from the station, Whitby lost at their backs.
Vambéry carefully reads it all, doing his best to place all the pages in some semblance of order, flipping back and forth, adding his own notes as he goes.
Several hours later, he finishes the final page scribbled in hasty script by Bram that previous night while trapped in the abbey tower. He closes the cover of Bram’s journal. All these recorded moments weighing heavily on him—this boy, this family, caught in something so horrendous for so long.
He leans back in his seat as the train bounces along, the English countryside rolling past the window.
He has much to think about.
MATILDA
Matilda wakes aboard the S.S. Hero to what she thinks is someone speaking her name. It comes to her in her sleep, a whisper across some great distance. She sits up in her small berth and glances around the stateroom. She spies nothing. She had left the porthole open, but only because there is no deck nearby, the only view being the sea, but also because she welcomes the sound of the waves lapping against the hull of the ship and the equally comforting sound of the sails steadily flapping in the wind, filling the otherwise quiet void of the night.
Matilda.
This time she is certain she hears her name. From somewhere outside, as impossible as that may be.
Matilda rises and slips a cloak over her nightclothes, then goes to the cabin door. She opens it, half expecting to find someone on the other side, but there is no one, the hallway is deserted. Matilda has been aboard ships such as this before and she is aware that at this hour most of the passengers would have retired to their staterooms, leaving only the crew silently scampering about the vessel performing their duties. But the crew does not know her name, and, anyway, she sees no one, crew or otherwise.
Bram and Thornley occupy the cabin to her left, and Vambéry is on the right. She considers waking her brothers, then thinks the better of it. They both need the rest more than she does, with Bram, in particular, exhausted after his ordeal in the tower.
Matilda pulls the hood of the cloak over her head and holds the garment securely at her neck, then follows the hallway to the flight of stairs that will take her up to the main deck. There, the salt air fills her lungs, wintry and briny, and she embraces the scent. It reminds her of their home all those years ago. As she crosses the main deck, a crew member shuffles past, muttering something in a language she does not comprehend, before disappearing around a distant corner.
There is another standing on the starboard side near the forecastle—slender and still, also in a dark cloak. Matilda recognizes her immediately. She crosses the deck and goes to her, standing at her side.
“Hello, Ellen.”
Ellen continues standing stock-still, staring out at the water.
“You should not be out here alone. I fear Vambéry will not hesitate to kill each of you at the first opportunity.”
“I am not worried about Arminius Vambéry.”
Matilda knows that Ellen and the O’Cuivs were spirited aboard the ship inside wooden crates, each filled with the soil from their graves and nailed shut. Those crates had been stowed deep within the hold of the ship and surrounded by other crates on all sides. None of it would be accessible until reaching Amsterdam and the cargo was unloaded on the dock. Yet here was Ellen, standing before her now. Matilda recalled how Dracul turned himself into a swarm of bees at Thornley’s house, and how Vambéry had told them the undead also could transform themselves into mist and access the smallest of places. All of this had seemed like a fairy tale to her—until now.
“Where are Patrick and Maggie?”
“Resting. To wake aboard a ship can be frightful, surrounded by all this water. We cannot cross water on our own except when the tide is at its slackest, but, be that as it may, we still are not capable of swimming even if we could swim in life. Patrick learned this almost fatal lesson all too well in Dublin when he fell