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Chapters (86)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Booklist
  4. Dedication
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  86. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

She ate one without noticing, then grimaced and handed them back. “Exactly. Rojas helped load the artifacts onto the boat. My great-grandparents set to sea and headed north, staying close to the coast. They stopped in Mexico and took on provisions, and my great-grandmother sent a letter to her parents describing the situation and their intention to sail to San Francisco and safely store the artifacts until Rojas could retrieve them from the museum.” Elle looked down at her feet, dug her toes into the sand and buried them. “The boat was sighted off the coast of California, foundering, struggling to get to shore before the full wrath of a storm struck.” She wandered over to the rusty prow, knelt and ran her hand over the metal. “They didn’t make it. All hands were lost. A few pieces of the wreckage washed up on shore.”

“Where on shore?” he asked, although he knew the answer.

“Here. Along this stretch of coast.” She met his gaze. “It is, after all, the City of Lost Souls. Some are more lost than others.”

“That is a tragedy. Do you believe this—” he touched the prow “—is part of the vessel? That would be an amazing—”

“Coincidence, yes. Whether it is or whether Gothic really is a source of mystical energy doesn’t matter. I know who I am, I know what happened, and I know why it happened.” She had a toothy smile that boded ill for someone. “I remember everything.”

61

ELLE TUGGED AT ADAM’S HAND. “Where can we hide this piece of my great-grandparents’ boat until we can retrieve it?”

Adam knelt beside her. “We can’t know if this really—”

“Adam.” She sounded firm, like a schoolteacher reprimanding a six-year-old.

He wasn’t going to fight because, well, it might not be as sensible or logical as the old, more cautious Adam would like, but the Adam who stood here believed Elle had found exactly what she had been brought here to find. “I’ve got a place in the rocks. Later, we’ll bring the truck and winch it up the cliff.”

“Does it speak to you?” She leaned in to him, her hand on his chest in that way that spoke to his heart. “Can you make something out of it?”

This piece interested him. He would be glad to take it into his shop and use it to create a piece of art that spoke of a terrible past, of violent storms, of a desperate and fearful death. “Oh, yes.”

Together they lifted the odd, oblong metal prow and carried it to a protected spot and piled driftwood on top of it.

Elle stood up and wiped her hands. “Do you know the name Stephen Penderghast?”

Adam had to cast around in his mind before he recognized it. “He’s a wealthy philanthropist of some kind?”