Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century 6)

A small hint of mischief worked its way into his face and his voice. “If it lacks meaning, I don’t know that we should call it art. Perhaps ‘decoration,’ instead.”

“As you like.” She took a seat on a nearby bench. He sat on the fountain’s edge. It was moist and cold through his frock; the air too wet to dry the tiles, but not yet ready to soak them.

Beside them both, a large gaslamp hissed, sparked, and flared to life—illuminating the courtyard alone at first, and then with the help of five others like it. Now he had a better view of the water fixture, but no better opinion of it; and now he could see the rest of the landscaping: the palms, climbing vines, succulents, and assorted flowers, all placed with as much care and formality as the plates and cutlery upon the supper table, an hour before.

The padre finally spoke again, mostly by virtue of thinking aloud. “What can we say about the men and women who have died here? You told me before that some were called here…were they all? Or were some merely unlucky?”

“That’s not the sort of thing that reveals itself in polite mealtime chatter. Believe me, I’ve tried to bring the subject around—to no avail. But it’s funny,” she said, her tone suggesting nothing funny at all. “There’s such silence surrounding what occurs here. Everyone knows, but no one says anything, except in whispers behind closed doors.”

“That hardly sounds like the best way

to address the problem.”

“I know,” she murmured. “Or rather, I agree. I do what I can to be open, and to draw others into my confidence. What little success I’ve met, has mostly been with Sarah—and mostly since you’ve arrived. You’re gentler than me, perhaps. You have a way about you…”

“But so do you.” He meant it as a polite rebuttal, but he almost understood why her efforts had not been as fruitful as she’d like. It was not merely the habit, not only the accent—so different from what most people heard on the island. It wasn’t even the brown eyes, flecked with gold.

Or were they gold eyes, flecked with brown? Everything depended on the light.

She looked up at the place where the moon must be, and he thought maybe she’d heard him thinking again. If she did, she pretended otherwise. “It’s kind of you to say so, if charmingly untrue. But would you look up there,” she tilted up her chin, to direct his attention. “Not a star to be seen, and getting damper by the hour.”

“The storm is almost upon us. Let us pray we’re not washed away in our sleep.”

“Oh, I don’t think it will find us tonight. Maybe tomorrow. In the wee hours, if we aren’t particularly lucky.”

He nodded, at her and the roiling indigo blanket above, where only a rare, stray twinkle broke through the darkness. “Will the hotel survive it, do you think?”

“It might,” she mused. “It’s a solid building, made to withstand the coastal storms; but we’re quite vulnerable here, you know. The island is long and narrow, and flat as a pan. It’s a lovely place, to be sure…but we must be honest with ourselves: It’s little more than a sandbar, wallowing between the Gulf and Texas. A better question might be, ‘Will we survive the storm, should it catch us here?’”

“I am confident of your resourcefulness.”

“And I am confident of yours. More than you are, perhaps.”

He considered his response, not knowing how much she needed to hear—or how much of the truth she wanted. Finally he said, “We all walk this earth on borrowed time, but mine is borrowed against something greater than death. I do not know what awaits me on the other side, and I do not know when I can expect to arrive there. These missions, if that’s what they are…one of them will be my last. I am due a reckoning.”

“We all receive our reckoning, in time. None of us knows when.”

“This is…different,” he tried to explain. But Sister Eileen did not ask for clarification, and he gave up trying to offer any.

“I’ll take you at your word. But tell me, what do you feel about this place? Use whatever vision or intuition you’ve been given, and look. Try to listen. We’re not at the center of the hotel anymore. We stand outside it, looking in. From here, what does this place say to you?”

“It says…” he closed his eyes, and opened them again.

He looked, and he listened.

He saw darkness, purple and black, and motionless at a glance.

But no, it moved. It swirled so hugely that it only appeared to hold still—the same illusion of watching a swift-sailing ship in the distance, seeming to creep across the waves. If the darkness had a shape, he could not discern it; but he sensed that it spun in a circle, tendrils dragged along its exterior to flail and wave and cut. A wheel of blackness, revealed only at the edges where it shifted against the earth, and scratched against the clouds.

The padre heard the rushing roar of something larger than the island by a thousand-fold, shouting at the earth and everyone who crawled upon it. Offshore, still. Something that would devour half the ocean, and use it to blast the land clean.

But was he hearing the hotel, or the coming storm?

“It wants to consume,” he said quickly, before he’d given himself a chance to think about it. “It exists to feed.”

“But is it tethered here, or only drawn here?”

“Both, perhaps. Something tethered and angry, calling to something free but angrier still. The hunger…” he said in a whisper. “I feel its hunger—and the certainty that whatever becomes of us, we deserve it—each and every one.” He turned the question to her: “But what about you? What does this place tell you?”