by Kelly Powell
“They attacked our Wick.”
I don’t know who says the words, but the response they receive is instantaneous. The noise in the hall swells, an oncoming wave. I shut my eyes. It doesn’t block out the sound of Jude’s name on everyone’s lips.
Our Wick.
As keeper, Jude Osric is the one meant to protect us from the sea. His encounter with the sirens—more than anything—demonstrates just how susceptible to their song we are.
“The nature of the sirens is a delicate matter,” says Earl. “Heavy losses to their number could result in a decline in tourism…”
From nearby someone says, “So you’re saying we should keep them on just so a few tourists can ogle and likely get killed doing it? Have you been addled by siren song yourself, sir?”
Others near me look decidedly torn, whispering among themselves. I hear my father’s name, and hope creeps into my heart. The hunting ban hadn’t come about without support—it hadn’t lasted all these years without people standing by it, upholding it.
Calum Bryce rises from his chair and walks to the edge of the stage. He murmurs something in Earl’s ear before taking his place at the lectern. “Mr. Earl raises valid points,” he says to the crowd. “Like it or not, our island relies on sirens to survive.
“With that said, precautions must be put in place. The sirens, now more than ever, exemplify the dangers we face at sea and along our shores. It’s a blessing, indeed, not to have experienced the consequences of their song within your own circle of loved ones.”
Where Thomas Earl was rusty, Calum Bryce is refined. He is Lochlan’s councilor and looks sharp in his dark suit and tie, polished as a new penny. He glances back to Earl, who gives a single, tired nod in return. I fear I’ve missed some secret conversation between the two of them.
His eyes on the crowd, Bryce persists. “The deaths of Connor and Nell should not slip by without note, as we have allowed so many others to do in the past. With this in mind, the Council aims to discontinue the ban on siren hunting, effective immediately.”
No, I think, except I must say it, as Brendan turns to give me a look.
“Those in favor?”
A chorus of ayes echoes through the dance hall. Dozens of them, contrasting with my own silence. Brendan, also, to my surprise, does not lend his voice to the vote. Instead, he mutters, “Oughtn’t we wait for Wick?”
Hearing this, some of the fishermen glance uneasily at one another. Doubt seeps into their voices—we ought to; he is keeper—and the words carry, pass around, until they reach Dylan Osric.
He says loudly, “I think I can speak for my nephew.”
Brendan looks around to eye him through the crowd. “I think not, Mr. Osric. He is, after all, no longer your ward. I reckon he can speak for himself.”
“And what do you imagine he’ll say?” someone asks. “He was just attacked—sirens stole away his family!”
“Then he’ll vote to dismantle the ban,” says Brendan. “Either way, he has a stake in this. Miss Alexander here tells me he’s on the mend.”
Something flares up inside me. I shift my attention to the stage, locking eyes with Calum Bryce. “Yes,” I announce. “He is quite recovered. As Dunmore’s keeper, he ought to have a say. Another day or two…”
Bryce rubs a hand across his forehead. He looks to the other councilors.
I am so, so still.
“Tomorrow, then,” he says. “We shall reconvene here. You would do well to inform Mr. Osric, Miss Alexander.”
As people start filing out toward the street, I catch Dylan Osric exchanging words with Detective Thackery. They head for the back room by the stage, and without thinking twice about it, I follow after them. I duck into the unlit space just in time to see Thackery disappear through the side door, the one leading out into the alley.
He closes the door behind him. Pressing back against the wall, I set my hand on the knob, pulse heaving as I ever so slowly crack it open. Though I can’t see them, they must be just a little ways from the door. The sound of their conversation drifts over to me.
“—of course he let her go,” Thackery is saying. “Do you even know the boy at all? Your own nephew?”
“It’s not him,” Dylan replies gruffly. “It’s that Moira Alexander.”
“You shouldn’t have left him with the siren.”
Low and unyielding, Dylan retorts, “You shouldn’t have killed Nell Bracken. Connor, aye, he needed to go, but—”
“She heard him talking in class. Did you know that? She knew there was something going on up at the light. She told me as much.”
I stare at the dusty piano. I feel fixed in place, panic seizing my muscles, my heart crashing in my chest.
Out in the alley, a boot heel scrapes against the cobbles. Dylan says, “This is getting out of hand. It has gotten out of hand.”
“Tomorrow—if the ban—”
“Jude won’t vote in favor of the hunts. You think I don’t know him? He won’t do it.”
Thackery is silent.
And just as silently I push the door closed. I’ve guessed this. I’ve waited for this. But that doesn’t stop a chill from running up my spine. There’s no victory in the knowing.
The truth aches like an open wound.
* * *
I spend that night at the lighthouse. After dinner, after telling Jude all that I’d heard at the dance hall, we end up crawling into our beds exhausted just as the weather takes a turn for the worse. Heavy rain lashes against the window of the guest room. I stare up at the ceiling, contemplating my failures of the past few days. Each forms a thread like the cuffs of Jude’s frayed sweaters. A thread for Connor, his blood washed away in the storm, for Nell, who found herself caught up in the same secret, a thread for Thackery, who tied the two together. A thread for the sirens and the hunting parties soon to come, a thread for Jude Osric, because I have dragged him into all of this.
I must drift off then, as I’m startled awake by a flash of blue-white lightning. Seconds later a low boom of thunder follows it. I turn over in bed. The night feels like a solid weight on my chest, pressing in from every side.
Between one strike of lightning and the next, there’s a soft knock at the door. The knob turns, and I see Jude standing, glassy-eyed and pale, on the threshold.
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 p
ress 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.”
I raise a brow. “That,” I say, “is a terrible idea.”
Jude looks crestfallen. “And what’s wrong with it?”
“You’re not baiting Thackery with your own life. If anyone’s going to be the lure, it ought to be me.”
“No.” He shakes his head, eyes wide. “No, it oughtn’t.”
“Oh, I see. It’s all right for you to do it, but not the other way around?”
He drops his gaze. I push up from the table, grateful when my hands don’t shake as I smooth over the front of my dress. With his eyes still lowered, Jude says softly, “You understand, don’t you? Why I don’t want you to?”
He looks up at me, and I tell him, “We’ll think of something else.”
My violin case rests on the table. Jude glances to it as he pulls at the loose threads along the cuff of his sweater. He says only, “I need to tend to the light before we leave.”
When he heads into the tower, I flip the clasps on my case. My flyer from the schoolhouse is still folded up inside. I take it out, my eyes fixing upon the slight tear at the top of the page.
And I wonder if Nell suffered when she died.
And I wonder if Connor had been afraid.
The Council meeting looms over my thoughts. I’m sure Jude will be able to convince some of the fisherfolk to side with the hunting ban because they trust him—because they love him. I can’t predict the rest. Thackery will be there and likely so will Dylan. I don’t know what they’ll do if the ban remains intact. My stomach twists as I consider the possibility of finding another islander bleeding to death on the beach when Jude and I could’ve done something to stop it.
We need to uncover their crimes—and quickly.
Closing my case, I wait for Jude in the hall. He comes back into the cottage, silent as he helps me into my coat, expression unreadable as he tugs on his boots. He reaches for his coat, and I grab hold of his hand. He smiles then, small but reassuring. Curling his fingers around mine, he presses a kiss to my knuckles.
“It’ll be all right, Moira.”
I pull him to me, kissing him on the mouth. He brings his other hand to the small of my back, holding me close. He’s warm against me, and I wrap one hand around the back of his neck, my fingers brushing the rough wool of his collar.
“Moira,” he says, “I need to thank you.”<
br />
“For what?”
“Staying here.” This time, when he smiles, it creases the corners of his eyes. My blood sings with the knowledge that I put it there. “I know I wasn’t the world’s easiest patient.”
“Siren victims usually aren’t.”
He raises a hand to cup my cheek. I know what he might say—that the meeting will go well, that the sirens will be safe—but I’ve a splinter of fear in my heart, one I’ve felt since waking this morning, and I turn away before he can offer empty promises.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Jude puts on his coat and cap. Giving me one last look, he unlatches the front door.
I walk out into the sunless morning. However much I hope for the best, I find myself preparing, inescapably, for the worst.
* * *
This meeting is not like the last.
For starters, there are far more people. I recognize faces from Lochlan, solitary folk from the remote stone houses at the northern edges of the island.
It’s all of us, together. Some are still sleepy-eyed, blankets wrapped around their shoulders, and those who look disheveled from the early ferry crossing. Children stand around barefoot outside the hall, holding cups of tea, pieces of burnt toast from breakfast.
The second thing I notice is how many eyes light up upon seeing Jude Osric.
He gets clapped on the shoulder, shaken, pulled into tight embraces—until he’s as unkempt as the ones who have just come off the ferry. He looks well pleased by the attention, albeit a little dazed. Some fishermen take my hands in theirs, leaning close, telling me, You did well, looking after him. I’ll be saying a prayer of thanks for you tonight.
My heart swells, but then we manage to get inside the dance hall, and I see the arguments have already started up. There are men who think it’s a wicked act to kill a siren, while others think it can bring storms, bad luck, all manner of ills.
I touch the iron charm in my pocket, looking to Jude. His coat sleeve hides his bandages, the stitches along his arm, but that doesn’t change the fact that his survival came with scars. He meets my gaze, nods, and heads off into the crowd.
