Jonathan leaned back with a gusty sigh and crossed his arms. His pajamas seemed too baggy on him. “I know. There’s islands with few people and always have been. The Hebrides might suit for a while.”

For a while, until she had to leave there too. Hæra would have to roam the world for centuries in a borrowed form, alone. There were probably worse fates, but at the moment it was hard to think of one. Unless…

“Maybe that’s far enough away from her family,” Madeleine ventured. But even if it was, would it be any easier for Hæra to survive the sea by herself? “Maybe there are more Each-uisge somewhere else, and she could find a new herd and be safe.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

The look they exchanged said it all. What did “safety” mean where Hæra was concerned? If she wasn’t like humans, she wasn’t like her own kind either. That was how she’d ended up here.

“Have you two talked about this?” Madeleine managed.

“I’ve tried, but she puts me off. She’s always said that when you came back, everything’d be sorted. She never told me how.” Jonathan sighed again. “Maybe you can make her see sense when I couldn’t. You’re a practical lass. Suited to this, I’d think.”

A strange weight settled on Madeleine, then. As if Jonathan had taken a heavy mantle off his shoulders and placed it on her own. He was worried about Hæra. He was old, and probably not in the best shape from decades of drinking. Now here Madeleine was, younger and with a deep connection to Hæra. Jonathan wanted her to take over and figure out what to do with the woman he’d sometimes called his daughter.

Ah, there was the panic. It snapped and bit at Madeleine’s insides. She said, haltingly, “I’ll try to, but…there’s only so much I can do.”

Jonathan gave her a sharp look.

“Or anyone,” Madeleine added. Her palms were getting damp. I’m not ready for this, she wanted to plead with him. I can’t take responsibility for this. She was just re-learning how to be responsible for herself, for heaven’s sake.

“No?” he said. “Let me tell you what I know.”

His eyes were as piercing, now, as Hæra’s had ever been. Madeleine sat up straight and faced him squarely back. “Okay,” she said.

“There’s ties that can’t be cut. If you try, you learn they’re your veins and you bleed out. And I don’t believe in your God, but I know there’s something outside ourselves as puts things in our keeping.”

Her heart thundered in her chest like a storm, or a herd of wild horses. “And you think Hæra’s been put into mine? I hope you haven’t told her that. She’d hate it.”