Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
Not knowing what to do after Mildew escorted her back to the surface, Carmen, for want of a better plan, went home. She figured she would attempt to tell her pere what had happened, and ask his advice.
Mildew had half-heartedly offered Fidelma to her for safekeeping, but Carmen had shaken her head. She couldn't trust Grim. Fidelma would be as safe with Mildew as anyone. Besides, the girl had clearly grown attached to the little dore.
So much for her plan: when she got home her parents weren't there. She had to let herself in using the spare key that was hidden inside a gumboot on the porch.
Over the course of the next hour she checked on Grandmere (asleep), spoke to Grim (strangely reluctant to come near her while she had the dice), and had something to eat (her churning stomach could barely keep it down). She tried to use the dice, thinking that if she began to feel something happening she would stop immediately, but nothing happened. She spent the rest of the time deciding what she would tell her parents, concocting a story that would include enough of the truth to be convincing.
Her parents came home together. Almost before they were in the door Carmen was rushing into her explanation, but they were too furious to listen. It had been a long time since Carmen had seen her mere in tears. Her pere just gave her a sad, disappointed look. Somehow this was worse. He sent her to her room and told her to stay there. Grim followed her up the stairs.
From her bedroom she could hear the ebb and flow of her parents' voices from the kitchen below: her mere's rising into peaks, her pere's soothing it back down again.
She sat by the window and watched the Croakumshire Road. At least it gave her the feeling she was doing something. The sense of helplessness pressed in from all sides. How could she have been so stupid?
(You warned him)
Grim was sitting sphinx-like on the bed, watching her.
(That doesn't help) she said.
He stopped trying to cheer her up.
To take her mind off things she might have taken the barking iron apart and cleaned it and put it back together again, but she didn't even have that now, having dutifully returned it to Mildew. So she looked out her window, at the winding river and the fields and the purplish mountains, and listened to the late morning trilling of birds and the distant lowing of cattle and the rustling of foliage outside the window and the familiar creak of the house, and time dragged out until it seemed she had been sitting there for days.
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What do you do to while away the time when you're anxious?
