The warg gazed down at me with expectation that made my cheeks burn, but he let me go, and we resumed our hike into the marsh. It took a while for us to reach the darkly glittering body of water where the kelpie had hunted the McKenna girl, and Graeson ended up steadying my elbow when my feet bogged in mud more than once, though we managed to avoid another tree incident. I didn’t thank him. I shrugged him off and trudged on, looking for an indication of where Harlow had gone into the water, but the sand hadn’t been disturbed by a sometimes-mermaid. All I had to tell me we were on the right track was Graeson’s nose, and that seemed more interested in sniffing me than the ground.

“Why don’t we split up?” I suggested. “You can search by scent, over there near the water, and I’ll head deeper into the woods.”

Farther away from you was implied.

“No.” He didn’t entertain the thought longer than it took to shoot down my idea. “We stick together. There’s something off about this place.” He stopped to rub a leaf through his fingers then sniffed them. “We know Charybdis was here, so was the McKenna girl, so were the chaperones who answered her cries for help and the search crew the conclave dispatched, and so was Harlow.” He stepped forward and repeated the process. “Yet I haven’t picked up a single scent that isn’t coming from you or me since we left the area surrounding the van.”

“Could it be an erasure spell?” Fae scents often frightened local wildlife. Several fae species were custodians of the earth, and they advocated such measures in order to do no harm to the animals. Erasure spells created sensation voids, which spooked animals too, but not as much as the predator smells did. Over time, after a good rain, the antiseptic magic washed away to be replaced with more natural aromas. “Can you tell if it’s charm based?”

“They’re too good for that. The absence is telling, though. I don’t like this. Someone wiped the entire lakefront. That shouldn’t have happened until all support personnel had cleared the area.” Pointing to the deer trail I had been following, he ordered, “Stay close. I’m going to try tracking by the water.”

Magic and water didn’t mix. If we had walked into an enchantment, wading into the water might break it. I was fine letting him play the guinea pig. I preferred being head blind to waterlogged.

Graeson kept to the sandbars as we circled the perimeter of the lake while I traversed the solid ground, walking beside him but six or seven feet away from even the barest hint of moisture. Every so often, I caught his head tilting back, tracking our progress by the moon.