Taking that as a yes, I entered the bathroom. At one time it had been papered in a lovely water lily pattern, but now blossoms of mold bloomed over the water lilies and the paper hung in long strips like seaweed. Brass shell-shaped wall sconces clung to the walls like barnacles, their light bulbs long burned out but now filled with flickering votive candles. Even the taps on the sink were shaped like shells.

I turned to the bathtub. Lorelei was stretched out beneath a froth of bubbles that sparkled in the flickering light. Her hair was piled high on her head in the same style as in the old photograph. “You were wasting, weren’t you?” I asked. “That’s why you had to leave.”

She shrugged. “I suppose. I did feel tired all the time,” she said, blowing at the bubbles. “Taking care of a human baby is so much more work than laying eggs.”

“So why’d you come back?”

“To mate. It doesn’t work in Faerie. Even the humans who wander in are no good to us.”

“Humans wander in?”

“Occasionally. Where do you think people go when they go missing? Sure, some of them are lying in a ditch with their throats slit or living new lives under assumed names in Mexico, but some wander into Faerie. It happens all the time in the woods when the door opens on the solstice.”

I thought of the young men I’d seen with the undines in Faerie, of one in particular, a dark-haired man with sad eyes. “Did one happen to wander in about eighty years ago?”

Lorelei shrugged. “Time is different in Faerie. All I know is when it’s time to mate … but now that you mention it there was a sulky boy who kept begging to go back, but it’s not as easy to get back into this world as to get out of it.”

Except maybe tonight.

“So, is that why you won’t leave? Because you have to mate?”

Lorelei laughed and stretched one bare, foam flecked leg up to the ceiling, daintily pointing her toe. “Oh, I’ve done that already. One of those pretty Stewart boys was quite accommodating. No, the reason I won’t leave are these.” She reached into the water and pulled out a dappled green oval. At first I thought it was bar of soap, but then I noticed it was glowing.

“Is that an egg? You’ve laid …?” I peered into the tub, through a patch of foam near Lorelei’s feet, and saw a pile of green spotted eggs – and one gold one. An Aelvestone.

Lorelei shifted uneasily. “I should have laid them in the Undine but then those damned Stewarts warded the house. Poor things. They’ll die if they don’t get into fresh flowing water soon.”