I stepped up next to Rosanna and said in a quiet voice, “Tell me something. This maiden-of-sorrow thing you’ve got going—how many Knights have you killed with it?”

Her eyes, both pairs, flicked aside to glance at me for a second, then back out at the night. “What do you mean?”

“You know. You’ve got that beautiful sad aura going. You look mournful and tragic and pretty. Radiate that ‘save me, save me’ vibe. Probably get all kinds of young men who want to carry you off on a white horse.”

“Is that what you think of me?” she asked.

“Lady,” I said, “a year or three ago, I’d have been the first in line. Hell, if I thought you were serious about getting out, I’d probably still help you. But I don’t think you want out. I think that if you were all that pathetic, you wouldn’t be controlling your Fallen—it would be controlling you. I think you’re Tessa’s trusted lieutenant for a reason. Which means that either this tragic, trapped-lady routine is a bunch of crocodile tears, or else it’s hypocrisy on such an epic scale that it probably qualifies as some kind of psychological dysfunction.”

She stared out into darkness and said nothing.

“You never did answer my question,” I said.

“Why not say it louder?” she asked me in a bitter undertone. “If that is what you think of me, then your friends need to be forewarned of my treachery.”

“Right,” I said. “I do that, and then your eyes well up with tears, and you turn away from me. You let them see one tear fall down your cheek, then turn your head enough to let the wind carry your hair over the rest. Maybe let your shoulders shake once. Then it’s the big bad suspicious wizard, who doesn’t forgive and doesn’t understand, picking on the poor little girl who is trapped in her bad situation and really just wants to be loved. Give me some credit, Rosanna. I’m not going to help you set them up.”

The glowing green eyes turned to examine me, and Rosanna’s mouth moved, speaking in an entirely different, feminine voice. “Lasciel taught you something of us.”

“You might say that,” I replied.

Ahead of us and slightly to the right a light flared up in the darkness—a bonfire, I thought. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, given the night and the falling snow.

“There,” Rosanna murmured. “That way. If you would excuse me.”

As she walked back to the wheel of the boat, a breath of wind sighed over the lake. In itself that wasn’t anything new. Wind had been blowing all the way through the snowstorm. Something about this breeze, though, caught my attention. It wasn’t right.

It took me another three or four seconds to realize what was wrong.

This was a south wind. And it was warm.

“Uh-oh,” I said. I held up the chemical light and started scanning the waters all around us.