Page 44

The moment she’d submerged and changed her hind legs to a marine tail, a current had grabbed Haera.

It had wrapped around her like a rope and dragged her through the water, past rocks and kelp and schools of wondering fish.

The last time Haera had taken this route, she’d been bruised in body and spirit, maimed by the betrayal of her family.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

At least this was faster.

The witch’s cold current whipped Haera forward so quickly that she closed her eyes against the water pressure.

Her tail beat fruitlessly.

But why resist? This was why she’d come.

Survival was an instinct.

She’d have to suppress it shortly.

With her eyes shut, she couldn’t see the whirlpool, but she felt its rhythms beating the water harder as she was drawn closer.

Two currents collided, creating a vortex.

Humans didn’t truly believe the legend that said a witch was at the bottom of it.

Just as well.

When Haera hit the vortex’s wall, the current released her.

No more need of it. She was sucked into the water and slammed about.

The whirlpool dragged her right down to the bottom, to the sandy pit where the witch spun with her victims. This time, Haera didn’t fight it.

Instead, when she landed on the sand, she lay sprawled there as she had in the mud behind Madeleine’s cottage.

Her fins twitched against the seafloor, and when she looked up, she could see the night sky.

The whirlpool slowed.

Before her, the witch stopped spinning and let her arms fall.

The two corpses floated down to the sand, but neither released the witch’s hands.

Instead, they slumped on the ground like puppets with only one remaining string apiece.

The water rushed in to fill the void.

The surface closed and the sky disappeared.

The witch looked at Haera with eyes like a sky that never saw stars.

“How did you call to me in dreams? How did you pull me here?” Haera asked.

“You can’t even leave this spot yourself.”

The witch looked at the dead man who clung to her.

“I cannot leave. But I can summon.” Her eyes sliced back into Haera.

“You owe me your life.”

Haera dipped her head low in acknowledgment.

She had made the bargain; she had created the debt.

“I’m here,” she said.

“I’ve brought you what you asked for. What will you do with it? With me?”

“Don’t know yet.” The witch walked forward, dragging the bodies behind her.

Clouds of sand rose beneath them and her bare, knobby feet.

“Won’t know until I taste.”

In Haera’s dream—a vision—the witch had licked Asgall’s blood from Haera’s human face.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out her desire.

“His was bitter,” the witch said when she reached the place where Haera lay.

“It belonged to the sea.”

Between one breath and the next, she went to her knees, leaned forward, and sank her teeth into Haera’s neck.

Even though Haera had foreseen this, instinct kicked in again.

So did her front legs as she tried to knock the witch away from her.

But the witch was immovable as stone, and Haera’s left front leg only hurt worse for it.

Besides, it was done.

Blood floated from the wound the witch had just left in Haera’s neck, right next to one from Asgall that had healed over.

Yet again, the witch’s tongue passed over Haera’s flesh.

Haera had tasted Madeleine’s blood last night.

It had been thrilling, tempting, intimate—nothing like this.

This was the absence of all joy and hope.

This was despair, and Haera had brought it to the witch as promised.

The witch did not linger.

After one lick, she rose to her feet and looked down on Haera, her expression inscrutable.

Haera’s neck ached. “Well? Finish me,” she croaked.

But the witch shook her head.

“You do not belong here. The sea does not own your blood.”

“I don’t belong anywhere,” Haera said wearily.

“If the sea doesn’t own my blood, what does?”

Silence while the witch regarded her.

Haera’s heart pounded, sending more blood to cloud the water from her wound.

Then the witch said, “The sky.”

It must be a taunt.

Somehow, the witch knew Haera’s doomed desires and was mocking her with them before she killed her.

If so, Haera deserved it.

She’d destroyed everything she’d touched.

“Go,” the witch said.

Haera boggled. Had the bargain been fulfilled?

The witch had only wanted a bite of her?

That was no mercy. “I have nowhere to go. I have nothing else to be.”

The witch said, “Wrong.”

Suddenly, Haera’s vision swam.

For a moment, she was in a car, a familiar one, Jonathan’s Vauxhall, as it rattled down a road.

Madeleine, still wet and dirty, was in the driver’s seat.

Her face was ashen.

It was just like the vision Haera had had years ago, when her family attacked her.

She’d been ready to give up until, across the miles, Sister Madeleine had called for her aid.

Why did she look so frightened now?

Was she in imminent danger?

Haera groaned. One more chance.

If she could protect Madeleine from whatever chased her…

if she could do the right thing, just once, so it hadn’t all been for nothing…

“Is it real?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then please.” Haera dipped her head until her muzzle touched the sand.

“I beg you…please, I’ll return afterward…”

“You swear this?” the witch asked.

“I do.” Haera was shaking.

“You would return,” the witch asked.

“For this chance, you would return here to be imprisoned forever. Tortured forever. Why?”

Haera looked at the dead man clinging to the witch’s hand.

The man she had loved and betrayed, and for which crime she was trapped eternally.

The witch looked at him too.

Then she laughed, as she had years ago, like the blades of two knives sharpening each other.

“You know how they don’t let go of you,” she said.

The words echoed in Haera’s memory.

Where had she heard them before?

Oh…she recalled…she had spoken them herself.

When she’d first met the witch and pleaded for her life.

Had the witch remembered Haera’s words so clearly for years?

Of course she had. Who better than the witch to understand—to empathize —with being bound to the human she loved?

“Then let her hold me.” Haera yearned to stand but couldn’t rise up without her hind legs, only flop uselessly on the sand.

“Ancient One, I surrender…please…”

“You would do this?” the witch repeated.

“I would do anything! It can’t be worse than losing her!”

At this, the witch flung up the two corpses.

As she began to spin once more, the currents resurrected, and the whirlpool resumed its shape.

Her robes, rotted from the sea, spun with her.

Her knobby bare feet kicked up eddies of sand.

She was silent, silent, and Haera wanted to scream?—

“Then do anything,” the witch said.

The surface opened. The stars reappeared.

Around Haera, the water roared, creating a tunnel between sea and sky.

“Don’t come back,” the witch said.

“You are not ours.”

The current wrapped around Haera’s fins again.

This time, it acted like a lasso, flinging her through the wall of the vortex with such force that she cried out.

Then it released her, but it had thrown her so fast that she kept going, spinning until she couldn’t tell up from down.

Her tail flailed as she sought to slow down and right herself.

But her tail wasn’t working properly.

It was growing weaker?—

It was shrinking ?—

So were her front legs.

So was her face, along with everything else.

Without her willing it, Haera’s body was enacting a transformation it had done so many times before.

Wildly, Haera pumped her tail toward the surface, even as she felt it begin to split in two.

But not into her horse legs.

Into her human legs.

She’d never gone straight from this shape into that one, without being a four-legged creature in between.

She broke the surface of the water, gasping for air.

She’d never had to do that before.

Whether in water or on land, her body knew how to breathe.

She’d never worn her human form underwater, though—maybe that was why?

The water was cold. Nearly freezing.

Haera strove for air.

Her teeth began to chatter, her muscles to lock up.

She squinted ahead—was it darker than it had been when she’d first gone under?

Everything was blurrier.

Nevertheless, she could make out the shore in the near distance, the one where she had kissed Madeleine and where Jonathan now lay.

The witch had thrown her back the whole way, and she could easily make it to land.

Madeleine was out there somewhere, terrified, and Haera had been given the opportunity to make things right.

She’d figure out the rest afterward.

She struck out toward the shore and immediately knew something was wrong.

Here, in the sea, she ought to be at her strongest. But her arms and legs felt weak, and when she swam—at least this body knew how to swim—she struggled as she never had before.

Waves slapped her face, and she gasped around their salty taste.

It made her thirsty.

The salt water got in her eyes.

They stung, as did the wound on the side of her neck.

Her left arm ached, but not just because it was injured.

Her heart was straining at twice its normal rate while she went half her normal speed.

Her lungs strained for more oxygen.

Was she going to drown?

That wasn’t possible.

Each-uisge didn’t drown.

Humans did.

“Depths!” she gasped, and then more salt water slopped into her mouth.

She spat, her tongue thick and dry.

No. She wasn’t. She couldn’t be.

But she was.

Her body wasn’t like before.

It was fighting to survive in the waters she’d known all her life.

Weak. Cold.

Human.

The witch. She’d said, You do not belong here .

And instead of killing Haera outright, she had done…

this. Now Haera hadn’t just lost everyone she loved.

She’d lost herself too.

How was she supposed to help Madeleine like this?

She’d have to figure it out.

The witch had shown Haera Madeleine’s terror and said, Do anything, and if this was how Haera could save Madeleine, she’d do it.

The waves pushed her forward, closer to the shore.

Closer now, she could see someone hurrying across the beach, from the seawall to the water.

They carried a torch, and they were heading toward Jonathan’s and Asgall’s bodies.

Even freezing, probably drowning, and with salt-stung eyes, Haera would know that human anywhere.

It was Madeleine. And she looked perfectly safe, not pursued by anything.

The witch had lied. Haera had nothing useful to do, no way to atone.

She might as well stop fighting and go under the waves right now.

Madeleine reached Jonathan and Asgall.

She stopped and looked around, waving the flashlight.

Then she crouched next to the bodies.

She was looking at Haera’s worst failure.

And that would be the last thing Haera ever saw.

If her human lungs were strong enough, she could have cried out, I’m sorry, loudly enough for Madeleine to hear.

The same way she’d called, Sister Madeleine, help me, years ago.

Full circle. But these lungs weren’t strong enough to yell.

They were barely strong enough to breathe.

This was the end, then.

It wasn’t how she’d ever imagined it.

Ruined…wasted…a failure, useless, wasted …

A rising wave, closer to the shore, caught her eye.

Specifically, what was cresting atop it.

An Each-uisge .

One of Haera’s fellows was going to shore, where Madeleine was, alone and defenseless.

Not just any Each-uisge .

One Haera would have known anywhere.

Her mother, Beathag.

Haera didn’t know why Beathag was here, nor did she care.

It could only end one way for Madeleine.

The witch had spoken true after all.

She struck forward again, wildly.

Forget the cold. Forget her weakness.

Forget, even, her despair.

She was going to reach the shore, draw her mother’s attention, and save Madeleine one more time.

Or die trying.

Madeleine had taken a flashlight before she’d left the farm.

Now she wished she hadn’t.

Not if it was helping her see this.

Jonathan lay immobile on the beach, with another man clutching him.

“Oh God,” she choked as she picked her way over the rocks, extra slippery in the storm’s aftermath.

The flashlight beam wavered with her unsteady steps.

The wind felt even rougher here than usual, almost pushing her backward, as if it was trying to blow her away from this.

That might have been a mercy, but Madeleine had opened her eyes to the world, and the world could be hideous and unjust. She bent into the wind and forced her way on until she stood over the two dead bodies.

For dead bodies they were.

She’d dared to hope, just a little bit, that maybe they weren’t—at least Jonathan wasn’t.

But neither of them breathed, and their forms were unnaturally pale, rigid.

She didn’t recognize the other man, until she did.

He was naked and lean, his body covered in wounds.

His facial features were like someone else’s she knew.

“Oh God,” she whispered again as she beheld Asgall’s human form, clinging to Jonathan in death.

Asgall’s face was a miserable rictus, his jaw set in a grimace.

He looked as if he was in the middle of some great effort—or had been.

Killing Jonathan, apparently, however he’d done it.

Jonathan had no visible injuries.

But what else could have happened?

Jonathan lay on his back, looking at the night sky with unseeing eyes.

His gray lips were slightly parted.

He looked oddly at peace.

As if his great effort, whatever it had been, was accomplished.

Madeleine pressed her lips together, but a soft sob emerged, hot in her throat.

She hadn’t known Jonathan well, but he’d been kind to her.

He’d loved Haera. He’d been a good man, and he deserved better than this.

She swung the flashlight’s beam around.

No sign of Haera or anyone else.

This beach had no infrastructure to manage in the wake of a storm.

Everyone would be too busy looking after their homes and businesses, if they hadn’t already gone to bed.

She was alone, and nobody could give her any answers—tell her if Haera was safe, or what had happened between Asgall and Jonathan, or what in the world Madeleine was supposed to do now.

Go to the village? Summon the police?

She’d have to think of some way to explain this.

Or maybe she wouldn’t.

Connor said everyone suspected Haera was different, even if they didn’t know exactly how.

They might not be surprised at all.

Madeleine swept the flashlight over Jonathan and Asgall again.

High tide was rolling in.

She had to move them or they’d be submerged.

She’d never manage to carry them up the stairs to the seawall, but at least she could drag them farther up the beach before she went for help.

The villagers could figure out what to do with them while Madeleine searched for Haera.

She crouched and set the flashlight down.

As she did, she saw two long, parallel furrows in the sand, next to a series of footprints.

The incoming tide was washing them away.

Madeleine stared at the furrows.

They led from the ocean to Jonathan’s feet.

Jonathan’s pants were wet up to his waist, and drying sand crusted the fabric.

He’d been in the water, obviously—but now he and Asgall lay on the sand, and there were furrows and footprints heading toward land, not away?—

Jonathan’s face was pale and gray.

Think of your heart, Haera had growled at him many times over meals while he’d waved her off.

No wounds. In the water up to the waist. Furrows in the sand.

Asgall clutched him with a look of agony.

He had been dragging Jonathan ashore, not under the waves.

Then he’d collapsed from his own wounds.

Or something else, maybe a force more powerful than blood.

A cry escaped her, impossible to stop.

She clapped her hands over her face to block out the sight of them.

Had Asgall experienced a revelation here, while Madeleine was doing the same by the standing stones?

Had he realized, like Haera, that he couldn’t kill his chosen human—and tried to save him, at the last?

If so, it had been too late.

Now, after decades of suffering, he and Jonathan were both lost.

This couldn’t be how Madeleine and Haera’s story ended.

She wouldn’t let it.

She’d learned too much.

Where was Haera? Had she been involved in this somehow?

Madeleine needed answers.

She needed Haera . She’d come so far.

It couldn’t end here.

A wave crashed on the shore.

It sounded the same as all the other waves, and Madeleine would never be sure why it made her look up.

She turned the flashlight on it.

From the foam and dark water, an Each-uisge emerged.

“Haera?” Madeleine whispered, but she already knew better.

This Each-uisge was smaller than both Asgall and Haera had been, but still bigger than any horse had a right to be.

Its hide looked black at first, but when the flashlight passed over it, it showed itself dark green, like seaweed washed ashore.

Its mane was dark as night, as were its eyes.

Its teeth, however, looked every bit like Haera’s and Asgall’s.

Long and sharp, which was easy to see, since they were bared.

The Each-uisge slowly approached, the tide lapping around its hooves.

It looked at Madeleine, and then at Asgall and Jonathan.

It made a low noise.

“My son,” it said.

Madeleine had known who it was.

The Great Mare had said there was another member of Haera’s family to fear.

Madeleine just hadn’t expected to face her alone in the middle of the night.

Beathag turned her head toward Madeleine.

“I have never been on land,” she said.

Madeleine hadn’t expected conversation instead of an attack.

She managed, “Oh.”

“The human world holds no fascination for me, as it did for my children.” Beathag stepped forward.

“As it did for my mate.” She stepped forward again.

“Your mate? Haera’s father?”

“They got it from him, this curiosity. This obsession.” Beathag continued walking—prowling—and Madeleine stumbled backward.

“You’ve taken them all from me.”

Madeleine’s stomach turned to water, as did her knees.

“That’s not true. Your kind prey on us. We don’t take anything!”

“So it should be. It wasn’t so with them. I refused to lose my mate, but my children are gone.”

Refused to lose her mate?

That implied he was still here.

Haera had said her father was dead.

And moreover… “H-Haera told me the reproductive cycle is terrible on females. She said the Each-uisge don’t know how to love. Are you really that sad?”

Beathag tossed her head back and whinnied a laugh, otherworldly and bitter.

“I kept the thing I needed. Now I need more. Where is my daughter?”

Okay, that was one good thing: Beathag clearly hadn’t murdered Haera.

“I don’t know.”

“You are bound to her. Her chosen prey.”

“No—it’s—” It wouldn’t go over well to say that Haera had pledged her love to Madeleine and sworn never to hurt her.

“I don’t know where she is, I promise you!”

“I have no use for promises. Alban gave me many, and they’re worth even less from you.” Beathag bared her teeth.

“Help me, human. Help me find her, and I’ll spare your life.”

Madeleine’s heart might break through her ribs.

“Oh? And what will you do when you find her?”

Beathag gave her a level look.

“I’ll finish what I started, and I will get what I need.”

Madeleine had no idea what Beathag needed, but she knew all too well what Beathag had started: the murder of her own child before Haera had escaped.

She lifted her chin and sent one swift, silent prayer to whoever was listening: Give me strength to do the right thing.

She said, “I wouldn’t help you even if I could. And if there’s a hell for your kind, you can go straight there.”

Beathag’s tail tossed.

She pawed the sand, lowered her head, and snarled.

Asgall had done that when he’d prepared to charge.

Madeleine was about to be torn to pieces, and it was going to hurt a lot, and?—

“Mother!”

Madeleine whipped around to behold Haera staggering out of the ocean in her human form, naked as the dawn.

She’d wrapped her right arm around herself while her left arm dangled at her side.

She barely seemed able to stay on her feet.

Beathag extended her head toward her daughter.

The wind blew into her face, and she sniffed it.

Then she recoiled, stamping a hoof.

“No,” she said.

Madeleine turned the flashlight fully on Haera.

She looked different.

It was hard to say how.

Her body was the same, tall and lean and muscular, but she seemed smaller.

Maybe it was the way she hunched over as she stumbled toward them.

“Stop,” Haera called.

Her voice cracked with strain.

She shivered as she clutched herself, as if she were freezing cold—but Haera was never cold.

And she was never weak, especially this close to the sea.

There was a small, dark patch on the side of her neck.

As she got closer, Madeleine gasped to see it was a bleeding wound.

“What have you done?” Beathag’s voice was a whipcrack.

“The witch in the whirlpool.” Haera stopped, swaying in place.

“She changed me. Now I’m…I’m…”

Beathag spoke it like a curse: “Human.”

Oh.

That was it.

Madeleine stared at Haera.

Of course. Of course that was it.

“You don’t want Madeleine.” Haera took another shaky step forward.

She slipped on a rock but righted herself at the last second.

“She’s never wronged you. Or anybody. But I have—I—” Her shoulders slumped even more.

“I betrayed everyone. It’s me you want. You want to finish me.”

Beathag said slowly, “You would surrender yourself to protect this…thing? Have you lost your warrior’s instinct?”

“If I could fight you,” Haera said, “I would.”

She turned her haunted eyes on Madeleine.

In them, Madeleine saw more longing than ever before, even when Haera had wanted her most fiercely.

But this was different too.

For the first time, next to the longing, Madeleine saw grief.

If she’d needed any more proof that Haera was now human, that was it.

Beathag turned to where Asgall and Jonathan lay on the beach, and then she looked back at her daughter.

Haera tried to lift her shoulders, perhaps in defiance, and didn’t succeed.

“Please,” Madeleine heard herself say, with no idea of a follow-up.

Was there anything she could say that might save Haera, save them both?

Haera gave her a horrified look, which suggested not.

“Madeleine. Go!”

Did Haera think Madeleine could outrun a vengeful Each-uisge ?

Madeleine’s disbelief must have shown on her face because Haera said, “I can slow her down. I’ll stop her, I’ll…” She lurched toward Beathag, holding out her good arm like a shield.

Blood dripped down her neck.

“Mother. Look at me!”

Beathag was already looking.

She seemed unmoved by her child’s injuries.

“You think to defeat me like this, when even your father fell before me?”

Haera stopped dead.

Her mouth opened, as did Madeleine’s.

“What?”

“I saw his fascination with humans. Your father talked ceaselessly of them, admired them. He called the human he took, that sea captain, his ‘other half.’” Beathag took a step toward Haera and pawed the ground again.

“Would you say the same thing?”

“Yes,” Haera said with no hesitation.

“I would. I do.”

“Alban was mine. He was my mate, mine for life. The other Stormhorses never spoke of their humans as he did. And when I saw him infecting you and…” Her head swung back to Asgall’s body.

“I couldn’t allow it. I knew I would lose him forever if I didn’t act.”

“What do you?—”

“And so I killed and ate him.”

The only sound was the wind.

That, and the ringing in Madeleine’s ears.

She looked on helplessly as Haera and Beathag faced each other, one tall and proud, the other shivering and small.

“Now he is always with me,” Beathag said.

“I lost him to gain him. I made that sacrifice. That is the measure of my love.”

Haera appeared speechless.

Madeleine certainly was.

Beathag regarded Haera for a moment that felt too silent and too long.

“I don’t love you enough for that,” she said.

Haera staggered backward.

Beathag didn’t appear to notice; she merely turned and paced toward Jonathan and Asgall.

When she reached them, she bent her head and took Asgall’s leg in her mouth.

Then she began to drag him toward the sea.

After a couple of feet, Asgall’s grip finally released Jonathan, who continued to lie on the sand and look sightlessly at the stars.

Haera said nothing. Did nothing.

She just watched with a dull expression as Beathag dragged her brother’s body away, farther back into the breaking waves, until the ocean swallowed both of them, and they were gone.

The moment the waters closed over Beathag’s head, Madeleine’s feet unlocked.

She rushed to Haera, managing not to slip or trip on the rocks.

Before Madeleine could reach her, Haera listed to the side and collapsed.

Haera had never been so glad not to be loved.

Not if love was like Beathag had said, like Haera had once believed: possession at all costs.

Beathag had killed Alban to keep him forever.

What else had Haera meant to do to Madeleine?

Thank the Great Mare she’d failed.

Madeleine knelt next to her and pulled her back upright.

The torch clattered to the ground.

“Haera! Are you all right? Good grief, of course you’re not. What happened to your neck?”

Haera looked numbly at the patch of beach where Jonathan lay.

She touched her neck and winced.

It hurt. She was so cold that her skin ached.

It was better than feeling…

whatever this was, all the rest of it…

Feeling human.

It must have started long ago.

Haera looked at Madeleine’s hand on her bare shoulder.

It started on the night they met, on this beach, when Haera was as naked as she was now.

She’d kissed Sister Madeleine with passion she couldn’t understand.

Human desire. How strange, not to understand it until now.

“ Haera .” Madeleine’s grip tightened on her shoulders.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” She squinted at Madeleine’s face.

Only yesterday she’d have seen it in the dark with perfect clarity.

“The witch bit my neck. She said my blood didn’t belong to the sea and she made me into a human. That is, after I…”

When she trailed off, Madeleine said, “After you what?”

“After she showed me you were in danger,” Haera said slowly.

“And I begged to be allowed to protect you, just one more time.”

Even in the dark, she could see the tears glimmering in Madeleine’s eyes, reflecting starlight and sea.

“I ruined everything,” Haera said.

The wind blew; she couldn’t stop shivering.

“I would have died for you both. A thousand times. Instead, I lost you, and…” She slammed her fist against her chest. “And I’m weak, and cold, and he’s gone, and you hate me, and I?—”

Madeleine hauled Haera into an embrace.

She wrapped her arms around her fiercely and clutched her, as if she wanted to pull Haera into her own body.

And she pressed her nose into Haera’s wet hair when she said, “Wrong. I don’t hate you. You’re not weak. And if you’re cold…” She squeezed tighter.

“I’ll warm you.”

Haera turned her face against Madeleine’s neck.

Madeleine’s skin was cold.

Her clothes were damp and covered in mud.

And yet she was right.

This was possibly the only warm place in the world.

“I’m sorry she was so horrible.” Madeleine’s voice was choked.

“I didn’t know how to stop her. Maybe it’s wrong to feel this way, but I wish I’d had that shotgun.”

“It’s lying over there,” Haera mumbled.

“Down the beach.”

“Down th…oh my God. I didn’t see it.”

“It’s wet. I don’t think it works anymore. Jonathan didn’t even fire it.” She shuddered.

“Asgall killed him.”

And Haera hadn’t stopped it.

Jonathan’s corpse lay mere feet away in silent reprimand.

After all I did for you, it seemed to say.

Madeleine said, “I don’t know about that. I actually think…never mind, we can talk about that later. I’ve got to get you out of the cold and—and take care of him.”

Haera peered up at Madeleine.

For six years, she’d hungered ceaselessly for the sight of her.

Sister Madeleine had been the whole object of her desire; then, six weeks ago, Madeleine had become something else.

Something more. But still, Haera had hungered.

Not so, now. Instead, when she looked at Madeleine, she felt an ache that had nothing to do with her wounds.

It wasn’t the usual, primal urge to hold her.

It was a sudden and desperate need to be held.

Madeleine looked into Haera’s eyes in a way that suggested she understood all of this, somehow.

“We’ve got to get off the beach, okay? Lean on me.”

She hauled Haera to her feet.

Then she hooked her left arm around Haera, aimed the flashlight with her right, and moved toward the steps that led up to the seawall.

“We can’t leave Jonathan h-here,” Haera said.

Her teeth chattered.

“We can’t carry him either. We’ll need help. Wait here.”

Haera, useless and freezing, sat on the bottom step.

Madeleine dragged Jonathan’s body far enough that high tide wouldn’t wash over it before “help” could get here.

He was probably too heavy to be swept out to sea, but the ocean was vicious when it wished to be.

Though Jonathan might not have minded, given everything he’d said in the cottage.

About how Asgall was his destiny, and he’d been heartbroken that he hadn’t been eaten .

He might have preferred the dark waters.

Haera hid her face in her hands.

Well, too bad. Asgall couldn’t have him.

Jonathan would remain with her at the last. She would honor his death with human rites, whatever they were.

She would show everyone what he’d meant to her, even though she’d never told him.

It was the least she could do.

“What about the gun?” she asked when Madeleine returned.

“I’m not touching it. In case of…fingerprints or whatever. Is that the right thing to do? I don’t know.” Madeleine pushed away a frizzy lock of hair.

She looked a fright.

“I can’t think straight. I’m so tired, but we have to keep going. Can you climb?”

Haera had last taken these stairs on four legs.

It would be easier on two.

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll get you to the car. There’s a blanket in the back seat, I think. Then I could—should I go to the police?”

Haera didn’t think much of the police.

They’d never bothered her, but Jonathan had always told her to stay out of their way in case they asked the wrong questions.

Now they would be likely to ask different questions.

Probably the right ones.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said as they climbed.

Gritty sand dug into her bare feet on the concrete.

“It won’t change anything.”

“The heck it won’t. I actually think we should go back to the farm.”

“But Jonathan?—”

“Isn’t going anywhere,” Madeleine said gently.

“We can ask Connor and Jim for help with him. They’ll know more about how the island handles this kind of thing.”

“There isn’t ‘this kind of thing.’ How can we explain any of this to them?”

“Um…we might not have to explain as much as you think. I’ll tell you in the car. Okay, next step.”

Carefully, they made their way to the top of the stairs.

Madeleine had parked near the seawall.

The village sat in the background, the streetlamps dark like everything else.

No other people were in sight.

At the top, Madeleine went to unlock the car while Haera leaned against the railing for support.

She looked over the railing, down to where the dark sea thundered, and to the sand, where Jonathan lay without Asgall.

Her brother had released his grip at last.

“Haera?”

Madeleine sounded anxious.

It tugged at Haera’s heart, but not with the wild urgency she’d known as an Each-uisge .

She’d have done anything to save her mate from fear or harm.

No, she hadn’t known the witch would turn her into a human—but if she had, she’d have made the bargain gladly.

Would a human make the same bargain?

She turned slowly to see Madeleine right behind her.

Madeleine put a hand on her arm.

“Come on. Let’s go home.” Her voice was as soft as the fuzz on a new leaf.

Maybe not every human would have made that bargain.

But Haera would, again and again, in a heartbeat.

“Yes,” she said. “Home.”