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I melted a little. I wanted to hug him, kiss him, thank him the best way I knew how. But he’d never allow it, so I just nodded in understanding, though I wasn’t sure I understood at all. “When is this supposed to happen? The cliff? The pregnancy? Is there an order of things?”

“The predictions have happened in the order she recited them. The cliff is next.” He stalked toward me. “It’ll happen anytime.”

That was comforting.

His eyes fixed on the strap of my carbine, his mouth clamped and determined. When he reached me, he jerked the sling off my shoulder. Evidently, he was ready to move on with the bath.

Fingers curled around the strap, he waited for me to relinquish the weapon.

I glanced at the motionless water, the murky shapes of the surrounding trees, and the weak beam of moonlight pushing through the clouds. Swear to God, there was something in the air, a leeching kind of stagnancy. It was gathering, concentrating, somewhere out there. In the pond? Across the shore? Above the trees? Was it moving?

I couldn’t pinpoint it, which strung my nerves on tenterhooks. I strained to feel the familiar vibrations of aphids, waiting for a crunch of a twig or a splash in the water.

Nothing.

Jesse watched me, his sharp eyes so damned perceptive. “There are other ponds nearby, but this one’s the cleanest.”

The heat from his body tingled across my skin as he pulled the carbine from my grip and unbuckled the holster on my thigh.

I didn’t want to hand over my weapons, but fighting him would only delay the inevitable. What was my problem anyway? I’d needed a bath since we left the mountains. We all did.

With a resolved exhale, I began to remove the arm sheathes, my attention on the water hole. Unarmed, on edge, in this abysmal place?

On second thought, I tightened the straps on my arms. “I’m keeping the knives.”

“Good. I’ll be…” He gestured at the woods. “On guard.”

“You can watch the perimeter from here.” I hated the pleading pitch in my voice.

He glanced at the woods and shook his head. “Not easily.” Then he took off with my guns, running away like he always did when my clothes were about to come off.

Talk about feeling vulnerable. But leaving guns on the shore for someone to use against me was out of the question. Besides, Jesse was there… Well, I couldn’t see him now, but he was near, ever protective and watchful, tormenting himself. And me.

Stripping quickly, I lit another cigarette and waded into the pond. My feet slipped over moss-covered pebbles, and the water lapped around me, warm and soothing.

Halfway across, the inky surface reached my hips. Far enough. I drew a slow drag from the cigarillo and held it in my lungs, unable to shake off the creeping dread. My first encounter with an aphid had really made me anxious about swimming. Water killed them quickly, but I would never forget the claw pulling me under. Its body bubbling with fungus-like tumors. Its eyes open and staring as it sunk to its death.

I ran a hand over my legs and ass and washed away the grime, all while making careful sweeps of the surroundings. Blackness stretched from the shore to the trees. Not a trace of Jesse’s tall frame. If he was watching, I couldn’t sense him.

“Jesse?” My voice ricocheted through the dark, louder than I intended. I might as well have screamed, I’m here. Come kill me!

The longer I waited for a response, the more I was convinced something was off. A menacing wrong-wrong-wrong coiled around me, itching my skin. My legs burned to haul ass out of the water, but it wasn’t the pond that spooked me. Whatever it was…was out there.

Stop it. I was making myself crazy. I didn’t sense aphids, couldn’t see or hear a goddamned thing. I was just impaired by tweaked-out emotions and lack of sleep.

“Eveline.”

I jumped at the frighteningly familiar whisper, and the cigarillo hit the water with a hiss. My sharp exhales rose in the air, my muscles locked in shock.

That voice… He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.

Wasn’t he?

I never saw a body.

Because the lava would’ve disintegrated it.

I listened hard, my gaze jumping from shadow to shadow. I was just hearing things. Crazy, overactive nerves.

The surface of the pond rippled away from the far shore as if something had slipped in.

My chest hitched. But nothing was there.

The breeze again.

I focused on the wind but couldn’t feel it. Not a damned thing moved. But I sensed something. Something slick and oily slithering behind me.

My heart bolted in fear. Paralyzing fear, the kind that freezes the lungs and shivers breaths along the spine. I was stuck in an unblinking, wheezing, high-alert stance.

The air was deadly still, yet the sound of flapping fabric drifted over my shoulder.