Lorelei was gazing at the egg cupped in her hand with the same expression on her face as she’d had in the photograph of her and baby Lura. She had loved Lura, but when she had begun to waste away she’d chosen to go back to Faerie. Perhaps that meant her love wasn’t a very deep kind, but who was I, who hadn’t been able to love Liam enough to make him human, to judge her? Frank didn’t believe she was responsible for the murder of the fishermen – and now neither did I.

“I want to offer you a deal,” I said.

She looked up, the flicker of interest in her moss-green eyes making her look momentarily human.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, we came downstairs, Lorelei dressed in a green silk gown embroidered with seed pearls that I suspected had been Lura’s wedding dress. I was carrying a canvas bag full of undine eggs. I called Lura in off the porch and told her what we planned to do. A fleeting look of sadness passed over her face when she realized her mother was planning to leave again, but she set her mouth and took the bag from me.

“I’ll bring them to the headwaters,” Lura said.

“That’s near the door to Faerie,” I said. “I’ll walk that far with you.”

“Won’t the Stewarts want to accompany you, seeing as you’re the doorkeeper?”

“I’ll tell them to take Lorelei to the door.”

Lura looked back at her house. The living room floor was under six inches of water. Bits of glass and tin bobbed on the surface. The house groaned and creaked, its timbers cracking under the strain of the water. It didn’t look like it would last till morning, which, I noticed glancing at the lightening sky in the east, was almost here.

“We have to hurry. I have to be at the door by sunrise to keep the Grove from closing the door.”

Mac and Angus were waiting for us at the edge of the tartan ward. “Lorelei has agreed to go with you,” I told them. “Lura and I are going to walk to the door ourselves.”

“You shouldn’t be alone in the woods right now. We’ve seen some strange creatures about.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Lura said, spitting on the ground.

Angus looked reluctant, but he finally agreed. The other Stewarts had formed a circle around Lorelei. Through a series of hand motions they wove a tartan shawl that they cast over her shoulders. Lorelei adjusted it as she might a mink stole and linked her arm through Angus’s. “Let’s go boys,” she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. She left without a backward glance for her daughter.