Meg Mucklebones was even bigger than I remembered, towering above the pond, green, slimy skin stretched over a frame that looked like it had been built of twisted roots. Long, veiny arms reached impotently for her prey, her voice creaking and screeching. A mere foot beyond her grasp, eleven-year-old Brandon Cassopolis clung like a terrified spider monkey to the trunk of a dead pine tree jutting out of the pond, arms and legs wrapped around it, his eyes squeezed tightly closed.

“How did he—” I saw a second barren pine trunk angled across the pond, caught in the branches of Brandon’s perch. “Oh, crap.”

Jen shuddered. “Daise?”

A policeman with a gun would have been helpful right about now. A wolf, not so much. I was pretty sure wolves could swim if they had to, and pretty sure they weren’t at their fighting best when they did. But without the wolf, we wouldn’t have found Brandon.

I really, really hadn’t thought this through.

I glanced down at wolf-Cody. “If you can understand me, now would be a good time to go back for your gun.”

Apparently he could, since he shot out from beneath the deadfall and headed back across the muck at a rapid pace.

In the center of the pond, the marsh hag abandoned her futile effort to reach Brandon and wrapped both massive, long-fingered claws around the trunk of the upright pine tree. Brittle wood screeched and splintered alarmingly as she tugged on it, sounding a lot like the marsh hag herself.

“Daise!” Jen’s voice was high and tight with panic.

“Okay. Okay!” I reached for dauda-dagr’s hilt and drew it. It felt cold against my palm, but in a good way. The dagger cleared the scabbard with a faint singing sound. “Hey! Hey, Meg! Or Jenny, or whatever your name is! Over here!”

She turned, dripping and oozing, looming up into the morning sky. Her sunken gaze found me.

I held up my left hand, showing her Hel’s rune. “You’re out of line, bitch! Let the boy go.”

It took a moment to identify the rhythmic creaking sound as laughter. The marsh hag bent toward me, baring a mouthful of hideously pointed teeth and a disturbingly withered tongue. “I am within my rights!” she rasped at me. “The boy ventured into my territory knowingly! It has happened many times. Many times! Again and again, he has trespassed. This time, I have caught him.” She gestured at Brandon with one slimy, taloned claw. “That makes him my rightful prey, Hel’s liaison.” Her voice dropped to a low, slithering, contemptuous tone. “Do you dispute it?”

It made me angry.

Seriously angry.