To my utter amazement, Damian simply rocked back on his heels, shook his head, and smiled.
“I’m not going to yell at you, Lori,” he said. “I’m not surprised that you thought you saw something on Cieran’s Chapel last night. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d seen a chorus line of chanting monks. You’re under a great deal of mental stress at the moment. Sir Percy’s story was bound to affect you. I thought it ill-advised of him to share it with you, and you’ve proven me right.”
“But . . . but I did see a light,” I protested, but I got no further, because the twins chose that exact moment to shout “Mummy!” at the tops of their lungs.
Damian and I took off at a run, spraying sand in our wake as we rounded a massive outcropping of rock. Andrew, Will, and Rob were standing together at its base, staring upward. I looked up, too, and felt a sliver of ice slide down my spine.
A human skull sat wedged in a crevice near the top of the rock, well above the high-water line. It stared down at us, grinning its timeless, maniacal grin, and for a shattering moment I thought that its fleshless maw had emitted a cackle of laughter, but it was only the shriek of a passing gull.
I drew a quick, shallow breath and forced a smile.
“My goodness,” I said shakily. “That certainly beats the lobster pot Daddy found in Skegness.”
If I was worried about my sons’ being traumatized for life, I was overestimating their sensitivity. As it turned out, the little ghouls were thrilled by their find.
“Andrew won’t let us fetch it down,” Will complained.
“He says it’s dirty,” said Rob, “but we can wash it in the ocean, can’t we?”
“When it’s clean, we can take it home,” said Will.
“No, we most certainly cannot,” I stated firmly, and quickly improvised a reason for the ban. “It’s . . . not ours. It belongs to Sir Percy.”
“Sir Percy will let us keep it,” Rob said confidently, and he was probably right.
“I’m sorry, boys,” Damian interjected, “but I can’t allow you to take the skull home with you. Andrew, would you please get it down?”
Andrew tipped seashells from the plastic bucket he was carrying and hooked the handle over his wrist. While he climbed up to the skull, I scanned the looming cliff tops, then backed slowly away, pulling Damian with me.
“It’s him,” I whispered urgently when the twins were safely out of earshot.
“Whom?” he asked.
“Abaddon.” Dimity’s words came flooding back to me in a panicky torrent. “He followed us to Erinskil yesterday, camped out on Cieran’s Chapel last night, and left the skull here this morning as a . . . a sick, demented calling card.”
Damian glanced toward Rob and Will, then pulled me even farther away from them.
“Lori,” he said, with the patient air of one pacifying a frantic toddler, “I want you to calm down.”
“Calm down?” I snapped. “You’re the one who said he might cut my throat on the beach!”
“But he couldn’t have known you’d be on the beach this morning,” Damian pointed out. “He couldn’t have known it would be such a fine day.”
“Look,” I began testily, but Damian cut me off.
“Hold on, Lori,” he said. “Let’s ask ourselves a few questions, shall we? How did Abaddon follow you to Erinskil? He didn’t come on the ferry—it’s not due for another four days. If he acquired a boat privately and dropped anchor in the harbor, I’d have heard about it—the harbormaster reports to me. Sir Percy’s private cove is the only other reasonable landing place on the island, and it’s been under electronic surveillance since Mrs. Gammidge arrived. No boat has come ashore, and no one’s been seen decorating the beach with skulls.”
“There are other beaches,” I said. “I saw them from the air.”
“Beaches, yes. Landing sites, no.” Damian shook his head. “It’s not easy to land a boat in Sir Percy’s cove, Lori. It’s ten times worse at the other beaches. They’re fenced in by all sorts of underwater obstacles—rocks, reefs, snags. I wish Abaddon would try to land at one of them. He’d drown before he ever stepped ashore, and we’d be finished with him.”
I folded my arms and eyed him skeptically. “I suppose the skull sprouted wings and flew up there?”
“The tide washes up all sorts of strange objects,” said Damian in an infuriatingly reasonable tone of voice. “Storms deposit them in unexpected places.”
I recoiled, aghast. “Are my sons likely to find more body parts?”
“It’s not as uncommon an occurrence as you might think,” Damian explained. “There’s a small section in the Stoneywell churchyard reserved for the burial of bones returned by the sea.”
“Oh,” I said, momentarily taken aback. “Is that why you asked Andrew to get the skull? Are you planning to bury it?”