Prologue

Rain blew sideways across the lid of the sea. There’d be no boats out there today. Noola tweaked the spiny parts from her geraniums. Still alive from last year, they had that tomato red you could see in Tyrolean window boxes. A wistfulness, the flowers were. All beauty spoke of yearning, she remembered, rocking in her chair.

A gloved hand sliced the kitchen door apart in a blade of dark. Alight with pinpricks of intent, cold eyes attended her.

Noola pulled the plaid rug nice and warm across her lap and sipped the fancy tea someone had brought. That abandoned lullaby from the beach blew up the cliff and through the grate. It had gone on every morning for so long that it was almost routine now. But this time there was an unfamiliar rasp of mournfulness—significant somehow—and Noola rose halfway, the hope that it was Weedy always in the back of her mind, weighing. It wasn’t Weedy, though. It was only the wind rattling the gate. Weedy wasn’t coming back.

Distracted, the old woman tasted the unfamiliar, peppery cardamom of the chai, the almost nasty smack of cloves. There was something she must do. She nibbled a chunk from Patsy Mooney’s Pascal cake. Ah, that chewy moisture was a delight. Then, still gazing off into the grizzle of foul weather, she remembered and opened her phone. She must tell what she’d discovered about the moon dial before—but Noola felt her heart stop once. And then again. She clenched the cup and there it went a third, overpowering time. Turning with the whelp of pain, she caught sight of the enraptured, leering face. Her hand opened and the cup slipped down, cracking on the tray, the browny liquid falling, falling onto and into the Donovan plaid.

Behind the door a quiver of satisfaction released, then stirred and slipped, unclean, away.