“I sound like a fool for talking to him in the first place, but…life is lonely, right?” Jonathan hung his head. “It’s a bugger. We come in alone, and we go out the same.”

Sister Madeleine wouldn’t. Once Hæra ate her, her spirit would be part of Hæra forever. And when the Last Current took Hæra, she wouldn’t go by herself. No more loneliness for either of them. Hæra thought often of how Sister Madeleine had looked on the sandy beach that afternoon: strong, but solitary. That woman knew what loneliness was.

“After all, it’s just you and him,” Jonathan said. “And you don’t like him much. Course you’d know what it is to look for what you can’t find, to…” He glanced at the window, toward the darkness outside. When Hæra first started visiting him, the windows had been so clouded with salt and dirt you could barely see through them. Now he’d washed them.

“To what?” she snapped. “I’m only looking for Sister Madeleine. I’ll find her. That is, she’ll come back.”

She had to, because the depths knew Hæra couldn’t get to her. Once she’d gained his trust, Jonathan had obliged her by going to the hotel where Sister Madeleine’s group had stayed. He’d reported back that they’d come from somewhere called “Philadelphia,” a city that didn’t border the ocean and was full of a million humans besides. Hæra couldn’t help thinking of them all sweeping in and out of the place like krill into the baleen of a whale.

“You must think about her a lot.” Jonathan had that look in his eyes, the one he wore when he was about to seek information from Hæra. “Even though you only knew her for a day.”

Hæra would not shift about in the chair. She’d learned that was a gesture of restlessness that gave away more than she intended. “So?”

“I don’t mean to pry,” said Jonathan, prying. “Just wondering if it works differently for you—love, that is. Most humans can’t fall that fast, but is that the same for you and him?”

Fall in love? Hæra looked at him, dumbstruck.

She knew, conceptually, what he meant. Humans formed emotional bonds with each other before they mated. It was part of the species’ preservation. They could get very passionate about sexual coupling.

Each-uisge knew no such passion except during mating season, when mares went into heat. Their real delight was in the frenzy of the hunt, riding the currents, or tearing into a rival.

Her current body was different, though. For all that it wasn’t truly human, it had responded…strongly…to Sister Madeleine lying beneath it. When she’d touched Sister Madeleine’s mouth with her own—a “kiss,” she knew now—she’d felt a hungry pulse between her thighs. Was that what Jonathan meant?

He said, “I just don’t know what to make of the look in your eyes when we talk of her. As if there’s nothing else in the world.”

Hæra’s face grew as hot as the unwelcome fire.