Page 55

It’s all plain walls and bare floors, with the closed-up feel of an attic. The only furniture is an altar to Therion built of driftwood at the apex of the room. There is no one here, and nowhere for them to be hidden.

We approach the altar. The velvet cloth is decorated with shells, smooth stones, and pieces of sea glass. No different, really, from the items my brothers and I have laid out for Therion at our own altar over the years.

But between the shells and stones are other things. A strip of lace, the end splotched by a rust-colored stain. A cut tendril of golden hair, braided into a silken rope.

And in place of a flask of chthonic liquor there is an enormous stoppered jar. It’s filled with murky water, and a grimy layer of sediment coats the bottom. A ladle is tied to the jar by a long strand of ribbon.

Silently, we file back outside. Camille walks over to the nearest cottage. She knocks on the door, peers through the window. Then she cups her hands around her mouth and calls, “Hello?”

Her voice echoes through the eerie silence, caught up by the wind that rushes between the weatherworn walls. It sounds asplaintive as a bird’s cry, like the call of the swans as they fly in their arrowed formation.

I glance toward Alastair, who stands with his arms folded, eyes fixed to the expanse of ocean—flat waves, the shore marshy with kelp. “Do you know where they might be?”

He shakes his head, mouth drawn taut.

We go past the clocktower building and out onto the beach, where tidal flats span between water and land. Everything is grave and gray, and completely deserted. The cliffs are lower here than the ones beside our cove, but I can see the telltale shadow of an opening at the base of them. It looks like it will lead into a cave.

As we walk toward it, though, I already know with an instinctive certainty that the Salt Priests have gone, that the caves will be empty. A shiver drags down my spine, ominous, foreboding, as icy as the reaches beyond the sea.

CHAPTER FIFTEENNow

I step into the phone booth outside the general store. The glass walls are salt-fogged, like the windows of the buildings in the compound, and I feel as though I’m in the chamber of a grimy, echoing seashell.

The bored-looking girl in the store who sold Camille our tea and pastries earlier only offered a bemused expression when we asked if she knew where the Salt Priests had gone. Laying down the paperback book she was reading, she told us the cult members rarely came into the town. Whatever they were doing out at their compound, she preferred not to know.

Now, inside the telephone booth, my hands shake as I drop coins into the slot and lift the receiver. Unfolding my brothers’ telegram, I dial the typeset number. The phone rings several times before the hotel receptionist answers. “Good afternoon, this is the Evelyn Hotel.”

I’ve left the accordion-style door folded open, and a gust of scouring, brine-scented wind blows around me, pulling at my hair. “I’d like to speak with Henry Arriscane, please.”

There’s a click, static, and the call is transferred. From the other end of the line comes Henry’s voice.

“Lark!” It’s the same bright way he answered in the rare times wespoke on the telephone while I was at Marchmain. My chest aches, my ribs pressed tight against my heart. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. When I don’t respond, Henry’s voice sobers. “Is everything all right? We’ve been expecting to hear from you.”

And then, like I am a lock and a key has been turned, I begin to speak, words spilling out so fast it’s almost like someone else has made the sounds. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“What truth?” he asks, tone edged with wariness.

“Henry, I know what you did, you and Oberon. I know what happened the night I was born.”

Silence echoes between us, then Henry swallows audibly.Bornis such a strange term for it—a child made of blood and magic, washed from the sea. When Oberon burned all the photographs of Ariel and Oliver Arriscane, was it from grief, or because he and Henry—my creators—didn’t want me to realize there was no record of me in the family before that night when I arrived on the shore?

Tautly, Henry says, “You’ve been snooping in the attic.”

His voice is harsh with anger. This is how he responds when he’s cornered—with outrage before anything else. The ache in my chest intensifies. “You’re not denying it.”

My brother sighs heavily, and there’s a sound of matches being shook from a box, theflickof a flame being struck. I imagine him standing in the hotel room, lighting a cigarette, scowling as he exhales a plume of smoke. “We always intended to tell you. But then… as time passed, we realized it would be easier if you didn’t know.”

“Easier forwho?” I snap. “You and Oberon, so you could send me away to my betrothal without ever having to explain?”

He muffles the receiver with his hand, and I hear his voice, indistinct, speaking to someone in the room. Then Oberon comes on the line. “Lark,” he begins, but I cut him off.

“You lied to me. Both of you.” My face is burning; I’m tremblingand furious, on the verge of tears. A sob aches in my throat but I force it back, swallow it down.

Oberon tries again. “Lark, please, just let me explain. When our parents died, we were only a little older than you are now. We were orphans, we were in debt—we had no idea what to do. Then we found the mirror hidden in the attic. Dad used to tell us a story of an ancient hero who used a mirror to speak to the gods. It was a folktale, nothing more.”

“Like Naiius,” I murmur, feeling very far away. “The hero inThe Neriad, the Tharnish poem about the gods.”

“Yes. Something like that, I suppose.”