Esme’s eyes opened. Nothing had changed. The knife still hung over her mother’s heart. The pearl still lay in her palm. Above her head, Anna curved over her and her mother, like a giant vulture about to feast.
‘Give it to me!’ Anna shrieked. ‘Give me the pearl!’
Esme sprung to her feet. With one hand, she knocked the suspended knife away from her mother’s heart. With the other, she held the pearl out before her, like she was wielding a weapon.
Anna’s avaricious features froze in place.
Light burst from the pearl, converging into a beam as strong and searching as the eye of the lighthouse back home. The beam formed the blade of a sword, a sword of brilliant light. The pearl itself was embedded in its hilt.
Esme raised the blade high, and struck at the wraith again and again.
Screams f
