She got up and grabbed an iron poker. For a moment I was afraid she was going to hit me with it, but she shoved it in the woodstove instead, stirring up a flurry of sparks that flew into the air and singed the drooping wallpaper. It was a wonder that she hadn’t already burned down the place.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know then that there might not be anymore undines coming here. The Grove wants to close the door …”

Lura turned on me, the poker raised menacingly. “They can’t do that! The undines must return to this river to spawn or they’ll die out.”

“I thought you said they were silly mindless creatures,” I pointed out. “And you were glad to see them gone. Why do you care if there aren’t anymore, especially …”

“Especially as I’m not going to be around much longer?” She lowered the poker and gave the fire one more angry stab. Sitting back down, she looked into the flames and grew silent. The reflection of the firelight gave her skin the momentary flush of youth and I saw that she’d once been pretty. “I’m not afraid to die,” she said after a while, “but to think I’m the last of my kind … well, that’s not the way I want to leave this world, even if it hasn’t always been a world that’s been kind to me.”

I wondered what the world had done to her that she’d chosen to live alone in this decaying house with only her half-human sisters for company. Looking at her, small and worn down as one of the river stones she collected, I felt the weight of all the years she had spent here alone. This house seemed infected with sadness, as if the wallpaper and plaster were peeling under its burden. A small, mean voice inside me sang, “This is what happens to you when you don’t love anyone.”

“Well, I’m going to try to stop them along with a circle of … friends.”

“Ha! A circle, eh? You must mean them witches and fairies? They don’t know what they’re doing most days. They come to me sometimes pretending they want my advice when all they really want is my Aelvesgold.”

“You mean you have more Aelvesgold than that stone?”

“Why would I tell you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands. “I just learned about the stuff. My friends said the only reliable supply of it came from Faerie.”

Lura snorted and spit in the Mason jar. “Like I said, your friends are ignorant. When an undine lays her eggs she lays an Aelvestone with ’em to keep ’em safe till they hatch. The one you found must’ve been with the undines you brought over to Faerie, so it belonged to my sisters. Why should I share it?”

“Because we need the Aelvesgold to give us the power to keep the door open,” I said.

Lura screwed up her face, taking away any remnant of the beauty I’d just glimpsed. She reached her hand into her cardigan pocket and pulled out the Aelvestone. I caught my breath at the sight of it and had to restrain myself from leaping up and grabbing it. She leaned forward and held it up between her thumb and forefinger, as if teasing me with it.