against Jude’s neck.
A thin trail of blood snakes down toward his collar, and on impulse I gasp, “Stop.”