Unconcerned with the muck, Graeson came to my side and gazed at the smooth surface of the water for so long I wondered what he was thinking. No, not thinking. Remembering. He had seen his sister’s corpse, found her and hauled her from her watery grave. He had the images burned into his mind that I had fabricated through a career of solving drowning cases.

Which of us held the short end of that stick? The one who knew and didn’t have to imagine, or the one who imagined because she didn’t know? Neither of us would ever know peace on the subject. Each of us would be tormented in a different way. Perhaps that suffering made us equals.

“Bessemer drove all the fae from the pack lands.” Dell worried her lip between her teeth. “You can’t pay most fae to step foot on them after what he did to the sprite, and humans are out of the question.”

Charybdis had brought the conclave here, and only Marie’s death—tied as it was to the deaths of fae girls—had given the local marshals reason to trespass.

“That leaves us with one option.” I massaged my temples. “I have her gear.”

Her gear. I had it all. The tail. The gill goop. Everything.

I spun the pearl bracelet around my wrist, bile tickling the back of my throat, and wished there was someone—anyone—else.

“I don’t trust that look, Cam.”

Had I been standing closer to the pond’s heart, I might have caught the faint reflection of my face arranging itself into grim but determined lines as the enormity of what I was about to attempt caught up with me.

“I’m going after her.”

From here it seemed the water grinned with its concentric rings, each ripple of anticipation a shiver down my spine.

* * *

The knot of fear tangling my heartstrings kept me distracted on the way home, the press of fear so tight my lungs balked at expanding as if water would rush in to fill them before my head broke the surface of the murky water.

That’s why I screamed when I tripped over the caramel-chocolate-dipped wolf pup who darted between me and the glowing lights of the caravan.

A blur of silver, and Graeson had her pinned lightly beneath his paw. The look he shot me was too self-aware for the wolf’s features. It was a man’s intellect that burned bright in his eyes, and his expression shared in my curiosity as to what the girl was doing so near our trailers, alone, so late at night.

“Camille,” Isaac panted, jogging out of the woods to join us. “Get him off her. She’s just a kid.”

“He won’t hurt her.” That much I did know. “What are you doing out here?”