“I’ll live,” I rasped. “What happened?”

“Two Denarians,” Gard replied. She nodded her head briefly to Luccio. “Both dead.”

Luccio shook her head. “They’d been half-drowned,” she said. “I only finished them off. I shouldn’t have liked to fight them fresh.”

“Take me to the bodies,” I said quietly. “Hurry.”

There was a sighing sound from behind us. I didn’t freak out about it this time, but Murphy did, her gun appearing in her hand. To be fair, Luccio had her sword half out of its sheath, too. I checked and found what I’d more or less expected: The body of the former Denarian, relieved of its coin, was decomposing with unnatural speed, even in the cold water. The Fallen angel in the coin might have been holding off the ravages of time, but the old man with the hourglass is patient, and he was collecting his due from the fallen Denarian with compounded interest.

“Captain, we’ve got to get every single coin we possibly can, and we’ve got to do it now.”

Luccio cocked her head at me. “Why?”

“Look, I don’t know what arrangements Kincaid made, but somebody is going to notice something soon, and then emergency services will be all over this place. I don’t want some poor fireman or cop accidentally picking up one of these things.”

“True enough,” she said, nodding—and then glanced at Murphy. “Sergeant, do you concur?”

Murphy grimaced. “Dammit, there’s always something….” She held up her hands as if pushing away a blanket that was wrapped too tightly around her and said, “Yes, yes. Round them up.”

“Michael,” I said. “Sanya?”

“When we got here,” Murphy said, “a bunch of those things were pulling you out of the water.”

“They ran. We went different directions, pursuing them,” Gard supplied.

“Where’s Cujo?” I asked.

Gard gave me a blank look.

“Hendricks.”

“Ah,” she said. “Lookout. He’ll give us a warning when the authorities begin to arrive.”

At least someone was thinking like a criminal. I suppose she was the right person for the job.

I raised my voice as much as I could. It came out sort of furry and rough. “Michael?”

“Here,” came the answer. He came walking around the curving path toward us a few moments later, wearing only his undershirt beneath his heavy denim jacket. I hadn’t seen him wearing that little before. Michael had some serious pecs. Maybe I should work out. He was carrying with both hands part of his blue-and-white denim shirt folded into a careful bundle in front of him.

Sanya came along behind Michael, soaking wet, his chest bare underneath his coat. Never mind Michael’s pecs. Sanya made us both look like we needed to eat more wheat germ or something. He was carrying Esperacchius and Amoracchius over one shoulder—and Kincaid over the other.

Kincaid wasn’t moving much, though he was clearly trying to support some of his weight. His skin was chalk white. He was covered in blood. The rest of Michael’s shirt, and both of Sanya’s, had been pressed into service as emergency bandages—and layers of duct tape had been wrapped around and around them, sealing them into place around both arms, over his belly, and around one leg.