“Patricia Cornwell wrote a book called that, didn’t she?” Sam said, and I almost smiled. This was a very civilized discussion to be having under the circumstances. Maybe I was still a little numb from the night before, or maybe I was continuing my process of hardening up to survive the world around me, but I found I simply didn’t care much about Sandra. The Pelts had had a personal vendetta against me for no very good reason for a very long time, and now it was over.

I finally understood something about the mayhem of the night before. It wasn’t the individual deaths I found so appalling but the level of violence, the sheer horror of seeing so much dealt out and received. . . . Just as I found Jannalynn’s execution of Sandra the most disturbing thing about today’s encounter. Unless I was mistaken, Sam did, too.

We reached the small open space in the trees. I was glad to see the little distortion in the air that betrayed the portal into Faery. I pointed silently, as if the fae could hear me (and for all I knew, they could). After a second or two, Jannalynn and Sam spotted what I was trying to show them. They eyed it curiously, and Jannalynn went so far as to stick her finger in it. Her finger vanished from sight, and with a yelp, she pulled her hand back. She was definitely relieved to see that the finger was still attached.

“Count of three,” I said, and Sam nodded. He moved from the end of Sandra’s body to the side, and as smoothly as if we had practiced it, we fed the corpse into the magical hole. It wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t been so small.

Then we waited.

The corpse didn’t get spat back out. No one leaped out with a sword to demand our lives for desecrating the land of the fae. Instead, we heard a snarling and a yapping, and we all stood frozen, our eyes wide and our arms tense, waiting for something to issue from the portal, something that we had to fight.

But nothing came out. The noises continued, and they were graphic enough: rending and tearing, more snarling, and then after some sounds so disturbing I won’t even try to describe them, there was silence. I figured there wasn’t any Sandra left.