EPISODE 5: THE TONGUE OF THE TIDE ## Chapter One: The Salt in the Sermon The church of St. Jude-by-the-Water had stood on its promontory since the reign of Elizabeth, its stone walls veined with lichen the color of old bruises. Rain slanted across the stained-glass windows in silver needles, turning the faces of the saints into weeping ghosts. Inside, the air was thick with wet wool, candle smoke, and the particular hush that gathers when a town is pretending it has nothing to hide. Eleanor Vale sat in the third pew from the front, spine rigid as the oak beneath her. The black dress she had worn to her mother’s funeral still carried the scent of the funeral home—cloying lilies and something metallic underneath, like blood left too long in salt water. In her lap rested the ledger she had taken from the hidden drawer beneath the hearthstone at Dunmere Manor. Its cover was sealskin, soft as sin, the pages inside filled with names written in varying shades of ink and, in later entries, what looked suspiciously like dried blood. Maeve sat beside her, earbuds in, eyes fixed on the floorboards as though the grain of the wood held secrets more interesting than the living. The girl had not spoken more than three words since the footprints had...