But it was still dark out, the first rays of light just spilling over the horizon.
Cairn slowly crept down the stairs, and almost immediately found Delphine. She had a rucksack overflowing with clothing slung over her shoulder, and she was propping a note against the rock sculpture on the entryway table.
Perched on the bottom step, Cairn flipped the light switch. She crossed her arms. “Little late to be leaving Santa your wishlist. Didn’t you see the pile of presents under the tree? He’s already come and gone.”
Delphine’s guilty grimace said everything. “I was going to tell you.”
Cairn flicked her eyes to the envelope with her name scrawled on the front. “Clearly. And if I read the note, what would I learn?”
Delphine sighed and dropped her bag to the floor. “While I was brooding for the last few days, trying to adjust to the new normal, my mind kept coming back to Sable Noir, the island where your mother found me. I realized I’m not going to be able to come to peace with who I am—with what I am—until I’ve seen where I’ve been. I …” She cleared her throat. “I found a boat that’s taking a group of archaeologists and volcanologists to the island. It embarks tomorrow from Rio de Janeiro, and my flight to Brazil leaves in two hours.”
“Then I’ll come with you,” Cairn offered. “I can throw a bag together, and Vulcan can feed Squall while I’m—” She stopped when she noticed Delphine biting her lower lip. “Oh. You want to go alone.”
Delphine’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I think I have to. The foundation of the life I thought I was living just crumbled. I have to build a new one from the ground up before I can resume all this. I need to walk the black sand beaches, to wade through the glowing waters at night. I need to pay my respects to Baron at the tar pits for all he did to try to protect me, and sit on the edge of the lagoon where the dolphins towed that bassinet, so I can reflect on all the events that brought me here.” She took a step forward and brushed the hair from Cairn’s face. Cairn flinched at first, resentful, but then melted under the touch of Delphine’s fingers against her cheekbone. “And then,” Delphine continued, “once I’ve seen the world through new eyes, I promise I’ll come back to you.”
Their lips came together, salty with their mingled tears. Cairn believed Delphine when she said she would return, but still part of her feared that this was the last kiss they’d share. If there was anything this year had taught her, it was that so much could happen in the span of a month.
People could change dramatically overnight with the right push.
After a minute, Cairn pulled away. She held up a finger. “Excuse me for one second.” Then she disappeared off to the kitchen.
Cairn returned with one arm behind her back. “Hold out your hands.” Delphine did as she was instructed, and Cairn crumpled the mystery item into her palm.
Delphine studied the breadcrumbs in her hands. “The rock, now this … I will never get used to your cryptic presents.”
Cairn opened the front door. “Leave a trail on your way out. So you can find your way back.”
Despite it all, Delphine laughed. “This trail will get me about as far as … the mailbox.”
“I can go back and get the rest of the loaf,” Cairn offered. “Now get out of here—you’re upsetting the cat.”
They both looked at Squall, who was sulking on the stairwell’s balustrade.
They’d run out of time anyway—a taxi pulled up in front of the house. They kissed again as the cold Christmas morning air rushed around them. When the driver honked, Delphine reluctantly tore herself away. She gave Cairn a final simmering look as she stepped out onto the front stoop, backlit by the taxi’s headlights. Then she dropped a single breadcrumb to the snow-covered stones. “See you soon, Delacroix …”
When she was gone, Cairn curled up on the staircase for what felt like an hour. She didn’t emerge from her brooding until she heard the crunch of tires on the snow outside. When the front door opened, she thought that maybe Delphine had changed her mind about leaving.
But the silhouette in the doorframe was much taller. It was her father, looking healthier and more well-slept than when he’d first left for the research trip. A youthful glow had returned to his cheeks.
“Merry Christmas, Cairn,” he said.
Cairn rushed forward into his open arms and immediately began to cry. “I thought you weren’t coming back from your fieldwork until after New Year’s,” she said with her face buried in his cashmere sweater.
He patted her back reassuringly. “The great thing about rocks is that they generally stay exactly where you left them. Except in cases of avalanche or erosion.”
Cairn released a wet laugh. “I’m so glad you’re here, you big nerd.”
“That’s an awful lot of tears for Christmas,” her father said, stroking her head. “Why do I feel like I missed something?”
Cairn stared past him at the footprints trailing from the doorstep off into the snowy morning. “You have no idea.”
Epilogue
Blood and Barnacles
Off the coast of Miami, a hundred-foot luxury yacht weighed anchor. A party raged on the Sea Diva’s top deck long into the night, laser lights flashing, bass thumping. All the while, the guests crushed champagne until the electric neon skyline of South Beach blurred together.
The host of honor: Amalia McLeod, the platinum-selling international pop sensation, who was preparing for three consecutive nights of sold-out shows at the Arena.
It was almost dawn by the time the last of the guests passed out, strewn around the deck amidst the empty bottles of Veuve.
When he was sure they were asleep, Njord rose from the Atlantic on a plume of water. It gently deposited the assassin onto the stern of the ship. Water dripped from his top knot and his beard as he moved stealthily across the deck.
As Norse god of the sea, Njord had a special talent for sinking ships. Storms happened unexpectedly all the time, and when a client needed a wealthy mark to drown in a way that looked like an accident, they called him. Of course, in order to allay any suspicion, there could be no survivors, and the bigger the body count, the more it wouldn’t look like a targeted hit.
Celebrities, business icons, world leaders—they all owned yachts, and no one was safe from Njord’s maelstrom.
Njord wanted to believe it was just about the money, but deep down, he enjoyed watching as his targets woke up with a wall of water rising around them, the panicked wide-eyed terror as they drew in their last breath, the dull look of resignation as the world went black around them—
And their body’s final spasms as it grasped for oxygen that wasn’t there.
Njord slipped into Amalia McLeod’s opulent master bedroom and locked the door behind him. Through the darkness, he silently approached the canopy bed and pulled the digital camera from his wetsuit. His client wanted a final candid photo of the pop star before the waves dragged her to her watery grave. For a quarter-million-dollar bonus, who was he to refuse?
Njord loomed over the lump in the bed and carefully drew back the covers.
He found himself staring down at a platinum blonde wig wrapped around a coconut.
Something pricked his neck. He grasped for the bug that had bitten him. Instead, he pulled out a metal dart.
“Everyone on this boat was having a grand old time,” a woman’s voice said behind him, “yet you had to be a wet barnacle.”
Njord hadn’t noticed the occupant who’d been sitting in the room’s leather chair, watching him this entire time. At first, he thought it was Amalia—she sounded young enough.
But then the figure stood up into the moonlight streaming through one of the portholes.
Illuminated in the blue glow, two piercing eyes gazed out from behind a dark, coral mask. Sharpened walrus tusks protruded from either side of her jaw.
Njord rubbed the wound on his neck. A fog had settled over him. “I will fill your lungs with brine,” he growled, “until your final pathetic pleas for mercy come
out as bubbles.”
The costumed figure took another step toward him. “Someone tried that once. But I reemerged from the depths stronger than before. Now I protect the vulnerable from the likes of killers like you.”
Njord drew the sailor’s knife from his belt. “I am the sinker of ships. I am the bane of sailors and the maker of widows. Do you think I fear you?”
“You should if you know what’s good for you,” she said. After a pause, she pointed behind him to the hulking figure that had just lumbered into the cabin. “And you should definitely be terrified of him.”
Njord spun around—and found himself staring into the hungry eyes of a polar bear. It opened its massive jaws just inches from his face and roared.
Acknowledgments
It’s hard for me to articulate how much this story means to me.
This Eternity of Masks and Shadows—originally titled Sedna—is the confluence of a lot of the genres that have shaped me as a writer throughout my life: the vigilante and superhero stories I consumed as a kid, the mythologies I fell in love with as a teenager, and the murder mysteries and noir I gravitate to as an adult.
It’s also a love note to the city of Boston, my home of many years and a setting that I can’t seem to stop heavily featuring in my work. I conceptualized most of this book while taking long walks around the city—often ten miles at a time while I agonized over various plot points and cleared my head. (I’m surprised my Fitbit didn’t explode from counting the steps.) I estimate that I wrote more than half of this book at my favorite bar, The Hawthorne, where I would write feverishly into my little notebook, fueled by good cocktails and grilled cheese.
In the same way that this book is the culmination of so many stories and places that I love, it would never have happened without the support of so many people I love.
To the love of my life, Annika, for having the courage to marry a brooding writer and for filling our home with laughter in between chapters.
To my agent, Ginger Clark, for our brunches and for suggesting thoughtful revision notes that inspired one of my favorite chapters in this book.
To my ever-growing family: Mom, Dad, Erin, Kelsey, Ray, Victoria, Brooke, and Luke; Eric and Lisa Jensen; Lou and Joan Martins; Alison, Brian, Jessie, Jake, and Julia Clew; and the expansive network of Knights and Murphys.
To Lloyd and Ellen Knight, my beloved grandparents who championed the arts throughout their lives and encouraged the creative impulse in each of us.
To everyone who has had to listen to me rant about the saga of writing and publishing this book over the last four years, particularly: Bernard and Lili Ozarowski, Patrick Alessi, Steve Dicheck, Chris Keenan, Kevin Mullaney, Dave Linehan, Jeff Green, Stephen and Sarah Kress, Jessica Angotti and Joe DeAngelis, Jennifer Riopel, Jillian Melnyk, Scott Tracey, Zoraida Cordova, Alexandra Mandzak and Mike Marshall, Dustin and Justine Martin, and Mary Kole.
To every reader who has taken the time to send me words of encouragement or a picture of themselves or their children reading my books—it might have just been a minute out of your day, but you don’t know how much it has kept me going all of these years.
This one’s for you.
A special preview of
Nightingale, Sing
Within the hallowed green walls of Fenway Park, forty thousand Red Sox fans rose to their feet. They held their collective breath as a monstrous hit from Gabriel Carrera climbed higher, higher, until the tiny white meteor began its descent toward the right-field fence. When the baseball sailed just clear of the foul pole, the explosive cheers from the stadium could be heard as far away as the Charles River.
Three blocks east, Jack Tides fled through the dark community gardens. With a postcard clutched in one hand and a knife in the other, he was trying to get to a mailbox before the men in the black van found him.
Nox’s boys were coming to kill him tonight.
In the darkness, Jack blindly smashed into a lawn chair and nearly skewered himself on his own blade as he fell. He landed hard in a zucchini patch and briefly lay there dazed, listening to the sounds of the Boston night, searching for any traces of his pursuers. For now, he could only hear the distant commotion from Fenway and the occasional car rushing down Park Drive.
That didn’t mean they weren’t still out there.
If it were anyone else after him, Jack might make a run for the stadium. After all, who would dare execute him in front of thousands of witnesses?
But this was Horace Nox, the nightclub owner, the gangster, the one man in Boston you did not fuck with.
And Jack had stolen from him the one thing he treasured most.
Jack gazed off in the direction of Back Bay, where the imposing fifty-two-story Prudential Tower loomed over the tree line. If he made a run for a populated area, like downtown or the stadium, they’d gun him down just the same. If he went to the police, Nox had men on his payroll there, too. And if he tried to hide in the gardens until morning …
He heard the hounds.
There were two of them, barking with feral delight. He could imagine them straining at their leashes, snouts low to the ground as they dragged one of Nox’s men ever closer. They must have picked up his trail where he’d escaped from the museum.
From the sound of it, they’d converge on him in less than a minute.
It was now or never. Jack picked himself up off the dirt and sprinted through the gardens, jumping over makeshift wooden fences, ducking under trellises, and trampling any crops in his way. He clambered up the hillside, and when he stumbled out from between the trees onto Park Drive, that’s when he saw it:
A mailbox. A beacon of hope, its blue paint flaking off in chips, in front of an aging brick apartment building.
Jack took off across the street. A car blared its horn as it swerved to avoid him, but he thundered on, until at last, with a trembling hand, he dropped the crumpled postcard down the mailbox’s gullet.
The metal mouth snapped shut with a resounding clang as it swallowed his little sister’s last chance for survival.
Jack turned back to the road as a taxi came around the bend. He tucked his knife into the waistband of his jeans and waved frantically from the curbside, but the cab was already full with passengers and never even slowed.
Tires screeched behind Jack, as the familiar black van barreled down the street. He prayed that they’d mistake him for an innocent pedestrian, but it was too late—the van accelerated toward him. Jack turned on his heel and sprinted for the bridge.
As he took the corner, his lungs burned and he knew that even though he was giving it everything he had left, the van would catch up in seconds. The decisions he made now, during this short window while he was obscured from view by a cluster of trees, could mean the difference between life and death. So as he reached the crest of the stone bridge that passed over the marshy water of the Fens, he did the only thing he could think of.
He jumped off the bridge.
The fall was quick. One moment he was hurdling over the railing, barely clearing the stone lip. The next he flopped face-first into the murky river below.
As Jack resurfaced, he resisted the urge to gag on the foul-smelling waters, which reeked like a compost pile. He sought refuge beneath the bridge’s arch as quietly as he could, keeping all but his head submerged in the cold, slimy stream. It wasn’t a second too soon. The van came to an abrupt stop directly overhead. Not long after that, the barking of the dogs rose to a crescendo. Their handler silenced them with a gruff “Heel!” Jack could hear the click of their nails on the pavement as they milled about.
The van door slammed with unnecessary force. “How the hell did we lose Tides again?” the driver raved. Jack recognized his voice as belonging to Drumm, the former NFL-linebacker-turned-enforcer.
“He’s a slippery bastard, for sure,” said a man with a Southern drawl and a voice that sounded like the croak of a bullfrog—Pearce, the dog-handler. “The hounds’ll pick up his scent soon enough. Where’d our gal Aries wander o
ff to?”
“The hell if I know,” Drumm replied. “That junkie creeps me out.” He must have flicked his cigarette off the bridge, because the smoldering butt of it landed in the water a few feet from where Jack was concealed. It hissed before the embers died in the murk.
“All right, you circle around the Fens with the van until you spot Tides. I’ll sweep toward Berklee to see if the boys pick up his stink again.”
Moments later, the vehicle peeled away. The hounds resumed their barking, searching in frustration for the fugitive’s scent.
Pressed against the bridge’s stone underbelly, Jack waited until he judged that Nox’s men must be far enough away. Then he cautiously edged out from his hiding place and scrambled up the embankment.
He never saw the wooden croquet mallet coming until it smashed into his knee.
With a sharp cry, he reached for his battered leg, but the mallet whipped around again. This time it collided with his cheekbone.
Jack dropped limply into the marsh waters. As he lay there, half-floating, he was momentarily confused as to which way was up and which way was down.
A figure stepped into view overhead. Jack’s vision was still swimming from the blow to his face, but he could make out the silhouette:
A woman with ram’s horns spiraling out of either side of her head.
The horned woman crouched closer, until Jack could see that she was no demon—in fact, she couldn’t be much older than her early twenties. Her ram’s horns were actually metal prostheses fastened to her skull somewhere beneath the nest of her spiked hair.
“You’ve been a bad boy, Jack Tides,” Aries said in a husky Latin accent. She pressed the shaft of her croquet mallet into Jack’s windpipe. He let out a hollow wheeze and grabbed ahold of the stick, trying to keep his head from being forced under the water. Was this it? Was he going to drown in the Fens, his last minute on earth spent choking on putrid water while his brain died from oxygen deprivation?
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