Fins broke the water all around us, and the librarians’ ship nosed through the debris. Heliabel called out in the ketoi tongue, though whether for Persephone or someone else, I didn’t know. Within moments, two other ketoi had surfaced.
Heliabel let go of us and dived. One ketoi caught me beneath the arms, while the other took Mr. Quinn. “Where is she going?” I asked frantically. “Is she looking for Persephone?”
The ketoi didn’t answer; perhaps they didn’t speak English. Instead, they hauled us to the ship. A rope was thrown out, and within moments, we were both on board.
Someone tried to wrap a blanket around me, but I shoved them off. “We have to find her,” I said. My teeth chattered from the cold, but I didn’t care. “Persephone!”
“Miss Parkhurst.” Mr. Quinn stepped in front of me, forcing me to look up at him. To my surprise, his pale eyes held an expression of sympathy. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“You’re wrong. There has to be.” She had to be all right. The ketoi were resilient—hadn’t she said so herself?
Bone-deep shivers wracked my body. My fingers felt like ice, and my toes had gone completely numb. My thoughts seemed to come sluggish and thick. I only knew that I needed to see her. To know she was all right.
To tell her I loved her.
“The ketoi will find her,” Mr. Quinn said. “Leave them to tend their wounded, while we tend to ours.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to strike him, to demand we stay and search.
My legs gave out beneath me. Another librarian caught me from behind. As I looked around, I saw men lying on the deck, swathed in hasty bandages. Some of them surely needed the hospital. How could I demand they lie here suffering, perhaps dying, while we searched fruitlessly?
Heliabel would find her. I didn’t know Mrs. Whyborne well, but I felt certain she wouldn’t give up on her child, so long as there was breath in her body.
“Yes,” I said numbly. “You’re right.”
The librarian wrapped blankets around my chilled body, but I refused to go below decks. Instead, I stared out at the dark and heaving ocean, long after night and distance had swallowed up the place where Persephone disappeared.
Chapter 11
Several days later, I sat in my room in my new boarding house, brushing my hair for bed.
Dr. Whyborne had returned to the museum that morning, fresh from his adventure in Kansas. Mr. Quinn and I gave him our account of everything that had transpired in his absence. His eyes grew wider and wider as we spoke. When we finished, he asked, “And my sister?”
The same question had haunted me every moment since I’d watched the whaler vanish beneath the waves. “I don’t know.”
Mr. Quinn cocked his head to one side, watching Dr. Whyborne closely. “You’re both linked to the maelstrom. Can you not find out?”
Dr. Whyborne’s mouth tightened. “It’s not like that. I don’t think.” His eyes went unfocused, then he shook his head. “Please excuse me. I need to write a few notes.”
He dispatched several urgent notes to Mr. Flaherty and his father, before spending most of the afternoon pacing his office. Though his correspondence had piled up in his absence, he bolted from the museum the moment the clock ticked over to five.
I’d wanted to beg to go with him. Instead, I took my pocketbook, the one that had once belonged to Irene, out of my desk and made my way to my lodgings.
Mrs. Yagoda had turned me out the moment I returned to her boarding house. At least I’d had the chance to collect my things. I’d spent a night at the Widdershins Arms Hotel, then set about trying to find somewhere new to live.
At least I had that luxury, unlike poor Irene. My grief for her made me feel even more isolated from everyone around me, none of whom would ever know the horrible circumstances of her death.
I grieved for Oliver, as well. Not as he’d become, twisted by the need for revenge, but as the boy I’d once known. I’d taken it upon myself to send a letter to his mother, telling her of his loss in a boating accident off the coast of Widdershins.
As for what I’d learned about the fate of the Bedlam…a part of me felt as though I’d lost Papa all over again. I’d always imagined him a kind man, and at first I tried to tell myself he simply hadn’t realized the ketoi were thinking creatures. But then I recalled Mr. Young had written of her jewelry, and I grew sad all over again.
The boarding house I’d settled in was in a less pleasant part of town. When the wind came from the wrong direction, the stench of the cannery became nearly unbearable. But it was much closer to the river than my former abode.
Just in case.
I set aside my brush and rose to my feet. After turning down the thin blankets on my bed, I re-checked the latch on the door. Not that I felt threatened by any of my fellow boarders; they seemed a lively bunch of women. However, most of them had a steady stream of visiting “uncles” and “cousins” whose identity changed by the day, and I worried lest one of them try the wrong door in the middle of the night. I never would have thought I’d miss Mrs. Yagoda’s rules quite as much as I did.
Something scratched at my window.
I spun. Had I truly heard it, or was it wishful thinking on my part?