“As far as I know.” The smell of wet dog almost bowled me over whenever I entered the shack. “I don’t see Graeson making his stand here if the pack wasn’t willing to get their paws wet.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.” After that ringing endorsement, she let her eyes go unfocused while she gazed across the water. “There are no naturally occurring aquatic caves in the area. Whatever’s down there was hand carved. The Mississippi River is maybe an hour away. Freshies use it like a highway. It’s not impossible that a large body of water like this one, so close to a main ‘road’, might be used as nesting grounds.” Her voice went soft. “There could be caves for miles down there depending on the size of the pod.”
“Freshies are freshwater mermaids?” I clarified.
“Yes.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Salties—like my parents—view them as hillbilly cousins or something. Lots of animosity there.”
Thierry hadn’t said one way or the other, but the mermaids in Wink must be freshies to live so far inland. That might explain why Harlow’s attempts to soothe the kraken backfired. If it shared its masters’ hatred for salties, then it wouldn’t hesitate to attack an enemy invading a potential nesting ground. Going in a human and a saltie? Harlow never stood a chance. She should have bowed out once she realized how long her odds were, but she hadn’t. Youth tended to give us all the illusion of invincibility.
“What are the odds of us recovering—” I almost slipped and said a body, “—Roni?”
“Warrens are difficult to navigate even when you’re familiar with them. Scent markers are the only way to be sure of where you’re going, so keep your fingers crossed that it’s been a while since a pod used the lake.” She opened a jar and removed a glob of flesh-colored goo. “The fewer smells competing for my attention, the easier it will be to lock on to where the kelpie is hiding.”
I wrinkled my nose when she liberally applied the gel to the sides of her throat. “What are you doing?”
When Harlow removed her hand, pink-rimmed gills flexed from her collarbone to under her ears. “A girl’s gotta breathe, right? It takes a few minutes for them to become fully functional.” Next she removed a dagger with a shell-encrusted handle and tucked it into a pouch sewn into her top. Gingerly she eased out what appeared to be a pair of black yoga shorts from her pack. Instead of standing upright to change, she laid back on the planks, wiggling her hips to pull the stretchy fabric on over the pair she already wore. “If you like that…” she huffed, “…you’ll love my next trick.”
I waited. Nothing happened. “Should l clap?”
“Give me a second.” She scooched over to the edge, dipped her hand in the lake and poured water onto her lap. Golden scales with a rosy hue glimmered where each drop fell. “The real magic happens in the water.” She rolled hard to her left. “Be right back.”
Splash.
Her tail breached seconds later, and her head popped up five minutes after that. Streaming water, she was radiant.
I gaped after her. I owed her applause after all.
“How is this possible?” Magic was capable of many things, but giving a girl reusable fins and gills? “Can all initiates do this?”
What I meant was—did the same change that allowed the merfolk to walk on land for a year also cause a false positive? Maybe Harlow wasn’t human. Maybe if I touched her now, while she wore her tail, I would read her differently. As long as I had puzzled over her mystery, I couldn’t stem my curiosity. Being stumped by a classification for the first time had been driving me nuts.
“I’m a changeling.” She bobbed in the water. “The human half of the equation, obviously.”
So much for that theory.
“That explains the texture of the magic in your aura.” The sensation was so slight even charismatic humans registered in her range. “At first I thought it meant you were a witch, but the signature was too faint.”
“No hocus-pocus here. Well, none generated by me.” She returned to the dock, dragged her bag closer and removed two small discs I recognized as rudimentary healing spells. She jiggled the pouches to settle their contents then tucked them into her top before snapping and knotting the various closures. She spoke to the fabric as if telling it her story was easier than facing me. “My parents made the arrangements for me.”
“Your parents.” Human or mermaid or both, I wondered.
“Both merfolk,” she answered my unspoken question. “I’m the only human in the pod.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked, half joking. Changelings were usually compatible on a base level with their adoptive parents. Dropping a human infant into the sea and expecting it to survive among merfolk stretched that definition.
“My mother is cursed. All of her children die the hour they turn six weeks old. Sixteen years ago my father was so distraught at her pain, he made a bargain with a brownie who cleaned and mended for a human family with thirteen children. They couldn’t afford another mouth to feed, and the brownie made sure they didn’t have one for long. The humans had been praying for a miracle, and the brownie overheard them and granted one.”
“The brownie swapped you for the merchild,” I supplied.
“Yes.” She secured the backpack to one of the pilings, and when the fabric got damp, a cluster of chalky-white bay barnacles burst over the surface, the kind you’d expect to see on the belly of a freighter. Glamour perhaps? “When the infant died, my father left my birth parents my weight in gold and precious gems. They were compensated for their loss, as much as any mortal is among the fae, and Mom got what she had always wanted.” She pointed both of her thumbs at her chest.
If she expected condemnation from me, she would be waiting a long time. Fae traditions were older than the ground under my feet. The rights and wrongs of fae and men were not mine to judge.
“The Rumspringa thing I told you about…” She blushed. “It’s pretty much a total lie. Sorry. Telling the story was habit by the time I met you.”
I waved off her apology. “Your parents were wise to give you a chance to see how humans and fae live topside together.” Otherwise she would have always been curious about the wonders of land, maybe even grown to resent her mother and father for not having a chance to embrace both sides of her heritage. “I do have one more question. Why do you wear the tail sometimes and not others? It seems like it would give you an advantage.”
“The magic requires time to regenerate. It’s not an issue at home, in salt water, but here it’s difficult to recharge that specific type of magic.” A dismissive shrug. “Not so much a mystery as a practicality.”
I mulled over her answer, imagining her soaking the shorts in a salt bath in her hotel room to rejuvenate them, and found the whimsy of Harlow’s life enchanting. “I hope you’re happy with your choice.”
“That makes two of us.” A tight smile stretched her lips. “Well.” The barnacles’ cling was tested by Harlow twisting the bag until it faced under the dock. “I’m ready. How about you?”
“I hate that you have to go alone.”
“I’ve survived worse odds.” She knocked on the warped planks. “Besides, you’re here.” She drifted away from the dock. “You won’t let anything happen to me.”
The pearl bracelet felt tight around my wrist. I ran my finger underneath to loosen it.
With a flip of her tail, Harlow vanished beneath the surface, and the waiting game began.
Chapter 16
Ten minutes passed counted out by my fingers tapping against my thigh. Ten. Some humans could hold their breath for twenty-odd minutes. The record was something like twenty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds. Nonaquatic fae had a similar lung capacity. That said, the average human only managed thirty or forty seconds before they started gasping for air.
Not that I was obsessed with drowning statistics or anything, but how would a nine-year-old girl survive such an arduous trip to the surface? If she was still alive at all. Harlow might be fast, but if the caves ran as deep as she thought th
ey might, then pressure sickness might also be a factor. Too many variables. Too many grim thoughts circling me. I was sick of them.
“Is it safe to come out now?”
The sound of Dell’s voice eased the tension in my shoulders. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You weren’t supposed to.” Her next steps made enough noise to compensate for the previous ones. Moonlight glimmered in her hair and bathed her cheeks when she winked at me. “Stealth mode and all that.”
“The patrols haven’t turned up anything?”
“Nothing so far.” She tapped the side of her nose. “The scent from the parking lot was strong enough we all imprinted a scent memory. We’ll know the creature if we come across it again.”
“That’s good news.” As fast as news traveled among the wargs, having Dell with me was as good as wearing a headset and listening in to comm chatter. Or it would be if she heard the pack bond as well in human form as she did as a wolf. “Is everyone in place?”
“The lake is surrounded,” she assured me. “It can’t get on land without one of us seeing or hearing it, even if it casts again and we lose the scent.”
A pack of wargs could handle the kelpie if Harlow spooked it. I was more worried about what was happening under the water. The question of what is Charybdis hadn’t been answered to my satisfaction yet either. Were we dealing with one fae? Or two who shared a magical signature?
If a practitioner put in an appearance, we weren’t without resources. We had two witches on our side, but Charybdis was fae or at least from Faerie. His magic would be fae magic. The Garzas cast earth magic. Even with a home-field advantage, the Garzas might not stack up against the mystery fae.
“We could ask the Garzas to cast again,” Dell was saying, “but by the time they finished, this op will be over.”
A bloodcurdling scream glazed my spine with fear. The ethereal white head of a delicately boned horse parted the surface of the water. Steam bellowed from its nostrils. Its mane rippled in the still night air as though the strands were as dry as bone. Hooves stamped the water in front of it, and a massive tail whipped the water in its wake.
“Fish sticks,” Dell cursed. “I need to shift. I have to warn the others.”
An enormous silvery gray wolf with white markings on its forelegs kicked up dirt when it landed beside me. Its teeth were bared, and drool hung from its muzzle. I stumbled into Dell before my brain caught up to my feet. “Graeson?” The wolf’s hazel eyes flicked to me, and a sarcastic wag moved his tail before he lowered his shoulders and snarled at the stampeding kelpie. “You can’t take on a kelpie alone.”
The wolf, who must have been hiding in the trees all along, ignored me.
Dell cocked her head, already listening to things beyond my perception while her bones cracked and the change took her. “The others…will be here…soon.”
A vicious shriek pierced my ears. The kelpie was gaining speed, and I was a sitting duck without borrowed magic to wield. We had expected the kelpie to flee. We figured it would exit the far end of the lake, the farthest point from civilization. It must have followed Harlow’s scent trail back to the pier. It wanted this confrontation. It came looking for a fight.
“I can’t stand back and watch you two fight this thing.” I stuck out my hand. “Please, Dell. Let me help you.”
Understanding tensed her shoulders, but she clasped hands with me. “Don’t die. I’ll get in so much trouble if you kick the bucket.”
Fingers damp in her grip, I timed it so my spur pierced Dell’s palm the moment the kelpie’s front hooves struck sand. A bestial cry rang out as it hauled itself forward in graceless increments. Its tail flipped and kicked up dirt until a burst of white magic dissolved the giant fins into muscular rear legs. With all four legs under it, the kelpie charged.
Tawny fur rippled down my arm the instant the tang of Dell’s blood registered in the back of my throat. Straining, I focused on the burn of magic, directed it, and slowly the nails on my other hand blackened and lengthened to razor tips.
Jaws wide, the gray wolf at my side lunged for the kelpie’s throat. Popping noises and soft whimpers told me Dell was mid-change. I circled around the kelpie, claws flexing, waiting for an opening. Graeson slung his head back and forth, ripping flesh and exposing the beast’s windpipe. His nails dug into its fur and gave him leverage to clamp his jaws deeper in the delicate skin.
The scent of raw meat made my stomach rumble. Must be the wolf blood, because I was a well-done kind of girl.
Graeson’s assault left no room for me. The hindquarters were too dangerous. The front end wasn’t much better. The throat was its weakest point, and the warg necklace the kelpie wore was stripping tendon to the bone.
A groan turned growl preceded the golden wolf who positioned herself between the fight and me. Head low and tail dragging the ground, Dell rumbled in her throat. The motion drew the kelpie’s eye, and its slimy gaze raked over me. The beast trumpeted a shrill whinny. Its black pupils expanded until only crystalline voids remained where its eyes had been. Their emptiness sucked at the edge of my consciousness, lured me forward and made my palms itch with the need to caress the kelpie’s silky hide, to run my fingers through its flowing hair. For a moment, the world spun in orbit around me, and the unforgiving fabric of the universe spread as far as my eyes could see. There was peace in death, and the creature offered it to me. Its vision enveloped me, and the surcease of pain was such a welcome relief that my bones melted with promise.
In the distance, miles away, light-years from me, the sounds of Graeson’s feasting rent the air. Another sound, a whine accompanied by the insistent nudging of a furry head against my thigh, yanked me from the kelpie’s trap, and I gasped as the world rushed back into focus.
A nicker passed the kelpie’s lips before it twisted, slinging Graeson off his feet. Graeson hung on by the tips of his fangs. When the horse let him touch down, it nailed him in the stomach with the sharp edge of a front hoof. Blood slicked his fur. He was hurt. Badly.
Seeing its opening, the kelpie stomped on Graeson’s tail and reared back its head, shredding its own throat as it tried ripping the warg off. Its feet stamped, eager for the chance to crush the wolf beneath them. It was my cue. I couldn’t wait another second. I rushed forward with Dell bounding two strides ahead of me.
The beast rotated its torso to the right, and Graeson slung free, his body splashing into the water. It spotted Dell and pivoted on its front feet, bucking wildly and clipping her on the chin with its rear leg. Her head snapped back. She hit the water and didn’t move. I ran to haul them out before they drowned.
“A little help would be nice,” I yelled to the wargs who had yet to materialize.
I bolted for Dell, but the kelpie cut me off. It didn’t charge. It didn’t move. Maybe it couldn’t now that it had expended so much energy on attacking the wargs. It stared me down while its life drained away in bluish fluids that slicked its chest. I didn’t have time to waste. Already prickles raced up my arms. Splitting the magic across two limbs was costing me. I swung my arm and raked furrows across the kelpie’s snout. It reared on its hind legs and screamed. I swung again, swiping its chest. It planted its front feet and whirled its hind legs. When it kicked out, air whistled over my head, but I ducked under its vicious hooves. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge its second strike, and the next thing I knew I was flying.
I hit the water. Hard. I gritted my teeth and gasped as the warm liquid closed over my head and the sound of my frantic pulse hammered in my ears. My body sank fast and so far, I thought I would never stop dropping. My frantic mind conjured Lori floating beside me, hand extended, encouraging me to let her guide me into the deeps where she had gone.
The bitter tang of fear and blood filled my mouth, and a second, more desperate change swept over me as Lori waited out my oxygen with an eager smile curving her lips. It was as if the wavering apparition had possessed me, ready to relive her death. The arms grasping for the surface were now slender and
pale. My hands were small, and a kitten bandage covered one of my knuckles.
Childish laughter tinkled in my ears. The sea boiled and frothed. Waves pelted me, sucked my feet from under me. My back hit the sand. My ears rang. Water rose up my chest, fizzled over my neck until it crested over my head. One heartbeat, two. It retreated in a dizzying rush, nursed my toes and tried to draw me out to sea with it. Salt made my face sticky. Tears or ocean water, I wasn’t sure.
A thick arm wrapped around my waist, and I cried out as reality splintered the memory. The remaining air in my lungs expelled from the pressure. I blinked through murky waters and found Graeson’s human face inches from mine. His eyes glowed in the low light, wild and furious.
I clawed at my throat, couldn’t breathe. So much water. In my eyes, my nose, my ears. Crushing me. Graeson was strong, but he was injured, one leg shattered by the kelpie. He struggled to haul us both to the surface.
Lori’s pale hands fisted his shirt. The gods weren’t so cruel as to let her die the same way twice, were they? Hadn’t I been punished enough? Or did I have to follow in her footsteps as I should have done that night so long ago?
Graeson scissored his legs and pinned me to him with one arm while he swam with the other. Pressure lessened. The pain banding my chest became bearable. Our heads burst from the water, and I gasped and choked until my throat burned. I shivered so hard my teeth chattered even though the water was as warm as the last shower I had taken.
“Hold on,” he panted. “I’ve got you.”
I clung to him, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck until he made a gurgling noise. He twisted in the water so I rode astride his chest as he paddled backward toward the shore. In a day or two I would be mortified. Right now I was too damn grateful to be alive. I propped my chin on my shoulder to keep my face out of the water. Graeson’s nose barely breached the surface, but his heart thumped steady against my chest.
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