“There’s a natural balance between mad scientists and vampires, but I won’t be a mad scientist for long. This will break me. This is already breaking me. My mind is eating itself alive, and only knowing my failure will mean the end of everything I love is letting me hold myself together.” Jack took another step forward. “I’m a brilliant scientist, not despite my condition, but in some ways because of it. That does not mean I can survive under these conditions. So ask yourself, if you would be so kind—ask your damned and Drowned divinities. How long can I live like this? And how long do the Moors maintain their balance without someone to stop my sister from drenching your world in every drop of blood she can wring out of it?”

Gideon gaped, momentarily stunned into silence.

And from behind them came a wet, terrible sound.

Sumi was the first to turn. Christopher the second. Jack didn’t turn at all. She didn’t need to see what stood behind them.

But for the others, ah: there was Cora, draped in the sodden rags of her clothing, which seemed to have been ripped and rent by some unspeakable claw, by some demon of the deep. Her skin, where it was exposed by the torn fabric, gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the Abbey’s stark electric light, and her hair hung in wet, heavy curls that tangled around her arms and breasts like eels. Her eyes were black from side to side, and the others couldn’t look at them for more than a few seconds without feeling the terrible urge to look away, sheltering themselves from the secrets swimming there.

Kade was cradled in her arms, shipwrecked refuse of a softer sea.

“The balance must be maintained,” she said, and her voice both was and was not her own. If a storm could have been said to have a voice, if a shipwreck could have spoken, it would have been the voice that dripped like poisoned pearls from Cora’s lips. “The Moors are made of petty conflicts: they thrive on familial blood. But those conflicts can never matter more than the foundations themselves. The Drowned Abbey stands with Jacqueline Wolcott in the matter of her sister’s malfeasance, and will help her to recover that which has been stolen.”

“Thank you,” said Jack, with swift, undisguised relief. “I—”

“We are not finished,” said the things speaking through Cora’s body. At least they sounded amused, and not angry at the interruption. “There will, of course, be payment.”

“Anything,” said Jack.

“No,” said Christopher sharply. “Not anything.” He turned to Cora—the Drowned Gods—whatever she was now, and said, “We get our friends back. Both of them. They’re not yours to keep.”