“We have to get under cover soon,” I say. “That thing—or maybe its friends—could come back any moment.”

“Can you walk, Wyatt?” Trey asks.

“Yeah.”

“Paige, very slowly and gently pull your sleeve away. Let’s see if the bleeding has slowed.”

I do as Trey asks. Sure enough, a little blood wells up, but not nearly as much as before.

“Okay, let’s move,” Trey orders, and together he and I help Wyatt to his feet.

“How’s that?” Trey asks him. “Any dizziness?”

“I think I’m okay,” Wyatt says.

We make our way slowly up the barge toward Manny and the towboat. Eyes to the sky, Tanq and Trey have been saying, and I can’t help scanning for dragonflies. But it turns out that danger comes from the deep, too. There is no safe place for us.

We’re holed up in a beach house in Port Clinton. The Tardis is parked at the end of a long dock, hardly visible through the living-room window with the rain sheeting down. There might have been time to drive the barge back to Sandusky before the dragonflies started patrolling again, but this storm makes it too dangerous. And none of us were keen to be on the water anyway, after learning the walkers are also champion swimmers. Besides, we need to keep an eye on Wyatt for a while, make sure his breathing normalizes and that he doesn’t have a concussion.

I wish there was a way to get in touch with Tanq, let her know we’re taking an extra night to get the job done. She knew it was a possibility, but I can’t imagine being all alone in that bunker, not knowing if my friends were okay. At least she has Emmaline.

“Okay, one more time,” Manny says to me. “Go through it again. Don’t leave out a single detail.”

We’re gathered in the living room on sandy-colored sofas that have seen better days. The room is paneled in dark wood, and taxidermied animal heads watch over us from the fireplace mantel: a black bear in full snarl, surrounded by a wolverine, a red fox, a six-point buck, and something whitish and scraggly that might once have been a rabbit.

I take a deep breath and give Manny the account all over again—the walker launching out of the lake like a porpoise, the way it glided toward me after it thought it had taken care of Wyatt, how it ignored me, like it hardly realized I was there. I describe its cloak touching my cheek—like fluffy cotton but wet and cold, cold, cold. I recount how I couldn’t distract it from Trey until I threw coal at its back.

Manny is silent a long time.

“What does it mean, Manny?” Wyatt asks.