Finding the young boy’s body again was tough. Mostly because not much was left of the victim after the kraken finished pulverizing the area. It didn’t take a lot for me to read magic on remains. I touched a shattered elbow and felt…nothing. No residual magic from Charybdis. No inborn magic from the boy. He was a blank slate.

This victim had been human, his only crime stumbling into an area populated by lethal fae that few mortals knew existed in order to avoid them. His parents would never know the truth of how his brief life ended. I sank to the ground and sat there beside him so he wouldn’t be alone. Even though he was past caring about such things, I wasn’t, and I hoped I never would be.

Chapter 4

I crashed hard after the incident at the Wink Sinks. That much I remembered. The conclave comped my room in a budget motel on the fringes of town so I could recuperate. I remembered that too. But I woke stiff from my earlier exertions and with the nagging sense of having forgotten something. Expending as much magic as I had without warming up first came at a cost, and I got the feeling from the dried crust around my mouth that I had just paid the bill.

A dark outline leaned over me, and I jerked upright so fast I almost cracked my forehead against Harlow’s before she leapt backward. After a moment’s heart-stopping pause, I swallowed my panic and slumped back against my pillow. “What the hell?”

“I was worried about you.” She scraped polish off her fingernails. “You’ve been drooling on that pillow for thirty-six hours. It’s almost midnight.”

“What?” I blinked my eyes clear of their hazy film. “That’s not possible.”

Aunt Dot would have a heart attack if I didn’t check in soon. She had expected me home the day after my impromptu trip to Wink, and since she was my next-door neighbor, she had probably been sitting in her bathrobe on the front porch staring down the dirt road leading into town, waiting on my pickup to round the bend until well past her bedtime.

Calling her at this hour was out of the question. She hated email and thought cell phones were brain cancer waiting to happen. My cousin Isaac, her youngest son by five minutes, lived beside her. I would text him to explain the situation as soon as Harlow left, and he could pass on the information when he met his mom for breakfast the next morning. It was too little, too late, and yes, somewhat cowardly, but it was the best I could do at this point.