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...
It had been sent home from school with every student a month ago. They were told not to open it. Had this been a mistake? Surely experienced educators would have known that telling kids not to do something was the very best way to get them to do it. Whatever the case, Slops, who was immune to most rules anyway, opened his as soon as he and Carmen had left the school grounds. They had read it together.
The letter informed parents that, by order of the Department of Education, Religious Education classes would now take place after school instead of during the day. Furthermore, they would become optional.
Carmen and Slops couldn't believe their luck. RE was their most hated subject. Their teacher was an ancient Brother who regularly fell asleep while reading the dry, moralistic accounts of the lives of Hatto and his followers. They were expected to recite chunks of these texts from memory in order to pass weekly tests. Carmen sniggered when she imagined the ancient Brother continuing his lessons, oblivious to the empty classroom.
In their delight, neither Carmen nor Slops had given a thought to what this change might mean. The State-run schools had always operated under the auspices of the Brotherhood. No decision could be made without their approval, and they quietly vetoed all kinds of decisions. This move by the State was a clear message to the Brotherhood. If Carmen was a bit more worldly she might have wondered what the Brotherhood's retaliation to this brazen act would be. But it never crossed her mind.
Her pere poured boiling water into a teapot. "Can you fix dinner? I have work to do, and your mere will be late." This didn't really need to be said. It had been like this every night for months.
"I'll handle it," Carmen said.
He put the kettle back on the hob and tousled her hair. She both hated and loved when he did that, for it was something he had done when she was small.
Her pere took the teapot up to the attic. Grim followed. Carmen fed some more coal into the stove and put a saucepan of water on to boil. Checking first to make sure Grim hadn't doubled back to the kitchen, she took Fidelma out of her pocket. The dore had stopped shivering. It looked up at her from her open hand, its black eyes alive with mousey intelligence.
"Where did you come from?" she whispered, more to herself than to the dore.
The thought of communicating with it the way she did with Grim would never have occurred to her. Fidelma belonged to Ward. She would know things about him. Personal things. In the same way she would have felt violated if anyone had spoken to Grim without her knowledge. The very thought was repugnant. Yet, one night she had dreamed that Ward had spoken to Grim. It had been a vivid dream, and she had woken from it with a strange, excited buzzing in her chest. But she would never have told anyone about the dream. Not even Grim.
So when the dore spoke to her, she was taken by surprise.
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