In the blink of an eye, she shifted, her shapely human lower half giving way to those vast, glistening, muscular coils. If you crossed a giant anaconda with a rainbow, that’s pretty much what the bottom half of a lamia would look like. Propelled by her undulating coils, Lurine glided across the surface of the river through a thicket of sedge grass, her torso disconcertingly upright and towering in the air. When she reached open water, she halted.

Her immensely long, powerful tail thrashed, churning the water. She raised her voice and summoned the naiads in a foreign tongue, every word precise and ringing with bronze-edged irritation.

I don’t know what she said, but she sounded pissed.

There was a long moment of silence, echoes dying across the bay. And then the water rippled with myriad arrow-headed wakes as the naiads, undines, and nixies came in swift answer to Lurine’s summons, rising to bob in the river, heads lowered in acknowledgment.

Lurine’s tail snaked back toward me and proffered a loop, the iridescent tip beckoning. Not exactly what I’d expected when she said she’d come back for me. When I hesitated, she glanced over her shoulder with mild annoyance. “I’m not playing, Daisy. Are you coming or not?”

“Coming.” I pried off my sandals and stepped onto the offered loop of her tail. It dipped slightly beneath my weight, and I nearly slipped. “Whoa!”

A coil wrapped around my waist, steadying me. “Gotcha, cupcake.”

Okay . . . gah!

Lurine retracted her coils, me within them, and in one swift rush I was floating above the river and the aquatic mean-girls club, securely encased in a lamia’s grip. Yep, definitely hot—also pretty exhilarating, like the weirdest amusement park ride ever.

The head naiad bobbed and glared at me beneath her lashes. I cleared my throat. “Um . . . hi again.” I raised my left hand, the one marked with Hel’s rune. “Remember me?”

Her voice was subdued, but icy. “Yes, of course. The sun has not set on our brief acquaintance.”

Lurine’s tail thrashed in warning. I rode out the convulsions, my bare toes gripping her water-slick coils, one hand clutching her shoulder. “Level with me. A boy died, okay? Just tell me what you saw.”

They conferred in their silvery voices. The sun sank lower, turning the rippled surface of the water to hammered gold.

At last a pair of timid undines with pearls from my morning’s offering twined in their translucent hair came forward. “The boy didn’t drown in the river,” one of them said in a faint, wispy voice. “They put him there.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Who did? His friends?”

They exchanged a glance. “We don’t know. It was dark,” the other one said. “They were in a boat without lights.”

“How many people?” I asked. “Human or eldritch?”