“Yeah, she made me a sweater last Christmas …” With a lumpy looking deer on the front and one arm shorter than the other, I recalled.

“Soheila, promise me something?”

“Yes, Callie?”

“If it looks like I’m going to wind up looking like Igor, could you just snap my neck instead?”

“Don’t talk like that, Callie. You won’t wind up looking like Igor, but even if you did, wouldn’t it be better than dying?”

I sighed. My breath made ripples in the water that Soheila was so valiantly scooping away. My friends were doing their best to save me. This wasn’t the time to indulge in self-pity, but I couldn’t help wondering who would miss me if I died here in the mud. Liz and Diana had each other and Soheila had lived for centuries watching her human loved ones die before her. What was one more? I didn’t have children, and although I knew my students cared about me, I didn’t flatter myself that I was essential to their lives. Even Nicky Ballard, whom I’d saved from a family curse a few months ago, was doing so well on her own that she’d gone away to a study abroad program in Scotland. My childhood friend Annie would be heartbroken, but she had her girlfriend Maxine. My grandmother Adelaide would probably think I had gotten what was coming to me, dying in the mud from a foolish attempt to help Faero-trash – as she and her club members at the Grove derisively referred to the fey.

And Liam?

I’d just made love to him and he’d saved my life today, but when he asked, I couldn’t tell him I loved him. If I couldn’t say it then, would I ever? If I couldn’t, we’d never be together. So what would it matter to him if I were dead?

“It’s not like there’d be anyone to really miss me,” I said.

Soheila lay down beside me in the mud so that her face was level with mine. “My dear, why set your life at such a low value?”

“I don’t … it’s just that …” I was going to tell her that I was afraid I’d never love anyone, but I realized in time that it was a tactless thing to say to Soheila who had selflessly renounced any chance at love. Still, I wondered if it were true. When Paul, my boyfriend of the last six years, had broken up with me last summer he’d said that he’d felt for a long time that I didn’t love him. He’d been right. I had kept a piece of myself apart. Maybe I’d been keeping that piece of myself separate and protected since the day I had learned that my parents were dead. And today, just when I’d thought I might be able to tell Liam I loved him I’d felt an iron band squeezing my heart – as if even the possibility of loving someone was so frightening my body had revolted. What was wrong with me? Was I ever going to be able to love someone?