He hadn’t been to the bayou since that day they found the body. They had never recovered all of Mary Beth, and she was hardly the only soul to die in there. Microscopic bits of gore and viscera had long ago seeped into the mud to now brush against his legs, mingling with the fabrics of his clothes.

Like it was ingrained deep in his brain, he walked to the spot where the body was found. The bayou was a maze, all but unrecognizable after so long, but he never faltered. He picked his way over tree roots, past hanging branches slick with moss, through the clouds of algae that slimed his clothes and left trails of green decay across his skin. The humming grew louder, thunderously so, drawing him in deeper and deeper until he saw her.

She stood, eleven years old, as she had been for the past seventeen years. Her dress hung wetly from her shoulders, the water up almost to her chest. Her hair was black like sea snakes beneath her ruined bow.

“You came.” Her voice was as sweet as it ever was.

“You’re dead.” He was consumed entirely by exhaustion, and an aching heartbreak for the girl who stood before him and watched him with those dark, cloud-gray eyes. “You’re dead and buried. This is another dream.”

“They buried me,” she agreed, “but I’m still here. I’ve been waiting ever since the priest sank my body under the water. I was still alive when he brought me here, but only barely. Would you like to hear what he did to me first, or do you remember?”

Eugene swallowed bile and she smiled. Her teeth were small and sharp, scarcely human anymore.

“I’m part of the bayou, now. It’s part of me. And now I can take Chanlarivyè, and everyone who ever protected the priest will be gone.”

"Children have disappeared."

Mary Beth shrugged. “I was a child.”

“They called you their little angel.”

“I was an angel. Then I was dead. Now I’m something else.”

Sharp teeth, glowing eyes.

“Something like Johnny Walker?”

“He didn’t call himself that back when he was with me. He always liked you, you know.”

She reached out and took his hand, her skin clammy as death itself. Her nails were blue, her fingers thin and gray. When she touched him, he went cold all over, as if someone had passed over his grave. The bayou would be his grave, as surely as it was hers. He couldn’t bring himself to fight it. She was right to condemn him with the rest of the town.

“I grew up with him,” she continued. “When my grandparents came over from Ireland, he came with them—and then he stayed with my mother and her sister, and then with me.”

“Why wasn't he with you that day? I tried to find him so he could help you, but he was gone. He said you sent him away.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said sharply. "He goes by different rules than us. I should have known better than to stop him from doing what he wanted."