“Let’s start with your name.”
“I’m Ethan Kaille.”
“And what the hell are you doin’ in my house, talkin’ to my girls, and pokin’ your nose in my business?”
Ethan glanced at Hester, who had closed the door and was watching him and her father.
“Don’t look at her!” Osborne said, his voice suddenly so loud that both women started. “It’s me as asked you the question!”
“I’m a thieftaker,” Ethan said.
“Ah,” the man said, nodding. “I figured as much, or somethin’ like it. You’re after what’s mine.”
“I’m not the only one. You’re playing a dangerous game with Sephira Pryce.”
“You let me worry ’bout her. The Empress of the South End don’t scare me.” He looked Ethan up and down, seeming to take stock of what he saw. “You know what you’re chasin’ or are you just lookin’ for the first coin that comes your way?”
“I’m looking for the pearls that you and Simon Gant stole from Sephira.”
Osborne had been grinning all this time, but now the grin faded. He waved the pistol at Diver. “So that’s where this one comes in, eh? He’s workin’ with you, or for you.”
“He’s no one: a lad I hired to do a little work. That’s all. Let him go. You have me now. I’m a lot more important than he is.”
“I don’t think so. He’s important to you, and that makes him valuable to me.” He narrowed his eyes, much as Hester had done. Up until that moment, Ethan hadn’t noticed the resemblance between Osborne and his daughters. But it struck him as obvious now that he was looking for it. “But tell me, Kaille. What makes a thieftaker so important?”
When Ethan didn’t answer, Osborne pressed the barrel of his pistol against Diver’s forehead and looked Ethan’s way.
What could he do but answer? “I’m working for the Crown.”
“The Crown?”
Ethan laughed, breathless and desperate. “You didn’t think you could attack a British ship that way and not attract the notice of the king’s men, did you? Are you that much a fool?”
The muscles in Osborne’s jaw bunched. “Have a care, man,” he said. “I’ll kill him, and then I’ll kill you, and I’ll sleep fine tonight havin’ done it.”
Ethan swallowed the retort that leaped to mind.
“What is it the Crown has you doin’?” he asked, his tone mocking, his pronunciation of the word “Crown” exaggerated.
“Looking for you, as it turns out.”
“Well, that’s too bad for you, Kaille. ’Cause they’ll never know that you found me.” Osborne looked past Ethan. “I want him bound, girls.”
Neither Hester nor Molly moved.
“Now!” their father said, sounding like he was speaking to ten-year-olds.
“He warded himself,” Hester said, her voice shaking. “I tried a spell against him before. It didn’t work.”
Osborne grinned. “Do it the way I taught you. Together.”
Molly made a small sound in her throat, like a trapped animal. Hester laid a hand on her sister’s arm and looked to her father once more.
“Do it!” Osborne’s words seemed to lash at the women.
Hester continued to glare at him. He stared back at her, daring her to defy him. And in the end, she looked away.
“It’s all right, Molly,” she said, her tone gentle. “It’s just a binding.”
Ethan watched them all, looking back and forth between the young women and their father. He knew better than to reach for his knife, but he remembered the two mullein leaves he still carried with him. They weren’t enough for a powerful casting, but perhaps a simpler spell would be enough. He had a feeling that if he could overpower Caleb, the women would let him take Diver and go.
He began to speak a spell to himself. “Conflare ex verbasco-” It would have been a heat spell, one that would force the man to drop his pistol. But as soon as Ethan began to recite the Latin, Uncle Reg’s bright eyes snapped to his face.
Osborne saw this. “Stop it!” he shouted, turning the pistol on Ethan.
Ethan faltered-only for an instant, but that was enough. With one quick stride, Osborne covered the distance between them. He slammed the butt of his weapon into the side of Ethan’s head.
Pain exploded in Ethan’s temple and white light flared behind his eyes. He staggered, fell to the floor.
“Now!” Osborne said, his voice like a hammer. “The spell! Cast it!”
A heavy silence fell over the room and Ethan tried to rouse himself. Before he could, he heard the women say in unison, “Corpus alligare ex cruore evocatum.” Bind body, conjured from blood.
The spell that rumbled like thunder in the floor beneath him, that pulsed through his body with such force it seemed to make his teeth clatter, dwarfed any spell Ethan himself had ever cast, save the one that he had sourced in the life of Shelly’s mate, Pitch. Whatever Hester and her sister had done rivaled a killing spell, something Ethan had never thought possible.
That the spell worked just as the women had intended, carving through his warding as if it were paper, came as no surprise. He couldn’t move. He had lost all control over his limbs, his neck, his mouth. His gaze could roam, but beyond that, he was helpless. On the other hand, he still felt everything. His head ached where Osborne had hit him; the rough floor pressed against his cheek, his arm, his side. He was growing more uncomfortable with every breath. But he couldn’t do anything about it.
He heard footfalls by his head and back and felt himself hoisted up into a chair. He started to tip over to one side, but Osborne braced him before he fell back to the floor.
“Rope,” the man said.
Hester nodded to Molly, who hastened to the back room and returned with a long piece of ship’s rope.
“Tie him up,” Osborne told her. “Just enough that he won’t fall over.” He smiled. “Spell’ll take care of the rest. But just in case, take his blade.”
Ethan hardly heard him. His mind was reeling from what he saw, and with the implications for all that had happened over the past several days. Hester’s red ghost had appeared again with the binding spell. It stood beside her. And a second ghost followed Molly everywhere she went. This one was a young woman who looked very much like the young man glowing at Hester’s shoulder. Both of the ghosts had large dark eyes, aquiline noses, and full, sensuous mouths. These features seemed odd, almost womanly, on the red figure of the young man; they were far more attractive on the glowing girl. Still the ghosts resembled each other; they were related, perhaps even brother and sister. This was not surprising, since Hester and Molly were sisters.
What had sent Ethan’s mind careening down a dark and troubling path was the color of Molly’s ghost. She was yellow. Bright golden yellow.
He stared at the shade for several moments, then shifted his stare back to Hester’s bloodred ghost. Yellow and red. He hadn’t seen either color before this day. But he would have wagered all he owned that when blended together, the yellow and red of their spells would leave a residue of brilliant orange. The same orange he had seen aboard the Graystone, on Mariz, and on Gant.
Osborne hadn’t killed anyone. His daughters had done it all. Together, their separate conjurings working as one.
He felt light-headed, sick to his stomach. The truth had been right there in front of him for so long, since that first day when he went to speak with them. Still, even knowing this, he couldn’t reconcile those yellow and red ghosts with what he had observed of the two women. They weren’t killers. They couldn’t be. And yet, ninety-seven men were dead; ninety-eight if he counted Gant. Killed by power that glowed orange.
He stared at them, at their ghosts, yellow and red. He wanted to ask them why, whether their father had forced them. But he could no more speak than he could stand up and walk out of the shack.
“What now?” Hester asked, looking to her father.
Osborne put on an old begrimed coat. “Now, I go out and look for some pearls. I might even be able to sell them.”