That had been Semelee’s plan: sneak into the room, press the toad’s back against the old man’s lips, then get out. A minute or so later he’d be on his way to his maker and the job would be done.

She’d have to think of another plan now.

After she set the toad on the front seat of the boat, where it squatted and watched her with its big black eyes, her hand instinctively went to her breastbone to touch—

She stiffened. What? Where is it?

Then she remembered—the thong had broken in the hospital room. As she’d fled the terrible feelin’, she recalled stuffin’ it into a pocket.

She rummaged in the uniform’s other pocket and heaved a sigh of relief when she felt the slim thong. She pulled it out, expecting to see the pair of black freshwater clam shells she wore around her neck. She gasped when she saw only one.

“What’s wrong?” Luke said.

Semelee didn’t answer him. Instead she lifted the uniform and pawed through one pocket then the other.

“Oh, no! It’s gone!”

“What’s gone?”

“One of my eye-shells is missin’!”

“Check around your feet. Maybe it fell out when you was gettin’ changed.”

She checked, running her fingers along the slimy bottom through the inch or so of water.

“It’s gone!” she cried, feeling panic rising like a tide. “Oh, Luke, what am I gonna do? I need them!”

She’d had the eye-shells ever since she was twelve. She’d never forget that moment. Her mother’d taken her to her daddy’s funeral. That was the first time she’d ever seen him…or at least remembered seein’ him. He’d up and left Momma when Semelee was just a baby, soon after they moved to Tallahassee. He was Miccosukee Indian, banished from the tribe for somethin’ Momma never knew. She’d hooked up with him at the lagoon—lots a people livin’ round the lagoon back then was on the run from somethin’ or other—and the three of them moved outta there along with everyone else shortly after Semelee was born.

Her daddy—or rather the man who’d knocked up her momma—had been killed in a bar fight. Some of his Miccosukee kin had decided to give him a proper Indian send-off and his wife and child was invited.