fabric. I assumed it was a girder; as my claws raked its length, it squealed like steel and sparks leapt from our union, dazzling my eyes.
Sparks. Hydrogen.
I pushed off with all my might just as the balloon combusted, but the fire still got me.
I curled away from the airship—singed, falling—Turning and Turning. Within seconds I couldn’t tell what I was. There was only the wind rushing past me and the fireball descending next to me, fabric in flames and red-hot steel.
And the brown-eyed man tumbled from the gondola. Three others like him, all of them shrieking as they hurtled to their deaths in the waiting sea.
I swooped toward him. I reached out for him.
Shiny talons curved around his wrist; I was pulled sideways from his sudden weight.
It seemed I was a dragon, after all.
• • •
Below us, all the sea flashed bright. Brief as a comet, glittering light spreading out miles in a fantastical, brilliant bloom. Night turned by Jesse into golden day.
Then it was over. The channel plunged to purple-black again.
Chapter 30
He lifted his face from the crook of his arm. He wiped the sand from his lids and allowed himself to breathe again, taking in the charred air, salt spray, and diesel smoke blowing over him in gusts. The smoke was especially foul, caustic stinking grease that seared his eyes and made him wipe at them again.
Armand climbed out of the Atalanta. Whatever had compelled him to fall back here in the first place—that infuriating, unbreakable command from Holms—no longer held him. He leapt down the slope, skidding through an avalanche of dirt and rocks, and bounded across the beach to the other boy.
Holms had collapsed on his side, one arm still stretched out to the channel. Mandy took him by the shoulders and rolled him to his back. It was dark out here, ruddy dark. Or maybe it was just that his eyes hadn’t adjusted yet from staring at Holms when he’d detonated without warning into solid light.
“Holms. Holms! Jesse, wake up!”
Water shifted and sighed over the pebbles. Jesse was getting wet. Armand’s knees were getting wet.
“Holms, did you see it?” he persisted. He tore out of his coat and lifted Jesse enough to spread it beneath him; the wool went damp right away. “She did it! She brought them both down—bloody, bloody amazing. Holms! Did you get the sub?”
There—the smallest thing: Jesse swallowing, his eyes still closed. Mandy felt hope ignite inside him, hard and glittering as the cast of golden fire.
“You did, didn’t you? Come on, old chap. Tell me you did.”
“Did.”
“Excellent! Excellent! So let’s get up, then, eh, and go find her. Go tell her, together.”
Jesse smiled. His eyes never opened. The sea sifted nearer, pulled back. The pebbles all around them shone glassy with water.
“Jesse,” Mandy said.
The wind fell calm. The diesel smoke wafted gently away.
“Jesse.”
The sea drew back. Nothing else moved.
Mandy bent double, lowering his forehead to Jesse Holms’s shoulder. His fingers felt like rusted iron against the coat. He could not get his fingers to unlock.
“I’ll tell her,” he whispered. “I’ll tell her all that you did.”
Chapter 31
The funeral for a hired hand is not the same as one for a marquess.
Mrs. Westcliffe was there for both. I guess that was the same.
Armand was there for both.
I attended only Jesse’s. It probably would have been politic of me to also go to the marquess’s; I had been summoned, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go anywhere, really. I wanted only to stay in my tower, in my bed, and spend the rest of my life doing nothing more than staring up at the ceiling, watching the spiders wending around on spindly legs, weaving their opal webs.
I roused myself for Jesse. That was all.
I stood between Mrs. Westcliffe and someone else. I think it was Professor Tilbury. Most of the teachers had shown up, which vaguely surprised me. Quite a few of the villagers, as well, along with all the other Iverson employees.
I was the only student. Even Malinda hadn’t come.
Lord Armand—now the new Marquess of Sherborne—was the highest-ranking person in attendance, so he’d been given a place of honor right by the pit dug for the grave. He stood a solemn figure in stylish black, almost directly across from me. Whenever I glanced his way, he was staring at me. Lots of people were staring at me, frankly, but his was the only gaze that stung. So I tried not to look at him.