He put a hand to his pocket, as though he’d find anything there; but of course, it was empty. The long, slender, ivory-handled knife he’d taken from the marshjack back in Georgia was gone. A mere inch of the handle still protruded from the bull’s eye socket. The rest of the knife was buried in the beast’s brain. A trickle of blood spilled over the hippo’s cheek like tears as it gave a final thrash, and then sank below the surface of the water.

As the ripples stilled, Adelia lowered her throwing arm.

“That,” Cal said quietly, “is why you shouldn’t be in the water after sundown.”

Chapter 8

DRAGGING THE HIPPO’S CARCASS out of the lake wasn’t easy, but it had to be done: Rosa, Ruby, Betsy, and Abigail wouldn’t approach the shore with the bull’s blood pinking the muddy water. Zahra and Stasia were nowhere to be found, but Adelia seemed certain that they’d return at dawn so long as the bull’s carcass was gone.

Fortunately, none of the hoppers was a stranger to dead hippos. Archie insisted that she be the one to wade out into the swamp—insisted that it was her fault the boy had been in the water in the first place. She secured a length of rope around her middle and made her way to the hippo while Cal and Houndstooth watched the water, ready to haul her back in if so much as a bubble surfaced nearby. She girded the beast with five separate ropes before splashing back to the shore. They all hauled him onto the sand together, dragging him far enough inland that their hippos wouldn’t be disturbed by the smell of their mad, dead cousin. Had they been on a ranch, they’d have butchered the carcass and sold the hide to a tannery; as it was, nobody could bring themselves to take a knife to the creature that had so efficiently slaughtered young Neville.

The exhausted hoppers dried themselves around the fire, not acknowledging the fact that none of them would volunteer to wade back into the river to find Neville’s body. Cal was the first to break the silence.

“I think it’s time you told us the plan, Winslow. You do have a plan?”

Archie looked at him, hollow-eyed. “Yes, ’oundstooth, what is the plan?”

Hero was the one who answered. They reached into their bedroll and pulled out a map of the Harriet, spreading it on the ground a safe distance from the fire and weighing down the corners with empty, whiskey-sticky mugs. The map showed the lake, enclosed parenthetically by the dam to the north and the Gate to the south. The feral’s usual territory, near the center of the lake, was marked with a large red circle; the safe travel routes, by blue arrows. The rest of the marks on the map were incomprehensible at first glance.