As quickly as it had come, it wriggled through her fingers like a sea creature and never returned to her again.

Back on land, where the trees and water intersected invisibly on the half-moon of shoreline, she heard a noise. It radiated across the lake and landed in her ears and traveled through her body like shudders of thunder. Her head cocked in confusion. The noise repeated itself, dull and wet, a noise that had no business here in the woods. Her body became indescribably cold. She knew, without any glimmer of how she knew, that the noise was very, very bad.

Breaking the cathedral silence, she screamed, “Laura! Are you okay?”

There was no response, and somehow she knew there would never be a response. No musical voice. No laughter. No call from the shore. “I’m fine, silly, what’s the problem?”

Just a beating, pounding, thumping drumbeat. A killing beat.

She swam. She put her face in the water and clawed with her arms and kicked up waves behind her. She swam so far and so fast that her body scraped on the sand before she even realized she had scissored into shallow water. Panting, she stood up, wiping water from her eyes. Her mouth fell open, and when she tried to scream again, she couldn’t make a sound. She saw Laura’s body where it had been before, but nothing else was the same. Her limbs were sprawled and twisted. She smelled of copper and death. Beside her, thrown carelessly to the ground, was a silver bat.

Tish dived across the sand, crying, and wrapped her arms around the girl on the beach, rocking her like a baby, bathing herself in her blood, whispering in her ear, telling her to wake up, telling her how much she loved her.

Over and over.

Until they were both cold.

Tish wept silently into her hands. Maggie squeezed her shoulder while Stride opened his office door and signaled for a bottle of water. Tish took labored breaths and then straightened up and wiped her face.

“I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard,” she said. “I’ve held it in for a long time.”

Stride nodded. One of the secretaries brought in a bottle of water, and he twisted off the cap and handed it to Tish. She sipped it slowly.

“How did Cindy know you were there that night?” he asked.

“I was still on the beach when she arrived,” Tish murmured. “I hid in the woods, but she heard me behind her. I told her what had happened. I told her the truth about me and Laura.”

“Cindy never told anyone that she saw you there. Why did she protect you?”

“She knew I didn’t kill Laura.”

“That’s not a reason to keep quiet. You were a witness.”

Tish shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. Besides, Cindy wasn’t just protecting me. She was protecting her father, too. If people knew the truth about me and Laura, it would have killed him.”