“Look at this.” Graeson tapped a row of boxes flush with the wall. “This is where she kept the suckers.” He squatted and riffled through a second box then a third. “Clothes with tags still on. Makeup.” The fourth box made his shoulders tense. “You should take a look at this.” Reluctant to leave Harlow, I hesitated until he said, “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

We switched places, Graeson angling his body to keep our path out clear while keeping Harlow in his sights, and I knelt on the damp rock and dipped my hand into a box with three items remaining. A man’s hiking boot, an old jar filled with brittle yet flawless leaves, and a piece of blue raspberry-flavored rock candy. I gripped the boot and yanked the tongue out as far as it would go. Written in the same neat hand that graced the nightgown’s tag was a new name—Derik Ellis. My father.

“These must be the items Harlow had left to pass off through Emily.” I replaced the boot and glanced up at him. “Seven items. Seven is a magical number.”

Meaning the rabbit was a ploy of Aisha’s or I was wrong about Charybdis sticking to magical theory.

Eyes on Harlow, he inclined his head toward me. “Do they have any significance to you?”

“This belongs to my father.” I tapped the shoe. “The leaves remind me of a game Lori and I played one summer.” I picked up the crinkly wrapper last. “This was our favorite flavor. Our parents bought these for us at general stores when we went up in the mountains.”

Rising to my feet, I rejoined Graeson in staring at Harlow, who hadn’t so much as fidgeted since our arrival.

“Can you hear us?” She gave no sign of listening to me, but it wasn’t her I wanted to engage. “I don’t know your true Name, but I know who you are.” I took one step closer. “You aren’t Harlow any more than you were the kelpie or Marshal Ayer.”

“How dare you address me. You who are but a child.” Harlow’s lips moved, the too-deep voice coming from her mouth, but the cadence of her speech belonging to someone else—something else. “You cannot begin to fathom who or what I am.” She turned her head toward us, and her eyes had gone black and gleaming, as empty and cruel as the kelpie’s had been. “You have cost me much, Camille Ellis, and I will have what is owed repaid.”

Graeson’s hand closed over my upper arm, and he anchored me to the spot before roiling anger blocked out my rational thoughts. “I owe you nothing.”