Sayuri was gone, only the memory of that look on her face remaining.
“Lottie”—Saskia cast a quick look at Anastacia, who nodded at her to continue—“I want to help.”
“What? You’ve done plenty, Saskia. It’s fine—”
Saskia cut her off. “No. I want to help you figure out who the Master of Leviathan is. I’m ready.”
They waited five days until Jamie was well enough to go back to his own dorm. Armed with a pencil and sketchbook, Saskia and Lottie sat on each side of his bed, waiting for him to finish sipping some water.
He was sitting up with mountains of pillows behind him like a plush throne, decorative blankets with woven stories covering his legs. He was a little too big for the setup, and his strong body and energy clearly didn’t deal well with having to rest. The room was much like any of the other dorms, wood paneling and paper screens, raised platforms where the futons lay, but Jamie’s room had the distinct smell of cinnamon. The screen had been pushed open to let a breeze through, giving a perfect view of the pond sparkling orange in the evening sun.
“Okay!” Jamie sighed, cutting right to it as soon as he placed his water bottle back on the tray. “What are we doing?”
“You and Saskia are going to piece together everything you can remember about the Master of Leviathan, and I’m going to try and sketch him,” Lottie said frankly, opening her rose-covered notebook to a blank page. “We need to find out who he is before they use the Hamelin Formula for something awful.”
A harsh exhale hissed through Saskia’s teeth, while Jamie simply looked accepting. The bruises under his eyes had almost completely faded, proof that he was fighting whatever he’d been through.
“I didn’t see his face,” Jamie said bluntly, staring off at the dwindling light behind the screen, haunted by a memory Lottie couldn’t begin to know.
There was something about the Goat Man; he had a way of getting into people’s heads, and Lottie was going to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.
“So you really spoke to him?” Saskia asked, trying her best to stay calm, and Lottie noted a subtle glint in her eye that hinted at danger.
“Yes, well, he mostly spoke to me.” A steady hand reached for his forehead, rubbing his temples uncomfortably. “He wore a goat mask, with huge horns like a demon, and he had two other masked people with him, a bird and a rabbit. I cut the bird in the stomach with Ingrid’s knife, but I doubt it was a deep cut.”
“They only wear the masks when they need to hide their identity; I saw him without it only once.” Saskia’s voice cracked and she looked away.
“Saskia,” Lottie began, gently placing a hand on her knee. “You’re not in Leviathan anymore, remember?”
Her wide brown eyes darted between Lottie and Jamie. “I’m fine. It’s just . . . You don’t know what he’s . . . the things he can do.” Shaking her head, she looked down at Lottie’s hand as if it were a foreign object. “I was so scared to disappoint him.”
“Disappoint him?” Jamie asked, a connection being made. “He used the same word when he spoke to me. I understand the effect he could have.”
Lottie clung to his choice of words: “could have,” not “did have,” not “can have.”
“He didn’t mention you.” His words were sharp and quick like a knife.
Saskia recoiled. “I expected as much,” she said, a sour smile crawling onto her lips.
“He doesn’t care about any of the kids he tricks; there was never anything you could have done to disappoint him, because he doesn’t care, but he’s exceptionally good at making you think he does. I nearly—” Jamie cut himself off. “He said he wanted to be a ‘father to the world,’ that everyone should have a choice about how they live. But he acted more like a god.”
Saskia nodded, opening her eyes again, shoulders lifting like she was shrugging off whatever nasty creature from Leviathan had been clinging to her back. “I know that. I needed to hear it.” She sniffed, attempting a weak smile. “Thank you.” She gave herself a final shake, her hair springing out of its knot. “He has dark brown hair, long, and he’s tall, pale skin, a little jaundiced.”
It took Lottie a moment to realize Saskia was describing the Master of Leviathan, something they’d been trying to get her to do for over a year. She pressed her lips together in concentration, readying her pencil as she let the image take over her mind.
“Ingrid used to tell me he’s very handsome, sharp jawline, heavily lashed eyes, like a stag she said; I think she was trying to shove it in my face that she gets to see him.”
“They’re based in Japan,” Jamie added, which reignited Lottie’s worries that they’d tampered with her grade, with an even darker thought trailing its fingers through her mind. What if that girl on results day with the red nails really was being controlled by them?
Could the Master of Leviathan really be manipulating everyone that much?
“His accent is hard to place, like a mix of many different ones, and his voice is low.” Jamie chewed the thought in his head for a moment. “It’s almost pleasant, oddly familiar.”
“Familiar?” That seemed completely absurd, and Lottie was sure she’d heard him wrong.
“Yes,” Saskia added, thinking hard. “‘Familiar’ is a good word.”
“I’d guess, from the way he spoke, he’s in his forties.”
“Agreed,” said Saskia. “From the brief moment I got to see him he had frown lines and crow’s-feet, curved eyes and sharp bones, but he was in shadow. Everything about him looked harsher, darker.”
Lottie let the two of them hash out what they could remember of their mysterious foe, jotting everything down while trying to form an image of him on the paper.
Long dark brown hair
Frown lines
Crow’s-feet
Tall
Handsome
Pale
Aging (forties?)
Sharp features
Looking back at her from the paper, a face began to emerge, one that was so completely ridiculous
