Though she hadn’t explained the ominous nature of her find, Ian checked the shoreline in a way that made her think he understood the omen well enough. “We should keep walking,” he said with a hand at her elbow to move her along.
“It’s this way,” she said, still cradling her unlucky find in her hand, unsure what to do with it. To cast it away could bring misfortune for ignoring the message, but keeping the skull invited a connection to trouble she didn’t wish to attract.
They walked another hundred yards—the length Mary had run with her skirt hiked to her knees to share what she had found and what they had both presumed moments later was a dead man. And yet here he was standing beside her, his flesh robust with life, the eyes clear, and the wounds, both physical and metaphysical, presumably on the mend.
The stranded fishing boat that marked the spot where they’d found him had disappeared. Its owner was likely out on the water in search of a decent haul of eel or skate for market. Even without the boat, she knew the shore well enough to trust this was the place, and said as much. The scent of his blood had washed away, but she was certain he’d lain in the exact spot before their feet.
“This is the place. The star of Venus was angled just there.” Edwina pointed over the top of the railroad bridge above them.
Ian nudged his shoe at the rocks, but with little detectable evidence on the tide-washed ground, he turned his attention to the algae-covered embankment at their backs instead. The wall was a massive structure, faced in granite. The height of the waterline on the stone made plain the temporary nature of the ground they stood on before the tidewater filled back in to reclaim the rocks and mud. She knew from experience one had best be up the stairs by the time the water rose to meet the rocky ground at the base of the wall.
“Do you recall anything?” she asked, wondering if the musty air or the damp of the shore had the power to awaken some buried memory for him. “Any reason you might have been down on the foreshore that night?”
He pulled his watch out and took a reading before looking in the direction they’d come. “You say there was a fishing boat resting this way?” When she confirmed the hull had been tilted perpendicular to the water, he twisted around to view a weathered ladder on the wall behind them, where the vessel was presumably tethered during high tide. He took a moment, as if triangulating between the ladder, the location of the boat, and the steps they’d come down. “I might be getting a clearer picture,” he said, adding the view of the top of the embankment to his calculation.
The guilt of what she and Mary had done to him festered the longer she watched him try to sort it out until she was compelled to speak. “We sent a policeman to come for you as soon as we left the embankment,” she said. “But by then we thought you were already . . .”
“Dead?” he finished for her.
“The chill in your blood had diminished your aura. That’s why I took you for a mortal at first. I couldn’t understand how you’d survived, but, of course, if you had been mortal, I doubt you would have.”
He knelt not to look at the ground at his feet but to get the vantage point of the land down shore from a man crouching. “Does she do it often?” he asked, standing again. “Remove people’s memories?”
“It’s part of Mary’s nature.” She picked up a tangle of fishing line and seaweed that had snagged on a rock. “She’s drawn to the shape and color of the transition between life and death. The corpse lights.” As Edwina spoke, she tied the fishing line around the skull, covering the eye sockets with the seaweed.
“She’s attracted to corpse lights?”
“The outflow of one’s life energy continues on, separate from the physical being after death. The floating memory forms bright-colored orbs that my sister collects. She compresses them into stonelike objects. Baubles, she calls them. Of course, you’ve seen how she does that already.”
He’d stopped taking in the scenery and instead focused on her with that familiar unsettled look. Everyone who ever learned the truth about her sister’s rare gift got the same expression on their face—fear of death, fear of someone disturbing the sanctity of their passing. As if their death were beyond corruption. As if her sister were some kind of degenerate. Ian was quicker at letting the thoughts pass like a shadow over him than most. He was a disciplined one. Well, once his restored memories had reined in the impulsive side she’d witnessed in the shop. She suspected his true nature was a cautious yet curious one, setting aside judgment long enough to learn the truth of a thing. He even offered a grudging smile in admiration of her sister’s unique skill before asking the question everyone always posed: How does she find the dead?