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by mossy rocks, she heard voices nearby.
    “Are ye insane, man?” a youth’s voice shouted. She eased up against the hard rock. Two young men, no more than eighteen years old, swam along the shores nearby.
    “Only as insane as ye! Gie out haur wi’ me!”
    Through the foggy blanket, she could barely make out their figures, splashing each other, wrestling in the surf.
    She pulled herself under again, watching them from beneath the shallow surface. The youths had stripped all their clothes off, and she saw their pale naked bodies swimming and diving in the cold shallow waters just offshore, the depth no greater than ten feet.
    She felt almost proud of herself, lingering here, not rushing forward to kill them. Perhaps this was all that she needed to ease her cravings for a bit.
    But even as she watched the boys swimming, she remembered being a child and stealing gingerbread one afternoon. The spicy, sweet aroma had beckoned her to the kitchen—where she was normally not allowed to go. It had been close to dinnertime and she knew that she would receive a slap on her wrist from the cook for even trying to eat the bread. She still remembered how watching the bread had done no good; as the cook stirred a stew over the fire on the far side of the kitchen, she had pulled a large hunk from the bread and run to her room.
    Even as this thought crossed her mind, a scarlet cloud burst out from the leg of one of the boys.
    The venom flowed in her mouth, and her stomach growled.
    No.
    No.
    She could not let this happen.
    She clutched at the rocky wall behind her, trying to hold herself back, until her own clawed fingers bled.
    The boy broke the surface, shouted in pain.
    “Well, haury up mate, ye don’ want to bring th’ sharks.”
    The other boy moaned in pain as they headed quickly toward shore.
    She couldn’t hold her hunger anymore. In a frenzy, she swam toward them, suddenly regaining control just as they stepped onto the rocky shore. Her hesitation, and their speed, was what saved them.
    Quickly, before she could pursue them onto land, she turned away and swam back to her island. The venom still flowed heavily in her mouth; she knew that her appetite for humans was intensifying even more.

    When I reached my room, I locked the door behind me. Hearing no footsteps on the stairs, I gave a silent prayer of thanks that Grandmother had not followed me. My legs wobbled and I leaned against the door, sliding down until I sat on the floor. It was then that I gave myself free reign to cry.
    As I sat there, in the darkness of my room, I felt too weak to even go to my bed. Wiping my face with my sleeve, I leaned my head back against the door and let myself think of Roddy—of that terrible day when he had died and I had almost drowned. Only now could I allow the pieces of that day, like driftwood, to fit together in my mind. Mother’s death, and the truth behind her death, had been difficult enough for me to face …
    When Mother and I had moved to the outskirts of Dublin for her governess position on the Edgeworths’ estate, Roddy had quickly established himself as my best friend. I squinted through tears in the shadows of my bedroom, remembering his face so vividly. I could almost see him, like it was a photograph in my mind. He was tanned, freckled, the son of a blacksmith. He’d had taken pity on me the first time I had been ruthlessly bullied by the local children; I was only ten years old at the time, and Mother and I had only recently moved into our small house on the estate. Because Roddy had an uncle who was a boxer in Stepney, even at ten years old he harbored a fierce obsession with fighting, particularly bare-knuckle boxing. It had been Roddy who had taught me how to fight and knife throw. I was never as skilled at fighting as he was, but within a year I surpassed him at knife-throwing.
    I wiped a tear from my eyes. Seven years. Seven years he had been my friend. We were so close. Then Mother’s seizures—which I now