Chapter 46

“You said you’d wait in the boat!” It was Aidan’s voice protesting.

“So did your mother, but she climbed the ladder the moment you were gone,” Grandfather’s voice replied. “I had to chase after her to make sure she didn’t get into trouble.”

Aidan groaned. “Where is she now?”

“Tying up the last of those entertainer folks.”

Perhaps I’d already died, and this was some delusion or dream, combining the horrid present on The Starlight with my gentler past in Maundley.

“What is the meaning of this mockery?” Annalise cried. “Who are you, old man? And why do you pretend to bravery where my beast is concerned? It could rip you to pieces.”

“Ah, but he isn’t now, is he?” Grandfather said.

Fighting back death, I rolled myself over, the better to see. There stood Bijou, towering over Grandfather yet quailing with pain at Grandfather’s fierce grip on his whiskers—which weren’t, of course, made from hair. Grandfather held a knife pointed straight into the soft scaly tissue directly behind the joint of Bijou’s jaw. His hand holding the blade wobbled, but the tip stayed wedged in place.

Bijou’s tail thrashed in terror. Annalise tried to rise, but Grandfather pressed his knife in farther, and the leviathan hissed in fright.

“What’s going on here?” It was Widow Moreau, brandishing the iron skillet she bought from the gypsy caravan. “Lem Pomeroy! You make that snake let go of my boy!”

“Patience, Eulilly,” Grandfather barked. “Let a man do his own work for once, without you bossing him around three-quarters of the time.”

“Let the beast go free, old man,” Annalise said, “and I promise no harm will come to you or any of yours.”

“Look at the child,” Grandfather said. “It’s a bit too late for that.”

I closed my eyes.

“Evie! No!” It was Aidan, calling from another time and place. I was falling, falling now.

“Bijou,” I heard Annalise’s voice command. “Let the boy go.”

“Surrender,” Grandfather ordered.

There was a long pause, then Annalise spoke. “We do.”

“Now save my daughter,” Grandfather said. “I watched her mother die this death, and I won’t stand by to see it again.”

My daughter?

“It’s too late,” Annalise said.

The leviathan hissed once more.

Darkness closed all around me. From across eternity, I heard a voice.

“Are you sure?”