He took out his pen, thinking of a message. It seemed bizarre to imagine that she could read, but then it was also inexplicable that she’d known English. In a movie she would have learned by secretly watching TV somehow, but Dorian knew that wasn’t it. Say she could read, then, freakish as that sounded. It wasn’t any more freakish than the fact that she existed. He thought for a minute before writing in clear block letters in the empty space above her head: If I keep putting these drawings in the water, your friends will find out what you did. So you’d better come talk to me. I’m not playing. He hesitated briefly and then decided not to sign his name. There was the risk his message would be discovered by a person instead of a mermaid. Dorian took the inscribed drawing and folded it into a crude boat. He stuffed it in his pocket and clambered out his ground floor window, dropping into a narrow channel of bracken that ran between the houses.

By the time he’d made it to the beach where she’d left him he’d started to feel just a little bit sorry for her. For all he knew, he was about to mess up her life completely. And she’d saved his, no matter what else she’d done. No matter whom she’d killed . . . He sat on the shore, the cold lumps of the stones digging into his legs, and looked up at the sky. The stars here were bigger than he’d ever seen, outrageous in their purity and blue, blinding fire. The waves shone steel-bright in their frozen light, rising in liquid metal arches, crumpling like silver paper as they hit the stones.

Was he really going to back down out of compassion for Emily’s murderer?

Dorian waited for the water to roll back, then ran down the beach and jumped onto a rock. He didn’t want his fragile missive to get swamped. When the water tumbled in below him, he waited a moment and dropped the little boat on the outracing foam. As soon as he let go of it, something tightened in his stomach. He fought down a sense of queasy apprehension.

The boat sped away, becoming no more than a pale triangle skating up the dark surging water, spinning down again. He hadn’t given much thought to the timing, but now he could see it had been perfect. The tide was going out, taking the folded drawing away with it. He found himself lingering on the rock in the irrational hope that the drawing would drift close enough again that he could reach down and snatch it back from the sea.

It was far away now. A white blinking eye on the wild water.