“Afternoon,” says Jude. “Did you, ah, receive my wire?”
“It’s the reason we’re standing here,” the taller one says. Thackery, I remember. That’s his name. “You found the boy on the beach?”
“Yes. I—I saw him from the gallery deck. I was doing observations.” Jude swallows. “Do you need me to come along?”
“That’s quite all right,” says Inspector Dale. “If you’ll point us in the right direction, we’ll take it from here.”
Jude gestures to the cliff’s edge as a thin bolt of lightning streaks the sky. “About half a mile down the beach. Near the path.”
Dale replaces his hat, touching the brim. “Much obliged. And were you there as well, Miss Alexander?”
“I’m just visiting.” Irrespective of seeing Connor, I’m not a witness by any means.
“We’ll need a proper statement later, Mr. Osric, you understand,” says Thackery.
Jude nods. “Certainly.”
The two gentlemen step away from the overhang, trudging off toward the cliff path. Jude closes the door and turns to me. “They’ll have it sorted,” he says, like I haven’t been standing here the whole time. A low echo of thunder rumbles through the lighthouse walls.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Are you?” He regards me, expression somber. “Connor—he was your student.”
My heart clenches. “Yes,” I say quietly.
Jude rakes a hand through his hair. The action only succeeds in making the curls less tidy. He says, “There’s not been a siren attack around these parts since last summer.”
I bite my lip. Jude’s expression is shuttered, his gaze stripped bare. I know he’ll be recalling the worst, and more than anything, I wish to spare him from it.
We return to the kitchen and sit down at the table, both of us watching the rain outside, sounding as if the sea herself is pressed against the cottage. I wonder if the beacon light still cuts through the blackness.
“I need to check the lantern room,” Jude says, echoing my thoughts.
And as he takes his leave, I look to my violin case. The thought of playing something for him comes to mind unbidden. When we were children, I’d play whatever song I’d learned most recently, and Jude would collect coins for me in his flat cap. It’s a memory that sinks into my heart like a hook. I wonder if he even remembers.
By the time he comes back downstairs, I’ve found a tin of biscuits and eaten three. Jude has soot across his forehead, a pink flush to his cheeks, but he looks better for it, less shaken. I feel he’s glad for having something to do.
“All’s well?” I ask.
“Well enough.” He takes a drink of cold tea, grimacing at the taste. “I really ought to be staying up there, what with this gale, but not—not tonight, I think.”
I picture Jude within the glass lookout of the lantern room, performing that solitary vigil, while Connor’s body lies on the beach below. It’s something he’ll have to write up in his logbook, an inked record of the event, as he would a shipwreck or a drowning.
I swallow. “The police are taking a good while.”
Jude looks toward the doorway, as if he might find the pair waiting in the hall.
“Considering how he was killed, it’s not surprising.” I take a breath in the hopes of keeping my voice level. “Sirens leaving him on the beach, slicing him open—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
At that there’s another knock on the door. Jude goes to open it, revealing Dale and Thackery standing once more beneath the overhang.
“Mr. Osric,” says Inspector Dale, “we’ve just come to get your statement down.”
Detective Thackery glances at me and back to Jude. “If we might speak to you alone.”
Jude meets my gaze. I give a small nod. “In the watch room,” he says. “Can I get you anything else? Tea?”
“Just the statement, please,” Dale says.
Jude nods, brisk, before leading them through the door into the tower.
I’ve nothing to do while I wait. My fingers trace over the knots on the kitchen table as Connor Sheahan slips into the forefront of my thoughts, and I wonder what would’ve drawn him to the shore in this sort of weather.
Sirens lure people with music that can make one’s ears and nose bleed from the sound. They call their victims to the ocean, dragging them into the depths. They wouldn’t leave a boy like waste on the shore. They wouldn’t cut his throat. Enchantment is enough to silence anyone. Connor’s wounds were clean, sharp, dissimilar from the jagged scrape of teeth and claws.
The sound of a door opening pulls me from my thoughts. Jude appears in the hallway, alongside Dale and Thackery. He says, “Moira,” and I wish I could somehow alleviate the sadness clouding his features.
The police give their farewells. Jude begins clearing the table, gathering our cups and mopping up tea. Outside, it’s black as pitch, the sky only outlined by the occasional streak of lightning.
“Would you like to spend the night?”
I can’t tell whether he asks for my sake or his own. “That’s very kind,” I say, but the words don’t sound as grateful as I feel. I’ve kept myself from the lighthouse for years, and now that I’ve broken the spell, I’ve little desire to return home so soon after.
“I made up the bed in the guest room just this morning.”
“Oh.” I clasp my hands together. “You had company?”
“My uncle,” Jude says shortly.
I raise my eyebrows at that. The last I’d heard of Jude’s uncle, he’d boarded a tender ship to help manage the offshore lighthouse around the other side of the island. For a moment I think of asking after him, before deciding otherwise. It’s been a long while since there was any fondness between the two—indeed, I find it curious his uncle came to visit at all.
We finish setting the kitchen to rights. Or rather, Jude does, waving off every attempt I make to help. He washes tea stains from the cups, places them side by side in a cabinet, and fetches a candlestick holder, striking a match to light the half-melted candle. I gather my violin case and lean against the wall. I trace a thin crack in the plaster—but it does not whisper its secrets to me.
“Moira?”
I look over. Jude stands at the doorway, waiting for me. He holds the candle aloft, his other hand knotted around the fraying cuff of his wool sweater. Together we head into the hall, and he starts up the stairs to the second floor. I’m about to follow when a dull thump echoes from the far end of the cottage. I pause with one foot on the step, eyeing the door, the last before the entrance into the lighthouse.
“That’ll be the pipes,” says Jude quickly. “They creak something fierce when the weather turns.” He takes the stairs two at a time then, and there’s nothing for it but to go up after him.
Four bedrooms occupy most of the space on this floor. Jude opens the door to the guest room, letting me pass, and I see it’s just as orderly as the rest of the cottage. There’s a single bed, a writing desk, and a mirror adjacent to a lace-curtained window overlooking the cliff. Rain strikes the blackened glass in an unremitting patter.