“Or you looked human, whatever! Why?” Madeleine curled her hands into fists. “Why didn’t you drop me on the beach and then go back into the water? Were you staying with me until help arrived?”

“I…”

“But if it was only that, then why would you kiss me?”

The words, and the memory too, rang like a bell. Madeleine’s mouth under Hæra’s, soft and hot.

I kissed you because I couldn’t eat you. Hæra couldn’t say that.

“I didn’t understand why.” That was true. Even in human form, the urge to kiss had been alien. “I just knew I had to do it. You were there, and I needed to…”

She looked at Madeleine’s mouth, which she had kissed years ago, and again only yesterday. That and more, only yesterday.

“I needed to,” she whispered.

Silence. Hæra looked at Madeleine’s eyes again; they were wide and dazed.

Hæra continued, “You’re not the only one looking for answers, but I know you’re mine.”

You’re mine. Would Madeleine understand the double meaning? Judging by how she gulped, she might.

Still holding her knees, Madeleine turned back to the farm. Jim was on the tractor. Connor was opening a fence. It all looked ordinary—or would, to a human.

Which Hæra was not, and would never be, no matter what thoughts occurred to her at night. “This was all so strange to me when I got here. Life on land. How humans live every day.”

“It must have been. So how did you end up living with them? That is, us?” Madeleine asked in a low voice.

Hæra’s laugh tasted bitter. She could try being completely forthcoming about this part and see how it went. At least it would show Madeleine her commitment to a goal.

“I returned to the beach the night after I pulled you out of the water,” she said. “I hoped you’d come back, as I bade you.”

Madeleine blushed again.

“You didn’t, but Jonathan came instead. He, ah…well, that’s a long story, and he should tell you himself. But he’d encountered my kind before, and based on what you said, he thought one of us might be involved. He was drunk and angry, and he yelled over the water, and I went to him. I knew he’d helped you and might be able to tell me about you.”

She’d been so hungry then. For everything, including information. The last few years hadn’t fed her enough.

Madeleine frowned. “And you became friends after that?”

“So it seems.” It had been such a shock to realize what seemed normal now. “I made a deal with him. I brought him a treasure chest from the ocean, which he used to buy the farm, in exchange for him teaching me your human customs.”

“Why did you want to learn those?”

“I think you already know.”