THE
WATERS AND
THE WILD

An Underhill Adventure

MERCEDES LACKEY &

ROSEMARY EDGHILL

The Waters and the Wild

Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR. ENTRY #10 IN MERCEDES LACKEY'S CELEBRATED SERRATED EDGE URBAN FANTASY SERIES!

Deeply depressed Olivia, whose parents are divorcing, is ripe for manipulation. And swimming star Blake is looking for someone just like her. Although her friend tries to warn her, Olivia falls for his ploys and accepts an invitation to go to the Adirondack resort camp of Lake Endor with him and his family.

But all is not as it seems at the hundred year old resort. Not only does Olivia discover that Blake is not the guy she thought he was, there is something sinister afoot at the lake.

There is something lying beneath the waters of Lake Endor. Something not of this world.

Will Olivia be drawn under or will she allow true friends to draw her from the lure of oblivion?

Baen Books by Mercedes Lackey

BARDIC VOICES

The Lark and the Wren • The Robin and the Kestrel

The Eagle and the Nightingales • The Free Bards • Four & Twenty Blackbirds

Bardic Choices: A Cast of Corbies (with Josepha Sherman)

The Fire Rose

The Wizard of Karres (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

Werehunter

Fiddler Fair

Brain Ships (with Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball)

The Sword of Knowledge (with C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish & Nancy Asire)

Bedlam's Bard (with Ellen Guon)

Beyond World's End (with Rosemary Edghill)

Spirits White as Lightning (with Rosemary Edghill)

Mad Maudlin (with Rosemary Edghill)

Music to my Sorrow (with Rosemary Edghill)

Bedlam's Edge (ed. with Rosemary Edghill)

The Waters and the Wild (with Rosemary Edghill)

THE SERRATED EDGE

Chrome Circle (with Larry Dixon) • The Chrome Borne (with Larry Dixon)

The Otherworld (with Larry Dixon & Mark Shepherd)

Silence (with Cody Martin) • Breaking Silence (with Cody Martin)

HISTORICAL FANTASIES WITH ROBERTA GELLIS

This Scepter'd Isle • Ill Met by Moonlight

By Slanderous Tongues • And Less Than Kind

HEIRS OF ALEXANDRIA SERIES

by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer

The Shadow of the Lion • This Rough Magic • Much Fall of Blood

Burdens of the Dead

THE SECRET WORLD CHRONICLE

Invasion (with Steve Libbey, Cody Martin & Dennis Lee)

World Divided (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)

Revolution (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)

Collision (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)

Avalanche (with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere)

THE
WATERS AND
THE WILD

An Underhill Adventure

MERCEDES LACKEY &

ROSEMARY EDGHILL

The Waters and the Wild: An Underhill Adventure

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4814-8430-5

eISBN: 978-1-62579-737-7

Cover art by Larry Dixon

First Baen printing, October 2019

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lackey, Mercedes, author. | Edghill, Rosemary, author.

Title: The waters and the wild : an Underhill adventure / by Mercedes

   Lackey and Rosemary Eluki Edghill.

Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Books, [2019] | Series: Bedlam's bard

Identifiers: LCCN 2019023418 | ISBN 9781481484305 (hardcover)

Subjects: GSAFD: Horror fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3562.A246 W38 2019 | DDC 813/.54--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023418

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Electronic Version by Baen Books

www.baen.com

To the memory of Stan Lee

THE
WATERS AND
THE WILD

An Underhill Adventure

CHAPTER ONE

“They probably don’t even have Wi-Fi there, Livy!” Mia Watson said in exasperation. The teenager tossed her long dark hair back over her shoulder as she gestured with her phone around her bedroom, as if to demonstrate that there was Wi-Fi here.

Photos and posters covered the walls, and books, game cartridges, and stuffed animals vied for space on the bookshelves. The closet’s louvered doors hung open and every drawer of every piece of furniture hung open. Clothing was spread out all over the bed and every other flat surface, and the flat-screen was frozen in the middle of a movie the two of them had been watching.

When people talk about “privileged” lives, this is what they mean, Olivia thought. The realization seemed to come from outside her, as if it were imposed upon her instead of part of her. But that was how everything was, and had been for the last year or more. When had everything gone so flat and lifeless? Had it been when she finally realized that all the things going on between her parents weren’t just “everybody fights” but “this is the end”? Or had it been earlier than that, when she figured out that she was always going to be on the outside of every single inner circle, that she was weird and freakish and the few friends she had were her friends out of pity?

Both, probably, she thought dully.

It was June. Everything was over: the Prom, the parties, the Senior Trip, Graduation itself. All the things parents said were “fun” and “the best times of your life” and “things you’ll always remember.”

Which just proves, Olivia thought bleakly, that the people saying those things have no memory themselves of what it’d been like. We have good clothes and better addresses. Most of the senior class is going off to college, even if it’s just a community college. We have cars, and computers, and the latest smartphone, and our own rooms full of stuff, stuff, and more stuff. And none of that makes us happy, and nobody will tell us why that is. So these are the best years of our lives? That’d make anybody slit their wrists.

She’d been looking forward to some downtime before getting ready to go off to CSULB in September, and these days “downtime” meant “far away from both parents.” They were going to get a divorce, and they rather naively thought they were hiding that fact from her. In fact, she’d known they were going to get a divorce since she’d been a freshman, but this senior year . . . it had just been somehow worse. There was an aching feeling in her that if she had just done something, maybe they’d have patched up their differences. But she hadn’t, because she hadn’t wanted to, and didn’t that make this her fault, somehow? She had all sorts of excuses for why she hadn’t wanted to, but they all boiled down to not wanting to be the rope in a tug-of-war, and wasn’t that just selfish?

Before she’d run over to Mia’s, she’d heard them going at it again. Dad had fired off “At least I didn’t base my entire life on a rainbow-unicorn fantasy!” just as she shut the door. It seemed to be his favorite comeback for anything Mom said. In fact, he’d said that a lot during their arguments. She wondered what it meant . . . because as far as she could tell her mom was as hard-headed a practical attorney as you could get. Was it because she was an entertainment attorney? But those checks that came in weren’t made of pixie-dust . . .

At least I can count on Mom to pay my tuition. I’m not sure I can count on Dad for . . . anything. Not when he says things like that to someone he supposedly loved.

She’d picked a school distant enough that she couldn’t possibly be expected to live at home, but September was months away. She wished she was there now. San Diego was supposed to be nice. It had to be better than here. Anything was better than here, when the ’rents were in the meltdown stage.

This impulse-vacation was the next best thing, she guessed. Really, it was hard to feel enthusiastic about it, but it would be with Blake, and anyway, the more Mia pushed at her to cancel it, the more stubborn she felt. When she felt anything at all.

“It’s the Adirondacks, not the Moon,” she replied dismissively, pushing her long brown hair out of her eyes.

Where Mia was dark, Olivia was fair, with grey eyes to Mia’s brown and hair that was neither vividly dark nor truly blonde. And where Mia was all big eyes and supermodel cheekbones, Olivia still looked like Squirrel Girl; not much different than she had back in eighth grade. Average. Forgettable. A nobody. And nobody’s friend, not really. Except for Blake. Blake was the one shining star in the endless night.

Some days she couldn’t imagine why Mia was still her friend.

But we’ve been together since kindergarten.

And kids make lousy decisions.

Then she thought of her parents. Grownups don’t make much better ones.

Reflexively, Olivia pushed the thought aside. She didn’t want to think about losing her family. Mom and Dad had been sniping at each other since she started high school, but in the last couple of years it had gotten really ugly.

So let Mom and Dad fight things out while I’m not around. In the last three months they’ve asked for my opinion and told me they “value my judgment” more than they have in the rest of the entire time I’ve been alive. Which basically means that now I’m the weapon they want to use against each other. I’ve seen this before. How many of the people at school have divorced parents, now? More than are still married, I bet. I am so tired of being their referee and playing piece!

That was one thing about being unnoticed—or unnoticed until this year, at least. When you were invisible, people talked around you. She’d overheard more lunch and gym-class conversations about peoples’ parents than she could count. She had been able to chart out the disintegration of her parents’ marriage by the benchmarks she’d overheard all of her school life.

It wasn’t as if they were being anything unique or special. Everybody divorced. Mia’s parents had divorced and remarried (other people) so many times that Mia was part of a large blended family, with so many half-siblings and step-siblings that Olivia lost count. Sometimes she envied Mia that—

It was really hard to be an only child, with your parents working on their first divorce—

They still thought she didn’t know about it, because they hadn’t said the big D word around her. And truth to tell, she wanted to avoid that moment for as long as possible.

Which was part of her reason for . . . all this.

And Mia knows that. And she still doesn’t want me to get away.

Even while she thought that, Olivia knew it was unfair—but it was also irresistible. The parental Cold War had ruined her junior year and all of last summer. If not for Blake, she didn’t think she could have gotten through this year at all. Having a boyfriend—a real, actual, public, not-just-a-bunch-of-guys-hanging-out, boyfriend—was as wonderful and terrible as Olivia had imagined it would be.

But.

The only thing more stressful than not having a boyfriend was having a really popular boyfriend—and Blake Weber was all that. Handsome, talented, athletic, captain of the swim team. Full-ride scholarship to Stanford already in the bag. He could have had anybody at Campbell High falling all over themselves to be with him, but when he’d dumped Maria Tedesco just before senior year, it had been Olivia Poole he’d gone after. And gotten, of course—her dad loved him, and her mom said he was “good for her.” Even her grades had come up, though because of Blake she’d had less time to study than ever before.

But what her parents didn’t understand (and what Olivia had no intention of explaining) was that just by being “Blake’s girl” Olivia had acquired a sudden collection of enemies. Girls who’d been friendly the year before cut her dead—only Mia had stuck with her—girls who’d used to think of her as too far beneath them to bother tormenting wanted her out of the way and made sure she knew it. And all the boys wanted to find out why Blake had picked her out, something Olivia herself didn’t know.

Some of their ways of “trying to find out” had left her very nervous about being alone with any guy but Blake. Which made parties a maze of hazards, because unless she picked a spot in the main party room and never left it until Blake left, there were lots of ways to get someone alone. Just going to the bathroom meant making sure no one saw you doing it. Depending on whose house the party was at, there had been a lot she’d skipped.

So from going unnoticed, which was hard, she’d gone to being a target, which was harder. A lot harder. And it was something that Blake didn’t even seem to notice, even when it was going on in front of him. The few times she’d tried to hint at something going on, he’d just laugh, and hug her, and tell her she had a really active imagination.

If she’d been smart—as Mia’d kept telling her at the time—she would’ve told him plainly she wasn’t interested when he’d first started making overtures. But the problem was—having Blake Weber want her was not just a nightmare, but her dream come true. And she couldn’t give up the dream part, not even to make the nightmare go away. Mia didn’t understand how special Blake made Olivia feel. When he was with her, the dismal, stifling gray haze that seemed to hang around her every waking minute lifted, and she could actually feel. She’d take anything over the numbness. Blake Weber made her feel alive.

And so, when he had asked her if she’d like to come along on his family’s summer vacation, of course she’d said yes. The Webers had been going to the lake every year since before Noah and Mason, Blake’s younger brothers, had been born; Olivia felt as if she’d been inducted into a secret club, or knighted, or something. Mom and Dad had approved (it was pretty much the only thing they’d agreed on during the last year).

Mia hadn’t. In fact, Mia had been furious with her when she’d first told her. Things had been awkward between them since then, and so, when Mia had proposed that the two of them spend the day hanging out at Mia’s, Olivia had been so grateful for the olive branch that she’d mentally glossed over how excruciating the day might get. Hanging out with Mia had seemed like a better option than going to the library (alone), the mall (alone!) or holing up in her room listening to her parents fight oh-so-politely. Maybe (she’d hoped) Mia would just let Topic A drop.

Fat chance, Olivia thought dourly, then: I wish it was September already. Except then Blake will be gone. She didn’t want to think about that. She just wanted to hang onto every single second when she was still “Blake’s girlfriend” and not think about anything else. So what if that was shallow? At least it was better than not caring about anything again. And it was better than contemplating the bleakness of not being Blake’s girl.

She’d quickly realized that even though the ostensible point of today was to hang out and maybe see if Mia had any clothes that would be useful for Olivia’s upcoming trip, the real purpose, at least as far as Mia was concerned, was a last-ditch attempt to get her to cancel it.

“What?” she said, aware that Mia had said something and she’d been zoning as usual. She hoped she hadn’t agreed to anything while she hadn’t been listening. She just didn’t have the energy for another fight. Really, she didn’t have the energy for anything.

“I said: ‘you wouldn’t notice if it was the Moon,’” Mia repeated. “Look, Livy, I know you want to get away from your fam for the summer—”

“Everybody’s parents get divorced,” Olivia said with faint irritation.

“But they don’t all turn their homes into Motel Hell,” Mia said dryly. “Your Dad get to the moving out stage yet?”

“In a week or two, probably. We finally had The Trial Separation Talk. He says it won’t change anything. They still haven’t said the D word.”

“They always say that,” Mia said cynically. “Nice of them to wait until you turned eighteen. At least there won’t be a big custody fight.” Mia’s dad had been married three times; her mom twice. She knew a thing or two about custody fights. And messy divorces.

“Yeah,” Olivia said tonelessly. I just got to listen to them tear each other apart when they thought I wasn’t around for what seems like an eternity.

“So they aren’t going to be fighting in your living room any more, and so there’s no reason to go off to Lake Woebegone just to get away from them,” Mia went on stubbornly. “You could just move in with me for the summer. My folks won’t mind, and—”

“Blake asked me, and I said yes, my parents said yes, his parents said yes. I have the plane ticket. What am I supposed to tell everyone? And I want to go,” Olivia pointed out, though Mia certainly knew that. Blake loved her—he’d said so. And wasn’t that what people in love did? Spend time together? They were going to two different schools—Livy had been accepted at California State University Long Beach—CSULB—and Blake at Stanford University. Stanford and Long Beach were six hours apart by car, and Olivia didn’t have a car. Blake did, of course, but this “family vacation” would be the last time she and Blake could spend more than a weekend together—at most—until next summer. Even then—swim meets were always on weekends, and that meant whenever there was a swim meet, Blake would be training with the team practically nonstop, getting to bed early, and certainly couldn’t be expected to run off to Long Beach and pick her up. And even if she could get a bus or a plane to the meet, she’d just be one more face in the crowd. He’d be concentrating on winning and have no time for her. He’d been wrapped up in training and competing so much during the last year—it would be worse at Stanford.

Everybody said that a high school romance never survived if people went away to separate colleges. This summer might be the last time she’d ever see Blake. And then she wouldn’t be Blake’s girl anymore. She’d be back to being nothing and nobody. She needed this; needed to have this to hang onto when she was in San Diego, alone.

No matter what Mia thought, Olivia couldn’t have “just said no” when Blake asked her to come with him to Lake Endor. And once she’d said “yes,” she couldn’t just change her mind at the last minute. He’d keep asking and asking and wanting to know why she hadn’t decided, and it was so much easier just to do what he wanted than to come up with reasons why she didn’t want to, especially when the only reason she had was “Mia doesn’t want me to” and that was just stupid. If he wanted me to do something really gross, or dangerous, that would be different, I guess. But he hasn’t.

So far, a small inner voice whispered. She ignored it. It sounded too much like Mia.

And if she’d said “no” he’d have smiled at her and asked “why not?” and what was she supposed to say? What could she say to anybody, and not be lying? Because she did want to. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to go off to a romantic, rustic lake with moonlight walks away from all the things that took Blake away from her? They were in love, right?

Like your parents were in love?

It’s not like that!

“Oh, ‘Blake asked me,’” Mia parroted exasperatedly. “Livy, Blake Weber is a creep. All year he’s been running around behind your back—”

“He told me,” Olivia pointed out, cringing inwardly at the start of the too-familiar argument. “It’s not like he lied. And anyway . . . he kind of had to. He’s kind of a celebrity. If he’s going to keep that scholarship, he’s got to go to the right places and be nice to the right people.” Blake knew how shy she was. He knew she hated being the center of attention—or even noticed. And there were a lot of things he had to do. Places he had to go. People he had to be seen with and suck up to. He said it didn’t mean anything. He joked about the “CW” pressure everyone their age was under. Conform. Stand out. Excel. Be cautious. And most of all: fit in, no matter what.

“And I know you don’t talk to Maria Tedesco, and she doesn’t exactly run in our social circles—at least my social circles—but Jenny Chawleigh knows her, and I think you should—”

Olivia flopped backward onto the bed with an exasperated sigh. Gossip. Character assassination. Rumors. Lies. Once you got to be somebody, everybody wanted to tear you down. All anyone needed for proof of that was to look at the news.

“You aren’t listening,” Mia said, and now she just sounded sad. “You never listen to anything anyone says any more. When you aren’t ignoring what people say, you’re zoning out. Livy, we both know something’s wrong and you can’t just keep going on this way. You used to be different. Remember when we were kids?”

“That was a long time ago,” Olivia said flatly. “Things were different then. I’m still who I always was.”

“You aren’t,” Mia said quietly. “This isn’t just a bad mood. Everybody has those. This is more. It isn’t going away. It’s eating you up. You never look happy, even when you should be. You don’t do the things you used to love anymore. I think you ought to talk to someone. At least—”

Olivia sat up and thrust herself to her feet. “Oh sure!” she said, though . . . it sounded sad rather than angry, even to her. “And have Mom and Dad dragging each other through court about what the dollar value should be placed on my mental health and which one of them drove me crazy!” She scrabbled for her purse.

“It’s not about crazy,” Mia went on. “It’s about being sick. Depression can happen to anybody—it’s not like you did something to deserve it—”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to sit around here and listen to your pity, or your jealousy, or your ‘Very Special Episode’ crap. There’s nothing wrong with me!”

I’m just tired, she added silently. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired. Or the last time something was fun. She slung her purse over her shoulder as she got to her feet and strode toward the door. Normally a fight would make her stomach hurt. Now she just felt a kind of relief at being given the energy to escape. Anger, grief, fear—at least they were things she could feel.

“Livy—wait!” Mia sounded panicky. “Don’t—”

Olivia wrenched open the door before she could hear anything more. Once she was through it, she slammed it as hard as she could. Everybody in the house probably heard it, but who cared?

It didn’t matter anyway.

Nothing did.

The rental minivan was huge, but it was also crammed, and the a/c didn’t reach all the way to the back, where Olivia was jammed into the jump-seat next to an enormous cooler and two duffle bags that threatened to fall on her every time the van swerved. And every time the van swerved, she was afraid they were going to lose something off the top, which was packed as full as the van was inside. Blake and his brothers were in the regular back seat, and of course his parents were in the front. Right now they were all playing some elaborate word-game—very loudly—but she didn’t know the rules and it moved too fast for her to follow anyway. She didn’t understand why none of the Webers were feeling as groggy as she was. She’d started her plane ride way too early in the morning, and now she really understood what jet-lag meant. She’d have napped if she could, but every time she nodded off something jerked her awake. Her mouth tasted like lint and her stomach felt knotted and sour.

They’d been on the road for about three hours, and in another two hours they should reach Lake Endor. The six of them (and enough luggage to go on a world cruise) had flown into Albany this morning, and if there hadn’t been huge problems with the rental place losing their reservation, they’d already be at Lake Endor. They would’ve been at the lake a fortnight ago if Blake hadn’t needed to finish up with his private swim coach. And while Mrs. Weber didn’t have a job, Mr. Weber did. That meant that Mr. Weber would be leaving in about two weeks and it would just be Mrs. Weber for July before they all piled back into the van to drive down to Albany and fly home again. She’d only have a week after that to be stuck in Sacto before she could escape to CSULB preregistration. Just one week with Mom alone . . . and for Mom to start whatever campaign she’d planned to get Livy on her side. She didn’t really want to take sides, but that was what had always happened to every other kid she knew. But . . . just one week.

Lucky for her.

But right now Olivia didn’t feel lucky. Right now her stomach hurt, and she had a headache, and she had the horrible feeling she’d made the worst mistake of her life by coming here. When Blake said “Lake Endor in the Adirondacks,” she’d kind of envisioned the Adirondacks to be something like Disneyland or Yosemite: a big park with lots of things to do and places to see and cities nearby. She’d meant to look the place up on the Internet before she left, but as usual lately, time had gotten away from her; she’d spent the whole night before the flight frantically packing and repacking her suitcases, afraid of bringing too much, too little, the wrong things. And after all, she’d been to New York before—as in New York City. How different could Upstate New York be?

A lot, apparently. Once they’d gotten out of the Schenectady-Albany-Troy area, there hadn’t been much of anything visible from the road. A few farms and orchards, and a few random houses, and eventually there wasn’t anything to see but trees. The Adirondacks, it appeared, was basically one huge wilderness park almost the size of a state, a mix of federal, state and even county parks, with the odd farm or house that had held onto their land since the year dot. Nothing to see. Literally, the sticks.

And nothing to listen to but Blake’s family.

Olivia didn’t really know the Webers all that well. She’d been to the house a couple of times for parties Blake threw, and once for dinner. Blake’s parents (their names were Harper and Aidan) had been, well, parents. And Noah and Mason had vanished as quickly as possible from the gatherings, so they’d seemed kind of . . . generic. So when Blake asked her to come to Lake Endor for a month, she’d thought she’d . . . fit in.

But Harper and Aidan had seemed to consider her more like sentient baggage than a person. And it turned out that Noah was thirteen and Mason was ten, they were like evil siblings in a comedy show, only not funny, and they hadn’t stopped bickering once since the van left Albany.

I’m just imagining things, she told herself hopefully. They don’t mean to ignore me. But she thought it would have been at least a little more pleasant if one of the rug-rats was back here and she could sit next to Blake.

She wished she’d made up the fight with Mia before she left, but she’d been too exhausted to. And anyway, Mia was just wrong. Olivia wasn’t sick. She was fine. She didn’t need a psychiatrist. Or a doctor. Or pills.

How could pills change her life? Why should she want to change her life? Life was what it was; it was never fair, and never happily ever after, and if you got a chance at being happy for a little while then you should count yourself lucky. That was what Dad always said.

And anyway, she should be—she was—happy right now. Dream vacation, right? Ask anybody.

She pulled out her phone. At least the van had Wi-Fi. But it was too bouncy to read. If she put in her earbuds Blake might say something to her and she’d miss it, she’d already told Mom she’d landed, and she couldn’t just text Mia out of the blue to chat when she’d deleted Mia’s last dozen texts without answering them. She sighed and looked out the window.

“First sign!” Noah shouted suddenly, and everybody else whooped in glee.

Blake turned around to look at her over the back of the seat. “First road sign for Lake Endor! The adventure begins!” He saw what she was doing and made a grab for her phone. Olivia snatched it away. Blake looked hurt. “Hey. Back to nature and all that. Cut the cord. Besides, you won’t be able to get a signal at the lake.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Olivia said, feeling a little alarmed.

Blake looked hurt at her objection. “Sure I did,” he said instantly. “You just don’t remember. Anyway,” he added, smirking, “who would you text anyway?” He turned around again.

She knew it didn’t mean the words to hurt, but they still did. She’d never had a lot of friends, and without Mia she’d lost one more.

The turnoff for Lake Endor put them on a two-lane county road that looked long overdue for repairs. The interstate had been nearly deserted, but County Road 12W wasn’t. There were a lot of vehicles going in both directions; cars and trucks and vans filled with luggage, or with kayaks and bicycles strapped on, and one of them was even towing a sailboat. Clearly, everyone was heading for Lake Endor Campground. Or for some campground anyway: all along the road there were signs for places with names like Hidden and Parthenon, or advertising things like live nightcrawlers and funnel cake. Most of the signs looked handmade. But where are all the houses and stores and towns and people?

The van passed another sign for “Lake Endor Resort and Campground.” It was larger than most of the others and had depictions of water-skiers and fishermen and people playing volleyball, all dressed in antediluvian swimwear. Olivia felt as if she’d fallen through time.

It would make a great start for a book. Imagine if we were really driving into the past and we got to the Lake and it was, oh, I don’t know, 1890 or something. Or even 1950. Think of seeing Elvis at some little county fair or something! Poodle skirts and chinos. That would be fun.

But the stories she’d always narrated to herself had lost the power to charm and distract her as the grey fog had come rolling in. Where she would once have elaborated the details of the road trip through time, now she just let the idea drop. Trying to make all that stuff up was just too exhausting.

“Almost there!” Mr. Weber said encouragingly as they passed the sign. Since he’d been saying it since they’d gotten onto the Interstate, Olivia didn’t pay a lot of attention until the van actually took the next turnoff.

The new road seemed a lot narrower than the one they’d just left—and it was certainly in worse repair. Olivia set her teeth against the constant jarring and stuffed her phone into her backpack before she could drop and lose it. The trees on both sides of the road retreated from the verge, thinning out as they went, and Olivia saw a few isolated houses—and trailers—scattered across the landscape seemingly at random and far from the road. Then there was a gas station, and they were in a town—and out again almost before she realized it. It had looked like something out of an old movie, as if time had stopped here a long time ago. She couldn’t decide whether it was creepy or charming or just sad.

The road narrowed in earnest now, to a lane and a half, then to a lane, then to gravel instead of blacktop. Mr. Weber didn’t slow down at all, and the van bottomed out several times. Everyone else laughed, but all Olivia could do was wonder what would happen if it somehow got wrecked. Blake’s family seemed to consider everything around them somehow . . . disposable. Olivia wasn’t sure how she felt about that. God knew she wasn’t in a space where she could pass judgment on someone else’s lifestyle.

Then they were driving under a rusty old wrought-iron archway. She looked upward, and caught a quick glimpse of letters that spelled out “Lake Endor Campground.”

“The old swimming hole!” Mr. Weber said. “Think you’ll have enough room to keep in training, Blake?”

“If you don’t complain about how I’m scaring all the fish away,” Blake answered, laughter in his voice.

The late afternoon sun made all the colors more vivid, and in the distance, Olivia could finally see the lake. It sparkled in the sunlight, and it was huge. Really, really huge, and not what she had pictured in her head at all. On the far side of it she could see some kind of a castle-y building, all white walls and red roof, and leaned forward to get a better look.

I guess that’s not where we’re headed, she decided regretfully. That’s got to be the resort that’s supposed to be up here. Even Blake wouldn’t call that a cabin.

With the lake at last in sight, everyone started talking at once. Noah and Mason began demanding Mr. Weber stop the car immediately so they could get out. Mrs. Weber reminded them that everybody had to help unload the car before anything else. The boys protested loudly, and even Blake joined in. Olivia opened her mouth and then closed it again without speaking. What could she say, anyway? She didn’t—the sudden realization was unpleasant—know any of these people, after all. At least, none of them besides Blake.

By now the van was moving slowly along the narrow dirt road that edged the lake. The water was only a stone’s throw beyond the edge of the dirt road, and by now Olivia could even smell it—sort of a green, alive, watery smell, nothing at all like the ocean. While she knew Lake Endor wasn’t like one of the Great Lakes or something, it was still the biggest lake she’d ever seen up close. She wondered if it was safe to swim in. Out near the middle of the lake there was a big swimming dock anchored, and a couple of people lying out in the unobstructed sunlight, so she supposed it was. Or maybe they just don’t care what happens to them, her small inner voice said. Maybe it’s full of toxic chemicals and horrible things that bite. In the distance, Olivia could see a big jet of water from a Sea-Doo arcing into the air, and there were one or two other small boats on the lake as well. Mr. Weber talked about fishing, stupid, and if it were full of poison the lake wouldn’t be full of fish too. Honestly, Livy, what are you using for a brain? Olivia sighed. Her small inner voice not only didn’t know when to shut up, it sounded an awful lot like Mia. Suddenly, sharply, she wished Mia was here too. This would be fun, an adventure, if she had someone to share it with.

Isn’t that what Blake’s for? Olivia clenched her jaw, and looked out the other side window. Summer days were long—the equinox was next week—but the pine trees and the mountains (Olivia mentally put air-quotes around the word, because even if everyone called the Adirondacks “mountains,” they looked like foothills to anyone raised in the Far West) would cut off the sunlight fairly soon, and she wanted to see what the place she’d be spending the next six weeks was like.

The resort was on the far side of the lake—looking more like a castle or a palace than ever—and on the near side of it was a line of white-painted cabins. They looked like miniature houses, or like the kids’ playhouses some people bought that were just a mini-version of their house. Most of them were already occupied—there were cars parked beside them, and the tiny front yards were strewn with toys, sports equipment, and a variety of shapes and sizes of barbeque grills. Olivia could not imagine where everyone fit—the interior rooms must be tiny, if the inside wasn’t all just one big room. She stifled another sigh. The last thing she wanted was to make Blake regret asking her to come on his family’s vacation, and for the first time, she wondered if they really wanted her there. All Blake had said was that his parents had said it was “fine” if she came along, and Olivia hadn’t queried any further than that.

Maybe you should have. Maybe you ought to have been thinking further ahead than making Blake happy and getting away from your parents’ bickering.

Too late now.

Dogs ran alongside the Webers’ van, barking, and people looked up and waved. Everybody here clearly knew everybody else. It was like some kind of tiny sitcom town here, as if she’d somehow been transported to Mayberry or Pleasantville. (Or Silent Hill, she muttered under her breath.) The van bumped slowly down the line of cabins until it apparently reached their destination. There was a carport beside “their” cabin—some of the cabins had one, and some didn’t—and Mr. Weber pulled the rental van into the space and stopped.

“Honey, we’re home!” he announced, in a fake-pompous voice. If Mrs. Weber had anything to say to that, Olivia didn’t hear it.

Noah and Mason were out of the car before Mr. Weber turned off the ignition, racing toward the lake and shrieking. Mrs. Weber opened the passenger door and shouted at them to “come back here right now,” but it didn’t do any good (aside from making Blake laugh), since the boys were already out of sight. Mrs. Weber seemed to have expected that response, because she slammed the door shut again in a kind of commentary and started rummaging in her purse.

Blake was still laughing as he came around the van to open the door on Olivia’s side.

“You’re going to love it here,” he said, holding out his hand.

The moon was halfway between full and dark tonight, but it still turned the sky a dark dusty blue. Even though it was summer, the air felt sharp, as if it was just biding its time before dumping winter on them, and the smell of pine trees was incredibly intense, but because it was real and not some kind of fake air-freshener, it just smelled like outdoors, instead of being a horrible intrusion. When the wind blew, the hushing rustle in the trees sounded almost like ocean waves. Crickets shrilled loudly against an irregular chorus of frogs, and behind both there was a high, almost mechanical whining sound. Probably cicadas, or something like that, but it wasn’t as if she’d expected there to be a Bio quiz on her summer vacation, so for all Olivia knew, all the sounds she was hearing right now could be the result of the local squirrels forming a techno-metal band.

Breaking News: It was really dark out here in the middle of nowhere. And it was a lot colder than she had thought.

Olivia shifted uncomfortably on the hard cot. At least she was warm enough, even if the wool blankets were heavy and scratchy and even the sheets smelled a little bit like mothballs. Apparently a lot of stuff was either provided by the campground—like bedding and towels and dishes—or people just left it in the cabins year-around.

Oh come on, Livy—can you see Harper Weber allowing these blankets within a hundred miles of her carefully curated lifestyle? Yeah, didn’t think so.

She reached for her phone and clicked it on just to see its reassuring light, but as Blake had said, there was no Wi-Fi. The cabins had been put up in the 1920s—a few decades after the lodge on the other side of the lake had been built—and hadn’t been modernized much over the succeeding decades. Oh, they’d been kept in good repair—walls and floors and roofs and windows—but the rooms were dim once the sun set, and there weren’t a lot of electrical outlets. Noah and Mason were monopolizing most of the free ones with their laptops. She’d be lucky to be able to find a spare hour or two for plugging her phone in to recharge it—and she’d have to keep an eye on it while she did, or else one of them was likely to throw it into the lake. Not that keeping her phone charged was a vital necessity, even if Mom said to “keep in touch”—just as Blake had said, there was no signal at Lake Endor. The nearest cell towers were blocked by the surrounding hills. On the other hand, her phone also had a lot of her music on it, as well as all the books on her TBR list, and she didn’t want to be completely cut off from entertainment, so getting regular recharges was necessary. Besides, she needed something to do with her days, because the afternoon and evening had been enough to show her that she was totally going to have to make her own entertainment up here.

Olivia had thought she was braced for the worst after the drive from Albany to Lake Endor. Even if the Webers didn’t know her (not that she wanted to get to know Noah and Mason), she’d assumed (before today, anyway) that Blake’s parents would treat her with the same vague politeness that adults always showed to teenagers, and that she would be spending most of her time with Blake.

And that he’d run interference for you and speak up for you. You know, Livy: just as if he’d invited you to come with him and his family on vacation . . .

Olivia gingerly rolled over on her cot, biting back frustrated tears. If the car ride had been uncomfortable, the afternoon and evening after they’d gotten here had been really agonizing.

First she’d spent a couple of hours unpacking the van, trying to fit in and make herself useful. Blake had wandered off, saying he wanted to see if some people were here yet. As for the so-called adults, Mr. Weber’s contribution to the unpacking began and ended with his fishing gear, and Mrs. Weber seemed to be a lot more interested in “cocktail hour” than in organizing the kitchen and emptying the suitcases and duffle bags. Olivia had alternated between wondering if she was being too pushy by getting everything unpacked and organized, and wondering if she was being hazed.

Aside from there being a cabin with actual walls and a ceiling and floor, it was a lot like tent-camping. By the first half hour Olivia had seen the whole thing: a tiny kitchen, a tiny living room, an antique bathroom, and two bedrooms, all arranged shotgun-style; the kitchen at the back, then the bathroom, then the bedrooms, and finally the living room in the front. There was an old-looking fridge and small box freezer, but they ran on propane, something she didn’t even know was possible, and which explained the giant gas canisters Mr. Weber had insisted on bringing, and had taken hours to chill down after Mr. Weber managed to light them. Then he had found and checked the main breaker and turned the electricity on.

Evidently there was a well with a pump somewhere that supplied the water for the cabins. Another worry. What if the pump failed? What would they drink? Was the well water all right? Horror stories about contaminated wells kept prodding at her memory.

But once the van was unpacked and its contents put away in the cabin, Mrs. Weber had acted as if Olivia had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and fussed about what to do with her, by which, of course, she meant Where would Olivia sleep?

One of the bedrooms had two sets of bunks—a detail Blake hadn’t gotten around to sharing with her while he was saying how awesome Lake Endor was and how much she’d like it—but Olivia couldn’t imagine sharing a bedroom with the Terror Tots even if Blake would be there, and clearly Blake’s parents couldn’t either. Nor was there any question of her sleeping in the same room as Blake, even if it was in a bunk bed. And it was painfully obvious no one even considered for a moment the option of her sleeping in the living room. Nor, really, did she want to try, not really. The Terror Twins would probably take every possible opportunity to harass her or step on her or sit on her. There’d been an excruciating two hours of trying to solve her as if she were a math problem. Olivia, who loathed being the center of attention, thought almost longingly of asking to be driven to the nearest bus station just so all of the yammering bickering cross-talk would stop, and she might even have gone looking for it on foot if it hadn’t finally been decided that Olivia could sleep on the back porch.

This wasn’t as awful as it seemed on first look, because the porch was completely screened in and even had its own door to the outside, as well as the door into the kitchen. It had clearly been set up as living space before. It had a cement slab floor, and there were a number of odds and ends of furniture stored in the space—a chest of drawers, a couple of picnic benches, a blanket chest (filled with actual blankets, now that was a surprise), and some Adirondack chairs—and Blake had dragged the chairs and benches out and into the front yard while Mr. Weber unearthed the cot from what seemed to be a communal storage shed and declared the problem solved.

But the back porch wasn’t particularly private—the screened walls had no shades—and she’d had to get into her pajamas in the bathroom and parade through the kitchen in her robe and slippers. It all made Olivia feel like an afterthought. She hadn’t even been able to unpack.

If you’d wanted to spend the whole summer being ignored and left out of things, you could’ve stayed home, you know. Olivia rubbed her burning eyes. Was she really trying to think of nonhumiliating ways of ducking out on the Webers already?

Because that’s what you do, of course. Pretend people can count on you, then you bail. Look at what you did to Mia. She’s probably already deleted you from her phone with a great cry of liberation. No wonder you don’t have any friends, Olivia. You break every promise you make and your word is worthless.

Hot painful tears burned their way out from beneath her closed eyelids. She wanted to deny that inner voice, but she couldn’t. She believed it. Everything it said was true. It was what she’d done for years—run away from everything. And somehow she’d been the last one to realize it.

And now you do. And what comes next?

Olivia had no idea.

The trouble was, nothing was enough of a thing for long enough to let her decide what to do about it and to be sure it was going to stay the same. Dinnertime had actually been almost kind of fun. Olivia had made sandwiches and iced tea and dug out paper plates and dished up the deli counter salads (they’d be going into Endor tomorrow to shop, but they’d stocked up on supplies on the way here), and everybody was gathered around the table, and there’d been laughter, and stories about other summers, and they’d all talked about how much fun Olivia was going to have while she was here, and Blake had looked at her with that soft look in his eyes that made her feel cherished and special and worthy.

And after dinner, Olivia did the dishes and bundled up the trash while Mr. Weber dug out some old board games from a closet and got everyone but Mrs. Weber to play and Olivia and Blake had beaten everyone at Trivial Pursuit. For a while it felt as if she’d fallen into a TV show from the fifties, and was in the middle of some impossibly cheerful, impossibly normal family. And that she fit in.

But she knew by now—in a way she’d always known—that feelings of happiness and normalcy and fitting in were only a lie.

After the game, she and Blake had taken a walk down by the lake. It was only about eight o’clock (her body thought it was three hours earlier), but most of the cabins were dark, and there were only a few streetlights (or whatever you called them in a campground) to give light. The lake itself was a sheet of black glass, reflecting the lights of the resort on the far side as clearly as if the water was a magic mirror.

This was the first chance she’d had to get a real good look at “The Resort” (it apparently didn’t have an actual name). It was an enormous old building that looked a lot more like what she’d imagined for a vacation destination, and Olivia wondered what kind of people stayed there and what they did for fun. But she didn’t wonder very hard, because Blake had his arm around her, and they were alone here together, and they’d walked down to the end of the row of cabins, and he’d kissed her.

“I’m glad you came, Ollie. I’m going to have a lot of fun this summer,” he said, holding her close and breathing the words into her hair. And she’d thought—at last. He was going to get romantic. That small voice at the back of her mind nattered about other things he was going to get, but this was Blake, and he wouldn’t hurt her, they’d just go sit by the lake and hold each other and kiss and she’d be like a normal teenager with a normal boyfriend. Finally.

And then he took a step back, and smiled ruefully, and said he was going to have to get up pretty early to be able to get in his morning swim workout before the lake got crowded, and they went back to the cabin. And Blake said goodnight (for a wonder, Noah and Mason were apparently already in bed), and Olivia had taken her things off to the bathroom.

At first she thought it was really a half bath, just a sink and a toilet without either a tub or shower: did everybody bathe in the lake? Or were there some kind of public showers around here somewhere? And then she’d spotted the pipe going up the wall and across the ceiling to the bare little nozzle with a pull-chain on the bare side of the bathroom, and realized that the other half of the bathroom was . . . kind of . . . the shower. The tile all sloped slightly down to the drain in the middle of the floor. Either the water only came out in a bare trickle, or you’d soak everything every time you took a shower. And there didn’t seem to be any way to set the temperature or the amount. You just pulled the chain and got water. What temperature? She had no guess. There was something called an “instant on hot water heater” in the kitchen, because there’d been hot water for dishes, and she guessed it led here too, but . . . maybe not. It might just be cold showers all the time.

Probably was.

Gross, she’d thought, and gone off to her . . . porch.

After such a long exhausting day—emotionally if not physically—Olivia should have found it easy to sleep. She didn’t, of course. She had the distinct impression she’d misjudged Blake’s parents somehow. Maybe she’d assumed he’d told them more about her, or that it had been their idea to have him invite her, or . . . something. But now she realized that she really didn’t know what Blake’s parents thought about her, or about having her here, and . . . well . . . Lake Endor wasn’t really what she’d expected.

If you don’t like it here, it’s all your own fault. The time to ask questions is before you jump off the cliff.

When Blake had talked about Lake Endor, Olivia hadn’t wanted to sound too eager—as if she was begging him to invite her—and so she hadn’t asked a lot of questions. She’d just filled in the background details she’d expected to be true.

She realized she’d made a few assumptions. Okay, a lot of assumptions.

When Blake said “cabin by the lake,” she’d thought of something like a regular house, only made out of logs, maybe, but with lights and connectivity, and, okay, actual full bedrooms and someplace for any guests they invited to actually sleep like a human being and not practically out in the open.

Instead, she was at Lake Endor Campground, and Lake Endor Campground wasn’t all that modern. In fact, it wasn’t modern at all—except maybe for the inside of the Resort on the other side of the lake, and at dinner Blake had mentioned that they didn’t like the “cabin people” going over there, so no chance of using their tennis courts, or pools, or even meeting any of the guests who might be her own age. As if that would make any difference, since you turn into a section of the wallpaper the moment anybody you don’t know even says “hi.” Of course, it was different when Blake was beside her, because Blake could charm anyone and was happy to do all the talking. And it was true that Blake said there were several kids their age who came up to stay at the cabins—but she wasn’t as certain as she’d been this morning that Blake would take the time to introduce her around. So—if she stayed—she’d probably be by herself a lot, unless she wanted to keep to Blake’s schedule and get up at four a.m. every day to watch him go swimming.

Olivia shuddered delicately. No thanks. She was a night owl by nature, and couldn’t see the allure of turning her entire body clock around on her vacation.

On the other hand (third hand? Fourth hand? She was running out of hands), Lake Endor, even on brief acquaintance, was one of the most beautiful places Olivia had ever seen. She liked hiking, and if there weren’t hiking trails here (unlikely) she could certainly make her own. There was the lake, too. While she wasn’t a really strong swimmer—certainly nowhere near Blake’s level!—there was the diving dock, and apparently there were boats to rent. And hadn’t she just been thinking that she wanted a real break from everything?

Well, she had what she wanted. Always be careful what you wish for—you may get it.

There was a flurry of motion and rustling through the brush. It made Olivia jump, but at least she didn’t scream (thank god). She stared out through the screen and saw a pair of burning green eyes looking back from the edge of the trees. A fox, maybe. Or a coyote. She took a shaky breath of relief: animals never hurt you. (Not like people did.) She’d look for its tracks in the morning, and then maybe she’d be able to know what it was. Maybe it would come back tomorrow night. Maybe she’d be able to get some pictures with her phone. And she’d brought her sketchbook, so she could at least draw a picture of where it had been.

The fox (or whatever) blinked and vanished, and Olivia heard the sound of an unfamiliar night bird, followed by a particularly loud bloop! that had to have come from the lake.

I wonder what’s in the lake making a sound like that? she thought, finally drifting off to sleep.

CHAPTER TWO

This is my favorite time of day, Dylan Waverly thought contentedly.

He walked past the lakeside tennis courts, and through the little ornamental orchard, and down to the dock. He was barefoot and wearing a pair of baggy swim-trunks with the Resort’s logo embroidered on one leg, and had a rolled towel draped across his shoulders. Anybody who glimpsed him would only see one of the Resort’s young lifeguards heading down to the water for a slightly-unauthorized swim. Lake Endor, of course, was “swim at your own risk” after sunset, and very large and very hungry carp discouraged anyone inclined to flout the policy. Of course a carp encounter wasn’t fatal, but the nips were painful.

The sun had set hours ago, and the night sky was bright with stars. Dylan watched as the security lights across the lake clicked off, leaving only faint indoor lights shining in one or two of the cabins on the row, and knew from that it was just ten o’clock.

He’d been in Issachar County since the early spring, and was glad to have found a good excuse for staying. While Dylan had no actual need to work—the kenning of gold might be a Seleighe gift, not a Selkie one, but he could have plucked wealth to last a mortal lifetime from the ocean floor—he liked people, and liked being among mortals. And he was wise enough to know that strangers—no matter who—or what—they were—required reasons to be where they were. An excuse, if you chose to see it that way. Or (as Dylan saw it), a beguiling story to tell. So when he’d seen the Resort, he’d known he wanted to work there. Selkies had always been friends and helpers to mortals, after all. It was why they’d resisted going Underhill.

It was true there was a Portal in the lake, but as far as he could tell it had been sealed, like so many others since the Courts had gone Underhill generations ago. It wasn’t the Portal that had drawn him to Lake Endor, but the quiet beauty of the lake itself. Of all the inland bodies of water he had encountered since making his escape from the Sea and his home, this was the one that had called out the loudest to him. And once he’d seen it, there was no question of whether or not he would stay. He would have found an excuse, even if he’d had to go treasure-hunting and buy himself camping gear to live in the forest. His kind were used to rough accommodations, after all. He was more used to not sleeping in a bed than having one.

But getting a job was the most practical solution to remaining, at least for now.

Getting a job in Endor had taken a certain amount of ingenuity. Little towns like Endor weren’t quick to warm up to outsiders—especially ones who couldn’t give a good account of where they’d been before and why they’d come here. It had been pure luck he’d overheard the conversation in the Endor diner that led him to apply for a job as a mechanic at the Resort. The Resort hired most of its staff from Endor and the surrounding towns. Many of its employees had worked summers here for years; the Resort was a “family” resort in more ways than one. He didn’t want to take a job from someone who had earned it, or who needed it, but after he’d been in Endor for a while, he’d figured out a way to be not only useful to the Resort, but needed by it.

For he had . . . skills. Skills he’d learned from some Seleighe folk and their mortal allies that he’d taken a liking to as a pup, and who had in turn taken a liking to him. They’d taught him a very great deal, not only about the engines that made human motorcars run, but about engines and contraptions in general. Skills that one only needed to demonstrate, and, even with all the certifications available, did not need to show a license or a degree to persuade people that said skills were real and reliable.

Mortal engines had fascinated him all his life, and his people had no fear of or aversion to Cold Iron. A skilled mechanic willing to accept a few months’ employment rather than a steady job, and who could also double as a lifeguard (and who was charming enough to be sought after as a dance partner most evenings, he admitted modestly), had been able to convince the Resort’s owners to hire him. The nearest mechanic was at Hidden, and as a result, when anything happened to any of the jet skis or the emergency generators, or any other thing that needed a motor or merely had complicated innards, it could be days or a week or even more before the thing was set to rights. He must have seemed like a gift from heaven to the Resort owners. Especially as he didn’t ask much, and made no questions about “benefits.” Not that he needed anything of the sort. He never got sick, his teeth and eyes were perfect, and whatever would he do with a “retirement fund” anyway?

He gave good service for his hire. It was a point of honor for him, and always had been. (What honor you have left, he thought somberly.) And his job was fascinating. Being the Resort’s mechanic-at-large meant he was in charge of everything that went out on the lake under power, including the boats the guests brought with them, and anything with a motor that helped to run the resort. Even when something was working, he still enjoyed tinkering with it to make it run better.

The lake was too small for the larger craft common at oceanside marinas, although he probably could have worked on things that large as well. Anything over thirty feet would be as cramped in Lake Endor as an ocean liner in a bathtub. Most of the boats were used by single fishermen; though the lake had been used for water skiing in years gone by (so he’d been told), the sport seemed to have gone out of fashion lately, probably because the endlessly-creative mortals had designed new toys for their enjoyment. These days, the Resort maintained a dozen jet skis for the use of guests, plus two (outfitted with rescue platforms) to be used for lake rescue—a good thing, since without them Dylan probably couldn’t have convinced Jaymie Maham and her husband to hire him.

Technically the Resort wasn’t liable for what happened on the lake itself, and it was rare for individual swimmers to get into trouble, but there was always somebody keeping an eye out from the high tower. Hence, the rescue-skis. Most of the common trouble came from one of the small boats tipping over, or from one of the powerboats—or the jet skis—running out of gas. So part of Dylan’s job was to make sure that anything preventable was prevented.

And the Resort will close for the season in September, and what will you do then, Dylan, me lad? You can’t go on drifting from place to place forever. Your own people and the Farraige Olc are hunting you, and sooner or later they’ll find you. And then . . .

But he shook his head, banishing the familiar litany of fault with a rueful sigh. He didn’t have a better answer now than he’d had a year ago: stay, be caught, and see everyone and everything he loved destroyed? Or run away, and delay that inevitability for as long as he could? Mayhap he could find a place for the winter tinkering on the fishing boats on the Gulf, or down in the Keys. People living as close to the edge as the Gulf fishermen did were grateful for someone who would make repairs for the sake of a bed and a meal and a bit of spending money. And there were many in the Keys who were as much on the run from their lives as he was from his.

The lights from the Resort shone in the lake in front of him, and even down at the water’s edge Dylan could hear recorded music coming from the hotel’s ballroom. The Resort kept later hours than the Tourist Camp did, partly from the advantage of having a more reliable electric supply (and a hefty set of backup generators in case of a summer storm) and partly because of its guests. Even though the same families had been coming to “The Endor” for generations, expectations had changed.

Everything is always changing here in the World Above, Dylan thought broodingly. I wonder: if we had been willing to change, too, would this whole catastrophe ever have happened?

In the 1930s, the Resort had put in one of the earliest phone lines in Issachar County. In the 2000s, it was limited Wi-Fi, which meant that there were also Wi-Fi hotspots in town, enough for texting and email (to the glee of the townies). But from its first season, the Resort had offered dancing every night. In the old days, it had been ragtime and ballroom and a full orchestra. Then it had been swing and a live band: now there was live music only on weekends in July and August, and for the rest of the week patrons made do with a DJ and his records—a DJ who doubled as one of the cooks, because everyone here did more than one job.

Today was a Monday—it was disco on Mondays—and the ballroom would close down in another hour. Most of the action at the Resort was indoors after sunset; the tennis courts weren’t lighted for nighttime play, and the lifeguards at the two pools went off duty at six. And it got mortal chill here of an evening, chill enough to discourage wandering about at night unless you had a good reason to. Even though the pools stayed open until 9:30, it was mostly the older teens who used them after the dinner hour, and the late swimmers usually weren’t a rowdy crowd. Never mind how silly it is to have two swimming pools when there’s a whole lake right here. Mortals are a silly lot in general. That’s why you are on the run and here in the first place. . . .

Dylan made an annoyed face at falling right back into the same brooding thoughts so quickly. It all came down to mortals and their never-ending history of making poor choices. It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not he had been chosen as Champion or some other, the outcome for his people would have been just the same, because the Farraige Olc wouldn’t compromise and the Mhuir Chéasta wouldn’t stop trying to convince them.

Go for a swim, why don’t you? And stop fretting about what you can’t change, he told himself firmly.

Dylan walked out on the dock and balanced on the very end. He dropped the towel and dove smoothly into the lake.

Where the man dove in, a seal surfaced. If there had been anyone to observe it, upon first glance they would have remarked that it was an exceptionally fine specimen of Halichoerus grypus atlantica, the Atlantic grey seal—at least before they took a second look and began shaking their heads in confusion. Even worse if that imaginary watcher and hypothetical amateur naturalist recognized him for what he really was, or more likely was one of the mortals who could see through a millstone better than most.

Not a seal at all . . . but a Selkie.

Dylan bristled his whiskers happily as he dove for the lake bottom, twisting this way and that in pursuit of startled fish. It was play rather than any need to hunt; Dylan was happy to take his meals properly cooked, thank you very much, and carp were filthy things, muddy tasting. But he enjoyed giving the carp as much of a fright as they gave to mortal swimmers.

Oh, it was wonderful to be able to swim in his rightful shape. And the water was—all things considered—almost pristine.

Now don’t start thinking like that again! That’s what you came here to get away from, isn’t it?

Dylan surfaced in the shadow of the diving platform at the center of the lake and hung motionless in the water, only his nose and the top of his head above it. It was a lifetime’s habit of caution that kept him hidden. Since before mortalkind had found fire and language and the inspiration to shape tools from reeds and stone and clay, it had shared its world with more races than it knew. For millennia, mortals had shared their world first unknowingly, then knowingly—then unknowingly again. But in that brief span of centuries, once the other races became myths, and when they had thought themselves alone upon the earth, mortals had changed. They had changed the world. And those who had become myths realized that mortals could no longer share the world with those Elder Cousins whose presence they had once taken for granted.

Not peacefully, anyway.

To stay in the World Above would have been to cause them harm, and the Seleighe Sidhe could not bear such a thought, for they loved their mortal cousins, and, truth be told, were empowered by mortal creativity. There had been a long period of strife between Dark Court and Light, but in the end, except for a very, very few, both Seleighe and Unseleighe Courts had departed for Underhill, along with their myriad courtiers and pets and allies.

At least . . . those of the land.

Even in those days in centuries past, when (so it seemed) all the earth was trampled underfoot by mortals, the sea had remained an unknown country. Mortal ships were frail and few, easily blown from their true courses and lost. There seemed no reason for the Sea-Folk to follow their landlubbing brethren Underhill.

Oh, they had withdrawn from mortal view. Sightings of Selkies, and swan-mays, and phoukas became first rare, then legend. Merfolk and nisse vanished from the surface of the sea, rusalka from marshes, lorelei from the rivers, kelpie and nixies, sirens and Lamiae, merrows and spaewives and all the thousand races of the ocean became wonder tales told at fanciful mortal firesides.

No one had expected mortal kind to claim the seas as well.

And not just to claim them, but poison them.

Dylan dove deep into the cool pure darkness of the lake, but even here there was evidence of mortal carelessness. In daylight, he would have been able to see the bright glitter of thoughtless trash—lost sunglasses, discarded tin and aluminum cans, glass bottles—that littered the lake bottom like out of place seashells, drifting until they clustered about the sealed and invisible Portal at the deepest part of the lake. In the darkness, Dylan could only sense their presence, though he could no longer sense the Portal itself.

He shot out of the water with a leap and reentered it with a loud reckless splash (more proof, if anyone heard, that Endora the Lake Endor Serpent really existed) then swam quietly back to the dock. In human form once more, he sat on its edge, dangling his feet in the water.

It looks clean. It tastes . . . Almost clean . . .

But it wasn’t.

And Mother Ocean was in far worse shape. All her far-flung limbs were connected—throw a bottle into the waters off Japan and eventually it would wash up on the shores of Seattle. Dump oil—or worse—into those waters, and everything in its path would die, whether it breathed water or not.

For centuries, as mortal kind had increased its numbers, building bigger and better ships, harvesting more of the sea’s bounty, using it as a dumping ground for their wastes, the problem had slowly been getting worse—and then the worsening had stopped being slow. Mortals had used Mother Ocean as a vast garbage dump for centuries, thinking they could do so forever, and the ocean’s children had sickened and died of mortal carelessness. Whole areas of the ocean had been poisoned, everyone who lived there slain by World Above poisons, and the damage—both its speed and its severity—had become more than the Mhuir Chéasta, the Sea’s Children, could undo. It had driven Dylan’s people and their allies from their accustomed places, and they had begun to speak of following their terrestrial brethren Underhill at last.

Some of them had, anyway.

Others had wanted to stay, to fight, to punish the mortals for the destruction they’d caused. The arguments had driven the Mhuir Chéasta so far apart that one name would no longer do for all of Mother Ocean’s children. The Farraige Olc—those who named themselves the ocean’s vengeance—said that the only answer to the mortals’ destruction of their home was war. Nobody in either group intended to stay in a world so toxic it no longer welcomed them. The Farraige Olc were perfectly willing to withdraw to Underhill—so long as mortal kind was first punished for its reckless cruelty.

There would be no winning such a war, Dylan thought sadly. He shook his head. And I can’t think of any way to stop it.

The two factions were unwilling to fight and unwilling to compromise. At last they had agreed there was only one fair way to settle the matter. Two champions, one from each side, to fight, and let battle decide what words could not. And the winning side to win all. It seemed simple and civilized enough, Dylan thought bitterly. Better than war among ourselves. And a fair and even chance of sparing the mortalfolk entirely.

Until the Mhuir Chéasta realized that what had seemed like a peaceful compromise was in fact only a cruel and desperate trick.

Because the Farraige Olc chose a Great Leviathan, the one called Tiamat, as their Champion. And our side chose . . .

Me.

The rules had been set long before each side’s Champion had been announced, and they were as binding as two untrusting coalitions could make them. Neither Champion could withdraw. Neither could appoint someone else in their place, nor have someone else appointed. Should either Champion die before the contest, and so be unable to appear . . .

Well, it would be a very good idea if they did not, and so Dylan had been (unwillingly) bound to Tiamat, with a binding that would last until they met upon the challenge ground. If one died outside the Arena, so did the other, and two new Champions would be chosen.

There was no possible way for Dylan to win against one of the ocean’s Great Old Ones, even if he’d been willing to fight and kill. There seemed to be no way out of the battle, the Mhuir Chéasta’s loss, the war to follow. And no way—no time—to seek a different solution. Even if he killed himself—which he was most certainly not willing to do—another two Champions would be chosen, and there was nothing and no one that the Mhuir Chéasta could produce that was as terrible as what the Farraige Olc had in their ranks. It had never been a fair fight, though the Mhuir Chéasta had naively thought it so.

But Dylan had realized that the Farraige Olc had vowed peace until the outcome of the Champions’ combat, and that promise bound them just as all the other promises did. And so he’d fled. From his people, from the sea itself, all the way to this little lake in the New World. This little lake and its coincidental Portal—I would swear by Ocean Herself that there was not one here when I was being taught the where and the why of the things.

He touched the talisman he wore about his neck. It was a teardrop-shaped piece of clear pale amber about the length of his thumb, with a silver band running along the sides and twisting up to form a loop for the cord on which he wore it. The band was engraved with symbols, or perhaps they were only scratches in metal that was both soft and old. Knotted in the dark leather cord were four more items: to the left of the amber drop, a piece of polished abalone shell and a small gold disk with a hole in the center. To the right, a shark’s tooth and a lump of polished red coral. The whole of it was one of the Greater Magicks, Gift of the greater Seleighe for some long-forgotten deed, set into his family’s keeping since the ancient days: whoever wore it could not be seen, sensed, tracked by any form of kenning or sorcery or even mortal Bardcraft. While it was worn, the wearer was invisible to all the folk of magic.

And Dylan had stolen it. If nobody could find him, nobody could make him fight. If there was no combat, and the Farraige Olc broke their truce, the Mhuir Chéasta could appeal to Oberon, and the Lord of the Sidhe would settle matters . . . conclusively.

But just as the talisman shielded him, it blinded him. In exchange for its protection, Dylan could no longer sense magic or the presence of magical folk. He might stand in the middle of Queen Amphitrite’s own deep ocean bower, or between the pillars of King Poseidon’s own temple, and neither sense nor scent any of the Sea People. He could see and hear them, of course, if they stood before him, but to magical senses, they were gone.

He’d bought peace for the Mhuir Chéasta—or at least a breathing space—with his own exile.

A sudden silence—as loud in its own way as a clap of thunder—told Dylan that the dancing was over for the evening. Enough brooding, he told himself, getting to his feet. And this time I really mean it. I’ve done all I can to help. Now I just have to . . . not get found. By either side.

The sunlight woke Olivia so early in the morning that there were wisps of mist still clinging to the bases of the trees and everything was covered in dew. She gingerly poked a foot out from beneath the blankets and sucked air through her teeth at the chill. She hoped it was warmer inside, but she sure as heck wouldn’t find out if she stayed here. She cocooned herself in her blankets as she rummaged through her suitcase. She shivered as she pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas and then wrapped herself in her bathrobe—a garment that was fine for preserving modesty in places with central heating, but which fell woefully short of usefulness when faced with an alpine summer morning.

Stuffing her feet into her ice cold slippers, Olivia sorted hurriedly through her suitcases to find an outfit for the day. Something with a lot of layers because “summer—lakeside—vacation” didn’t exactly scream “bring your winter coat,” and she was going to have to make up for that lapse somehow. Of course, judging by yesterday, it would be a lot warmer later, and she didn’t want to look completely ridiculous.

She picked out a (ha, ha) camp shirt in bright florals and paired it with a pair of cropped jeans in sage denim. Over the shirt went a boxy cropped cardigan with big faux-antler toggles, knitted of brown-bag-colored yarn so thick you could do macramé with it. The cardigan was over-embroidered in a geranium-red yarn with arrows and squiggly lines that were (allegedly) Native American trail signs, and her favorite pair of all-terrain sandals. Lilly Pulitzer rides again, she quipped silently, catching sight of her reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror.

By the time Olivia finished dressing and brushing her teeth, she’d decided that all her uncertainties and doubts from yesterday had just been the effect of her being tired and everything being strange. Now, looking at Lake Endor after a full night’s sleep and the chance to be alone with her thoughts for a while, it was clear that all her apprehension and misgivings yesterday had been caused by nothing more than a long day of travel and a bad mood. In the light of morning, well . . . the air was crisp and clean, the lake was beautiful, the cabins were quaint, the resort on the far shore was mysterious, and visiting the town of Endor would be an adventure. And sleeping outside had been—nice. Way nicer than she had expected. Especially since the screens kept the bugs away. She realized that she felt more awake and alert this morning than she had in a long, long time. As if that gray fog that held her for so long had been banished.

Nothing happened during the morning to diminish her mood of good cheer. Blake was back from his morning swim and he and Mr. Weber were cheerfully discussing the fishing prospects and the upcoming Fourth of July barbeque. Even the boys were reasonably quiet (and, not, she was relieved to discover, going to be included in today’s visit to Endor). Since Mrs. Weber was still in bed, Olivia pitched in to make breakfast, and once she’d washed the dishes (there was no hope of expecting either Noah or Mason to do it), she, Blake, and Mr. Weber piled into the minivan.

The narrow road was more crowded today. Or maybe it was just the time of day, because it was just now about nine a.m., and clearly nobody wanted to waste a moment of this beautiful day. Mr. Weber drove much more circumspectly today, and the van shared the road with children, dogs, bicyclists, and hikers. On the way in to Endor—it was about three miles; walking distance if not for the fact they would need the van to transport their supplies—Mr. Weber talked about Blake’s athletic future. Blake almost never talked about his swimming career, but now Olivia learned that he had a chance at a spot on the American team in the next Summer Olympics, and maybe even a chance at a medal. Blake shared an embarrassed glance with Olivia and changed the subject to the Endor Resort.

Or, to put it more accurately, The Fabulous Lake Endor Resort Hotel.

Apparently it was famous, at least if you lived anywhere around here. It was over a century old, one of the last great resort hotels of a kind that had used to be everywhere in the Adirondacks—the sort of place where (before air conditioning), whole families had come to spend their summers to escape the sweltering heat of the cities.

“It closes for the winter, of course,” Blake said. “Lake Endor isn’t anywhere near any of the good ski trails, and it’s too pricey for the hunters, so when the season’s over, that’s it. I’d thought about maybe getting a summer job over there this year—you know, lifeguard or something, but—”

“But your career is too important to fritter away on something like that when you should be training,” Mr. Weber interrupted in a firm voice. “It’s not as if you need the money. You’re destined for greatness, Blake. You shouldn’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t move you forward—”

Boy, if Mia could only hear this, Olivia thought. She was always saying that Blake got everything his own way, both at home and at school, but right now it looked like Blake didn’t have much freedom at all. His father seemed to have planned out Blake’s life for years to come. Olivia couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be like. She wasn’t even entirely sure her parents had any idea she was going to Long Beach before the applications and demand for fees arrived.

“Here we are!” Blake said, just a bit too loudly.

The town of Endor would have been a one-horse town only if any self-respecting horse was willing to be caught dead in it. Olivia had gotten a glimpse as they’d driven through yesterday, and it didn’t look any bigger—or more modern—today.

Main Street was about three blocks long; a pharmacy and soda fountain (which at least sounded like it might be fun to check out), hardware store, tiny grocery store, barbershop . . . pretty boring, and of course nothing like a Starbuck’s or even a McDonald’s. Almost as an afterthought, there was a diner (one of the old kind made from a railroad car), a post office, the Association Library, and—weirdly—a couple of antiques stores. But maybe that was a thing out here. Several hundred yards past the tiny library, Olivia could see the gas station they’d passed on the way in, and next to it a weather-beaten tin sign with a bus line logo on it hanging above a forlorn wooden bench under a metal awning. Rounding out Main Street were the shops offering items that proclaimed Endor’s primary function outside of the summer season: gun shop, taxidermy shop, wild-game butcher. (Clearly there was no reason to come to this part of the universe unless you hunted, fished, or really liked to swim.)

If there was ever a reason to do well in school and get good grades in college, it would be to not have to spend the rest of your life in a place like this, Olivia thought, but despite that, Endor had a kind of bizarre charm. As if in coming here, she’d stepped into the Land of Long Ago and found herself to be a time-traveling tourist.

She took advantage of the sudden appearance on her phone of a public Wi-Fi network to text her mom. Here safe. No cell at camp. Wi-Fi in town. She waited, as Mr. Weber negotiated the traffic and got a reply that made her roll her eyes. No cell good for you.

Thanks Mom.

Mr. Weber had slowed down to a crawl as soon as they reached the outskirts of Endor, and now he turned right on the side-street just before the post office. Another, narrower, street ran back up along the backs of the shops, most of which had back doors, and on the opposite side of the street was a large graveled lot backed by a row of houses. The lot seemed to be where everyone with business in town parked; it was already half-full of cars and trucks, most with local plates and several years old. Among them, a few still-glossy cars with out of state plates stood out like tropical birds.

“Time to make sure we don’t all starve,” Mr. Weber said pleasantly, getting out of the van. “Got your list?”

“Yes, Mom,” Blake said, rolling his eyes. “And it’s not like I can’t find you. I can even text you. C’mon,” he added, opening the back door and taking Olivia’s arm. “He shops like it’s a time trial. We’d better get moving,” he said as he helped her out.

“I saw the Wi-Fi,” Olivia said, getting out of the van. “How good is it?” She had a brief vision of reprieve. Maybe she could find a spot at the camp where her phone would reach the network?

“Not good, it runs off copper,” Blake corrected. “The bandwidth is crap, the latency is awful, the network is underpowered, and there’s no actual cell service. You can text, but don’t expect data.” He flourished his list and headed for the Main Street.

Couldn’t you have told me about that before you dragged me here? Olivia thought uncharitably, following him.

The fact that it was a Saturday probably explained the number of people on the streets, because the town of Endor didn’t really look like a place that had ever known the meaning of the word “bustle,” nor was it really a proper tourist trap. The entire town was obliviously functional, as if nobody here knew there was a resort across the lake and a campground just up the road. No boutiques, no trendy eateries with outside seating, no quaint little snack shops. Aside from the antique shops, no real recreational shopping at all, which seemed a little weird. Clearly the Resort attracted tourists. She had only to look around. So why wasn’t there anything to cater to them?

Maybe because they’re only here for three or four months in the year, and then what would you live on the rest of the time?

The vacationers were easy to tell from the locals, partly by their clothes, partly by the way they stood in the middle of the street, oblivious to traffic, as if they had nowhere they needed to be and everything around them had been arranged for their entertainment. Most of Olivia’s attention was on Blake, who alternated striding along as if he’d forgotten she was here (or that they were in a hurry) with stopping to give her a guided tour to the wonders of Endor that Olivia didn’t really want.

And, of course, to greet all of his summer friends.

“It’s dead here most of the time, so— Hey, Scotty!” Blake stopped yet again to hail another acquaintance. It seemed as if he knew everyone in town, as if he’d lived here all his life instead of only visiting for a few weeks each year. Everyone seemed to know his name, and he knew theirs. Why didn’t you think of that, Olivia? Were you really dumb enough to think you’d be able to have him all to yourself this summer? Blake makes friends everywhere he goes. Between his swimming workouts and catching up with his friends, you’ll probably see less of him than you did during the school year.

Oh, well. At least the lake is pretty.

But even though Blake stopped to greet all of his summer friends, and to exchange a few “in joke” comments, he didn’t introduce Olivia to any of them. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel grateful or uneasy. On the one hand, trying to make polite conversation with total strangers always made her feel horribly awkward. On the other hand . . . well, she felt almost invisible, and she wasn’t sure she liked that either.

It wouldn’t be any different if you were back in Sacramento, she reminded herself. Everyone loves Blake Weber.

“Mandy, yo!” Almost as if he could read her mind, Blake grabbed her arm and started pulling her forward. “You’ve got to meet Mandy! We just about grew up together. Hey! Mandy, this is Ollie.”

I wish he’d stop calling me that, Olivia thought with a silent wince. No matter how many times she told him she preferred Livy, or even Olivia, all he said was: You’ll always be Ollie to me.

Mandy Phillips was a girl about their age. It was clear that she was a local rather than a visitor. She had sun bleached brown hair and blue eyes, and was dressed more formally than most of the people Olivia had seen so far, in a white button-down shirt and a denim skirt.

“Hey, Blake,” Mandy said, coming to a stop. “And . . . ‘Ollie’?”

“Olivia,” Olivia said almost inaudibly.

Blake pulled Mandy into a casual hug. “We just got up here last night. Supply run! You coming to the barbeque? What’ve you been up to?”

Mandy eased herself out of the hug, a bright smile pasted on her face. “Oh, you know, Blake. Nothing much changes around here. Better get going. My shift at the diner starts in less than five minutes. Nice to meet you, Olivia.” She raised her hand in a half wave and hurried off.

“She’s great,” Blake said. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time she and I—Oh, wait! Dave! Hey, Dave!” Blake bounded up the steps into the drugstore.

Olivia didn’t follow. Through the plate glass window, she could see Dave and Blake pounding each other on the back and laughing. She turned to look back in the direction Mandy had gone, but didn’t see her.

He’s excited to be here. That’s all. He isn’t ignoring you on purpose.

Why had she thought things would be any different here than they were back home? She’d thought that up here it would just be the two of them, that there could be more of those moments when he focused entirely on her—the moments, she’d come to realize, that were all that mattered to her anymore. The moments she would do anything to have, because they were like a breath of air in a room where she was slowly and silently suffocating. But nothing had changed. Blake was the star attraction, the center of attention anywhere he went. Olivia Poole was his invisible satellite—one that never quite managed to drift away.

He loves you, she told herself fiercely. He wouldn’t have invited you to spend the summer here with him if he didn’t love you.

Blinking back sudden tears, she forced herself to study the storefronts across the street, her back resolutely turned toward the drug store. If Blake noticed her crying, he’d just make a big noisy joke about it. He knew she hated being teased, but he told her she looked so cute when he did that it was irresistible.

Focus, Livy.

Antique store. I wonder who buys antiques around here, or is it just a fancy name for a junk shop? Might be worth poking around in it. Bakery. And pizza parlor, it looks like. Mushroom pepperoni cupcakes, yum. Laundromat. I didn’t see a washer in the cabin; I wonder if everybody does their laundry here? Or do they just toss their clothes in the lake? I’ve got my driver’s license . . . if the Webers will let me use their van I could volunteer to do the laundry here. That way it wouldn’t look like I was just hanging around the cabin all the time.

All you ever do is run away, she told her inner monologue sharply. That’s all you’re good for.

With a sigh, she turned back to the drugstore to follow Blake inside.

The “pharmacy and soda fountain” was light-years away from the California Walgreens Olivia was used to. The back of the store was the “soda fountain” part; its wall taken up with an enormous plate glass mirror, in front of which was a marble-topped counter and a line of red-upholstered stools. A chalkboard menu offered such delights as the “Endora Sundae” (which apparently contained a full half gallon of ice cream and was free if you could finish it), plus malts and coolers and even egg crèmes. It was like something out of a fifties musical.

The actual pharmacy counter was off to the right. The rest of the store was pretty tame—the usual shelves of stuff you could find in most so-called drugstores, there just were only one or two brands of everything, so two or three “departments” were all squished together on a single set of shelves. Except for the camping stuff. There were more shelves of bug spray and insecticides and even sun screen than she was used to seeing, and a big display of charcoal briquettes fought for floor space with stacks of twelve-packs of every member of the Coke and Pepsi families. Everything about the place practically screamed “You Are On Vacation.”

But everything was just a little off, a little fake. Everything seemed a little smaller than normal, or a little greyer. Dull. That was it. Everything here—despite the chrome soda-fountain—seemed just a little dulled.

Or maybe it was her.

“Help you find something, young lady?”

She turned around quickly, startled. The man behind the register smiled. He was old enough to be the owner; he wore a name tag that said “Bob Myers, Pharmacist.”

“No,” she said quickly, looking around at the same time. “No, I’m with—”

But Blake wasn’t here.

She scanned the store again quickly. Shelves of stuff. Soda fountain. Pharmacy. Cash register flanked by spinner racks of maps and brochures. But she and the clerk were the only ones here, except for somebody’s mom, kids in tow, inspecting the display of sun lotion as if there was going to be a quiz later.

She knew Blake hadn’t come past her out onto the sidewalk. He and “Dave” must have gone out through the back—at least she hoped so.

Well, if worst comes to worst I can walk back to the lake, after all.

Feeling she needed to explain her presence here, Olivia grabbed a couple of items at random—a pack of gum, and a little brochure with a Nessie-type monster on the cover and the words LAKE ENDOR MONSTER at the top—and set them on the counter.

“Just these, thanks.”

As her purchase was rung up she said hesitantly:

“A friend of mine came in here and . . .”

“Oh!” Mr. Myers said, bagging her items. “Blake Weber? He went out through the back. A lot of folks just use this place as a shortcut, no use shouting at the rain. Your first time visiting the lake?”

“I, um . . . there’s a monster in the lake?” she asked, indicating the booklet she’d just bought.

“Some say,” Mr. Myers said, with a conspiratorial grin. “Never seen her myself. She likes to come out when you summer folks are gone. Endora, I mean. Don’t you worry. She’s never eaten anybody yet.”

Probably because she doesn’t exist. Olivia smiled politely and took her bag and her change. “Thanks.”

“Any time. Be sure to stop in again. Best ice cream in the county—and if you finish an ‘Endora,’ it’s free.”

“Thanks,” Olivia said again. Ugh. Half a gallon of ice cream all at once? Gross. She turned toward the back of the store, and this time she saw the little corridor that clearly led to the back door. She hurried toward it, trying to look purposeful.

I am officially in the Twilight Zone. Or Pleasantville. Or Hell.

A palace stood upon the ocean floor, surrounded by the warm soft dimness of the shallows of a southern sea. Though it possessed tall stately pillars of crystal and coral and pearl and gold, carpets of colored sands and glistening shell, and walls of drifting sea-grass, no one who walked upon the land would recognize it for what it was—in the unlikely event such a surface-dweller stumbled upon it. In the truest sense, it was not a palace at all, for no sovereign reigned here. It was a place that had been built by folk who had no need of stairs, or floors, or sturdy barricades to withstand the raging elements, just as they had no need of kings and queens, councils or parliaments. Nor was it a temple, by the most exacting definition, for this folk had no need of such. Their temple was the whole world through which they moved, from these bright sunlit waters near the surface to the abyssal depths where not even light dared to venture.

But at times there were questions to be decided, promises to be made, appointments to be kept—and when those times came, it was to this place that the Mhuir Chéasta and the Farraige Olc came.

Once they had been one folk, their races and their interests as various and several as the sea herself. There had never been a war within the ranks of the Mhuir Chéasta, for their world was vast, and few of their kind had any taste for war.

Things had changed.

Was it the poison the Mortalkind flung so profligately into our waters? Or was the true poison within our hearts, that so many of us so quickly seized upon the opportunity to deal out harm for harm? Aighaire, leader of the Mhuir Chéasta in a time so debased that there was need of leaders and wars, awaited her counterpart in the place appointed for that meeting. Her thoughts turned, as they so often did in these days, not upon the battle to come, but on the failures of love and trust that had brought them to battle.

Aighaire looked harmless enough, were there anyone here to see. Mortals would wonder at the presence of a grey seal so far from its ancestral waters—or perhaps one of the Mortalfolk with the eyes to see would look upon her and see only a young woman, her short sealskin tunic pale as seafoam, and her long hair, drifting like sea-grass, just as pale. Neither seeming was wholly true. Neither seal nor woman, Aighaire was both and neither. She had lived for many centuries and given birth to numerous children.

So many of them dead, and my Dylan, my lastborn and dearest, oath-foresworn and wandering. Nor can I find it in my heart to truly blame him for his oath breaking and dishonor, for these are times unlike any the Folk have ever known. The grief—the shame—she would soon conceal from the Farraige Olc was plain in her eyes.

Once our beliefs did not divide us. It is true that vengeance is a fine thing, and that some of our peoples have held it dear as far back into the Long Ago as anyone can remember. But not us. Blood for blood, a child for a child—these are cruel transactions, and never have the Selkie-kind engaged in them. But even among those who do, never have they called for a vengeance to strike down every member of a folk. . . .

Aighaire did not have long to spend alone with her unhappy thoughts, for her Farraige Olc counterpart was exactingly punctual. Abruptly the waters grew dark and turbid, the bright fish scuttled into hiding, and even the swift shadowy predators of the waters found business elsewhere, for there was no profit to be had in outfacing an enemy so overwhelmingly powerful. Even the water seemed to cool as the Farraige Olc approached.

Ocras and Aighaire had met countless times, trying to find a way to peace, or if not to peace, at least to the most harmless path, yet never, in all their meetings, had either warmed to the other. Aighaire was a Selkie, creature of shorelines and bright sands, child of a race that loved music and laughter, song and play. The speaker for the Farraige Olc was a Ceirean, a long shadow of spines and fangs, a creature of depths and darkness. Her wide tripartite jaws gaped open, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth, as she spoke.

“Well, air-breather? I have come at the time appointed. Where is the Champion you have promised to produce? My people grow restless.”

Aighaire regarded the envoy before her with calm dark eyes. “Then they must grow restless, Lady Ocras,” Aighaire replied, her whole body shrugging. “Prince Dylan is not here.”

“You cannot delay a decision forever by hiding your Champion,” Ocras hissed, the spines on her flanks flaring with her rage.

“Bad decisions are best delayed,” Aighaire answered. “Do you think I believe Prince Dylan can defeat Tiamat?”

Ocras seemed to smile, though her flanged jaws did not easily lend themselves to such an expression. “You should have been wiser when you bound yourself to that bargain, air-breather. Your child shall meet our Champion, and he shall die. And then, by the pact of your own weaving, we shall be free to punish Mortalkind as it deserves. Why do you not see the justice in this—you who have lost so much more than any of us? Where now are your islands, your villages, the soft coastal waters where you used to play?”

“All things change,” Aighaire answered softly. “Turn the seas red with blood, and you will not turn back time. Nor will you win anything for the Farraige Olc save attention you do not truly desire.”

“Oberon is far away, and neither the Bright Court nor the Dark care about the folk of the sea,” Ocras answered sneeringly. “Sister, we do not even ask you to help us in our vengeance. Concede the victory, let the binding spell be undone. I swear to you by the Sea Mother, the Farraige Olc will pursue no quarrel with your folk. Go where you choose. Sister, you can yet save your son.”

“And what would I save him for, if you mean to break the world?” Aighaire answered quietly. “When you have made your war, you will lose it, and win or lose, you will have nothing you desire—and much you would desperately have sought to avoid.”

“Empty words!” Lady Ocras lashed her body through the water as if she struck at prey. “We must fight the landfolk—or die! There is no third choice. Produce your Champion!”

“I cannot,” Aighaire answered. “And since I cannot, there is no combat. Your own oath binds you to peace until that day.”

“That day will not be delayed forever, air-breather,” the Ceirean growled. “If you will not produce him, the Farraige Olc will find him. And the sea will fatten on your tears in that hour.”

“Empty words will not summon our Champion, nor will they release either of us from the oath both our peoples have sworn,” Aighaire answered steadily. “Go and say to those whom you serve that we bargained with you in good faith, though you did not deal fairly with us, and until the day our Champions meet, we are both bound by our bargain,”

For a moment it seemed that the dark serpent would strike, and rend the small silken body in its great jaws. But the people of the sea, whether Farraige Olc or Mhuir Chéasta, had once been one folk, despite their myriad of shapes. And the oaths both peoples had sworn were too powerful to be set aside in a moment’s rage.

“Until that day, then,” Ocras said at last. “And in that day, remember: I offered you peace.” With a lashing of its great body, it turned away, thrusting itself fiercely into the dark cold depths of the deeper waters.

Slowly, Aighaire rose to the surface to breathe. She could pretend to others that the course of action her son had taken did not grieve her, but she could not lie to herself. Even though she understood the desperation that had driven him to it, his flight solved nothing. If the Farraige Olc thought of somehow ending Tiamat’s life—

Oh Blessed Danu, mother of the waves, let them not think of that!

If Dylan died before meeting Tiamat in combat, Tiamat would die as well.

With both Champions dead, the war would begin.

Let my son’s name be oathbreaker and coward, let it be bitter in the mouths of my people for a thousand years, but let the Farraige Olc not think of that!

Eventually Olivia figured out that Blake and Mr. Weber didn’t need her, she could see the parking lot from the diner, and she could get to the van long before they could possibly finish loading it. So she took a seat inside, up near the front where she had a good view of the van and . . . took out her phone and stared at it.

Blake had been right; she watched in a sort of stunned disbelief as the webpage for her email loaded literally a line of pixels at a time. It hadn’t even cleared the top border when someone came up beside her and gently cleared her throat.

She looked up. It was Mandy, the girl Blake had introduced her to. “There’s no point—” she said, nodding at the phone. “It’ll take an hour for a page to load.”

Olivia sighed, and went back to “home.” “I feel like an addict that needs a fix,” she admitted.

Mandy nodded, not without sympathy. “Most people coming here do. We’re too far out for fiber, we haven’t got cable either, and too many hills for cell. What can I get you?”

Belatedly, Olivia scanned the menu. “Uh—iced tea, and can I have BLT without the bacon?”

She was sure that Mandy would make a wisecrack, but she said nothing. “Tomato sandwich, check. I’d put pepper, fresh basil and oregano on that if I were you.”

She smiled at the unexpected helpfulness. “That sounds great, thanks!”

Mandy smiled a little back, and went off to place the order. Olivia went back to watching the van. Mr. Weber came out of the butcher’s with a heavy box, put it in the van, and left. Mandy came back with the sandwich and tea, but had to hurry off to another customer. Olivia looked after her a little wistfully as she bit into the sandwich.

She seems nice. I mean really nice. Like, she got me whole grain bread which I forgot to ask for, and she suggested the basil and oregano. Mandy seemed like the kind of person she’d like to be friends with. Except that she works, so she probably doesn’t have any time off during the day, and I don’t want to try walking here at night. . . .

Usually whenever anyone associated with the Webers came to the diner, Mandy and the cook made sure that whatever they asked for was mediocre at best. But Olivia had looked so wistful . . . and so totally unlike anyone she would have associated with Blake Weber, that Mandy had felt a sudden surge of sympathy for her. It was pretty obvious from the way she’d scanned the menu with a little dismay, and then asked for a BLT without the bacon, that the poor girl was probably a vegan or a vegetarian. Which made sense if she was from California, like Blake.

She’s going to half starve with the Webers, Mandy’d thought with sympathy. PBJs for breakfast, lunch and dinner does not a balanced diet make. And out of that sympathy, she’d suggested some of Grams’ fresh herbs, and had ordered the sandwich on whole grain, figuring that was what the girl would want.

The smile of thanks she got when she brought the sandwich and the tea was almost worth more than the tip.

She’d wanted to go back and talk to her a little, for one thing, to find out why someone who was a decent human being was being dragged around by Blake of the Lake, but she got busy, and when she looked up again, the girl was gone.

Well, she’s going to get bored out there on the campground. Hopefully she’ll come back when I’m not slammed. She seems nice.

Way too nice for Blake Weber.

CHAPTER THREE

It wasn’t until midafternoon that the Weber men and Olivia started back to Lake Endor.

Despite Blake’s dark predictions of “speed shopping,” there wasn’t a lot of actual shopping involved: apparently the Webers had preordered a lot of what they’d need, and most of what there was to do in the town was sign for the supplies and load them into the back of the van. Mr. Weber mentioned a local farmers’ market that was open on Wednesdays, and joked that Olivia was going to get pretty tired of fish by the end of the summer.

Does that mean he’s going to bring dead fish home with him? How does he know they’re safe to eat? I hope he doesn’t think I know how to clean and cook them!

Oh, stop being a wuss, Livy. Blake has two younger brothers and they’ve all clearly survived the Weber Parenting Experience.

They could just as easily have had everything they picked up in town delivered, Olivia discovered, but one of the main reasons for the trip was apparently to buy fireworks. Blake had grinned at her look of alarm as he’d loaded several large boxes into the back of the van. “Relax, scaredy-cat! They’re harmless!”

They didn’t look harmless. The lurid packets had names like “Black Widow” and “Demon Head” and made it look as if the Webers were getting ready to fight a war, not celebrate a holiday.

“All the real action’s going to be on the other side of the lake,” Mr. Weber agreed. “They do put on a nice show. We’re lucky the little stuff is legal here,” he added, patting one of the boxes fondly.

Olivia opened her mouth to protest, but Blake was watching her, so she closed it again. It wasn’t up to her to say how the Webers should celebrate the Fourth of July. If they wanted to terrorize every dog in Issachar County, how could she stop them?

At least she didn’t have to worry about it for a couple more weeks.

They stopped for lunch at the bakery-pizzeria (Livy managed to get the slice that didn’t have meat all over it, and that plus the sandwich she’d had earlier filled her up), and then loaded up the perishables. As Olivia had expected, there were cases of sodas and boxes of every form of junk food under the sun, as well as enough canned goods to stock their own Zombie Apocalypse shelter. Which made sense; there wasn’t a lot of room in that little fridge, which limited the perishables.

I can feel my face break out just from looking at this stuff! Olivia thought mournfully, gazing at a carton filled with bags of potato chips. Maybe they’ll be coming back for things like fruits and vegetables tomorrow. She shook her head. Who am I trying to kid? Mr. Weber picked up half a cow from the butcher shop, and he bought eggs and milk at the grocery. This is probably as good as it gets.

Olivia was tactfully trying to pretend that she hadn’t seen the two boxes full of bottles Mr. Weber had carted out of the liquor store. She’d wonder who was going to be drinking all of that, but why kid herself? Everybody at school had known Blake’s mom drank, and apparently she planned a drinking vacation.

It’s not my problem. They’re all okay with it, and if worst comes to worst I can walk into town and eat at the diner. It’s only a couple of miles. And hey: they probably serve vegetables.

Olivia was thinking hopefully of offering to make dinner—Mr. Weber intended to barbeque, but there was always potato salad and stuff—when they arrived back at the cabin. In their absence, it had been transformed. There was a picnic table and an old style kettle belly grill set up in the front yard, and the rest of the lawn furniture that she’d shared the back porch with last night had been dragged out and set up. (Not, she was relieved to note, her bed.) Most of the nearby cabins looked much the same as the Webers’ did—today the effect of all the domestic nuclear-family clutter was welcoming instead of claustrophobic, and once again Olivia berated herself for letting her erratic mood-swings blot out what was right there in front of her.

Noah and Mason came running toward the van as it pulled up, accompanied by somebody’s Golden Retriever, who looked like it had been swimming in the lake not that long ago. They immediately pounced on the fireworks, but with only a little prodding, were willing to carry them into the house instead of . . .

What? Setting them off right now?

The rest of them began unloading the contents of the van onto the picnic table so the van could be put away. When Mrs. Weber came out and began collecting perishables, Olivia helped her. At least that way she’d know where everything was.

“I don’t know why I put up with this place every year,” Mrs. Weber said, stacking cartons of eggs in the refrigerator. “But Aidan really loves it here. Did he remember the chicken?” she asked.

“Um . . . I don’t know,” Olivia said hastily. “I’ll check.” The last thing she wanted was to spend the summer as the confidante of one of her boyfriend’s parents.

When she went back outside, Mr. Weber had moved the van off to the carport next to the cabin and Blake was standing at the table talking to . . .

. . . The most stunning girl Olivia had ever seen in her life.

“I thought you wouldn’t be here until next week, Audrey!” Blake said.

The newcomer—Audrey—was about their age. She was wearing a tiny yellow bikini top with a retro print of cherries on it, and a very brief pair of denim shorts. She had waist-length flaming red hair—if it was a dye-job, it was an expensive one—and eyes so green Olivia could see their color from the doorway. She was draped over Blake like a slice of Velveeta on a grilled cheese sandwich.

“Dad and I came up early,” Audrey said laughingly. “Mom’s court case ran over; she says she’ll be here as soon as she’s beaten opposing counsel into submission.”

Blake chuckled. “You know she always says that, and it’s always July before she manages to get here.” He gave Audrey another hug, seemingly oblivious to Olivia’s presence, let alone her existence.

It was not a brotherly hug. And Audrey really seemed to enjoy it.

As for Olivia, she had never in her life wanted to turn and run more than she did right now, but she knew if she did, Audrey would laugh, and Blake would laugh with her, and somehow that was unbearable.

As if the redhead could hear her thoughts, her smile widened. “And who’s this?” she asked playfully. “Somebody new?”

“This is Ollie,” Blake said. The sentence stopped short—or . . . No, not really. It stopped because that was all Blake was going to say, but there should have been more. There should have been: This is Olivia, my girlfriend from back home.

“How precious!” the redhead said gleefully. “Is it short for Olive? I’m Audrey Jordan. Our cabin is right next to yours. We come up here every year.”

Olivia, Olivia thought, but this time she couldn’t even force a whisper out. This wasn’t high school and there wasn’t anything Audrey could do to her (not really), but she felt irrationally as if there was. Something horrible.

“Audrey and I practically grew up together,” Blake said grandly. His arm was still around her waist.

“You used to pull my hair and push me into the lake,” Audrey said playfully. Her words were for Blake, but her glittering gaze never left Olivia’s face. “I’m so glad you eventually grew up enough to start treating girls better.” She finally stepped away from Blake, focusing all of her attention on Olivia. “I’m sure Blake will do everything he can to make this the most special summer of your life,” she said to Olivia. “We both will.”

At the time, Audrey Jordan’s weirdly over-the-top behavior was too theatrical to actually scare Olivia. She’d known more than her share of Mean Girls, especially this last year at Campbell. But Audrey’s off-key-ness bugged her for the rest of the evening; she poked at the odd encounter as if it were a sore tooth until she finally drifted off to sleep on the Webers’ back porch.

It still bothered her in the morning, but only a little, and as the days passed, she more or less forgot it. No matter what Miss Cruel Intentions had said, or how meaningfully she’d said it . . .

Nothing had happened.

I guess some people just watch too many movies. And you, Livy, are a world-class dork.

Rachel Tyler had buried her only daughter beside her father and become guardian of her granddaughter and never looked back. Her own grandfather had settled in Endor after fighting in the Great War. He’d been a farmer until the Great Depression, then sold up and opened the Endor Diner. His son—her father—had come home from Korea to take over the running of it. Rachel had been born here, and so had her daughter. She’d hoped the girl would take over the running of it someday, but the day had never come, and young Amanda had been talking about leaving ever since she’d arrived. Well, it was early days yet, and she was good for a few more years. Mandy might change her mind. Time enough to decide whether to sell it off or pass it on. There hadn’t been quite so much talk about leaving this summer, and Rachel had some hope. Mandy might not know it yet, but she’d put down roots here in this little Adirondack town.

Meanwhile, she ran her diner and collected local lore. Not Endora nonsense. Endora-the-Lake-Monster was nothing more than a Silly Season story the townsfolk had run with because the Away People would believe just about anything. But that didn’t mean there weren’t genuinely uncanny things happening around here. These hills had been old and haunted long before the first Europeans had arrived in the neighborhood. Between the two of them, Rachel and Carrie Armbruster at the Association Library had documented quite a list of things that had happened—or been said to have happened—here in Issachar County.

It was always good to have a hobby.

She was bussing tables when Mandy came in wearing a frown and carrying a photocopied piece of paper. From where she stood, she could only tell that there was a picture of something, one word at the top, a few numbers below that, and under the picture, a block of text. But she knew what it was, and sighed. First one of the season.

“First one of the season.” Mandy said, echoing her thoughts. She said it angrily as she taped it to the side of the cash register.

“Dog or cat?” Rachel asked.

“Dog. Golden Retriever, named Buddy.” They both knew how this ended, with crying children begging mom and dad to stay one more day, just one, because they’d surely find him if they just stayed one more day . . . .

But mom and dad couldn’t . . . and the long, long list of pets that disappeared every year from the Lake Endor Camp would have more names added to it. The Resort people had more sense than to bring pets with them, and by now, the folks of Endor knew to keep their pets in a yard, on a chain, or in the house when the first campers arrived, and keep them that way until the last camper left.

“What are you thinking, Grams?” Mandy asked, finally, as her grandmother stared off into the distance.

“I’m thinking that we didn’t have this problem twelve years ago,” Rachel finally said. “I’m thinking one or two pups would go missing in a summer, but never more than that. And I’m thinking there’s nothing in the local lore that talks about something that eats dogs and cats.”

“Grams—” Mandy began in an exasperated tone of voice.

Rachel interrupted her. “And I’m thinking that all the experts say serial killers begin by killing small animals.”

A chill fell over the empty diner. “I—was kind of thinking that, too,” Mandy said in a small voice.

“I’m not done. I’m thinking . . . if one of the camping kids is the one to blame, then that kid is seventeen or eighteen now, and about ready to graduate to—other things.” She fixed Mandy with an unwavering gaze. “And I’m thinking that I’d take it kindly if you never went anywhere alone with a camper, never went out alone after dark, and kept your grampa’s hunting knife on you when you’re not working. I already know your pa taught you how to use one.”

There was a long, long silence.

“I think that’s a good idea, Grams,” Mandy said, quietly. “I think I’ll do all of that.”

There’d been occasional days of clouds, and it had even rained once, but overall, the weather had been picture perfect. By the end of the first week at Lake Endor, Olivia had settled in to a comfortable routine. It wasn’t the way she’d expected (dreamed, really) to be spending her summer, but it wasn’t bad. She was used to being alone, and she was used to entertaining herself. There were a number of half-overgrown hiking trails here, some of which went most of the way around the lake. She hiked, she swam, she sketched, she read . . . Nobody minded (or, probably, even noticed) if she made herself some PBJ sandwiches in the morning and vanished for the day.

When Mrs. Weber was three sheets to the wind, Livy made dinner. She usually made breakfast, because Blake always came off the lake starving, and that was at least once every day when he looked at her in the way she wished he would, with appreciation and gratitude, and he always said something nice.

And best of all, for whatever reason, that grey fog that had claimed her most of the time at home seemed to be hanging off in the background, only to descend on her when she was trying to go to sleep at night. That was when she’d be sure Blake didn’t love her after all, that she was only in the way, that all this was a mistake. But the early sun always drove it away in the morning. And if she was lonely, it wasn’t a listless lonely, where she’d lie on her bed, unable to muster the energy to do anything because there wasn’t anything worth doing. This was the first time she’d ever spent this much time out in nature, and when she woke in the morning, she wanted to see more of it.

Sometimes Blake hung with her for an hour or two, though he had to get up before dawn to get in his swimming before the lake filled with boats and Sea-doos. Every morning Mr. Weber would go out with him in one of the boats (probably to warn off anybody else who might be using the lake at 4:30 a.m.), and when the two of them got back, Blake would join her and his brothers for breakfast. After breakfast the boys would take off, and Blake would go catch a nap. Mrs. Weber slept late, and Mr. Weber spent a lot of the day fishing, and sometimes Olivia wondered what the boys would have eaten if she hadn’t been here to cook.

Oh, Livy, don’t be naive. Aidan Weber would never let his future Olympian survive on junk food. If you weren’t here, he’d probably be cooking breakfast himself.

It wasn’t a really comfortable feeling to pass judgment on one of her peers’ parents as if . . . well, as if he were one of her peers—like Jenny Chawleigh, say, or even Marty Lamb. Up until a few years ago, parents—and most adults in general—had been a kind of background, like mountains, or tornados—mysterious, powerful, and irrelevant until one of them made the mysterious decision to happen to her or one of her friends.

Mom would say that thinking about Aidan Weber like a person means I’m becoming an adult myself. Dad would say nobody ever really grows up. What I say is that I never wanted to learn that you can grow out of acne but not out of being a loser.

Of course she’d known about the “stage mom/dad” thing, where parents wanted their kids to be perfect and successful so they could, like, pretend it was their lives and their successes. Kids on sports teams got it from their dads, kids in dance or theater or choral usually got it from their moms. Until this summer, she hadn’t even known that Aidan Weber was one of “those” dads.

As he so clearly was. And she didn’t quite know what to think about that. Blake had never talked much about his “career.” She’d known he was under a lot of pressure. Anybody who was going for a sports scholarship was, and that was different than the kind of pressure that came from parents wanting to live your life for you—or instead of you. It took Olivia several days to unravel the reason for her uneasiness, and when she did, it came to her in the middle of the night.

Why didn’t Blake say anything about it to me?

She’d gone to his meets, she’d watched him train, she was (was supposed to be!) his BAE. And she hadn’t known.

Why not?

He’s just been trying to protect me. That’s what it is. Of course. And now he’s letting me in. He’s trusting me with his secret. He’s too good a person to complain about the way his folks treat him. Blake would never do that. But he wanted me to know. To see. And soon we’ll talk about it. I know we will.

But that moment lay in the future. Right now, Olivia was left to her own devices. She was glad (at last!) not to be an audience to her parents’ predivorce wranglings, and found it surprisingly easy to entertain herself here. She’d actually walked down into Endor a couple of times, and had been delighted to discover she qualified for a special temporary library card, so she didn’t have to rely on keeping her phone charged to have something to read. The Association Librarian had been the one who told her that there was a place in town where Olivia could rent a bicycle if she wanted, and she was thinking about doing that. Mom had given her an “emergency” credit card, so she could handle things that came up. Renting a bike didn’t exactly qualify as an “emergency,” but Mrs. Poole’s definition of “emergency” was flexible, and anyway, Olivia knew she could probably get away with murder, at least until the divorce was finalized, as each of her parents vied with each other to get her on their side. The stories Mia told . . .

Oh, god, I wish we hadn’t had that fight. At least I’d be able to text her when I was in town.

But done was done. Maybe they could rekindle their friendship when they got back.

And maybe they couldn’t. That was the thing about graduating; friendships ended as decisively as if you’d moved to the other side of the planet. Maybe at the end of the summer she’d go home, and Mia would be on vacay or something, and then Olivia would leave for San Diego, and they’d email and promise to get together during breaks, and they just wouldn’t.

Thinking about that scenario in the dark nights had made Olivia weepy more than once, so maybe it wasn’t surprising that she flung herself into learning about Lake Endor as zealously as if it were a school project. She discovered that Blake hadn’t exactly lied when he told her about the place . . . but he hadn’t exactly told the truth, either.

Yes, there were a lot of kids their age who hung out at the Lake over the summer. Most of them came from Endor or from neighboring towns to spend a couple of hours swimming or boating before they went home again. There were also a lot of teenagers staying with their families at the Resort, though that crowd skewed a little younger. The townies and the Resort guests mingled freely, at least at the actual lake, but both groups cleared out by sunset, when the lake closed. (If you could actually close a lake.) And whether they were townies or guests, they all had long-term friendships in place and all of them knew each other.

As for the cabin people . . . Aside from her, Blake, and Audrey, thirteen-year-old Noah was about the oldest, and she didn’t want to hang around with a thirteen-year-old kid. Counting the two younger Webers, there were fewer than a dozen kids staying at the cabins, most of them with obvious grandparents, and all of them Mason’s age or younger.

Which was fine if you were a kid (Noah was kind of stuck, but Olivia found it hard to work up much sympathy for him, because he was a real turd), since everybody hung out at (or around) the lake. The kids pretty much ran wild: they could bike around to the Resort side, or into the woods, or into Endor . . . there were even a couple of communal rowboats for the cabin people to use. They were supposed to be for adults only, but people didn’t pay much attention. No helicopter parents here.

Olivia could hear the psychic voice of her mom in her head, telling her she should make friends with all the nice kids her age (it would be good for her), but it wasn’t any easier for her to socialize here than it had been in California. Harder, really, because here the cliques were already set in stone.

Of course Blake knew everybody, and even if he didn’t, he made friends as easily as breathing. But Olivia wasn’t any more eager to find herself in the middle of his social whirl here than she’d been at home. If there’d just been one or two girls she could hang out with in the evenings . . .

But there weren’t. Except Audrey. And . . . no.

No matter where I go or what I do, nothing ever changes. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way it’s going to be for the rest of my life. I should get used to it.

The Terror Twins didn’t care if they wore the same clothing every day until they smelled like monkeys, and Blake was in a swimsuit more than he was in regular clothing, but Aidan and Harper were more fastidious, and so was Olivia. Olivia herself was down to two outfits when she found Harper holding up two different pink tops, and eyeing them dubiously.

“What’s the matter, Mrs. Weber?” she asked politely.

“I don’t know why I packed these,” Harper said fretfully. “I hate them both, but they’re all that’s clean.”

This seemed like the golden opportunity. “I can take the van and all the laundry to Endor and do it,” she offered. “I bet the laundromat is empty during the day.”

Harper’s face cleared. “Ollie, you’re a dear. That would be very thoughtful of you.”

Of course, Harper’s idea of “helping” was just to throw every scrap of clothing in the back of the van without regard for baskets or laundry bags, but Olivia was pretty sure she could sort it out. And it would give her a chance to get something besides Meaty McMeat or PBJ or soup for lunch.

At least Mrs. Weber pressed a handful of bills into her hand along with the van keys to pay for it all.

Her first stop was the grocery, where she got laundry detergent and heavy-duty trash bags—and carrots, tomatoes, and apples for real snacks back at the cabin. As she had suspected, the laundromat was completely empty. She filled six washers with clothing, putting all of them on the “heavy-duty” cycle, and then headed for the diner.

The nice waitress—Mandy—was on duty, and greeted her with a smile. “Don’t tell me—tomato, lettuce, and herb sandwich. On wholegrain toast. I’ve got a smidge of guacamole if you’d like that instead of mayo.”

She slid into the booth Mandy waved her to, and smiled back. “That would be totally awesome,” she said gratefully. “I feel like I’ve been living in the Neolithic. Except I don’t think Neanderthals had hot dogs. To go, this time, I’m doing laundry.”

“I’ve got some chamomile tea if you’d rather that than regular iced tea,” Mandy offered, writing down the order and taking her money.

“That would be awesome too, thank you!” When Mandy had taken the order to the kitchen, she checked out the window, just to be sure no one was messing with her laundry, but the laundromat was still empty.

She turned back and Mandy was already there with a brown paper bag, and she yipped a little startled.

“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you,” the waitress offered the bag and to-go cup.

“I’m just a scaredy cat, it’s okay.” But Mandy didn’t move out of the way. In fact, she looked down at Olivia as if she was trying to make up her mind about something.

“You don’t ever go out alone over there after dark, do you?” Mandy finally asked.

“Uh . . . no?” she replied, baffled. “Why?”

“Just—it’s not a good idea. Especially once the security lights are out.” Mandy shrugged. “Raccoons carry rabies,” she added as an afterthought. “And they’re nocturnal.”

“Oh God, has someone been bitten?” Olivia asked, feeling panic as she thought about that pair of green eyes that had stared at her the first night. Had that been a rabid raccoon? And she’d thought animals didn’t hurt you!

“No, no, nothing like that. Not this year anyway. But you can’t be too careful.” Now Mandy moved out of the way so she could get out of the booth. “Just keep that in mind in case you get moonstruck or something, okay?”

“I will! Thank you for warning me!” She took her bag and tea and headed back across the street to the laundromat. I’m totally not going out at night. Ever!

She ate her sandwich and drank her faintly honey-flavored tea, and moved all the washed clothing into the dryers. Then she went to the Association Library.

The librarian was alone, as usual, so she didn’t think asking her a question would interrupt anything.

“Do you have anything about . . . um . . . folklore?” she asked. The woman smiled.

“We just got this in from an estate,” she said, reaching into the rolling cart behind her and taking out a book. “You might like this.”

It was the kind of book you only saw these days in antique stores and junk shops: it was bound in brown leather, and had clearly never had a dust jacket, because the front cover was stamped and embossed with an elaborate design. The title and the author’s name were in a typeface too ornate for Olivia to read easily, embossed in gold. Olivia was already reaching for it as the librarian set it into her hands. It was heavier than its size indicated, but Olivia had been expecting that: the pages in books of this vintage were of a glossy heavy paper designed to last for time and all eternity.

Now that she had it in her hands, she could make out the title: Romance of the Waters. She looked up at the librarian questioningly.

“In the Victorian era—that’s the nineteenth century for you products of modern schooling—people woke up to the fact that they were innovating their own history out of existence. There was a sudden interest in collecting the old ballads and stories, and even studying them. And right along with the folklore revival came a new interest in old fairy tales, once people realized that fairy tales were just tidied-up folklore. There were a lot of books like this one written—usually by that great scholar ‘Anonymous’—that gathered together a bunch of old stories and categorized them. And added a few of them fresh from their imaginations, but that’s half the fun.”

Olivia opened the book. The type was tiny and quaint, and the edges of the pages were browned like sugar cookies ready to come out of the oven, but the pages were as crisp and legible as if the book had been printed yesterday.

The first chapter of the book was about something called Selkies.

The color plate facing the chapter showed a man walking out of the ocean, wearing a long fur cape with the hood thrown back. A woman in old-fashioned clothing stood on the shore waiting for him, a baby in her arms.

Olivia quickly skimmed the entry. Fairy creatures. Shape-changers between man and seal. The sealskin seemed to be removable and transferable and Selkies, like dolphins, seemed to be friendly to humans, rescuing swimmers and guiding lost mariners home. There were apparently a lot of stories about human men keeping Selkie women on land by hiding or even burning their sealskins, which sounded awful. But then:

“. . . and yet, a mortal woman’s tears can bind even the king of the Selkie kind with a love unbreakable. Should she be in grief for an unfaithful mortal lover, let her but weep beside the water like the ferns that do drop their tears, and she will call a Selkie from the sea to be her faithful and constant lover . . .”

“I’d be afraid to take this to the cabin,” she admitted, coming out of the book to find the librarian still looking at her. “Do you have anything less—fragile?”

“Quite a few e-books, if you have an app on your phone,” the woman said, taking the book back. “Let’s get you loaded up.”

“Why is this town named Endor?” she asked, speaking mostly to herself, as the librarian transferred books to her phone.

“Like a number of places, it got its name from a typo.”

“Like Yreka,” Olivia said. “It was supposed to be called ‘Eureka,’ but nobody knew how to spell it.”

“Just so!” the librarian said. “There’ve been Europeans in this area since the 1600s. They didn’t displace any of the indigenous peoples because they had more sense than to settle in some place that gets this much winter. When they got around to naming the place, whoever was first in line named it Endymion, and everybody immediately started squabbling about what it ought to have been called instead. The front runner was Issachar, the same as the county. So in dispatches both names got used—Endymion-Issachar, and since nearly everything was handwritten, it was abbreviated, so ‘Endymion’ became ‘End.’”

“End . . . or—Issachar!” Olivia said, delighted to have solved the riddle.

“And eventually somebody with a Biblical turn of mind decided that the abbreviation meant ‘Endor in Issachar,’ and here we are today. There’s usually a perfectly reasonable explanation for things if you dig far enough.”

Olivia went back to the laundromat to plug in her phone to charge and read while she waited for everything to dry. After that would come the tedious job of bagging everything up. Well, almost everything. She’d be careful with her things, and Blake’s, and his parents. But the Terror Twins could deal with wadded up wrinkled stuff. Not that they would notice anyway.

Diving Rock was a black basalt boulder the size of a slightly-squished eighteen-wheeler’s trailer. It couldn’t be seen from the cabins—the lake was much longer than it was wide—but it was on one of the postcards the drugstore sold—Olivia had a pretty good collection of them by now, even with having sent a couple to her folks—so she knew what it looked like. The name was a misnomer, because you couldn’t dive from it, but the rock itself was a local landmark, and it made a good destination. Today she planned to hike all the way down to it, and maybe even climb it. According to one of the pamphlets of local lore (most of them were free for the taking, and she’d started collecting them for something to do), the locals used to set off fireworks from the top of the rock in the days before the resort had been built.

At least I’m enriching my mind this summer. Ha.

The cabin was quiet as Olivia finished the breakfast dishes and stacked them in the drainer. The Terror Twins had bolted the moment their plates were empty, and Blake had given her a perfunctory (tired) kiss and headed off for a nap.

It almost seemed as if he’d been avoiding her for the last few days, that he wasn’t tired in the morning so much as contrite. All Olivia could imagine was that he knew this vacation wasn’t as much fun for her as she’d hoped, he’d noticed that she had kind of turned into the unpaid “help,” and he was feeling guilty. She was going to have to find some way to make him feel better, but how? She could say she was having a wonderful time here in Endor, but she was a wretched liar and lying would only make things worse.

If this were a book or a movie—or anything in which she wasn’t her—she would go to him, and stumble haltingly through an explanation of how she felt, and then he . . .

But at that point, her imagination foundered. She knew if this were a story, he should, or she should, do something that magically fixed everything and made the summer better, but she couldn’t think of what that could be, even in the context of a story where she controlled all the action. Going back to Sacto wouldn’t solve anything—it would probably make things worse, to be honest. And staying here presented the same problem—she wasn’t magically going to be popular, their cabin wasn’t going to grow several extra rooms, and Noah and Mason weren’t going to get personality transplants.

And while you’re making up miracles, how about wishing that Blake’s mom wasn’t a lush and his dad a stereotypical stage mother of swimming? And that the cabin was three times bigger and had all the modern stuff and even if you were the unpaid help it wouldn’t take up more than a few minutes every day.

Yeah, that’d be great. She turned her attention back to the dishpan full of soapy water. I can just imagine what Mia would say. But I don’t mind doing chores, and this place is so small it would be intolerable if it were messy. It’s kind of cute, though. Like living in a dollhouse. It would be great if the Terror Twins weren’t here and I could have the other half of the bedroom. We could hang a sheet between me and Blake, and it’s not as if we could do anything with his parents one thin wall away. Why can’t the boys sleep on the porch, anyway? Never mind. They were here first. And besides, if they slept on the porch they’d probably use the chance to sneak out and terrorize everyone in the middle of the night.

Maybe if she came back from today’s hike and burbled delightedly about everything she’d seen and done, she could convince Blake everything was okay. She’d never talked to him about the fact her parents were divorcing. She’d never wanted to bother him with her problems while he was under so much pressure to succeed. Maybe she should. Not put pressure on him, but say something deft and cool like: Hey, Blake, I’m so glad to be here this summer. Even if it isn’t the Ritz, it’s worlds better than being home listening to my parents fight.

Her spirits lifted. That sounded like a real possibility. She could work out the wording on her hike. Maybe she’d do a couple of sketches to show him.

Once the last of the dishes were away, and she’d rinsed the dishpan and set it to dry, Olivia filled her water bottle from the kitchen sink, made herself some sandwiches, and grabbed a soda out of the carton next to the fridge. As cold as it got overnight, the sodas stayed reasonably cool being stacked on the floor without taking up precious fridge space. I’m getting tired of PBJs . . . but peanut butter and jelly doesn’t need a fridge. Her sketching supplies joined her provisions in her backpack, and Olivia was ready to go.

There wasn’t anybody around to say goodbye to when she left, so she didn’t.

She’d just gotten to the front door when movement outside caught her eye. Audrey Jordan was walking down toward the path by the lake. She had a rolled up blanket slung across her shoulder by a strap, and she was carrying a picnic basket—one of the big old-fashioned wooden kind that looked like it had come straight out of a Ralph Lauren or J. Peterman catalogue.

Despite herself, Olivia drew back, as if Audrey Jordan was somebody she needed to hide from. She tried to tell herself not to be silly, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

It wasn’t as if Audrey had harassed her. After the day they’d met, Audrey had barely spoken to her, though the Jordans and the Webers had barbequed together a couple of times and eaten dinner together, too. And it wasn’t as if Audrey had ignored her, either. Not exactly.

It was as if, for Audrey, Olivia simply didn’t exist.

Olivia watched from behind the curtain until Audrey was several cabins away, then, cursing her own silliness, finally opened the front door. She cut around the back of the cabins instead of taking the lakeside path—not because she was trying to avoid Audrey, she told herself, but to get to the nearest of the woods trails.

The dense canopy of leaves overhead effectively blocked out so much of the sun that there was almost no undergrowth except along the hiking trails. There were no forests like this in California, or at least, not anywhere Olivia had been. It was always cool in the woods by the lake, cool enough that in the morning and evening a sweater or hoodie didn’t come amiss. The prevailing scent was of old leaves, moldering away in drifts on the forest floor. Sometimes when she was out here, Olivia would hear something bounding along that carpet of leaves, or burrowing into it, but most of the wildlife seemed to prefer being high up in the trees. Supposedly there were deer, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and even bobcats all around the lake, but so far, she hadn’t seen any sign of them. The dogs accompanying a lot of the cabin families probably scared them away. Maybe even the rabid raccoons are scared away by the dogs. It had been nice of Mandy to warn her about that, though.

Although there was not a single sign of civilization along this path, it was impossible to get lost. Each of the hiking trails around the lake was clearly designated by an old wooden sign, the sort of thing you saw in Yogi Bear cartoons; wooden planks affixed to an upright log, with carved letters that had once been bright yellow and still had traces of yellow paint in them. Each of these signs pointed the way at the beginning of each particular trail. So far as she’d discovered, each trail dead-ended at a “scenic destination,” where you’d find another sign, showing you that you had arrived. A couple of those destinations were gone—there was nothing left of “Robin’s Oak” except the remains of a splintered stump, and blight had long ago destroyed “Chestnut Grove.”

But the signs were all so uniform that it made Olivia wonder if all of the land around the lake had once belonged to the Resort—or maybe had been a state park that had gotten sold into private hands, the way a lot of stuff was in the twenties. That would make sense: the cabins could have been for people who preferred privacy—or, more likely, for some of the resort workers who had families. Back in the olden times, they’d probably been considered premium housing. After all, they did have running water, an indoor toilet, and electricity.

The tree canopy wasn’t as far above her head as it would be in Yosemite or Redwood National Park—in fact, if she’d been as inclined to climb into trees as she’d been when she was little, Olivia could easily have clambered up nearly any them and taken a seat among the leaves. That gave the forest more of a “cozy” feeling; less the “green cathedral” of Yosemite—at least as it had been before the fires—and more of a “green cottage.” In fact, with the low canopy, the cool shade, the bitter leaf-scent, and the twittering of birds out of view above, the Endor woods were exactly as she’d imagined fairy-tale forests to look like when she was much younger.

If she’d still been a child she’d probably have run off the path to play; maybe find herself a tree hollow she could have curled up in and, like the characters in the Little House books, made dolls and things out of flowers and twigs and whatnot. But she wasn’t a child any more, and although she didn’t think she could get lost, she wasn’t inclined to take a chance on it.

As she walked, Olivia relaxed and her mind drifted. She already knew—thanks to Mrs. Frisbee, the local librarian—that there were a lot of legends surrounding Lake Endor.

Well, Lake Endor didn’t have any familiar spirits, nor (so far as Olivia knew) a witch, but if her leisure-time research could be believed, there were a number of odd things about the place. She’d dismissed out of hand all the tales of “Endora The Lake Endor Monster”: those stories were clearly an attempt to capitalize on the success of Nessie and Champie and their ilk. Lake Endor was tiny in comparison to Lake Champlain, let alone Loch Ness—even a vegan sea monster would starve to death here.

But there were a lot of tales of the waters of the lake glowing brightly at certain times of the year, of uncanny white animals seen in the forest by hunters . . . and of disappearances. In the winter of 1928 (so the website Mrs. Frisbee had pointed her toward the last time she was in town said) some of the local bright sparks had driven a “flivver” out onto the ice in the middle of the lake . . . and vanished. The ice had been unbroken, but the tire-tracks led out on the ice to the middle of the lake . . . and stopped.

Easy enough, in this more sophisticated time, to come with a dozen ways to fake something like that, but that wasn’t the only time people had gone missing here—or so the local historians wanted you to believe. Whatever the truth was, the stories were good for tourism, anyway.

And are much nicer than rabid raccoons.

The late morning sun shone through the trees, dappling everything, and she could see the rock through the trees ahead. Not much farther.

Then she heard the giggling, and automatically froze in her tracks. It was the kind of sound someone made when they were doing something they knew they shouldn’t be—or that they knew that someone else thought they shouldn’t be. It could be as innocuous (and legal) as eating a whole cheesecake by themselves, or as scurrilous as getting drunk (or stoned) and naked.

Somebody else is out here, she thought, and a moment later: Duh. From the sound, the person was female, but it was hard to judge. Not that Olivia planned to do any judging. It’s summer, and this place isn’t exactly deserted. So somebody’s decided to have a private party. Not your circus, not your monkeys.

After a moment more, she decided the best thing to do was just keep going. If the giggler heard her, so what? They didn’t have to have a conversation. And from the sound of things, the person was off to the left and a little behind Olivia’s current position. She started forward and froze again, this time in shock.

She hadn’t moved away from the source of the giggling as she’d expected and intended. She’d moved toward it. The only thing between Olivia and the giggler was a wild blackberry bush.

The giggler was a girl. The girl was Audrey, and Audrey wasn’t alone.

She was here with Blake.

Blake, who’d been so convincingly bushed and sleepy not two hours ago. Blake who swore he was going off to bed. He and Audrey were lying on the blanket Audrey had been carrying, the picnic basket pushed off to one side. There was a half-empty six-pack of beer visible, and scattered empties bore witness to the fact it probably wasn’t the only six-pack the basket had contained. Audrey was sitting with her back to the trail, wearing the bottom half of a pink bikini . . . and nothing else. Blake was shirtless, wearing a beat-up pair of jeans—they’d used to be Olivia’s favorite look on him, but not from now on—and lying with his head on her thigh.

Hide! Olivia’s mind screamed at her.

The blackberry bush was just barely taller than she was; Olivia forced herself to move, crouching as she scurried back toward where it was thickest.

Just as she did, Blake leaned up to kiss Audrey.

It was a very passionate kiss. The kind that would have made her embarrassed to see it, no matter who was doing the kissing.

But it’s Blake! He’s kissing Audrey! He said they were just friends . . .

The only thing Olivia could think of in that moment was that they mustn’t know she was here. She didn’t even register the ludicrousness of being the one who was hiding when they were the ones . . .

“Why in heaven’s name did you drag that babyish wet blanket up here this year of all years, Blakey?” Audrey said, breaking the kiss. “I’m not happy about having to sneak around all summer just to avoid confusing your parents.”

“I explained all that to you on the phone before we got here,” he said, with a theatrical sigh. “For one thing, she’s great camouflage. The ’rents think she’s my girlfriend, so I’m not getting any more flack from my father about how I have to keep myself free of ‘entanglements’ and concentrate on my training. I was getting a lot of that from him towards the end of last summer. Ollie is perfect as far as they are concerned. She does all the housework without a peep and makes zero demands on me.” Blake chuckled, bracing himself up on one elbow and letting the fingers of his free hand trail along Audrey’s bare thigh. “And besides that, weren’t you complaining that you were bored?” he said. “I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh?” Audrey’s voice sharpened with interest. “Do tell.”

“I had to dump Tedesco last year when I got home. She’d been talking to the wrong people and gotten some ideas.”

“Oh come on,” Audrey scoffed. “She’s just trying to fatten up her college fund, just like the last one. Have your dad pay her off.”

“Yeah, no,” Blake said. “Not after the other two. And Stanford would yank my scholarship if they thought they might have to pony up for another ‘jock assaults co-ed’ thing. So I had to dump her before things got out of hand. Ollie was a good reason, and Tedesco focused on her, not me, and I skated.”

“Poooor Blake,” Audrey sing-songed, with sugary-sweet insincerity. “Can’t get a girl without chemical help.”

Blake swatted at her playfully. “You’re the only girl for me, Auds. But guys have needs, you know? You’re not in Cali. So I get the itch scratched wherever I can. If the bitches want to be seen with me, hey. There’s always a price tag attached.”

“Everything comes at a price,” Audrey agreed thoughtfully. “But since you’re here, and I’m here, why the hell is she here if you’re itchy? I’m not buying the camouflage. That’ll only last until your dad starts seeing her as a possible complication.”

Olivia shuddered as she heard the other girl’s voice turn edgy and petulant. Her stomach knotted with panic, and the world seemed to be slowly revolving. She breathed deeply and carefully, forcing herself to hold very still.

Not because she wanted to spy on the other two. Because she was afraid of what would happen if they realized she was here. There were two of them, and there was nobody else around.

Blake was speaking again. “She is here, my very best Audrey-wadry, because this is our last summer together, and because I wanted to make it a very special episode of The Lake Endor Games. Jesus, you have no idea what I put up with to get Coyote Ugly to come up here with me! I let her follow me around like a dog all year. It was like being stalked by a baby seal. But it’s all going to be worth it. I promise.”

“What about her parents?” Audrey began tracing the line of his shoulder with a fingertip. Her nails, Olivia noted distantly, were really long, and colored the same shade of pink as her bikini.

“Divorcing,” Blake said promptly. “She’s the school weirdo, and she doesn’t have any friends. Nobody’s going to listen to a word she says. If she says anything. Pooor little Ollie,” he crooned, his voice full of false sympathy. “She’ll do anything to get some attention. And then she’ll make up stories no one will believe, because who would ever believe another girl would be doing things like that?”

Audrey laughed as if Blake had just told the world’s funniest joke. “Oh, Pookie! Audrey isn’t mad at you any more. We’ll make this a summer little Olliekins will remember for the rest of her life.”

Blake mock-growled happily and reached for her, pushing Audrey backward onto the blanket.

Olivia ran.

She didn’t care now if they heard her, or saw her. All she cared about was getting away.

She ran until she was out of breath, and kept running. She fell, tripping on rocks and tree-roots, and scrabbled to her feet to keep running. Her arms were scratched by thorns, she’d torn one sleeve of her blouse, and she’d scraped both knees. She was off the trail. She didn’t care.

“Poor Little Ollie.”

“Followed me around like a dog all year.”

“There’s always a price tag attached.”

She’d been disliked before. She’d been made to feel like prey before. That was just normal high school life, no matter what anyone’s parents thought.

“She’ll do anything to get attention.”

“Everything comes at a price.”

But if she’d been miserable—and she had been—she’d never been the butt of sheer visceral hatred before.

She’d never had what she thought was reality ripped away from her with just a few words.

“. . . Like a dog.”

“Everything comes at a price.”

It had all been a lie. Every smile, every kiss. Every time Blake told her she was special, that he’d never known a girl like her, that she was funny, and clever, and pretty, and that he loved her . . .

Olivia fell to her knees, choking on the bile that rose up in her throat. She spit it out and lunged to her feet again. She had to get away.

“There’s always a price tag attached.”

Finally she was so winded she simply couldn’t keep going. She leaned against a tree, blind with anoxia and gasping for breath. She felt sick, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. And of course the trail was nowhere to be seen.

Her lungs burned. Her throat was scraped raw. Her mouth tasted like blood and ash. Her muscles shook uncontrollably, knotted by cramps and wracked with spasms. She desperately needed to listen for pursuit, but her heartbeat pounded so loud in her ears that Olivia could barely hear the sound of her own breathing. She whimpered with each indrawn breath and gagged with each exhale. She could not tell whether the darkness around her was the shadows of the tree canopy or the vanguard of a faint.

No. She couldn’t afford to pass out. They’d find her. She had to get away.

Where?

Diving Rock. She could see it ahead of her through the trees.

At least from the top of it I can see them coming, she thought disjointedly, and lurched onward, grabbing at tree trunks to keep herself upright. A few minutes later she found the trail again, and turned onto it, and a few minutes after that she reached the park sign that superfluously announced that she’d arrived at Diving Rock.

It was as if the sight of it stole away all the strength she had left. She was so exhausted that all thought of climbing it had vanished. She sank to her knees at the edge of the lake, staring unseeingly into its surface. Her hands trembled and her body shook with the triphammer beat of her heart. She was gasping for air, hyperventilating, and she couldn’t stop.

Mia had been right. All the girls who’d tried to warn her had been right. Everybody had been right, and they’d probably spent the whole school year laughing their heads off at her for believing she was the kind of girl Blake Weber would want for real.

She wasn’t. She’d never be the kind of girl anyone would want. Blake had played her. It had all been a big joke, a way to get her up here for the summer, so he and Audrey . . .

So he and Audrey could . . . what? Her imagination failed her.

“We’ll make this a summer little Olliekins will remember for the rest of her life.”

What did that even mean?

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, rocking back and forth as she knelt in the mud. Whimpering like a puppy somebody had stepped on.

It meant he doesn’t love you, he’s never loved you, he lied to you and you fell for it. Ugly stupid loser. Stupid loser. Stupid, stupid, stupid . . .

Blake’s love for her had been a lie. It was a cruel trick, and the trick wasn’t over yet. She was trapped here with him, thousands of miles away from her parents and everyone she knew. From anywhere she could run to.

Who could she tell? Who could she go to for help?

His parents? They wouldn’t believe her. They’d just tell Blake what she’d said. She’d already heard Mr. Weber talking about Blake’s brilliant future and Olympic dreams. He wouldn’t let anything stand in their way. He wouldn’t listen. He’d just tell.

And then what?

People disappear here. Everyone says so.

The thought didn’t even strike her as being over the top. If she vanished, Mia would just think she’d drowned herself, if Mia even cared. Probably her parents would too. They might even be relieved to have her gone. One less expense. One less complication to them splitting up.

Nobody cares about you. See? Blake Weber proved it. These things don’t happen to girls people care about.

Olivia closed her eyes tightly. She was calmer now, but that wasn’t much of a plus. It meant that instead of being hysterical, she was grief-stricken. Humiliated. She’d felt happy, she’d felt special, because Blake loved her.

And he doesn’t. He didn’t. He never has. He thinks you’re a joke.

He brought you up here for Audrey to play with.

For one icy moment she was snapped out of her grieving fugue by fear. She’d been afraid of Audrey Jordan the first time she saw her, and she’d tried to dismiss it. That had been a mistake. Audrey was . . .

Okay, she didn’t know what Audrey was. But she knew she had to get away before she found out. She had to get away from Lake Endor, from the town of Endor, from all of this. She’d discovered the secret of the Universe: nobody cared about Olivia Poole. She had to save herself. If it’s even worth the effort, whispered the small voice in her mind.

But where could she go? There was a bus stop in Endor, but she didn’t even know if buses still stopped there. Even if she got out of Endor, she was still on the wrong side of the country. Her ticket home was for the end of July, but if she could get to the airport, she could change it. If she could get to the airport, if she could get home, she’d . . .

What?

What could she say?

What explanation could she give?

None. Nothing.

The realization made her even sicker. What had she heard, exactly? Hearsay and innuendo, her mom’s lawyer-voice whispered in her mind. It’ll never hold up in court.

And she didn’t leave for San Diego until the end of August, and the Webers would be home by the beginning of August, and . . .

For just an instant Olivia imagined going back and finding Audrey and Blake. Saying to them: I heard what you said and I don’t care. Do whatever you want with me.

As her heartbeat and her breathing finally slowed, terror began to give way to grief.

He doesn’t love me. He never loved me. It was a trick. A lie.

Her panting breaths became ragged sobs, and finally the tears came.

CHAPTER FOUR

After spending the early shift refereeing the kiddy pool, Dylan was glad to escape to the quiet of the boathouse for a couple of hours. The under-ten set was cute but exhausting—endless energy and no sense of self-preservation. He wasn’t sure the older kids had any more of it than the younger ones, but the diving pool was a little quieter, and trouble there was a little easier to spot.

But for now, Dylan was removing his “lifeguard” hat and donning the one that had secured him a summer position at the Endor Resort: mechanic. The jet skis were kept at the open dock during the day—they could be rented at two hour intervals and had to be signed in and out, but right now one was down for repairs.

Right next to the boathouse was a little concrete blockhouse with a lock on it. And in that blockhouse was a number of large crates full of fireworks. There was a great mortal festival next week, and it would be celebrated with a grand display of rockets and fireworks—yet another benefit of working here.

Dylan loved fireworks. And while he wouldn’t be among the team setting them off—that called for skill and practice—he was certainly going to enjoy watching them.

He pushed his dark brown hair out of his eyes and adjusted the worklights over the broken scooter. Picking up his toolbag, he stepped down into the driver’s seat, and flipped the ignition experimentally. The machine made an unhappy sound and stalled.

Ah, I suspect I know what the trouble is, he thought. I’ll have you back on the water within the hour, my lovely.

He reached over for his tools . . .

And then he felt it.

It began as a warm weight in his chest, as soft as sunlight. It spread quickly to fill his entire body, and banished all thought of the repair job from his mind. Suddenly there was only one thing that was important. He was called. He must answer.

No!

Sudden panic broke through the insistent summons. Dylan clutched the talisman he wore. Strong magic—great magic, proof against any spell Mhuir Chéasta or Farraige Olc might deploy to locate him. Proof, in fact, against any magic, any spell . . .

Save one.

He gritted his teeth, shaking his head, but he knew it was hopeless. He had to go. He had to find her. No Selkie could resist the call of mortal tears from the eyes of one weeping for a lover who had betrayed them—

—if they fell into water—stream or lake or ocean—where a Selkie lived.

If.

No lightsome summer love, this. Her heart is truly broken. As mine will be.

The moment he found her, the moment he saw her, Dylan would love her. No Selkie could defy such a summons. This much he knew. But he had known it only as legend—no woman had wept beside a Selkie’s home in generations.

Until today.

He could delay no longer. Staying here instead of hurrying to her side to comfort her—whoever she was—had already become acutely painful. If he did not answer this call, he would die. It was as simple as that.

But whoever she is, she probably isn’t expecting a seal to show up . . .

The doors to the boathouse were already open. Dylan hurried to one of the rescue craft, grabbing his T-shirt with the Resort logo and skinning it on hastily. Might as well look as official as possible until he knew more about what was going on.

It could still be a trap. In which case, both he and the mortal maid were caught in it. Gritting his teeth, Dylan backed the jet ski out of its slip, turning it up the lake and opening the throttle.

She’d cried herself dry-eyed, and now Olivia was just kneeling at the lakeside, so still and silent that all the wildlife she’d scared away with her approach now ventured timidly out of hiding; Diving Rock was far away from the more heavily trafficked parts of Lake Endor.

First to appear were the rabbits; round-faced, big-eyed cottontail bunnies with black-ticked bark-colored fur, who crept out of hiding and began nibbling away at the grasses and clovers that surrounded the rock. Next were the gray squirrels, with flocculent gesticulating tails and twitching ears. Soon, last year’s leaves rustled as mice and ground squirrels hurried invisibly through them. Birds that Olivia didn’t recognize flew down to hunt bugs in the long grass and the reeds at the edge of the water. There were other birds in the branches of the trees that bordered this tiny frith, and once she had been unmoving for long enough, a pair of stately herons backwinged down to the shallows and stalked past the rock that cast its shade over the lake.

Olivia saw all of this without reacting to any of it. She was locked deep inside herself, running the hamster wheel of What now? What now? What now? and feeling the grey fog of Doesn’t matter—nothing matters rising up to smother her. The heartache was fading as she pretended everything that had happened this morning out of existence, pushing it down into the greyness until that greyness swallowed it up and left her . . . numb.

Being numb was better than hurting. Everyone pretended they didn’t understand that. If they knew about the greyness—if she told anyone—they would demand she get rid of it. Fight it off. Summon back the pain.

Why should she?

Wasn’t it better not to feel, if the only thing you felt was pain?

Then even the words were swallowed up by the grey, and Olivia let herself drift.

Suddenly the animals around her scattered, and a moment later she heard a high lawnmowerlike whine. A boat was approaching. It was one of the bright orange “rescue” jet skis from the Resort—she’d seen one out on the lake the other day when a canoe had tipped over—and it was heading right toward her.

She thought about running away, but she was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to really care about making the effort, so she didn’t move. The scooter and its pilot were probably here for some other reason. She could just ignore them. She couldn’t need rescuing if she wasn’t actually in the lake, could she?

Then he ran the craft right up onto the shore a few feet away from her and got out.

Only a few minutes ago Dylan had resented the spell that was about to bind him fast. Now—as he saw her kneeling by the waterside—he didn’t. It was as simple as that. He saw her, he loved her, and it didn’t matter that the love was magic-driven. He was a Selkie; such ensorcellments were as natural to his race as their heartbeats. And perhaps, he thought, even if I’d met her without the spell, I might have loved her anyway.

She was a slender girl at the edge of adulthood. Her dark brown hair was tangled and messy right now, but he could tell it was long—and oh! how it would shine in the sun when it was combed smooth. Her eyes were dark. Brown, Dylan thought, and enormous in her tear-blotched face.

A fair mortal maid with a broken heart, and I to succor her, and our hearts to beat as one . . .

But he could hardly approach her with the language of magic and fated love—not in this pragmatic era. Dylan schooled his face to an expression of kind indifference.

“Hi,” he said, not moving from beside the boat. He could sense that to come closer just now would scare her. She looked as if she’d been fleeing for her life. And this seems like something more physical than just a broken heart and a betrayal. Did he—whoever “he” is—hit her? I’ll be having a word with him if he has . . . “My name’s Dylan. Dylan Waverly. I’m one of the lifeguards from the Endor Resort. Are you okay?”

His beloved raised her hands to her face and flinched when she saw how begrimed with mud they were. She scrubbed them hastily on her thighs, then left them there as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

“F-f-fine,” she stuttered. “I’m fine.”

Dylan let his smile broaden a bit and projected sympathy. It wasn’t a geas or glamourie, but simple compassion—even if Dylan were capable of compelling her, the thought of using such power would horrify him. Selkies believed in freedom for all beings. Including ourselves. And that includes the freedom to be true to our natures . . .

“It looks like you got into a fight with one of our local trees and lost,” he said commiseratingly. “I’ve got a first aid kit with me. That scratch looks pretty deep. And I’m betting you could use an aspirin.”

The comment startled a ragged laugh out of her. “I’m not a guest of the Resort,” she said.

“I know. I would have remembered you if I’d seen you before. But the Lake Patrol is here to help anyone who needs help. The Mahams—the Resort’s owners—believe in being good neighbors.” Her eyes flicked to his T-shirt and took note of the logo. She relaxed fractionally. Good. “What’s your name?” Dylan asked.

“Liv . . . Olivia. Olivia Poole. I’m staying at one of the cabins.”

“Well, Olivia Poole, we’ll have you fixed up in no time,” Dylan said equably, turning back to the boat and his first-aid kit.

He handed her some packets of moist towelettes so she could clean her hands and face, and was briskly professional as he wiped the scrape on her arm clean with antiseptic and put a bandage over it. Fortunately the scrape didn’t seem to be too deep. When he was done, he sat down beside her and offered her a bottle of water from the kit. She uncapped it and drank.

“I’m okay, really,” she said, stuffing the used towelettes into her backpack. “I just . . .”

“Is this your first visit here?” Dylan interrupted. Whatever explanation she was about to make for her condition, he knew it was a prelude to extricating herself from this conversation, and he had no intention of being sent away until he’d figured out how best to help her. “I haven’t seen you around before. You don’t look local.”

“I’m from California,” she said. “Sacramento, really.”

“Sacramento’s part of California, right?” he said, and was rewarded with another hesitant smile. “You’re a long way from home.”

Her eyes filled with tears again, and he pretended not to notice as she fought them back. “I came here with . . . Well . . . He’s a guy I went to school with, and . . .”

After that, it wasn’t hard for Dylan to coax the story out of her—or her version of it anyway. She didn’t name any names, but they weren’t hard to guess, since everybody at the Resort gossiped about the Summer People, and Dylan, like all Selkies, loved gossip. Blake Weber. Audrey Jordan. Both came to Lake Endor every year with their families, and Dylan’s co-workers had warned him about them.

Audrey Jordan loved nothing more than causing fights and teasing people into reckless stunts. Blake Weber was known to be a bully—and worse. Weber’s family worshipped the ground he walked on—or the water he swam through—and were certain he could do no wrong. If anyone said anything to the contrary, Weber’s father would descend upon them like a cartoon anvil, and the accusations would just . . . go away. Either paid to go away—or somehow Weber’s father would command silence with some other form of “coin.”

Together, Blake and Audrey were the Mean Kids you either placated—or stayed well away from. And Olivia was tangled up with both of them. Worse, Blake Weber was the “boyfriend” who’d just broken her heart. Even though Olivia was vague about what had happened—aside from insisting it was all her fault, and she deserved it, something Dylan didn’t believe for a moment—it wasn’t hard to guess that she’d seen Blake and Audrey together.

But something about that didn’t make sense. Catching your boyfriend with another girl, well, you could be grief-stricken and devastated. Maybe even angry. But Olivia was terrified.

Of course Dylan loved her—had loved her the moment he’d set eyes on her—but that didn’t mean he’d suddenly become stupid. Olivia didn’t look like the sort of person who would panic for no reason, and she’d clearly been badly frightened by . . . something. It made Dylan wonder why Blake had gone to such lengths to get Olivia to come up here in the first place. It wasn’t as if Blake didn’t have a summer girlfriend waiting for him—and the Resort gossip said his family was dead-set against him developing any “serious” romantic entanglements that might interfere with the stellar future they had mapped out for him. So why bring Olivia here? Just to jilt her in the ugliest way possible? That didn’t make a lot of sense. If he went to all the trouble to get her here—and I can’t imagine his parents were entirely happy with the show of interest—whatever he intends may not be something he gives up on at the first stumbling block.

“—I never should have made him bring me here—this is all my fault, and it’s a whole month—five weeks—before they leave and I can’t just ask them to drive me back down to Albany and not say why, and what could I say anyway, and . . .”

Dylan didn’t know precisely what Blake Weber had done to Olivia, but he was furious about it anyway. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what the best course of action was. Of course he didn’t want her to leave, but would leaving solve her problem?

Maybe not. She’d said she and Weber went to the same school: presumably Weber knew where she lived, and would be able to follow her home to do whatever harm he intended.

“It wouldn’t really do you any good, would it? Leaving, I mean?” Dylan said casually, and, when Olivia looked alarmed: “You’d just have to sort it all out back in Sacramento, because you’d both be there, right? The trick for dealing with this sort of thing is not to mind—or at least to act as if you don’t.”

Now Olivia was looking at him as if he was crazy, which Dylan guessed was an improvement.

“So he’s got another girlfriend, right? Why don’t you get another boyfriend? Nothing says ‘complete indifference to your boorishness’ like slotting in a replacement for him as if you’ve barely noticed he’s missing. And before you ask: yes, I’m volunteering for the job. Oh, not for real,” he added hastily (and lying his head off). “I’m not in love with you. I’ve just met you. But you seem nice, and, well . . . if he thinks you don’t care what he does, he won’t know he’s hurt you, will he? And if he thinks you’ve got a boyfriend, he might decide it wouldn’t be a wise thing to bully you.”

He knew he was pushing her, but dammit, she needed somebody around here to be on her side. Certainly she could, and should, fight her own battles. But she’d just been badly wounded. Didn’t she deserve a shield until she could heal a bit?

“What do you get out of it?” Olivia asked warily.

Dylan smiled sunnily. “A good excuse to give to the guests at the Resort who hit on me,” he said promptly. “We’re not supposed to date the guests, especially not the ones that come with husbands! But some people think Lake Endor is the end of the world and what happens here won’t have consequences . . . and I am devastatingly handsome, you know.”

“And modest!” He could almost hear the words she didn’t say as her mouth quirked into a tiny smirk. She was brave, and rebounding fast from the morning’s shock. “But what about . . . Don’t you have a real girlfriend? Somewhere?” she asked aloud.

“‘Somewhere’ is Vancouver,” Dylan said instantly. He’d learned months ago that most Americans thought of Canada as a kind of faraway fairyland where everyone spoke English but otherwise anything was possible. And they didn’t seem to know much about it. “And . . . no. I decided to take a couple of years off to travel around the world. It wouldn’t be fair to someone to keep them waiting for me.” As I will wait for you, Livy. Forever.

“Oh,” she said, and lapsed into silence. He sat peaceably, waiting. He knew he was asking for a lot. Trust from someone he’d just met. And who had just been given the best of reasons not to trust anyone’s good intentions ever again. “What would I have to do?” she finally asked. “For this girlfriend thing?”

Dylan felt a wave of relief wash over him. She was willing to consider it. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “you should probably say things like: ‘That’s Dylan, and he’s really nice.’ To other people, I mean; you don’t have to say it to me. And maybe we could go for walks. Or on a picnic. Or I could take you out on the lake. I should certainly give you a tour of the Resort, it’s old, and I think it’s interesting.”

“Don’t you have to work?” she asked, and the wary note was back. Obscurely, he was glad to hear it. She’d need all her self-protection instincts if she was tangled up with Blake Weber and Audrey Jordan.

“Lifeguard,” he said promptly. “And actually, there’s a bunch of us and we all take two-hour shifts so we don’t get sloppy about things while we’re watching a pool full of kids, so I’m not working sunrise to sunset. The rest of the time, I keep the boats running—well, and anything else with a motor. Just doing things that need doing. But I can certainly get a couple of hours off during the day, or . . . whenever you happened to be free.”

Olivia wrinkled her nose but didn’t say anything. It was sunburned and streaked with sun block, and Dylan longed to kiss it anyway. Way, way, too soon, he told himself. Go slow.

“It’s not like B— Like he’d care,” she finally said.

“And if he doesn’t, no harm done, is there?” Dylan answered. “Maybe he’d like to know you’re having fun. You know: on your own. So he doesn’t have to worry.”

Her expression cleared. He’d offered her a way out as well as a way to think well of Weber (not that the guy deserved it). “He wouldn’t have to feel responsible,” she said tentatively.

I doubt that self-obsessed golden boy has ever worried about anybody but Blake Weber in his entire life, Dylan thought uncharitably. “So is it a deal?” he asked.

“A deal,” Olivia agreed.

And if she didn’t sound enthusiastic, at least she’d agreed.

She’d never met anybody like Dylan Waverly before. Maybe because he was Canadian. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected when he’d come roaring up on the shore in his little ski-boat. Pushiness. Questions. Insistence that she tell him everything that was wrong and then come up with things she should do to fix it—and then nag her endlessly if she didn’t.

But he hadn’t done any of those things. The closest he’d come to telling her what to do was remind her to reapply her sun-screen.

And, of course, he’d offered to be her fantasy boyfriend.

Olivia supposed the explanation he’d given her for the idea almost made sense. Dylan was handsome (very handsome), so probably he got hit on a lot, and she supposed it was more tactful to be able to say you were already seeing someone than to have to say you just weren’t interested when you had to give somebody the brush-off. Especially if the somebody was a guest of the Resort, and a pushy cougar. And besides, it was probably either a joke or one of those well-meant offers that everybody made and nobody made good on.

Or maybe not. She recalled a few uncomplimentary things that Mia had had to say about “cougars.” And she could see how a lonely old lady could see Dylan Waverly and think “summertime snack.” In fact, she wasn’t entirely certain Harper Weber wouldn’t try to take a nibble on a cute young man if she wasn’t already involved in a torrid affair with a bottle.

He seemed nice, though. He smiled a lot, but it wasn’t fake. He seemed to be genuinely happy.

She tried not to envy him.

It was her firm belief that Dylan’s offer was an empty promise that let her go on sitting on the bank beside him in the warm sun with the smell of the lake and the pines all around them. It was what let her say “yes” when he offered to run her back up the lake to where the cabins were, too.

It was only after she was seated behind him on the jet ski that she let herself realize she’d been dreading the hike back. Not for its length, but . . . for who she might encounter along the way.

They were just joking with each other. That’s all it was. They didn’t know I was there. Not then. Maybe not at all? Oh, I hope! It was just some joke-game they were playing together. This is a summer vacation, not a summer movie. Some kind of Blair Witch Cabin in the Woods? That’s too over-the-top for words. Get a grip, Livy.

Riding the jet ski was fun. It was a little like riding a steampunk dolphin—a little tippy, but Dylan’s weight kept it stable; the jet skis were built for speed, not stability: judging by the other couple of jet skis being run out on the lake right now, being dumped off into the water was apparently part of the fun. She was almost sorry that the return trip took only a few minutes. Dylan told her if someone on the lake was in distress, the point was to be able to reach them quickly and keep them from drowning while the rest of the rescue party followed in a powerboat.

He guided the skittery little water scooter up to one of the cabin-side docks a few doors down from the Webers’ place, and then handed her up onto the dock before dismounting himself.

“These are good little runabouts,” he said, steadying her, “but it’s possible to fall out of anything if you really try.”

“At least I can swim,” she joked automatically, and he grinned at her.

“You’d be surprised how many people come for a lakeside vacation who can’t,” he said.

But then she stood facing him on the weathered wood of the boat dock, feeling oddly self-conscious. “Well,” she said awkwardly. “Thanks. Goodbye. See you around.”

“Of course you will,” he said, bounding back down onto the seat as easily as if the jet ski was rock-steady instead of bobbing on the wavelets, and turning it back toward the Resort. “You’re my summer girlfriend, remember?”

Looking back on it afterward, Olivia wasn’t sure how she made it through the rest of that day without somebody calling the doctor, or the police, or her mom. She walked around the cabin and in through the screened sleeping porch. Nothing had changed. That didn’t seem right. Everything had changed, hadn’t it?

It was all a joke, a stupid prank. Blake will tell me that, and then he’ll pout because I’m not laughing and tell me that we really have to work on my sense of humor . . .

Blake.

She’d meant to take a nap. She was completely exhausted; she felt like a balloon someone had let all the air out of. But the thought of Blake—of the morning—made her thoughts skitter off in wordless directions. She grabbed the top blanket off her bed—it was good sturdy wool, like the one Audrey . . .

No.

She turned and walked back out of the screened porch—across the little strip of grass, through the brambly underbrush and in among the trees. She found a place to spread out the blanket, then took off her backpack, lay down on it and let the wordless greyspace take her.

And that was all she remembered until the cool of evening woke her, and she saw the lights on inside the Webers’ cabin.

She stared at the cabin until she realized she was just being silly and self indulgent. She wasn’t the heroine of a dystopian YA novel. She wasn’t the heroine of anything, including her own life. There was nothing to go all Drama Queen about; the last thing she needed was to have one of the Webers call her parents and hint delicately that it would be great if Olivia could go home right now.

And what had happened?

Nothing.

She’d gone for a hike, had a freak out, and fell over a couple of trees.

That was all.

If she said anything else, they’d laugh at her.

Blake would laugh at her.

When she got up to fold her blanket, her catalogues of gashes and bruises made themselves loudly known. When she went inside, everyone—Blake especially—looked surprised to see her. She thought it was because she’d come in through the back door, but then she went to the bathroom and got a good look at herself in the mirror.

Ugh!

Her face was blotchy and she had deep rings under her eyes. Worse, she looked like she’d been rolling in the mud, and one sleeve of her shirt was torn completely off, exposing the bandage beneath.

There was a tapping on the door, and Olivia braced herself.

“Ollie? Sweetie? Are you all right?” Mrs. Weber called through the door.

“I’m fine!” Olivia called back, forcing her voice to be light and merry. “I’ll be out in just a minute!”

Despite Olivia’s explanation of going for a hike (and her completely mendacious story about slipping in mud and falling over a tree trunk), Mrs. Weber fussed over her all during dinner, saying that Aidan should take her into Endor to see a doctor, and fretting about what Olivia’s mother would think, until Mr. Weber said firmly that it was probably nothing more than a touch of sun.

“We’re in the Adirondacks, you know, darling, and mountains are mountains. She probably just got a touch too much sun today, didn’t you, Ollie? Maybe a little dehydration. More sun-screen next time, right? And stay hydrated! Soda won’t do that, take it from me, I’ve been coaching Blake all his life. Take a water bottle instead of a soda next time you go out.”

Olivia seized gratefully on the pretext, and assured Mr. Weber that she would absolutely use a lot more sunscreen next time, and be sure to drink plenty of water too, because all she really wanted to do was burrow under the covers and stay there for the next month.

Or until her life made sense.

Or something.

Blake had seemed honestly surprised to find her here in that condition. He’d even asked if she was sure she was all right, and got up to get her an apple from her little store of healthy snacks. “Natural Gatorade,” he said with a wink.

He still smiled at her just the way he always had. Just as if nothing had happened.

By the time dinner was over, Olivia had pretty much convinced herself that she’d completely misunderstood what she’d overheard that morning. Not the part about Blake fooling around with Audrey (she was not, after all, blind), but the rest of it. And at least (she was relieved to note), neither of them had seen her accidentally spying on them. Blake wouldn’t be acting this normal if they had. So when he invited her to take a walk after dinner, she was on the verge of saying “yes.”

“Probably not too good an idea to tire yourself out if you’ve been feeling under the weather,” Mr. Weber said mildly. He was packing his pipe, a sure sign that he meant to sit out on the front porch for an hour or so—and the front porch had an unobstructed view of the lakeside path.

As if he wants to keep an eye on us . . .

Suddenly everything made sense. “I, um, yes. I mean no,” Olivia stammered, flushing furiously. She could have wept with relief. “I mean . . . I do have kind of a headache. Maybe I should just, you know, turn in?”

“Well, it won’t be any fun without company,” Blake said good-naturedly. “Hey, pests, how about a card game? Pokemon?”

This last comment was addressed to his brothers, who whooped and scrambled off to get their decks.

Olivia doubted her excuses convinced anybody, but at least they let her escape to her porch and its blessed—if slightly chilly—solitude. She sat on her cot and hugged herself tightly, almost weeping with relief. Blake didn’t love her. She knew that now, and it hurt. It hurt a lot. She cringed at the things she’d said to him—things she’d never shared with anyone before, not even Mia—but he’d dragged her up here to Lake Endor for a reason.

Audrey.

Blake did love Audrey. She knew—everybody at JWCHS knew—that Blake’s parents didn’t want him getting “serious” about anybody because of his sports career. He’d brought her up here because he was serious about Audrey, and he didn’t want his folks finding out. She was just camouflage, the perfect sort of girlfriend, one that didn’t cling, and didn’t demand any attention, and could easily be sloughed off when he went off to Stanford.

It was still a dumb and hurtful thing for him to have done, and she would’ve been mad about it if she wasn’t so relieved. Everything she’d heard this morning had just been Blake explaining Olivia’s presence here to Audrey—who looked like she needed a lot of explaining to and maybe some world-class groveling thrown in.

Olivia didn’t know why he hadn’t told her. Maybe he’d been embarrassed. Probably he’d thought she wouldn’t go along with it. Sure. That was right. He liked her a little, but he was in love with Audrey. So he’d strung her along, figuring she was like all the other girls he’d dated, who had been happy enough to be seen with him, and who didn’t fuss much when he dumped them. And now . . .

No. She couldn’t possibly let on that she knew. How could she? Confess she’d spied on him? Ask him about Audrey?

No. Oh, god no. Whatever had happened . . .

Well, she wasn’t going to think about whatever had happened. Blake would tell her the whole story in his own time, and they’d kiss (chastely!) and make up and vow to be best buds forever.

And with luck, she could forget the morning completely.

And that was that.

CHAPTER FIVE

In the morning, everything seemed back to normal.

For about half an hour.

As usual, Olivia was in the kitchen, making breakfast. Blake had gotten back from his morning swim half an hour ago; he’d be out of the shower soon.

Nothing horrible had happened, and nobody had said anything to her other than “good morning,” and pretty soon (she hoped), she’d be able to completely forget that yesterday had ever happened. Today would be a good day for finding a nice sunny spot to sit and do absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, what had already become the morning routine (the new normal) was perking soothingly along. The bacon was sizzling merrily in the pan, and the two youngest Webers were at the table with the toaster, methodically toasting every single piece of bread left in the loaf to a crispy blackened state and then stacking them like pieces of a card house. Olivia had given up caring about what they did days ago. She wasn’t their mother and she wasn’t their nanny, and anyone riding herd on Noah and Mason deserved both combat pay and body armor, in Olivia’s opinion. If they wanted sandwiches on cold soggy toast for lunch, that was their business. They wouldn’t starve.

How do six people go through so many eggs in a week? she thought vaguely as she cracked the last of the dozen into a bowl. It looked like somebody would be driving into town tomorrow for more groceries. Maybe the Webers would let her do it? Assuming somebody was willing to hand over a credit card, of course . . .

“Someone’s at the door!” Mason shouted at the top of his lungs, just as Olivia heard knocking. “Someone’s at the door!”

“Be quiet! You’ll wake up Mom!” Noah—who was sitting right next to him—bellowed back. Mason elbowed him.

“No, you’ll wake Mom!” Mason shrieked, ducking and yelping as Noah aimed a swat at the side of his head. Neither of them moved to answer the door, of course.

I feel like I’m living in a bad reality show. And oh my god, I hope it’s cancelled soon. Olivia was quickly rinsing her hands at the sink (wondering why whoever it was didn’t just come in, since nobody seemed to lock their doors up here) when Mrs. Weber came into the kitchen. She was wearing a pale-blue caftan-style robe, and had taken the time to apply a dash of lipstick. And it was clear to Olivia that she wasn’t particularly sober. Well, at least she wasn’t dealing with a hangover. Always look on the bright side, Livy.

“MOOOOMMM!” both boys yelled in chorus, and even louder than before. Olivia winced at the sheer volume. “Somebody’s at the dooor!”

Mrs. Weber smiled vaguely and headed in that direction. If Noah and Mason were my kids, I’d probably drink too, Olivia thought unkindly.

“Shut up,” Olivia hissed fiercely at them as they drew breath for further shouting. “Or I will poison both of you.”

They blinked in surprise, and then snickered. Brats. She turned back to her breakfast preparations, shrugging mentally. Whoever was at the door was none of her concern.

But a moment later Mrs. Weber returned, and it turned out that (surprise!) it was. “Someone here to see you, Olivia.”

“Hi,” said the familiar figure behind Mrs. Weber. Today Dylan was wearing an unbuttoned denim shirt over his Resort T-shirt, and a pair of jeans instead of swim shorts.

“Dylan!” She hadn’t really expected to see him again—or if she did, certainly not so soon.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he said politely. “I saw the lights on over here, so I knew somebody was up, and—”

Just then Blake came wandering into the kitchen in his usual bathrobe and pajama bottoms, fresh from his shower. He stopped dead when he saw Dylan. The expression of shock on his face would have been comical . . . if Olivia had been in a mood to be amused by anything right now.

“Hi,” Dylan said, stepping forward and offering his hand to Blake. “I’m Dylan Waverly. I work over at the Resort. I’ve just dropped by to pick up Olivia. We met yesterday when she fought a tree and lost.”

“Pick up Ollie?” Blake said, still looking stunned. He ignored the proffered hand.

“For their date, sweetie,” Mrs. Weber said, just as if it had all been discussed and settled in advance. “But you must stay to breakfast, Dylan. Everything’s almost ready. We’d love to have you.”

“That would be wonderful,” Dylan said warmly, “but actually, I’m planning to take Olivia to breakfast over at the Lodge. If that’s all right. I mean . . .”

By now Olivia was sure she was looking as stunned as Blake was. Everything was happening so fast.

At the mention of the Lodge, she saw Noah and Mason prepare for another round of bickering. Or maybe demands to come along. They’d been complaining about staying in “this crummy old cabin without even a pool” ever since they’d gotten here.

“Well, go get your things, Ollie,” Mrs. Weber said briskly. “I’ll just finish up here.” She regarded the stove as if she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

“Oh, no, Mom, I’ll do it,” Blake said hastily. Probably because in her current state Harper Weber was quite likely to set herself on fire. He moved quickly toward the stove, and Olivia moved just as hastily away from it. She was relieved to see that the first thing he did was move the frying pan off the heat.

Mrs. Weber, clearly satisfied that her obligations had been discharged, turned and headed in the direction of her bedroom with the stately majesty of a clipper ship under full sail.

“C’mon,” Dylan said.

“I’ll meet you outside,” she said breathlessly.

Olivia, faced with two choices—the prospect of Dylan and Blake in the same kitchen, or getting Dylan out of here as fast as possible—ran to get her backpack.

“I hope I didn’t make any trouble for you,” Dylan said when they were outside. One of the regular runabouts—a rowboat with an outboard motor, painted with the Resort logo—was tied up at the dock, and he led her toward it.

“You told Blake’s mom we had a date?” Olivia asked. She wasn’t sure whether she was outraged, or mortified, or just exhausted.

“Ah . . . no,” Dylan said. “I just asked her if I could see you. The ‘date’ was her idea. I figured I’d run with it. I thought you might want to save your hearing,” he added dryly. “Those kids sounded like jet skis without mufflers.”

“They’re good kids,” Olivia protested automatically (although privately she thought they were horrors).

“Well, it’s different when they’re somebody else’s brothers,” Dylan said neutrally. “You can’t really threaten them with much.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Olivia muttered to herself. “Do you have any brothers?” she asked.

“Six,” he said. “All older than I am. And one sister.”

She wasn’t sure what to say now. That was always her problem. She said stupid things. Or the wrong things. Or didn’t say something when she should. Only Blake . . .

But Blake didn’t care either, did he?

Dylan didn’t seem to notice her sudden silence. He jumped down into the boat first, and then reached up to help her down. His hands were warm and strong. And soon they were gliding across Lake Endor toward the so-far-mysterious Lake Endor Resort.

The Resort had been something of a mystery, surrounded as it was by old trees and sculpted hedges. You couldn’t get anything but glimpses: a window here, a bit of porch there, from the part of the shore where the cabins were. But once Dylan made a wide turn to come in to the Resort dock, that all changed.

From the dock it was possible to see the huge, two-story-tall Resort—Dylan said that the Mahams called the main building “The Lodge”—and the several smaller buildings that surrounded it. The other buildings looked a bit more rustic; one was little more than an elaborate pavilion, although it seemed to have screens on all the sides and a screen door. Olivia could see an orchard, what looked like a couple of tennis courts, and—far off to one side, almost as if they were an afterthought—two swimming pools, side by side. One of them had diving boards, and both of them were occupied, even this early in the morning.

The Lodge was a nondescript building apart from its size; it didn’t seem to have been built in any particular era. It was painted white with a red roof, and had enormous open porches with heavy, varnished wooden railings on both storeys on both sides. She guessed from the way things looked that those porches ran all the way around the building. A bare-earth path ran from the dock and its boathouse to stairs leading up to the Lodge level: the north side of the lake had been built up or dug out at some time in the past.

Dylan pulled the runabout into the boathouse and its waiting slip. Once he’d handed her out onto the dock, he urged her out the door and up the stairs to the Lodge itself.

Up close, the Lodge was almost intimidating. The porch had “Adirondack” rocking chairs lined up on both sides for about twenty feet, then there was a kind of half-barrier wall that would keep you from going any farther. Maybe so each room had its own private porch space? A towering wooden door, carved to evoke a fairy tale, opened into a foyer done in rustic white plaster and coffered tiger oak wainscoting. Underfoot was an elaborate “deco” tile floor, and through the archway beyond, she could see the main entry space of the Endor Resort and Lodge.

She paused just inside the doorway, blinking in the dimness while her eyes adjusted. This was more like what she’d imagined when she’d heard the phrase “cabin by the lake,” though nobody in their right mind would call this a cabin.

This two-story-tall room must be the main lounge for the entire Resort. To her left were the double doors of what must be the main entrance into the guest rooms. They managed to look rustic and overpoweringly grand at the same time. Directly ahead there was an enormous—currently cold—stone fireplace, its fieldstone and granite facing covering most of the wall. You could probably have roasted a literal whole cow in it, It was flanked by a set of normal sized doors, with quaint copper grilles inset where a peephole in a modern door would go. To the right was the check-in desk, currently deserted; a sweep of polished oak with a huge old-fashioned ledger and pen set resting on it. Behind the counter were dozens of pigeonholes, some containing mail, most empty.

The floor tile from the entryway continued all the way across the floor, its design as elaborate as that of the slightly-threadbare oriental carpets scattered over it. The furniture was made of peeled logs with worn brown leather cushions; the walls were plaster above the wainscoting, and the plaster was painted a warm ochre. Huge chandeliers made of dozens of deer antlers lit the space, with matching deer-antler sconces on the walls. There were no animal heads mounted on the walls, but if there had been they’d have fit right in. Instead, there were some landscape paintings and a lot of old photographs—really old photographs—of the Lodge itself, the docks, and some people posing stiffly at some of the “landmarks” designated by the trails. The whole effect was a weird mélange of aging public building and gracious home.

As much as Olivia would have liked to explore the details of the lobby, they didn’t stop here. “Come on,” Dylan said, taking her hand and squeezing it gently. “Breakfast is this way.”

She followed him across the huge open space and through the door on the right side of the fireplace. It was marked “Resort Staff Only” in fading gold-leaf letters, and opened onto a short hallway painted industrial green, with a linoleum floor of cream and green squares. A few steps took them through one of the swinging doors (painted a slightly darker shade of the same gas-chamber green), and Olivia found herself in a decidedly more pleasant space: a white-painted room filled with natural light.

It had scoured wooden floors and one-piece bench-and-table seating made of heavy plastic and metal pipe that wouldn’t have been out of place in a high school cafeteria. At the far end of this room was a cafeteria-style serving area with a couple of people behind it, and the aroma of bacon reached Olivia’s nose and made her stomach growl. Next to that serving area was the other door with the copper grill. Clearly the Resort guests came first, they were even given an entrance that took them right to the head of the serving line! There was no hesitation this time; she followed Dylan and took an orange plastic tray at the end of the line at the same time as he did.

“Olivia is my guest, Lana,” Dylan said to the lady at that end of the line, who looked pretty much like a cafeteria worker anywhere, except that she wore shorts and a white camp-shirt instead of a uniform under her apron. The lady grinned, punched something into a keypad, and asked her how she liked her eggs. The choices in the stainless steel vats on the steam-table seemed to be scrambled, hard-boiled, and fried; Olivia hastily asked for scrambled. I don’t think anyone eats egg-white omelets here. . . .

Evidently the Resort’s ideas of portions were “generous”; Olivia followed Dylan carrying a tray that held far more food than she thought she could eat. He led her to a table on the far side of the room, away from the expansive windows that looked out over the lake-shore and the antique playground equipment under the trees. “Guests get window seats,” he explained, as he put his tray down, and stepped over the bench. “Staff has to stare at the wall.”

Then he grinned, and suddenly she felt . . . relaxed.

And the toast was a perfect, golden brown, and prebuttered. She was biting into it just as four more people, two guys and two girls, joined them at the table. They were about her age, and all wearing Lake Endor Resort shirts like Dylan’s, so she assumed they were staff. Dylan indirectly confirmed this as they nodded in a friendly way at both of them. “Brittany, Justin, Ted, Lila, this is Olivia.”

“Livy,” she corrected boldly, as the other four nodded at her and dove into their breakfasts as if they were ravenous.

“They’re some of our lifeguards,” Dylan added, “And you won’t get a word out of them until they put away their first helpings and have gotten their seconds.”

“Hey, I resemble that remark!” Justin exclaimed indignantly—but he didn’t stop eating.

Brittany was tiny, with dark, short, curly hair. Justin was tall, brown-haired and lanky. Lila looked as if she might be his sister, and Ted looked a little like Martin Freeman as a teenager, complete with the same floppy hair. Olivia tried not to stare in fascination as they made food vanish. She was barely a third of the way into her own breakfast when they—and Dylan—went back for more.

When Dylan returned, he had a second small plate with him, piled high with what looked like pancakes. “Try these,” he said, gesturing with his fork, then transferring three of them to his own plate.

“Pancakes?” she asked doubtfully.

“Johnnycakes,” he corrected. Still doubtful, she took one. She wasn’t all that fond of pancakes, but if he was going to insist . . .

They weren’t pancakes. They tasted like a combination of pancake and cornbread, the best parts of both. She ended up eating three. In fact, she was kind of surprised how much she did end up eating.

True to Dylan’s prediction, the other four teens emerged from their single-minded preoccupation with putting away calories once they got started on their second round of food. Brittany was the first to say something.

“There,” she said with a sigh, after drinking half a huge mug of coffee. “That’s better. Hi, Livy, we’re not always ravening beasts. Only in the morning.”

“Speak for yourself, hobbit,” scoffed Justin, who had been eating with the determination of a war refugee who hasn’t seen food in months. “Hi, Livy. Nice to meet you. You’re new here, right? I mean, at the Lake?”

“Um. Yes,” she replied, “I came with the Webers.” She waved vaguely in the direction of the lake.

Ted made a face, but didn’t say anything. Lila did. Or rather, she snorted, then said: “Oh, you mean King of the Lake, Blake? He and his father don’t own this place, but you sure would think they do from the way they act.”

Suddenly all four of them seemed to be watching her very closely. To see if she would take offense and storm out or something? She shrugged. “Mr. Weber is a very high-powered guy on the West Coast, so I guess he’s used to always getting his way. He’s been nice enough to me. Blake is someone I know from school.”

If that was a test, she passed. They all relaxed, visibly. “We’ve all had run-ins with the Webers over the years,” Justin said. “Well, except for Dylan, he’s new this year. Every year Mr. Weber tries to get us to practically shut down the lake so Blake can get his practices in—that’s after he tries to rent the pool for his exclusive use—and every year we end up having to go to the boss and she has to remind him that the Resort still owns the lake and they’re not about to shoo people off it, no matter how much Mr. Olympic wants to practice in private.”

Olivia felt her eyes widen. “I didn’t know the Resort owned the lake,” she finally managed to say. All five of them, even Dylan, exchanged a glance she didn’t understand.

“This place was a Very Big Deal in the Gay Nineties, right up through the Depression,” Brittany said—evidently that look had been the group selecting the spokesperson to enlighten the Noob. “There weren’t a lot of resorts back at the turn of the century—that’s the nineteenth century—that had been built for middle class families; most of them catered to the upper crust. So Endor Resort did really well. People from New York City who could afford it would send the wife and kids here for the summer, while poor old dad sweated his brains out in the city.”

Justin snickered. “And probably had a hot old time in other ways without the wife around. They didn’t call that time the ‘Gay Nineties’ for nothing.” He waggled his eyebrows in a way that was probably supposed to be lascivious and made him look like Groucho Marx without the moustache instead.

“Stop it,” Brittany said amiably, swatting him with a napkin. “Anyway, it was kind of a big deal. There was the lake, the nature walks, the playground, swimming and diving lessons—the swimming pools went in in the sixties, before that it was all the lake—nature lessons, all that stuff, plus they brought in Chautauqua all summer long.”

“Chow-what-now?” Olivia asked, bewildered.

The others rolled their eyes. “Now you’ve got her started,” Justin sighed theatrically. Brittany ignored him.

“Chautauqua! Remember, there wasn’t anything like TV, radio, movies, back when the Resort was first built, so back in the eighteen hundreds on up through the mid-1920s there was this organization that sent entertainers around to towns and resorts in the summer. Except they were supposed to be educational and enlightening, like TED Talks, so there were lecturers, teachers, famous preachers, authors, musicians, politicians, even opera and operettas! All things that middle-class people didn’t usually get to see, or if they did, they could maybe afford it once a month at most, not practically every evening. The resort would let the townsfolk come for a fee, but the Chautauqua was free to anyone here at the resort. There’s a no-kidding, real theater in this building; stage, flies, lights, everything. Even some old scenery and scrims. It’s just past the Grand Lounge.” Brittany paused for a breath, and Justin waved a hand frantically at her.

“I think she’s got the idea,” Justin said. “Anyway, the traveling road shows were why the resort stayed a pretty big deal right up to the Depression. In the twenties, I bet it was a good way for families to get their daughters out of the city during summer vacation so they didn’t hop a streetcar to Coney Island and meet up with the wrong kind of boy.” He smirked, and Brittany hit him with a napkin again. “When the Depression hit, the resort managed to hold on by selling off some of the original land, including the cabins on the other side of the lake—which gave the town of Endor free access to the lake among other things—and when the Depression was over, the Mahams did okay again (not these Mahams; their grandparents). Then the Resort was a convalescent hospital for the Army during World War II, then went back to being a resort again after the war was over. Nothing like they were back in the day, but they’re doing all right.”

Olivia blinked; between them, Justin and Brittany had given her a whole encyclopedia’s worth of background on the Lake Endor Resort—things she had only caught glimpses of in her plunges into the local library. She wondered where they’d learned it—was there a local history society around here?

She thought of asking about “Endora,” or some of the other bits of local folklore she’d read in the pamphlets she’d bought in town, but she didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, what if they thought it was a stupid question?

What if this whole thing was a long elaborate set-up by Dylan to . . .

“It helps that there’s not much agriculture close enough to the lake for it to get runoff.” Lila, silent until now, finally spoke up. “Plus when they built this place, whoever planned it knew how to site the septic systems so nothing gets into the lake from those, either. So the water’s really good—just about drinkable; they test it every year before the start of the season—you don’t need to worry about pollution, the fishing is great, and even though all we get is 48k Internet on copper wire for our Wi-Fi, people think it’s worth it to come here. The Mahams keep talking about upgrading to satellite, but I guess a commercial subscription is not in the budget. That’s why there’s no satellite TV in the rooms, either, just the local PBS station. 48k seems to satisfy most people.”

Ted sighed. “Not if you’re a gamer, it doesn’t,” he said mournfully. Brittany hit him with the napkin this time.

“Your WoW Guild will survive until fall,” she scoffed. “It’s enough for texting and email!”

“I may not!” he objected. “I’m going into withdrawal!”

“Liar. I saw your laptop. You downloaded half the Steam library before you got here.” Lila snickered. “And for your lies, you take first shift on the kiddie pool this afternoon.”

“Lila is the senior lifeguard, so she assigns the shifts,” Dylan explained, while Ted moaned and begged for mercy (apparently, afternoon was the busiest time). “If you’re done, I can show you around a little.”

“I’d like to see the theater,” Olivia admitted.

No, Dylan wasn’t out to trick her into anything. She was somehow absolutely certain of that. She didn’t know why he wanted to play boyfriend—did the guests at the Resort really hit on him that hard?—but she acquitted him of having any ulterior motive that would harm her. Or even mock her.

The other four bid her farewell as she and Dylan took their trays and left the table. Brittany said she should come back another time and they’d introduce her to Joyce, Devra, Bobby, and Zeek, the rest of the lifeguards, who were already at work.

“It seems like a lot of people for just two swimming pools,” she said diffidently, after they’d left the dining room.

“Well, everybody does a lot of different things,” Dylan explained. “Including washing dishes and helping out in the kitchen and groundskeeping. But the main thing the nine of us do is make sure is make sure nobody drowns. That isn’t something you’d want to skimp on.”

The theater proved to be in the center of the Lodge, where all four wings met. Being windowless was not a handicap for a theater. There were some very dim lights on, enough that Olivia could make out the second-story balcony, as well as the curtained stage. The theater-style seats were upholstered in green plush, just like the curtain across the stage. The big room was a little dusty, a little musty, but it seemed to Olivia that she could hear the echoes of past performances in its silence. She almost felt as if she could step behind the curtain and step out again in another time . . .

“We still use it for things,” Dylan said, reading her expression. “Sometimes for dancing—although the Resort’s got an actual ballroom, and there’s dancing here every night. But in addition to the dancing, every Friday is Karaoke, Saturday night is Amateur Night, and Sunday afternoons one of the clergy from the local area comes up and does a service. They rotate. And all of them use the theater.”

After they left the theater, Dylan showed her the ballroom, and then one of the empty second-floor guest rooms, which was bigger than she had imagined—and much larger than a modern-day hotel room. The ocher-painted room itself was furnished with more “rustic” style pieces, done in clear-finished, dark wood; three big chest-of-drawers, two double beds of the same “peeled log” style as the lounge furniture, a blanket chest at the foot of the bed, and an actual tube-style TV with some sort of box on the top of it.

“I thought you said they didn’t get satellite TV,” she said, pointing to the box.

“They don’t.” He grinned. “I guess you never saw one of those. That’s a digital-to-analog converter box, the kind they gave out cheap when all the TV stations went digital in 2009.”

She stared at it. “My parents just bought new TVs,” she confessed.

“Well, think how expensive that would have been to do here! When a TV finally dies, the Mahams replace it, but otherwise—” He gestured at the box. “There you go. There’s only one station that makes it this far anyway, unless you’re really lucky. That’s the PBS station.”

She examined the two pictures on the wall; both views of the lake. Braided rugs on the floors, burlap curtains with calico trim on the windows and on the set of French doors that led out onto the porch. Quilts that looked handmade on the beds, and what looked like handmade afghans laid over the foot of each bed. I’d like staying here, she decided.

“It’s set up kind of like a dorm in a way, there’s shared bathrooms, one for every twelve guest rooms,” Dylan said. “I know that moderns expect every room to have its own bathroom, but that wasn’t always commonplace. The owners have talked about modernizing the Resort, upscaling it, turning these single rooms into three-room suites with a bath, but, well . . . I guess the money isn’t there.”

“I suppose someday someone will buy it and turn the whole thing into condos,” Olivia said gloomily, and Dylan laughed.

“Maybe not! There are some advantages to being out in the middle of nowhere!”

Completing his tour of the guest accommodations, Dylan took Olivia out on the screened-in porch, and showed her old fittings for canvas walls that had turned the long screened-in porch into something like a series of tents. “They called these things ‘sleeping porches’—basically you and your husband got the room, and at night, you put up the walls and you shoved the kids out to sleep on the porch on cots.”

Like me, Olivia thought.

“Then during the day you pulled back the walls like curtains, folded up the cots and unfolded chairs and sat on the porch if you didn’t want to do any of the activities.”

“That Chautauqua thing sounded neat,” she ventured.

He nodded. “Sometimes I think people are missing a lot by getting buried in television and the computer and their phones.”

Startled a little by that, Olivia managed a laugh. “I never would have taken you for a Luddite. You sound like someone’s old gramps. Back in my day, we didn’t have all these gadgets and thingamabobs, and we liked it!”

Dylan rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled ruefully. “I guess I do, at that. But you should listen to Brit, if you think I’m bad. I keep expecting her to show up for lifeguard duty in a ruffled cap and a long wool bathing suit with a skirt and bloomers. I think if you gave her a chance to go back and live then, she’d do it in a second. She knows about every single one of the photos on the walls, who’s in them, when they were taken, and what was going on. I think she’s just waiting for someone to step out of one of those photos and sweep her off her feet into the past.”

He led her out into the hall. “Doesn’t anyone ever complain about no satellite TV or Internet?” she asked. “Doesn’t anyone in Endor complain?”

“Well. . . .” He shrugged. “People who come here know what they’re getting into. And some people in Endor do have satellite. But that stuff’s expensive, and when most of your money for the year only comes in during four months, that’s something you can’t afford to splurge on.”

And Olivia felt a twinge of guilt. She didn’t even think twice about having cable and satellite and broadband. “Is it that expensive?” she wondered aloud.

Dylan shrugged again. “Lila says it’s criminal out here, what I told you is what she’s told the others. Brittany says she’d give a lot to go all the way back to what she calls a ‘simpler time.’”

As they descended to the first floor to pass back through the Lounge and into the outdoors again, Olivia reflected that having something like that happen to her would probably be better than her current situation.

Than her current life. Back to a time when people who wanted to gossip about you had to do it in person, and you didn’t have to worry about horrible things being said about you on platforms the entire world could look at. When changing where you lived really did give you a new start, and every embarrassing thing about you didn’t follow you around everywhere, for anyone to look up.

Dylan took her outside, then, to show her the rest of the grounds. The screened-in thing she had seen at a distance was “The Pavilion,” and it was a bit fancier than it had looked at from the water. It could be reserved for private parties, which the Lodge would cater; otherwise it was a place to sit at night and not get eaten alive by bugs, or during the day and have shade and a breeze. There were four large cabins that could be rented by groups that didn’t want to stay in the lodge, everything from a Scout Troop to a family reunion. There were also a few boarded-up buildings tucked out of sight—what used to be the on-site doctor’s office and residence, the on-site ranger’s residence, and the on-site hunters’-guide residence. “Fall used to be big for hunting, back before most of the Adirondacks were turned into state and federal land,” Dylan explained. “In the Fall, instead of families coming here, you’d get hunting parties of moderately rich guys that didn’t have their own hunting lodges. That way they got their bragging rights with the other guys at the Stock Exchange. The Lodge really only closed once the snow fell and it got too hard to get up here, and it opened again in May.”

As she walked beside Dylan and listened to him talk, Livy realized she was actually . . . not feeling bad. Dylan was comfortable to be around. He didn’t talk down to her or tease her. When he showed her some of the overgrown, hidden parts of the grounds—places that used to be little bowers and nooks where people could be alone in the now-neglected gardens, she didn’t feel as if she needed to be on her guard against anything. He didn’t stand so far away as to make her feel as if he really didn’t want to be with her and was just being polite, but it wasn’t so close as to be uncomfortable.

It was almost as if he wasn’t a “pretend” boyfriend at all. Or at least, as if he was a real friend.

When lunchtime grew near, they were still out in the grounds. “Want to have lunch too?” he asked, before she could make an excuse to leave. “It’s cold cuts, hot dogs and burgers, nothing fancy. After that, I go on duty. I can run you back over in a boat, or you can look at the Lodge library and I can run you over after I get off.”

“There’s a library?” she replied, before she thought.

“Mostly nature books and a lot of really, really old novels.” He grinned. “I don’t think there’s anything more recent in there than 1960. Brit spends half her free time reading that stuff.”

“I’d—like that,” she said, and suddenly realized that yes—she would like that.

“Great! Let’s eat.” Without looking to see if she was following, he set off for the Lodge. But she was right beside him.

Audrey’s parents. . . .were not really her parents.

Her father of record was a professor at Boston University. Her mother was a defense attorney in high demand. They were busy professional people, and for as long as she could remember, their adopted daughter had watched them closely, not the way a child watches its parents, but the way a scientist studies a specimen. They were the rulers of her small world, so she needed to know how to handle them to get what she wanted. She’d known that before she was precociously out of diapers. She didn’t love them, but she didn’t hate them, either. They were necessary (for the moment), so she would do everything she had to in order to get what she wanted. To survive. It had been her earliest imperative, unquestioned and overriding.

She’d always known she was different, just as she’d always known she was adopted, even though she’d only been a few days old when she came to live with Mom and Dad Jordan. This didn’t bother her. If anything, it made things easier. The only thing that bothered her about her situation was her name. Her birth mother wouldn’t have named her “Audrey.” Somehow she knew that. She also knew that somewhere out there was the person who knew her real name.

And someday she would find them. And she’d find out why she was here, when she did.

She hadn’t been like a “normal” child, though the Jordans seemed more delighted by her precociousness than alarmed by it. She was potty-trained as soon as she could walk, she could talk before she could walk, and both had been months early. When she’d been very small, none of the other children had wanted to play with her. Unless she made them stay, they cried and ran away. Most of the time this didn’t bother her, because she never felt lonely, but now and again she did want them to do what she wanted. And so Audrey Jordan quickly learned how to hurt them without anyone seeing. To make them lie for her. To make them lie about her. And to keep silent about what she’d done to them.

Fear created obedience. Her first discovery about other children. It wasn’t the last.

While she was still a child, she knew she wasn’t strong enough to challenge adults, so instead she made herself adorable and harmless for them. Sweet and biddable, pretty and bright. Never in trouble. Never a moment’s worry. When she’d gotten old enough for it to seem plausible—age five—Audrey asked about her birth parents, and Mom said that she and Dad had adopted Audrey through an agency. They’d never met Audrey’s birth mother, and the records were sealed, so they didn’t know anything more. That didn’t surprise her. What had surprised her was that there seemed to be no way of finding out what her mother had been like. She obviously wasn’t like the Jordans in any way.

In fact, she wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met. So she kept studying people. and learning more about them with every passing day, hoping to find some answers for all her questions.

By the time Audrey was six, the instinctive aversion other children had felt for her was gone. It was as if they could no longer see her clearly, or perhaps they just didn’t trust their instincts any longer. It was much easier to manipulate them then. To gather cliques of admirers, classmates who vied for her attention and her approval.

And when she wanted to hurt someone, it was easier than ever. Audrey had accomplices. Allies. And she learned how to make people forget what she’d done to them, and remember only what she wanted them to. Hurting people made her feel good. More than that, it made her feel more alive. Everything was brighter and sharper, and haloed with an aura of pleasure after she’d hurt someone. But she had to be careful about that; if she hurt someone too much, they might not forget she’d done it.

She remained different from every single person she had ever seen, and knew it, but that was all she knew until she was eight years old and saw the sea for the first time. It was autumn, and the air was sharp and cold. While she’d grown up in Cambridge, and Boston was a seaport, Audrey and her adoptive parents led busy and organized lives, and—like so many who were natives of “tourist destinations”—they never went to see those things that people came from so very far away to visit.

On this particular occasion, the Jordans had gone to the house of friends who lived in Quincy next to Wollaston Beach. The air was full of salt tang as they drove toward it, the scent making Audrey feel oddly restless, as if there was something scratching at the back of her mind, wanting to get out. Her parents had parked the car, and gone up the steps to greet their waiting friends, but Audrey had hung back, staring at the waves rolling in on the shore. She’d seen oceans in films and TV and pictures, but nothing had prepared her for the impact of being in its presence. The roaring sound of the waves gave everything she saw a shocking immediacy, and that same aura of pleasure she got when she hurt someone. Something in her blood cried out to her: home, home, HOME . . .

She ran toward it—through the traffic—as fast as she could.

Her parents were alerted by the blaring of car horns. They saw her cross the parking lot and then the beach. They followed, running, shouting for her to come back, saw her run into the water, floundering out through the waves fully dressed and clearly intending to go onward as long as she could.

When her father got to her and dragged her out, Audrey fought him, screaming and biting and doing everything she could to get away and back to the water. But the adults were stronger than she was.

Audrey and her parents spent the rest of the day at the ER. Audrey spent the next three years going to a child psychologist, to whom she’d lied prettily and comprehensively until he pronounced her thoroughly adjusted. Even while she was seeing him, she’d gone back to the ocean as often as she could, always in secret. It wasn’t that hard. She learned how to tag along with families on public transportation as if she was one of them. She figured out how to negotiate the subway system. She learned how to make adults look right past her, even at midnight. The ocean never had the effect on her that it had had the first time, the sense of coming home, and that infuriated her. The sea had something she wanted, and she didn’t know what it was, and she had no way to force the sea to surrender that thing—whatever it was—to her.

So Audrey waited. She’d learned to wait, after all. She might not have any virtues but patience, but the amount of patience she had more than made up for her lack elsewhere.

With puberty, her sense of difference grew stronger. When she’d been younger, she’d lured and killed things that were small and tame—cats, dogs, rabbits and mice—but mostly for the power killing them gave her over others. Now she did it for another reason: for the joy in their pain. For the thrill of drinking the hot blood and the savor of biting into still-living flesh. For the ecstasy of the kill.

She was very careful. Adulthood was only a few years away, and with it would come freedom. She would do nothing to risk losing that. Soon after the incident with the sea, her parents had begun vacationing at a place called Endor Lake. The psychologist Audrey had been seeing suggested that the quiet, the rural setting, would be good for her . . . and if she still had an unhealthy fascination with water, well, the lake would be a good deal safer than the ocean.

Of course she’d showed no “unhealthy fascination” with water. That they knew of. What she did after her parents went to sleep—well, that was her secret.

The Jordans met and befriended the Webers, and their respective offspring, Audrey and Blake, became fast friends. Both sets of parents approved of the friendship, and all the other adults at the campground agreed, and said Audrey and Blake were ideal pals and kept each other out of trouble. Summers at Lake Endor were as perfect as her life could get. No boring school. The lake all to herself if she wanted it that way. And Blake to train.

And when the desire to hunt and to kill grew too strong to ignore . . . there were thousands of acres of wilderness around her, and thousands of animals whose deaths would not be noticed.

And it was there, at Lake Endor, the year she was sixteen, that Audrey finally learned the truth.

Her adoptive parents didn’t want her wandering around Lake Endor alone at night, but then, they wouldn’t have liked most of the things Audrey did. She took care to make sure they never discovered how little she slept, and how much of her time was spent out in the woods and the lake after they thought she was asleep. Later it wouldn’t matter, but until later came, she took great pains to lull their suspicions and keep secret the things that she did.

The night she learned the truth, she was out, as usual. It was late—or early—no more than ninety minutes to dawn. Usually she’d already be back inside, but tonight she’d taken down a deer, and the hunt and the kill had taken longer than she’d expected.

She’d run the animal down and killed it with her bare hands. She was stronger and faster than any mere human—another thing she needed to keep secret.

But not for much longer. In a few years she’d be of legal age. Her parents were already talking about colleges. That was fine with Audrey. They could talk all they liked. She didn’t intend to either attend or graduate, but she did need to figure out how she could continue to enjoy the life she had had up until now if things changed.

She was washing the deer’s blood off her face and hands at the edge of the lake when she saw something in the lake begin to glow with a beautiful blue-green light. It looked as if someone had switched a lamp on at the bottom of the lake. Audrey had never in her life known fear, and this phenomenon didn’t trigger it. Without thought, she dove into the water and swam toward the glow, drawn by an instinct as primal as that which led salmon to return to the waters where they were born. As she swam downward, she saw that the light came from a shining blue-green pool on the bottom of the lake, as if it were somehow a pond within a lake, but a pond made of light and cool fire and—somehow—of music. Its soft glow illuminated the waving strands of water-grass surrounding it, and struck dull gleams from beer bottles and soda cans.

It filled her with an inescapable longing. Exactly the way she had felt the first time she saw the ocean.

When she reached the glowing pool, she dove into it.

A warmth like sunlight enfolded her, and an instant later she was not swimming down, but up, through water that was now salt, not fresh, and which glowed with a light from above. She reached the surface, filling her lungs with air in greedy hunger. It had never occurred to her that she might drown.

Where is this? she wondered.

Wherever it was, it wasn’t Lake Endor at night in July. The sky was daylight bright—a brilliant tropical blue—but there was no sign of sun. The strangeness, the impossibility of it, filled Audrey with a rising satisfaction, as if something that had been eternally mysterious now, at last, made sense.

This is where I belong. I don’t know what, or how . . . but I know that. This is where I came from. Even if that’s impossible.

She looked around herself. There was no sign of shore. The ocean stretched from horizon to horizon. Below her, no farther down than the deep end of a swimming pool, lay the white sand of the sea-bed. It was as perfect as a painting, with clumps of sea-grass, schools of bright fish darting in and out of rock outcroppings, and seashells in fabulous jewel-bright colors. There was absolutely no sign of anything made or marred by the hand of man. Directly beneath her lazily kicking feet was the glowing pool through which she had passed. On this side it was ringed not with discarded trash, but with stones and shells in an enormous—a deliberate—pattern.

The air was sweet and warm, and she laughed aloud, splashing the surface for the sheer joy of it, and then diving down to swim beneath the blood-warm water. Swarms of tiny fish darted away at her approach. She had never before felt such a sense of belonging. All her life she had been a stranger in a world she could not navigate by instinct. Now that feeling was gone. She didn’t know what came next, or what unasked questions might be answered, but for now, just having this much was enough. She dove underwater and swam after the fish, delighted when they scurried away and then darted back curiously. She felt no sense of fatigue—and anyway, the glowing pool was still there. She could return home any time she wanted to.

Then, suddenly, the schools of bright fish vanished, swimming away faster than she could follow.

Audrey surfaced again. There was a new sound on the wind. Bizarre, alien, half howling, half keening. In the distance she could see a line of white foam upon the water, as if something—something large—was swimming along the surface. Suddenly cautious, Audrey looked around for the glowing pool through which she had come. It was still visible, but she was shocked at how far away it was. She’d gone further from it than she’d thought. She started to swim toward it—not on the surface, where the going was slow and she was blind to things under the water, but down near the bottom.

A few minutes later her lungs burned for air, and she cut toward the surface. Just as she broke the surface, something struck her in the ribs—hard—the way a school of dolphins will attack a shark. She kicked and fought, gaining only a panicky impression of something large and snakelike. There was time for one gasp of air before it coiled around her and pulled her underwater. She could not force her mind to make sense of what she was seeing as she kicked herself away from it and swam toward the pool as fast as she could.

Her pursuer was faster. It outpaced her, getting between her and the glowing pool that was Audrey’s only hope of safety. As Audrey backpedaled in the water she could see it—her!—clearly.

The sea-creature was nearly twelve feet long from head to tail. Her mouth was open in a silent scream of rage, and the gill-slits along her ribs showed that she had no need to surface to breathe. Above the waist, she was nearly as human as Audrey was. She even had the same red hair and green eyes—but her fingers ended in talons, and her teeth were needle-sharp. From the waist down . . .

If a mermaid had possessed a long thick tail halfway between serpent and eel, it would have looked something like this creature. There was a long finny crest running along the top and bottom of her tail, and like an eel, she undulated her entire body to move through the water. Unlike an eel, her body scales were a vivid blue green—shading to deep indigo along the top, and to a yellow green on her underside. The dorsal and ventral fins were poppy-orange, and there were eye-shaped spots along her flanks in the same color.

In the natural world, only predators are brightly colored. Hadn’t that been in some crappy wildlife documentary her parents had thought she’d want to watch? The thought passed through Audrey’s mind as she headed for the surface again. If she could just hyperoxygenate, she could get back through the pool again, and . . .

There was a sudden sharp stabbing pain in her calf, nauseatingly wrong. Blood billowed in clouds through the crystal water—her blood. Audrey floundered, barely able to keep from gulping down seawater and too distracted by pain to concentrate on reaching the surface. It took only seconds for her to orient herself and start swimming again, but again came the sickening jolt—this time, as her attacker tore a meaty chunk out of her thigh. Audrey felt queasy at the thought that monster was eating her alive, desperate for air, and for the first time in her life, it occurred to her that she could die. She could lose the game-of-the-moment. She could fail. For the very first time in her life, she felt fear.

Stupid and weak and losers like all those others, but not me—not me!

A rage greater than her pain filled her, driving out the fear. And Audrey. . . . changed.

It was like being ripped apart from inside—or like stretching limbs cramped with a long unnatural confinement. She felt her body unfolding in ways she hadn’t imagined possible—as if it were a suit that had been packed in a box and was now being unfolded to use.

This is what I am, she thought in wonder, even as she tore herself free from her attacker with newfound strength. I’m not one of them. I always knew it. This is who I really am.

The pain of her wounds, the burning of her lungs, the desperation to breathe—all that was gone. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she gulped in water and felt it whoosh out through her gills. As reflexively as she had once run, jumped, ridden a bike, she drove her body through the water with powerful strokes of her muscular tail.

Only one thing was the same: her need to escape her attacker and reach the glowing pool on the sea floor.

Daughter. Lovely daughter. My Peneia, my darling. Come back to me so I can eat you . . .

Timosia’s words were clear in Audrey’s mind, and with them, so many other things also became suddenly clear. My name is Peneia. Not Audrey. Peneia. Peneia! It was if she’d suddenly remembered a book she’d read a long time ago, forgotten until now.

Lamia. That was what this creature—her mother!—was. That was what she was.

Audrey—Peneia—would have died that day, in that world, if other Lamiae had not followed the first one. Timosia abandoned the chase in order to defend her meal from her sisters, giving Audrey the precious seconds she needed to escape.

Audrey dove into the bright warmth of the eldritch pool just as needle-sharp teeth closed on the tip of her tail. With the strength of desperation, she tore herself free.

The lake was dark, and shockingly cold after the warmth of the strange paradise. For a moment, floundering through the dark cold of the lake, wounded, bleeding, aching, Audrey thought she was doomed to spend the rest of her life at its bottom, unable to change back, to pass for human once more, unable to leave the water. Again, she felt fear. But once she’d calmed down, the change was easy enough to work in reverse. And when she had, she discovered her flesh was unmarked. No sign of the wounds she had taken, not even a scar.

One less thing to explain to Mom and Dad Jordan . . .

It was nearly dawn when Audrey crawled out of the lake and sneaked back to her bed. She had a lot to think about.

Later, she would put more pieces of the puzzle together. She would discover that she had been right, that the name for what she was . . .

Was Lamia.

Lamiae were cannibals, as willing to devour one another as to eat anything else living that crossed their path. She studied myth and legend with a fervor that surprised her parents, putting together hints and crumbs of clues until she came to realize that in order to protect their daughters from being eaten—for Lamiae had no sons—Lamiae would take their newborn infants and abandon them somewhere on land.

And unsuspecting humans would find the children, and raise them until the day they could first take their seagoing form, and they would return to the world they’d been born for.

The larger questions—how Lamiae moved between the two worlds, if they did—whether there were more Portals connecting the two worlds than the one in Lake Endor—how her mother had recognized her—and how Audrey had gained the knowledge of what she was—didn’t interest her particularly. These things were boring and irrelevant. If they became important, she would think about them then. But for now, it was enough to know what she was, how she had wound up where she had, and think about her future with all this new information to calculate into it.

It wasn’t the last time Audrey—she never spoke her true name aloud, for there would be time later to truly claim it—dared the glowing pool at the bottom of Lake Endor, and each time she learned more. It was a gateway not just to another world, but to many other worlds, all filled with creatures like herself, creatures that were straight out of storybooks. She didn’t believe in magic, but she didn’t know what else to call this. Magic was real.

With the patience she had learned in her first years of life she restrained her appetite, used her powers to charm, and lured some of the least wary to her in order to interrogate them. And when they had told her all they knew, she usually let them go. There was no point in making too many enemies, after all. If she was going to do more than merely survive on the other side of the doorway, she needed to know as much about that world as she knew about the one she had grown up in.

She approached this one carefully.

She had encountered a nixie (harmless), and a siren (harmless to her) and several variations on the theme of “mermaid.” The whale-tailed ones wouldn’t allow her anywhere near. The fish-tailed were relatively benign if you were female, but one that she had encountered all by herself was so utterly brainless that Audrey had eaten her in exasperation, leaving behind her man-made “treasures” scattered over the sand. Besides, she’d had the audacity to sport the same crimson hair-color as Audrey.

This one, though. . . .

She scented human blood in the water, and with her appetite awakened, followed the scent to its source, where she discovered a grey-skinned mermaid with the tail of a hammerhead shark finishing off a human leg. The mermaid was all lithe muscle and razor teeth, and Audrey stopped dead in the water, hoping she hadn’t been spotted.

Too late.

The mermaid made a lazy revolution in the water to turn to stare straight at her. The mermaid’s flat, dead eyes—shark eyes—seemed to gaze through her. Then she smiled, showing multiple rows of pointed teeth.

“Hello, Lamia,” the mermaid purred. “Care for a bite?”

When Audrey froze, the mermaid laughed, and tossed the leg at her. Reflexively, Audrey caught it, and her mouth watered.

“Go ahead, finish him off,” the mermaid said carelessly. “Waste not, want not.”

Appetite overcame reasoning, and Audrey tore big chunks out of the thigh. It was the best thing she had ever tasted.

“You’re young, aren’t you? New to . . . all this.” The mermaid waved her hands around her, and smiled again. “Well, you’re in luck. I’m sated, in a good mood, and willing to talk. What do you want to know?”

Audrey paused and swallowed a bit. “Why do I sometimes go where there aren’t any humans, and sometimes where there are?”

“Because you don’t concentrate on where you want to go when you enter a Portal, dear,” the mermaid replied. “There are no humans Underhill. It’s another world entirely. Safer for us, not poisoned . . . but boring, if you ask me. Sometimes our kind call it Undersea, it’s all the same thing. Another world, or worlds, where humans aren’t. Just concentrate when you reach the Portal, and you’ll go where you want. Next?”

“Are there more like me where humans are?”

“Like you, not so much. Lamiae generally only cross into the humans’ world for a quick bite when they get a craving for manflesh. Same for my people. And of course Lamiae have to go to the humans’ world to leave their young for humans to bring up. But there are Underhill creatures still in the human world, and not all of them live in the sea. Plenty live on the land. What else?” The mermaid hung unmoving in the warm tropical waters. Warm, but not clear; there was plastic detritus here, on the sea floor, and hanging in the water.

“Do you . . . do you know much about Lamiae?”

The mermaid threw her head back to laugh, but then provided Audrey with an entire encyclopedia’s worth of information while Audrey finished the leg and dropped the bones down to the sand. “I like you, fire-hair,” the mermaid continued. “I think you are going to be a fine predator. You’ll never be my rival, but you’ll be more than a match for most of your prey. But it’s time for me to take my own Portal home—and probably time for you to do the same.” She wriggled her fingers in farewell. “Remember to never eat a human except in cases where you can leave no trace that it was you. They’re weak, but their weapons are powerful, and if you betray our continued existence to them, your own kind will forget trying to eat each other and band together to track you down and eliminate you.”

She turned to swim off, then looked back over her shoulder as she moved away. “And never forget your power to control the minds of humans. It will serve you well.”

And that was how she learned that the magical creatures weren’t all on the other side of that magic doorway. A lot of them lived right here on Planet Earth. Now that she could . . . change . . . Audrey could see them. Talk to them. Most of them were warily friendly, even when they knew she was a Lamia. They seemed to know instinctively what she’d discovered on her first trip through the doorway: she was young, and relatively weak. Not much of a threat to anyone.

Not yet.

But she would be. Now she didn’t have to think about the future and growing up or college and getting a job or any of that nonsense. All she had to do was gain the strength and power and cunning to survive among her own people. In the end, fairy tale or not, it was a lot like the human world she’d grown up in, except for the fact that the cutthroat competition involved actually cutting throats.

So she’d wait. And learn. And when the day came that she was ready to give up pretending to be human forever . . .

Oh, she had plans.

CHAPTER SIX

Yesterday had been more fun than Audrey could have dreamed. She’d been spending the last several summers pushing Blake farther and farther in the direction she wanted him to go. Hearing him suggest they use that whiny little cow as a playtoy just proved how successful she’d been. She bet Blake had no idea how far she intended their little game to go. He probably intended something like giving little Ollie a good scare, get her drunk or roofie her, and maybe just get her clothes off and take some shots with his camera and post them to his friends to ruin her reputation. He wasn’t the rapey type . . . yet. But with her in charge, he would be. And then . . . there would go all his plans, and his family’s plans. Burned to ashes.

And no matter how hot the fire, nothing about it would touch her. She was eighteen this year, and that meant she had plenty of options. Go along with her foster parents’ plans for a while? Kill them and vanish through the pool in the bottom of the lake? Or—best of all—frame Blake for killing them?

The more she thought about that, the better she liked the plan. If she was going to make an exit, she wanted it to be an epic one, and what better than to stage a huge, bloody massacre, set it up so that Blake took the blame, and escape? Maybe she could even get him to massacre both families, his and hers. . . .

And Ollie, of course. Audrey was pretty sure the crashing through the bushes that had temporarily interrupted her and Blake’s picnic yesterday had been little Ollie Poole, and not (as Blake had insisted) a deer.

She’d been prepared to find Ollie a wet mess when next she popped in to visit the Webers, and had a variety of scenarios in mind to continue the baby’s mental torture. She’d been torn between rubbing it in, and pretending that Ollie had hallucinated the whole thing.

But now . . .

She’d seen the studly lifeguard bringing Ollie back to the cabins when she and Blake had finished their little rendezvous, and that had thrown a whole new variable into her calculations. Audrey’d had her eye on Dylan herself: he was good looking, well built, and new around here. The perfect plaything—if he’d shown the slightest sign of interest. Which he hadn’t. She’d already decided to make him pay for that little lapse in judgment, and if he’d set his sights on little Ollie, he’d definitely sealed his fate. She just hadn’t made up her mind as to the best way. Maybe Dylan should be the sole survivor of the killing spree Audrey had planned? No. He was a nobody, a drifter. It would be much more fun to make golden boy Blake of the Lake suffer. He had so much more to lose.

But Dylan’s involvement certainly changed things. How much did he know? And what did he intend to do about it? Had little Ollie gone crying to her new boyfriend about her broken heart?

One thing was certain: if somehow Blake Weber wasn’t yet aware he had a romantic rival . . . well, Audrey would be happy to tell him.

After all, what were friends for?

She’d been waiting for the Weber brats to leave for the day before going next door to tell Blake his plus-one had gotten both a backbone and a new boyfriend, and she’d dressed with extra care. Boys weren’t that bright, and she wanted Blake to be very clear on what he’d be giving up if he displeased her. She was brushing out her hair and looking out her window when she saw the boyfriend himself—Dylan Waverly—walking up to the Weber cabin door. A few minutes later Dylan left again with little Ollie in tow.

Well. Wasn’t that interesting? She immediately changed her plan from being the bearer of bad tidings to consoling Blake for his humiliating loss—and his failure to keep little Ollie on the hook. Before she left the house, she kissed Dad Jordan on the cheek, and told him she was going to go meet her friends. He smiled at her and told her to have a good time.

She wondered what she’d feel when she killed him. She hadn’t killed a human being yet. It should be delicious.

Audrey walked into the Weber cabin without knocking. The kitchen smelled of bacon grease and burned toast, and the tinny sounds of prerecorded explosions and gunfire from the living room told her the brats were here but out of the way before she even walked in the door. She strolled in through both bedrooms and the bathroom—Blake’s parents had a “privacy curtain” up making a narrow little corridor to walk through that did absolutely nothing to conceal that Aidan was gone and Harper was sleeping off another binge. In the kitchen, all the breakfast dishes were stacked in a haphazard pile in the middle of the kitchen table—not as a prelude to cleaning, but just to get them out of the way. Blake sat in one of the kitchen chairs, eating a strip of bacon and staring at nothing. Audrey slid into the empty chair at the table and picked up his mug of coffee.

“Hey, Auds,” Blake said listlessly. Audrey felt a lick of anger—this was not how she expected to be greeted!

“Looks like you gave the help the day off,” she said sweetly. Blake winced, ever-so-slightly, and that appeased her just a bit.

“Who the hell does that guy think he is?” he blurted out.

“The guy who’s stolen little Ollie right out from under you, that’s who he thinks he is,” Audrey said. “So much for her being desperately in love with you. You must be losing your touch, big man.”

Blake’s face twisted with anger. “She is in love with me,” he growled. “She is. She’ll see. If she knows what’s good for her.”

“Of course she will,” Audrey said insincerely. “Who could resist you, after all, Gaston?”

Blake’s face darkened further.

“On the other hand, why do something well if it’s not worth doing at all?” she asked. “You want her to stay away from Dylan—and him from her. Why bother making her think it’s her idea?”

Blake smiled, his interest piqued. “You sound like you have a plan,” he said.

“Don’t I always? And you’ll love this one.”

Maybe not the part where little Ollie goes to the bottom of the lake and never comes up again. But you don’t have to know about that part until afterwards . . .

The next couple of days passed without incident—except that when Dylan wasn’t around, that grey fog descended on Livy again, and just getting up and doing the things the Webers expected her to do took all her willpower. She even went to bed early each night, right after finishing the dishes, and no one seemed to notice. Her memory was unreliable, and concentrating on ordinary things was exhausting. On Tuesday, Mrs. Weber gave Olivia a credit card and her car keys, and Olivia drove into Endor to do the shopping. The whole effort of making a decision to do something and then following through seemed to sap all her energy; a trip that should have taken an hour at best ate the whole day, and when she finally got back, she learned Dylan had turned up looking for her and left disappointed. On Wednesday, she’d taken one of the “Adirondack” chairs around to the back of the house and was sitting in front of her screened porch bedroom trying to concentrate on a book when Dylan stopped by to invite her to come and watch the fireworks next week at the Resort. She’d hesitated, imagining how awkward it would be—after all, Blake had invited her up here on the pretext that she was his girlfriend, and that didn’t play too well if she was running around with another guy.

Seeing her indecision, Dylan had quickly turned the invitation into one that included the Webers, and left her to decide whether or not to deliver it. She consoled herself by deciding that the Resort’s Fourth of July party would be so big and bustling that Dylan wouldn’t know whether she was there or not. She certainly didn’t intend to go. It had been a generous gesture on Dylan’s part to become her imaginary boyfriend, but she didn’t really need one once she discovered that Blake had been her imaginary boyfriend, so to speak.

By now, the scene in the woods between Blake and Audrey that she’d inadvertently eavesdropped on had changed in Olivia’s mind. She had managed to convince herself that she’d imagined what she’d overheard, or misunderstood it, or she actually had gotten sunstroke, or . . . something . . . and trying to figure out which was too exhausting to contemplate. Blake didn’t treat her any differently than he had before, and there were even times Olivia completely forgot that she wasn’t Blake’s actual girlfriend. She hadn’t even seen Audrey anywhere around since then, and that helped. If it hadn’t been for Dylan turning up with that invitation, she probably would have been able to convince herself it had never happened at all.

Later that day, the weather had turned unseasonably hot and muggy, and by the end of the day everyone had been tired and snappish (and none of the little bungalows had been retrofitted with a/c, to add to the unalloyed joy). Olivia was completely unused to the humidity and had been shocked at how awful it made her feel. She had gone to bed early and spent a restless night on the screened porch, too uncomfortable to sleep. Even when the air stopped feeling like a sponge filled with hot water, the relief only seemed to put her more on edge—as if the energy freed up was turned directly into worry. And no matter how many times she told herself there was no reason to worry, it made her worry more. Blake—Audrey—Dylan—Blake—round and round in a circle.

When at last the sky began to turn pale—though sunrise was still a good hour or more away—Olivia finally gave up any hope of a night’s sleep and got dressed, telling herself she could go back to bed after breakfast. At the rate she was going through the books she’d loaded onto her phone, she was going to have to go to the Association Library to reload her phone again—or find out if the Resort would let the cabin people borrow some of those old books. The novels had been—odd, quaint, really dated but kind of interesting. She’d just settled herself in the kitchen and was debating whether or not to put on the kettle or the coffee (and turn on the lights) when Blake appeared.

He was bundled up in his heavy terrycloth bathrobe, wearing his Speedo and a pair of rubber flip-flops. He was stuffing his hair into his swim-cap as he walked in—he’d talked mournfully about the fact that competing at the next level would involve getting a swimmer’s crewcut—and his nose plugs were strung around his neck. He was obviously on his way to do his morning swim. She was usually still asleep when he started. Olivia knew that he did three hours in the lake each morning—up to Diving Rock and back, probably more than once. He couldn’t do anything fancy in the way of training, but he could build his endurance. Or so Mr. Weber had said during one of his interminable discussions of Blake’s training program. If it was cold enough at this hour for Olivia to be wearing her heaviest hoodie—and even in the kitchen it was freezing—she shuddered to think of what the lake itself was like.

He was alone, and Olivia frowned, puzzled. “Where’s your dad?”

“Up the road trying a new fly-rod at a stream that’s supposed to have trout,” Blake said. “He said so last night, and that he was leaving before I got up, remember?”

She didn’t, and wondered if that should worry her. Had she heard the van drive away? She should have. Had Mr. Weber been at dinner last night? Yes. That much she did remember. But she’d gone to her “room” right after that, and gotten caught up in that hamster-wheel of being unable to decide anything, and had buried herself in the blankets and deliberately tried to shut off outside noises . . . she must have been more successful at that than she’d thought.

It wasn’t exactly as if the Webers kept her in the loop anyway, now, was it?

But the thought that she’d zoned out so far as to totally miss something so major left her feeling even more unsettled and preoccupied than she had been, so much so that when Blake flipped on the light, she jerked in startlement.

“But I’m glad you’re up,” he said as he came into the kitchen, “because—”

Whatever he’d been going to say, the sentence remained unfinished, as the front door opened, bringing a blast of chill morning air and Audrey Jordan. She was wearing a hoodie with “Lake Girl” stenciled on the front, and had another hoodie slung over one arm.

“Ready to go?” she said brightly. She smiled confidentially at Olivia, just as if they were BFFs and she’d been expecting to see her in the kitchen at this hour. “We figured we’d give Mr. Weber a day off; I can certainly use a stopwatch. But it will be easier with two. I brought an extra jacket.” She held it out to Olivia. “C’mon. It’ll be fun. And we can go into town for breakfast afterward.”

No matter what Olivia had imagined, she could not have imagined this sudden thaw on Audrey’s part. She stood there tongue-tied, her mind spinning. What had caused it? Guilt? Second thoughts? Had she only imagined Audrey didn’t like her in the first place? Maybe Blake had told Audrey he didn’t love her, he loved Olivia, that the picnic she’d stumbled over had all been a big mistake. Maybe he was ashamed to tell Olivia what had happened.

Audrey thrust the hoodie toward her, even though Olivia was already wearing one. “C’mon. If we don’t go now, the lake’s going to be full of boats.”

“C’mon,” Blake echoed. He kissed Olivia on the cheek and headed for the front door.

It was the kiss that made up Olivia’s mind for her. Blake wouldn’t kiss her in front of Audrey if he didn’t mean it, would he? So she must be right. He’d chosen her over Audrey after all. Maybe having Dylan around had made him wake up and realize he was going to have to make a choice if he didn’t want to lose her.

And whether he had or not, the idea of being rude to Audrey—to anybody, really—made her feel awful. Like she was violating every rule of civilization. Anything was preferable to that.

Anything she could imagine, anyway.

The outdoors had the exotic hush that only dawn could bring. There was no wind, not even a breeze, and the morning chill seemed to radiate from everything at once. There were no sounds from the night birds and animals, and the daytime ones weren’t on the move yet. The lake was absolutely still, so much so that it didn’t look like water at all, but like a vast lightless expanse—a bottomless pit into which the unwary might fall forever. The only light came from the security lights on their poles, and just as Olivia noted that, they clicked off.

The timer might think there’s enough light to see by, but I don’t. Oh, well. The sun will be up pretty quickly.

By the time the three of them reached the boat dock, the sky was a deep pre-dawn blue, and only the brightest stars were visible. The lake had begun to gather mist to itself, so that it appeared as if the water was steaming and about to boil.

Blake dropped his robe and kicked out of his flip-flops as he walked to the end of the dock. He entered the water almost silently and began to swim out toward the middle of the lake.

“C’mon,” Audrey said again, and suddenly Olivia wished Blake weren’t so far away already. She looked around for the boat they were to follow Blake in, but the only thing tied up at the dock was a bright orange canoe. She stopped dead, and when she did, she realized she was still carrying Audrey’s hoodie. She thrust it toward her, and Audrey took the motion as an opportunity to grab Olivia’s wrist.

“Don’t worry,” Audrey said. “It’s a lot more stable than it looks. I won’t tip it over accidentally.”

It was go along and get in the canoe, or make a big scene right here and maybe make Blake decide she wasn’t worth having after all. Olivia took a deep breath and let Audrey help her down into the boat. She was still carrying Audrey’s hoodie.

Once Olivia was sitting cautiously on the thwart in the middle (no matter what Audrey said, a canoe was a lot more tippy than the jet ski had been), Audrey stepped down and knelt in the bow. Now Olivia could see that under the long baggy hoodie, Audrey was only wearing a bikini. She must be freezing. . . . Olivia wondered if she should have changed to her swimsuit before they came out, but . . . no. She wasn’t planning to go into the water. Especially before it had warmed up.

Now, when it was far too late, Olivia decided that she did not want to be here, and that she should have done anything—including locking herself in the bathroom—to keep from being here. No matter how much she kept telling herself she was fine, she was safe, nobody wanted to hurt her, she still felt on the edge of panic. Being in the canoe didn’t help, either, because it put her vantage point about equal to sitting on the ground, and she wasn’t used to seeing things from this level.

While Olivia was trying to cope with the feeling of disorientation and figure out how she could get out of the canoe without falling into the water, Audrey leaned over and untied the canoe from the dock.

“Just stay right where you are. I’ll do all the work,” she said cheerily, picking up the single paddle and backing the canoe deftly out into the lake.

The narrow vessel glided swiftly northward along the shore, and then arced slowly out into deeper water. Olivia knew that a canoe was operated with a single paddle—which meant it took a lot of practice both to get somewhere and not to capsize—but even though she’d never seen her out on the lake before, Audrey seemed to be an expert. Between the mist and the dawn twilight, it was hard to tell where the water ended and the land began. She couldn’t even see the resort from here, let alone where Blake was.

“Aren’t you worried that we’ll miss Blake? Or run over him?” Olivia asked hesitantly. They’d been on the water for about ten minutes now, and she’d gotten completely turned around.

“Not really,” Audrey said coolly. “He can drown for all I care. And so can you.”

Olivia turned toward her, mouth hanging open in shock. Audrey tossed the paddle into the water and flung all her weight to the side.

The canoe obediently turned over.

It was cold and dark—too dark to see which way the surface was—and her clothes were a sodden weight holding her immobile. She could still manage to get to the surface if she worked at it—and if she knew which way the surface was.

Don’t panic. You’ll drown if you panic.

The still voice seemed to come from outside her, though Olivia knew it hadn’t. And anybody who grew up on the California coast had better have a good idea of what to do if they fell in.

First things first. Get rid of your clothing; it’s dragging you down.

She forced herself not to fight, to hold her breath and drift motionlessly in the water. Her lungs were already burning—she hadn’t had the chance to take a deep breath before she hit the water. She closed her eyes, the better to concentrate, and focused on getting her hoodie off. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves carefully, then shoved it up over her head. (If it had been the kind with a zipper, it would’ve been easier, but she had to work with what she had.) She opened her eyes and kicked off her flip-flops, catching sight of the dim shapes in their clouds of bubbles as they floated toward the surface.

Good. I know where up is.

Something brushed against her with a ghostly gentleness. It took all of Olivia’s willpower not to suck in a big lungful of lake and try to scream. It’s only Audrey’s hoodie. I was carrying it when I fell in. That’s all. It’s just drifting along with me.

By now she was desperate for air and very cold. She kicked toward the surface, or at least she thought she was. What if she wasn’t? What if she was diving instead?

She pushed that thought away stubbornly. Even if she were going down, it would orient her.

Something slithered past her bare ankle, there and gone. She clapped a hand over her mouth and pinched her nose shut to keep from inhaling water, though all she wanted to do was shriek. Fish, Olivia told herself desperately. Just a fish. Or grass. Or lake trash. Get to the surface. Then worry.

Then the something was back, and this time it tightened around her ankle.

And then it yanked her down.

Dylan Waverly shared an eight-bed room with whichever of the other (male) lifeguards were sleeping at the Resort on any particular day. In theory, everybody who worked at the Resort slept here—room and board were part of the summer’s wages—but a lot of the staff lived in Endor or one of the nearby towns, and chose to drive (or bike) back and forth, so Dylan’s eight-bed room was rarely fully populated. Zeek slept here almost every night (he’d deflected every attempt to learn his first name with bashful good humor, and though he’d worked here for the past four summer seasons, the other lifeguards all swore they didn’t know it), Bobby, Justin, and Ted mostly during the week (they swapped first shift at the pool around with the others so they could spend weekends at home); Sam and Dennis only when they didn’t have kitchen chores. They were part-time kitchen staff and groundskeepers in addition to being lifeguards, so they usually slept in the quarters of the rest of the kitchen staff, whose workday began at four a.m. Down the hall, the girls (Lila, Brittany, Joyce, and Devra) had much the same arrangement.

Today Dylan was sharing with Zeek and Justin, neither of whom could be routed out from under the covers until the last minute (the pool opened at eight, and they were on first shift), but Dylan had always been an early riser. He woke before dawn—near astronomical dawn, as Lila had been happy to tell him, which was more than an hour before actual dawn—to savor the morning quiet.

Quiet though it was, the kitchen staff had already been at work for an hour and more, and by six some of the groundskeepers would be at their jobs. So it was really only the guests who were still asleep at this hour. He had the lake mostly to himself, aside from some fishermen off to try the lake, or one of the local streams, and of course Blake of the Lake and his father. It took a lot of pairs of hands to make a vacation paradise that seemed to run entirely by itself, but anyone who didn’t like the work just somehow didn’t stick around at the Resort, or keep coming back. Those who did considered themselves part of an elite community—one that Dylan knew he was not yet a full member of, but one he hoped to join.

For as long as you can stay out of sight, anyway. The talisman helps, but if it blinds them, it blinds you, too. You know perfectly well that both the Mhuir Chéasta and the Farraige Olc are hunting you—the only difference is, the Mhuir Chéasta don’t really want to find you . . .

But that was a problem for tomorrow, or next year, or never, so Dylan put it out of his thoughts.

By just before five a.m. he was headed down to the boatshed. Dylan loved the lake at this hour. It was still too dark for mortal eyes to make out any detail on the far side of the lake, but Dylan did not operate under any such handicap. He’d never admitted, not even to himself, that part of the impetus for these early morning vigils was Blake Weber himself. Lake Endor wasn’t a swimming pool, and if Blake of the Lake cramped up, it really wouldn’t matter that his father was out there in a rowboat waving his stopwatch. There was no way one person could haul a swimmer in distress into a rowboat—that was why the Rescue staff had jet skis specifically outfitted for just that. And training.

And even now that Dylan had met Olivia, he wasn’t quite willing to let Blake drown. If he got into trouble, that was.

Dylan peered closer at the dock and frowned. There was a different boat tied up at the dock this morning, a canoe instead of the usual rowboat.

Then Audrey Jordan and Blake Weber came out of the Weber cabin with Olivia in tow. Dylan’s frown deepened. Something was going on. He watched as Blake walked to the end of the dock, kicked off his sandals, and tossed his robe to the planks before slipping into the water. Dylan could imagine Blake’s grimace as he dashed quickly into the chilly water. Too bad you don’t have a nice fur coat to keep you warm, fella.

As Blake began swimming out along his usual route with long assured strokes, Dylan turned his attention back to Olivia and Audrey. He watched apprehensively as Audrey coaxed Olivia into the canoe.

Even if Audrey has some spitefulness planned—and I’m sure she does—there isn’t much she can do to Livy other than tip the canoe over and dunk them both. Livy says she’s at least an adequate swimmer—and you’re right here.

But something didn’t feel right.

Relax. You’ve been over every inch of that lake. There’s nothing in it but a few fish of unusual size and a lot of rusting beer cans. His hand went to the talisman around his neck. Not that you’d know if there were, he admitted wryly.

But there was no harm in keeping an eye on things. At least for a little while.

Dylan was once more telling himself he was being overprotective and worrying needlessly when the canoe capsized. Audrey had done it deliberately. He’d seen her. He didn’t see Olivia, but Audrey was still on the surface. He watched her pull off her sweatshirt while treading water. Where was Olivia? Under the canoe? What was going on?

Then Audrey turned and dove—and Dylan saw the flash of a long scaled tail.

Lamia!

All thought of going for the rescue boat vanished in that instant. Lamia were cannibals. And carnivores. Dylan sprang to his feet and dove off the end of the dock, but it was several hundred pounds of enraged Selkie that entered the water.

Olivia flailed at the water, praying she could kick herself free of whatever it was that had grabbed her. Suddenly, blessedly, the grip on her ankle was removed.

Free!

She was desperate for air now; there were tiny points of light dancing across her field of vision. But she was near enough to the surface—the sun had risen enough—that she could distinguish up from down. She reached up and felt her arm break through into the air. She flung back her head, desperate to take that first, life-giving breath—

Then the thing—snake? tentacle?—brushed against her legs once more, at the same time hands grabbed her other wrist. For an instant Olivia relaxed, thinking giddily Oh thank god rescue, and then she realized—the grip on her wrist wasn’t pulling her to the surface. She was being dragged down toward the lake bottom once more. She tried to jerk free, but all that happened was that a hand closed over her other wrist. She couldn’t even see who was holding her.

Panic filled her with an irresistible need to flee, but flight was impossible. She wanted to scream, to fight. Her pulse shook her with every heartbeat, and she didn’t know whether she was blind or whether there wasn’t anything to see.

Then the body that belonged to those hands came kissing-close, close enough to see even in the murky dimness, and Olivia realized what—who—she was seeing.

Audrey.

Audrey was smiling at her. Audrey was holding her wrists, holding her down under the water, drowning her. Olivia struggled as hard as she could, not even caring that what she saw wasn’t possible when all she could think of was that Audrey—smiling Audrey—was keeping her away from the air . . .

You have to let me go! I can’t breathe!

But Audrey just smiled and smiled, and her long red hair swirled around her head like seaweed.

Olivia kicked at her, trying to make Audrey let go, trying to make Audrey understand that there wasn’t any air down here, that she couldn’t breathe, that she was dying. And then something big and flat and muscular wrapped itself around her legs, and Olivia couldn’t kick any more. In her anoxic state, it seemed perfectly reasonable for Audrey to have a tail, a long golden-scaled eel-tail that was wrapped around Olivia’s legs, pinioning her.

Suddenly the hands, the tail, were ripped away, and Olivia drifted free. I was doing something, she thought vaguely.

But right now she couldn’t remember what.

Everything was so dark . . .

No single Selkie was a match for a Lamia. The only safe way to attack one was as a group—if you were crazy enough to do anything but run away. Dylan’s only hope (and it was a slim one) was that Audrey didn’t know what she was yet. Like cuckoos, Lamia left their offspring for others to raise; if this was Audrey’s first transformation to her aquatic form—if she had been fostered in the mortal world—she might be too freaked out by it to kill him. But even if that hadn’t been Olivia in the water, Dylan would have gone on the attack. If Audrey took up residence in the lake, she’d be hunting vacationers as dinner very soon.

Blake Weber would probably be the blue plate special.

Dylan sped through the water, clinging desperately to the knowledge that Olivia was still alive. Then he saw her. Saw them. Audrey was holding Olivia beneath the water until she drowned.

He drove himself forward and rammed Audrey’s side with all his strength.

Shock and surprise made Audrey let go of Olivia, but Dylan didn’t dare look to see how Olivia fared. Audrey was coming for him now, her long tail lashing furiously, her fangs bared. If she was surprised to see a seal in the lake—if she recognized him for what he was—she didn’t show any sign of it. It looked like the only thing on her mind was breakfast, and that meant she already knew what she was.

He had to finish this fast. With every moment that passed, the day was getting brighter. Being discovered by mortals this close to a Portal—even a disused and sealed one—would be very inconvenient . . .

He dodged out of Audrey’s reach at the last possible instant, and then lunged forward, sinking his teeth into her tail and biting hard. Dark blood billowed. Dylan gagged at the metallic taste of Lamia-flesh and spit the chunk in his jaws out quickly, bracing for another attack.

But—unbelievably—Audrey had broken off the attack and was fleeing for shore.

I’ll take what I can get, Dylan thought. He had no compunctions about killing a Lamia—but saving Olivia was more important than finishing the fight.

Where was she? He turned in a quick circle, scanning the lake, and saw her.

No!

She was drifting, softly and slowly, toward the bottom of the lake.

The first thing Olivia knew was that she was coughing so hard it made her thrash bone-jarringly against . . . something. She was numb and aching with cold; desperately trying to breathe; fighting off hands that were holding her down, hurting her. Her head hurt. Her chest hurt. In fact, everything hurt. Even her lungs hurt as she sucked in air with wet tearing rasping sounds.

Suddenly she rolled sideways and coughed and puked up what felt—and tasted—like half the lake, and then lay there, dazed. Panting. Too weak even to open her eyes. Her mouth tasted like blood and garbage. When gentle hands lifted her away from the reeking mess she’d made, she didn’t have even the strength to struggle free of them.

“Here. I’m going to put an oxygen mask on you. It will help,” a familiar voice said.

Olivia moaned weakly, trying to get her eyes to open. The oxygen mask settled over her face. The air she inhaled was sharp and cold; it cleared her brain fog while at the same time making her more aware of how tired and dazed she was. What had happened to her? Had she been in a car crash? It was so hard to think. All she wanted to do was slip beneath the surface of sleep.

Slip beneath . . .

“Stay awake,” the familiar voice said briskly. “I’m going to help you sit up now.”

Dylan. It’s Dylan Waverly, she realized. She felt him manhandle her into a sitting position—she must have been lying down before—and wrap a blanket around her. Then he put his arms around her as if to force warmth into her body. Olivia realized as if for the first time that she was leaning against him. She was cold and wet. What had happened? The pure oxygen might have cleared her head, but it didn’t help her make sense of anything that was going on.

“Talk to me, Livy.” He took the mask away.

“Dylan.” She finally managed to get her eyes open. Her voice was a foggy croak, and her throat hurt worse than it had when she’d gotten her tonsils removed. She was sitting on the floor of the Resort boatshed, leaning against Dylan as if he were a sofa pillow. Bright morning sunlight spilled in through the boathouse doors.

How did I get here?

“Hi,” he said. His voice was shaky. Was he afraid? Of what? “What do you remember?” he asked gently.

“I was in the canoe . . .” she said. Her voice was hoarse, and talking hurt.

The canoe. Blake’s dad was away; she’d been making breakfast (had she?); Audrey came in . . .

“We were going to help Blake swim,” she rasped in confusion. Then what? She and Audrey had gotten into the canoe. Then what? Her clothes were all wet and she had no idea where the canoe was. Had she gone into the water? She must have. Why couldn’t she remember that? It wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot, now, was it? Even if your brain was as messed up as hers was.

“I fell in. Hit my head?” She gazed at Dylan with wide bewildered brown eyes.

Performing the mental twist that turned long Lamia-tail into shapely human legs, Audrey Jordan flung herself out of the water and into the canoe, flipping the craft back upright with the force of her leap. Automatically she ran her hand over her thigh, where that thing had bitten her. All healed now. She knelt in the bottom of the canoe, panting with rage. She had never been this angry in her entire life, and someone was going to pay for it. She wished, now, that she hadn’t abandoned the fight, that she’d made the beast pay for hurting her. But the sun was already up. She didn’t dare risk being seen. All it would take would be one idiot with a smartphone to snap her picture . . .

Think! Or this soft easy life is over, and you don’t have enough allies to survive on the Other Side yet!

She hadn’t gotten a good look at her attacker—just a sleek dark form arrowing through the dim-lit water to steal her prey—but she’d seen its kind before. Selkie.

How dare it interfere?

She growled under her breath. It had been such a wonderful plan! Once Olivia was unconscious, Audrey could take her through the Portal. There were places there where she could stash Olivia and keep her alive until she returned for her. And then, once she had her safely tucked away . . . oh, the wonderful stories she could spin. What if she told Blake that little Ollie had run off to tell tales about him? What if Audrey could make Blake disappear too? He and Ollie would be so much fun to play with on the other side of the Portal. And nobody would ever suspect her at all.

But the Selkie had ruined all her fun. Where had it come from? Not through the Portal. She would have sensed the Portal activating (even if she hadn’t seen its glow, which admittedly was hard to miss, at least when it was dark). And that meant someone here at Lake Endor was a Selkie.

No matter who it was, she would find them, and kill them, and eat them, and then there wouldn’t be anyone to save Olivia, would there?

And next time I get my hands on you, dear little Ollie, I’ll make you wish you’d actually drowned . . .

She looked around. To the south, some jerk in a rowboat. To the north, not too far away, Blake, thrashing around in the water like a wounded pig. To the west, the cabins—several of them showed lights, but nobody was outside at this hour. Eastward, she could see the Resort; its outside lights were on, gleaming through the trees, and the boathouse was lit up as well. But no sign of anything in, or on, or under the lake. No Olivia. No Selkie.

“Lose this?”

Audrey barely kept herself from shrieking and lunging, but it was only Blake. He’d swum up to the side of the canoe while she was distracted. He brandished the oar she’d tossed aside when she’d capsized the canoe.

Audrey forced herself to smile adoringly as she accepted the oar. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Blake.”

“You’d’ve had to swim home,” he said, grinning at her. “Hey, where’s Olivia?”

Frantically, Audrey cast her mind back over the recent past. Had Blake been paying attention when they got into the canoe? She couldn’t remember. She’d have to risk it.

“I’m afraid your little sweetheart has canoe-ophobia,” she said mockingly. “She took one look at it and decided she’d rather go back inside.”

“Yeah, she’s kind of the timid type.” Blake laughed, and Audrey felt a pang of triumph. He hadn’t seen them. And if Olivia said anything different . . . well, it would be her word against Audrey’s, wouldn’t it? “Guess I’d better keep going,” he said, kicking himself away from the canoe.

“Yes. You do that,” Audrey said absently. She picked up the paddle and began to shadow Blake, her mind elsewhere. Her hot fury had faded to a cold enduring rage. Once she found that Selkie . . .

Olivia would be next.

She doesn’t remember, Dylan realized. Not that uncommon after a traumatic accident, really. And Olivia had nearly drowned. He remembered the terror he’d felt seeing her body float slowly to the bottom of the lake; the frantic rush to get her to the surface, back to somewhere he could help her. In all that wild confusion, he’d lost track of Audrey-the-Lamia. Why she hadn’t finished them both off, Dylan didn’t know, but he blessed the luck of it. And Olivia had lived.

With all his heart, Dylan wished he could accept the gift and leave it at that. Let Olivia (if she ever remembered anything she’d seen after she hit the water) think it had all been some kind of muddled near-death hallucination. But Audrey was still out there, and leaving Olivia in ignorance would be leaving her defenseless. As much as Dylan wanted to believe Audrey had attacked Olivia because she was hunting the Mhuir Chéasta’s champion on behalf of the Farraige Olc, he couldn’t make that idea work. With the talisman he wore, he was invisible to all the folk of Underhill and the Courts, at least magically. While Audrey could, without a doubt, see Olivia’s half of the link binding her to Dylan, she might not know it for what it was, and she certainly couldn’t trace it back to its other half—at least, not while he was wearing the talisman. It was Olivia who was Audrey’s target, and if Dylan left her ignorant of what was stalking her, Audrey’s next attempt probably wouldn’t fail.

Of course, he could kill Audrey. Dylan considered that possibility without flinching. Killing her would be something of a public service. Audrey would probably go on to kill a great many other people. That was what Lamiae did. They were very much like mortal psychopaths, except for the fact that they weren’t a bent and broken version of anything. Lamia existed to kill; you could no more have a discussion with one about mercy and morals than you could with a chair.

But even killing Audrey—if he could bring himself to do it—might not be enough to protect his beloved. While he wore the talisman, Dylan was working half-blind. Was Audrey the only Lamia near Lake Endor? Was she the only Otherworldly creature here?

For that matter, is the Portal even sealed? I assumed it was, because the mortals have been settled in this area for so long and the Seleighe Sidhe like to keep things tidy, but while I’m wearing this, I won’t know. Anyone might come through it—for all I know, Audrey’s been commuting through it to Great Ocean knows where all summer. And the others at the Resort say her family’s been coming up here for years . . .

As anyone with any sense would say, the thing to do when you were a Selkie and a Lamia showed up in your workplace was to give notice and leave. Only Dylan couldn’t figure out how to convince Olivia to go with him without telling her the truth—and he had to admit that even the whole truth would probably not be enough to get her to abandon her home, her friends, and her family. Which was what she would have to do, if she hoped to survive the enmity of a Lamia. Run far, run fast, and leave no trace to follow.

So you can’t run and you can’t fight. And you can’t hide Olivia—not from Audrey, at least. But there’s one thing you can do . . .

“The canoe tipped over, yes,” Dylan said gently. “It was lucky I was down at the boathouse and saw it. I don’t think you hit your head, but you did nearly drown. Do you remember why?”

Although she was facing away from him, Olivia was essentially sitting in Dylan’s lap. Even though he had her wrapped in a rescue blanket, he could feel her puzzlement turn to horror, and then to wariness. She remembered what she’d seen. He was sure of it. “I hit my head!” she repeated, a note of desperation in her voice now.

“No,” Dylan said. “Audrey tipped over the canoe deliberately. I saw her do it. And when I got to you, she was holding you under the water. Drowning you. You could see her. You were struggling with her, but she was stronger than you were.”

“It wasn’t real,” Olivia muttered, as if to herself. “Why would she want to do that?” she added plaintively.

Because eating you while you were still alive would have been too much trouble, Dylan thought. He didn’t say it aloud. He needed to convince Olivia of the truth of what she’d seen, not scare her witless.

“I don’t know why,” he temporized. “But what you saw was real,” Dylan said, very gently. “I saw her too. Tail and all.”

He couldn’t see Olivia’s face, but he could feel her body tense. He knew she’d been doing her best to repress what had happened—both the event itself, and the impossible thing she’d seen. She might even have been able to do it . . . except for the conversation he was forcing her to have.

“No! Stop it!” Olivia cried. The effort started her coughing again. Dylan tucked the blanket more firmly around her, and gave her as much physical support as he could. If she could have, Dylan knew, Olivia would have jumped to her feet and run away, but she was still too weak.

He offered her the oxygen mask again, but she waved it away irritably. He had no choice but to go on.

“A lot of things exist that most people don’t know about,” Dylan said. “Or don’t see—or don’t want to see. You’ve just had proof of that. Did you ever read any fairy tales as a child?”

“You mean like Lord of the Rings?” Olivia asked, after a very long pause. Her doubtful tone of voice indicated she could not imagine why he was asking such an irrelevant question. Somehow Dylan didn’t think LOTR was the sort of fantasy that appealed to her—if, indeed, she read any fantasy at all. When it came to books, he thought she was more likely to read things that were based in mortal reality. She’d probably only seen the movies.

“Close enough,” Dylan said. “You see, a long time ago, humans weren’t the only sentient race on Earth . . .”

“I know that!” Olivia irritably. “There were Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnons, and . . .”

“That’s not what I mean,” Dylan said. His heart hurt at cutting off her escape from the truth he was trying to tell her—it wasn’t an easy thing to live with sometimes—but just now it was the only way to save her life.

“Elves,” he said bluntly. “Elves and kitsune and dragons and Nimerigar and . . . And Lamiae. Creatures like Audrey. We all lived among you for a very long time. And then . . . well, we had to go away, you see, because you began filling up the world and there was no more room for us here with you. And you told stories about us, and turned us into legends, and stopped believing in magic. In us.”

Olivia didn’t say anything, and it took him a moment to realize why.

She was crying.

She didn’t believe him. She thought he was playing an elaborate cruel trick on her, the way too many people in her life must have done. And she’d trusted him, at least a little. She’d only known him for a few days, but he’d always been kind to her, and now he was doing this to her. His arms tightened around her. “No,” he whispered. “Please, no. Olivia, Livy, love . . . I’m not lying. I’m not playing games. I swear it.”

Whatever her answer was, it was unintelligible, choked by tears. She was struggling to get away, but she was still too weak. But at least he could give her that much. He lifted her to her feet and settled her against one of the crates of jet ski parts stored here, and drew the blanket more snugly about her shoulders. Then he knelt down in front of her and took her hands.

“Livy,” he said. “I’m sorry. But everything I’ve said is true. I can prove it.”

“Go away,” she whispered harshly. “Leave me alone. I don’t know why you and Audrey—” He didn’t know how that sentence would have ended. She’d run out of air.

“I can’t,” Dylan said simply. I love you. “You’re in danger. You have to believe me, or . . . next time, Audrey will get what she wants.”

That startled an ugly laugh out of Olivia. “She’s already got what she wants. She wants Blake.” Then suddenly her eyes opened wide in horror. Clearly she’d remembered . . . something.

“Livy?” Dylan said quietly.

She stared blankly at nothing for a long time. “That day . . . at the rock. Blake said . . . Blake said he brought me here . . . for her.”

Dylan tried not to wince. While not in the same weight-class as their sisters the Sirens, Lamiae had a certain amount of psychic ability to . . . fog peoples’ better judgment. Had Audrey done that to Blake?

Did she need to? We’re talking about Blake of the Lake here. He might even know what Audrey really is—and not care.

“Look,” Olivia said, clearly trying to push him away emotionally even if she couldn’t quite do it physically right now. “Thank you. I didn’t say, thank you for saving my life. Thank you. I don’t know why you’re . . . All this . . . Endora and Bigfoot and Nessie, and . . . Just go away? Please?”

“I said I could prove it,” Dylan said quietly. “Not about Bigfoot, and Endora definitely doesn’t exist—” unless that Portal is active and something big and uncanny comes wandering through it every now and then “—but I said I could prove that I’m not lying about Audrey and you’re not crazy. Will you let me prove it to you?”

Olivia scrubbed at her face with the edge of the blanket. Her face was pale and blotchy, and her eyes were tear-swollen. Dylan thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful. “You aren’t going to . . . How? She’ll just lie.”

She thinks I mean to make Audrey confess to being a Lamia, Dylan realized. Not that it would prove anything. Talk, as mortals say, is cheap.

“I’m going to show you,” Dylan said carefully. “Right here, right now. Nobody will get hurt. I told you that there are a lot of . . . people . . . like Audrey. A lot of those people are shapeshifters.”

“Like werewolves?” Olivia said listlessly. She was coming down off her panic high now, he was glad to see. Panic wasn’t a good condition to be in when someone was asking you to believe in something that would change your entire worldview. And when that belief was the only thing that could keep you alive. But between that and the trauma of near-drowning, she was clearly exhausted.

Probably the best time to hit her with something like this.

“Like werewolves,” Dylan agreed.

“Werewolves aren’t possible,” Olivia said simply.

“Well, shapeshifting does require magic,” Dylan said calmly. “It’s perfectly natural, but that doesn’t mean it’s something everybody can learn how to do. You see,” he added, mentally holding his breath, “I’m a shapeshifter, too. A different kind than Audrey is; I’m not a Lamia. And so I figure, if I can prove to you I can do that, you’ll believe . . . what you saw. With Audrey.”

There was a long moment of absolute silence. He watched Olivia’s face. She stared at him.

“Prove it,” she said flatly.

Dylan took a deep breath, offering up a sincere prayer to whoever might be listening that he would not be spending the entire rest of his life (however long that turned out to be), searching the mortal world for his one true love, who had fled shrieking at the sight of him in seal form.

And he shifted.

Already today Olivia had faced death, got rescued from death by her imaginary boyfriend who was fortunately a real life lifeguard, found out Dylan thought Audrey had been deliberately trying to kill her, and . . .

Well, the rest of what he’d said was mostly on the other side of the grey fogbank of Nothingness that was growing thicker with every heartbeat, the Nothingness that turned off her emotions and took away everything but an overweening sense of tiredness.

Heroines in books never had these problems. They never complained about missing meals or missing sleep—or about losing their purse and ruining their best pair of boots. They never even noticed things like that. They got abducted all the time—or attacked by clandestine forces, or rescued somebody, or faced off the bad guys with nothing but guns and karate—and then they bounced right up again, ready to fly to Peru or take part in a multi-city car chase or maybe a fight on top of a train.

All Olivia wanted to do was go to bed and sleep for a week. Crime and the forces of evil could go do whatever they wanted to: Olivia wanted a nap.

Dylan wanted to talk.

In defiance of all Earth Logic, apparently he’d decided that this was the perfect time to talk about . . . whatever. At first she’d thought he was trying to make fun of her, and then that he must be telling some elaborate joke where she didn’t get the punch line (as usual). He’d said Audrey was a werewolf, and he’d talked a lot about fairy tales, and nothing much about what he’d been saying had made any sense. (Well, that part was familiar anyway.) But Dylan kept insisting she was in danger, and he seemed so earnest about proving to her that fairies existed, that she figured . . .

Well, Olivia wasn’t sure what she figured. Maybe that if she called his bluff he’d go away and let her go back to the cabin to get some sleep—she was tired enough to curl up right here on the floor, really.

And then there was a giant seal looking at her. Or maybe it wasn’t a giant seal: she’d never seen seals in person. Maybe it was a normal-sized seal. Olivia regarded the seal with a kind of glassy calm for nearly thirty seconds before she realized there shouldn’t be any seal of any size here looking at her. Once that happened, the following things also happened, in no particular order.

Olivia jumped to her feet to flee, and only succeeded in falling over the crate she was sitting against. She attempted to scream in shock and surprise, and instead produced an inelegant quacking sound followed by another spasm of coughing. By the time she got it under control, Dylan was back and the seal was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey,” Dylan said. “Are you okay?”

Olivia simply stared at him mutely. What in the entire last hour or so had given him the idea she was all right?

“Yeah, okay, yeah; stupid question. But you believe me now, don’t you?”

Despite her best efforts, Olivia felt her face curl into what was probably a very authentic and heartfelt sneer. Why should her hallucinations translate into his truthfulness? She knew there was something people should say in situations like this. Nothing came to mind.

Dylan regarded her hopefully. “Do you need me to do it again?”

“Okay,” Olivia said. Why not? It wasn’t as if she could stop him from turning into a seal if he wanted to (or, rather, could stop herself from having another hallucination). But then there was the seal again, and there was no Dylan anywhere in the boatshed, and the seal hitched forward and nudged her hand with its nose. Hesitantly, she reached out and touched its head. She’d expected it to be cold and slimy, but it was furry, and the fur was dry and warm. Like a dog. And it had whiskers, and big brown eyes, and . . .

And then the seal was gone, and her hand was resting on Dylan’s head.

“Gak!” she said, recoiling. “Don’t you have to be at work?” Stupid, stupid, stupid! her mind shouted at her. But aside from telling her she was stupid and could never do anything right, her mind did not seem to have any helpful suggestions for how to carry on a conversation with the cute lifeguard who’d just turned into a seal (and back) in front of her (twice).

Dylan smiled at her uncertainly, his head tilted a little to one side, and she couldn’t unsee the resemblance between him and the seal he’d just been.

“The seal he’d just been.” Are you even listening to yourself, Olivia Helen Poole?

“I don’t have to be on the job until this afternoon,” he said. “But if you want . . .”

“No!” Olivia said quickly, though she wasn’t really sure what she was rejecting. “I mean . . . I’m . . . You’re a seal.”

“A Selkie,” Dylan corrected gently. “You don’t . . . mind . . . do you?”

“It’s none of my business,” Olivia said hastily. It must be her imagination, but she thought he looked a little disappointed by her answer. “I mean . . . it’s not like you can stop being a Selkie, is it?”

The unreality of the conversation just made the brain-fog billow even thicker. She felt herself floating away on it, farther and farther, until everything she saw and heard had an aura of distance around it, as if it came from a very long way away. Nothing hurt, and nothing mattered, and if she closed her eyes she could just turn the world off completely.

“No, you really can’t,” Dylan agreed. “But now . . . do you believe me?”

“Sure?” Olivia wasn’t sure about anything right now, except that she wanted to get away from here and not have to keep paying attention and pretending to care about what she was hearing.

“About Audrey,” Dylan clarified. Olivia frowned inwardly. What did Audrey have to do with anything? Was Dylan saying Audrey had turned him into a were-seal? That was . . .

Oh. Right. Focus, Girl Genius. They were talking across each other. Stupid her, asking dumb questions. Always the wrong questions. Never saying or doing anything right.

“I’m here, in your world, because—well, let’s just say I like people,” Dylan said, and once again she had the sense that what he said wasn’t quite what he meant. “Livy, you do believe me about Audrey, don’t you? You saw her yourself.”

Olivia hesitated. She wasn’t sure what the right answer to that question was, let alone the true answer. And she knew she ought to be on fire with curiosity, but all she felt was numb. What would Bella Swan do? Probably trip over something. Too bad I’m already sitting on the floor.

“Audrey’s a Lamia,” she said obediently.

“Yes,” Dylan said. “Her parents are probably perfectly normal. Lamia are like cuckoos—they leave their children for somebody else to raise. So either her mother—her Lamia mother—stole the Jordans’ baby and replaced it with Audrey, or the Jordans adopted her, thinking she was a human girl. And either way, that usually doesn’t end well for the parents.”

“Does Blake know she’s a Lamia?” Olivia asked. Somewhere, she knew, there was a right question that would make this whole situation make sense, or—better yet—go away.

Dylan frowned. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Audrey knows she’s a Lamia. And she’s after you.”

“But why?” Olivia felt fresh tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. Dumb question. She hates you.

“Lamiae are predators,” Dylan said gently. “Like sharks. They aren’t very . . . sociable. She wouldn’t have known she was a Lamia when she was a child, but . . . now she’s growing up. As she does, her Lamia-self grows stronger. In a few more years she’ll lose the ability to change forms. She’ll swim out to sea, and . . . be a Lamia all the time.”

“Oh,” Olivia said politely. “Well . . . that’s good, right?” At least she isn’t going to have to deal with college . . .

“For Audrey, yes,” Dylan said, still patiently. “For everyone else, not so much. Lamiae are predators.”

He kept repeating that phrase as if it should tell her something. And it really didn’t. She saw Dylan realize she just wasn’t getting it (nothing new there; she was such an alien) and she cringed, because usually when that happened, people said something rude, or mean, and left. But Dylan didn’t. As if he really liked her. As if he wanted to help. He saved your life this morning and told you his secret identity. What more do you want?

She didn’t know what she wanted. And just like always, she didn’t know what the right words were.

Finally Dylan sighed, just a tiny bit. “I know this is a lot for you to take in all at once. I wouldn’t have dumped it all on you at once, except that Audrey is after you. I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that means ever going back into Lake Endor is right out, but Sacramento is near the coast, right?”

“Not so much. Central Valley. But it’s between two rivers.” And wasn’t she just a fund of meaningless irrelevant information this morning?

“That’s bad enough.” Dylan looked grim enough to disturb her, just a little. “Especially since Blake would tell her where you live if she asked him. Look, Livy. Will you do something for me?”

She was still trying to fumble out an answer that wouldn’t be either too stupid or too trusting when he reached up and slipped off the necklace he always wore. She’d noticed it the first time she’d seen him, and even admired it, though it wasn’t really the sort of thing guys wore in her neighborhood: an egg-shaped piece of clear pale amber, flanked by a piece of abalone shell, a rough red coral bead, a gold-colored disk, and what looked like a real shark’s tooth. It looked sort of . . . tribal.

“Will you wear this?” Dylan asked. Despite herself, Olivia flinched visibly. Dylan smiled ruefully. “It doesn’t mean we’re going steady or anything,” he said. “Honest.”

“I couldn’t accept this,” Olivia said hesitantly. “It looks . . . like something very important to you.” And very expensive, and Mom always said that when somebody was trying to give you something for nothing, take a second look.

“Call it a loan,” Dylan said. “Just for a little while. You can give it back later. But it will bring you . . . luck.”

“‘Luck,’” Olivia echoed dully. She reached out for it, almost despite herself, and he set it into her hand. The pieces were knotted into a long triple-strand of brown leather, she saw, and it was long enough to easily slip over her—or Dylan’s—head. “Okay. I guess.”

She put it on. The amber was warm from his skin. She didn’t know whether the sensation was horrible or pleasant. That was the nice thing about the fog: all the emotions stayed completely outside it.

“Thank you,” he said. “Don’t take it off until . . . Until I come back for it. Don’t worry. It’s waterproof.”

“I just bet,” Olivia muttered.

“Now let’s get you somewhere you can have a hot shower and get into some dry clothes. I don’t think Lila would mind if—”

A jagged bolt of alarm sliced through the numbness. He wanted to keep her here. Everyone would know. How could she explain it?

“I just want to go home,” Olivia said quickly. “Back to the cabin.” She got her arm over the top of the crate she was sitting next to and leveraged herself carefully to her feet, wincing. But the argument she was subconsciously bracing for didn’t come.

“Okay,” Dylan said. “Wait here. I’ll go get one of the go-carts.”

A few minutes later Dylan returned with one of the little golf-cart things the Resort used to run her up to the parking lot. Apparently he’d really been serious about not going anywhere near the water again. From the parking lot, they took one of the pickup trucks to circle the lake. She nearly fell asleep on the drive back, even though it was dirt road all the way and not a smooth one either. But more quickly than she thought possible, they arrived back at the Weber cabin.

It was still early morning, maybe a quarter to six. She finally remembered to look out at the lake. The orange canoe was visible, and she could see the white line of foam on the water that meant Blake was still out there practicing.

When she looked back at Dylan, it was clear he’d seen it too. Despite the fact that Audrey and Blake’s whereabouts were completely accounted for, Dylan insisted on doing a walkthrough of the cabin before letting her go in. The only ones there were those who should be: Harper, Noah, and Mason. And they were all asleep.

“I never thought I’d say I wished cell phones worked up here,” Dylan said, closing the front door gently behind him. “But even if I had one, giving you its number wouldn’t do any good. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay, Livy? Or . . . anything?” he asked.

“No.” The only thing Olivia was certain of was that she wanted to be alone. “I’ll be fine,” she added, because that was what you said, and if you just said it often enough, and for long enough, people would leave you alone.

“Be very, very careful around Audrey. Don’t go near the water. Go home, back to California, I mean. Make some sort of excuse. I’ll see you later,” Dylan said. He got back into the truck—he’d left it running the whole time—and drove slowly off.

It was just as he was leaving that the keyword penetrated. Cell phone. I had my cell phone in the kitchen and I took it with me . . . She patted herself down quickly, then realized her cell phone was almost certainly at the bottom of the lake.

Mom’s going to kill me.

And it wasn’t even seven a.m. yet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

He’d done the only thing he could do, Dylan told himself as he drove away from the Weber cabin. Giving up the talisman into her keeping was the only way to protect her, and being able to do that meant more to him than anything—even his own life. It had been the hardest thing he’d ever done to let her walk away, and to let her walk away without knowing how he felt made it doubly hard. Oh Livy, mo stór, wherever you are, wherever you go, be safe.

It was amazing how different everything looked when you were in love.

The only thing that should be on her mind after what had happened was packing her things and getting out of Endor as fast as possible. Giving Olivia the talisman accomplished two things. One, it hid her from magic (other than Dylan’s bond to her; nothing much could sever that), and it would protect Olivia from Audrey’s powers of “persuasion” if Audrey caught up to her before she’d left. Two, if Audrey had any cross-Portal allies, they wouldn’t be able to find Olivia unless Audrey physically pointed her out to them.

And two and a half, anybody who wants to can find you now. In addition to making yourself a prime target for Audrey the Lamia, soon enough she won’t be the only Farraige Olc here. Of course, if Audrey didn’t let the Farraige Olc know that he was here, it would go badly for her. If Audrey hadn’t learned enough about her own people yet to be up on the politics . . . well, that was her tough luck. He wouldn’t weep over anything the Farraige Olc did to one of their own.

And since the Farraige Olc meant Dylan to face their Champion, they’d want him alive and well to do it. And for the same reason, everyone here at the Resort except Livy was probably perfectly safe. The Farraige Olc hated humans, but their war against Mortalkind couldn’t begin until after Tiamat had defeated the Champion of the Mhuir Chéasta: they had consented to that binding, and it would hold them, just as it bound his own folk from going Underhill until after one Champion had defeated the other. The worst that was likely to happen here at Lake Endor Resort was that Lila would be extremely angry when Dylan didn’t show up for his shift one day.

And speaking of shifts . . .

Dylan pulled the borrowed truck into the staff parking lot and put it next to the other Resort vehicles. When he got out, he glanced at the sun to check the time. Not quite eight. If he hurried, he could grab a cup of coffee in the staff caf before his shift.

He’d never felt less like eating.

Be safe, mo chroí. Be safe.

Olivia really didn’t remember making her way to her screened porch bedroom. All she knew, dimly, was that nobody was poking at her any more, and that was what she wanted. The old familiar grey nothingness rolled in all around her like fog.

It was familiar, and safe, and Olivia surrendered to it gratefully.

The next thing she was really aware of was the sunlight filling her makeshift bedroom with light and warmth. She felt as if she’d just awakened from a long dreamless sleep, one she could tumble back into with no effort at all. In the distance she could hear canned music, boat motors, dogs barking, and the happy cries of vacationers. The bungalow itself was quiet.

Carefully, painfully, Olivia took stock of herself and her surroundings. It was something she’d had to do so many times during this past year that she’d gotten really good at it. Too bad it wasn’t a marketable skill. She was sitting on the edge of her daybed. Her hair no longer smelled of lake water, and she was wearing fresh pajamas instead of jeans and a muddy sweatshirt, so she supposed she must have showered. There was a bottle of aspirin in her hand, and a can of some sports drink sitting on the bedside table. Olivia stared at the tableau for a long time until the awareness that her throat still rasped and her chest ached managed to penetrate. She opened the bottle and shook out two pills, then thought for a moment and shook out two more.

The can was warm. She opened it anyway and slugged down the pills, gagging at the oversweet fruity taste. She peered at the label, wondering where she’d gotten it. Well, at least it had caffeine.

What am I going to do now?

Every time she closed her eyes, Olivia was back in the black depths of the lake with a smiling monster who held her under until she drowned. And all she felt about that was . . .

Nothing.

Nothing at all. Just a faint dull fear, because she ought to be feeling something—something that would give her some idea of what to do.

And she didn’t, and that worried her more than Selkies and sea-serpents and Blake’s murderous girlfriend. Had Dylan really turned into a seal in front of her this morning? Had she made the whole thing up? If she had, what had actually happened? How had she ended up at the bottom of the lake? Had that even happened?

Yes. There were her jeans, kicked into a corner, still wet and muddy. There was the sweatshirt she’d put on because she’d woken up so early this morning that the air had still been freezing.

She’d been out on the lake today.

And in it? Probably. It was hard to say, Olivia thought to herself, that this had been a crappy morning. She wasn’t sure yet what kind of a morning it had been. And what about Evil Mermaid Audrey?

There was an unfamiliar weight around her neck. She put a hand up to touch it, felt the roughness of coral and the smoothness of amber.

“Will you wear this?”

Dylan had given her his necklace. Yes. That had really happened. She ran one finger across the five items strung on the cord. Yes. This is real. So she’d been in the lake, and she’d been in the Resort boathouse—with Dylan—and then he’d driven her back here.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going steady or anything.”

She tried to evoke a memory of what she’d felt when he’d turned into a seal. It ought to be a peak experience, right? Magic was real, wardrobes led to Narnia, if you tried hard enough you could find Platform 9 and 3/4. Magic being real didn’t mean you’d fit into this world any better, but maybe it meant there was a world out there somewhere where you would fit.

Except only crazy people believe in real magic, and anyone who thinks they’ve got proof really needs to go back on their meds.

Olivia took a deep ragged breath, willing herself not to cry. Mermaid or not? Selkie or not? And why were they at Lake Nowhere here in the Twilight Zone? Maybe supernatural creatures were as common as they were on television. Maybe most of the people she knew were supernatural creatures who were hiding behind masks. Maybe she didn’t know anyone or anything half as well as she thought she did.

She felt the achy airless sensation that heralded the beginning of a panic attack. Panic attacks were old friends by now—the metallic taste in her mouth, the nausea and the choking feeling as her heart rate spiked, the feeling she couldn’t breathe no matter how hard she gasped for breath. The familiarity of it—the way it went the same way every time, the way it left her exhausted and jittery and didn’t change anything—it all made her want to scream. If she’d had the energy for screaming, of course.

She didn’t even have the energy to exist.

And at the same time, all she could do was ask herself unanswerable questions. How should I feel about this? What should I do in this situation? Should I scream or laugh? Is this a joke? Or not? Mia had been right. She couldn’t go on like this. It was like being one of those people who couldn’t feel pain—how could Olivia protect herself if she didn’t know when to run away?

How could she even want to protect herself when it was so much easier to just . . . drift? All she wanted to do was to curl up on her cot and sleep. She hugged herself tightly, but it didn’t seem to help. Despite the warm sunlight shining into the porch, Olivia was cold inside.

On the other side of the screened porch, the concrete slab the bungalow was built on extended for several feet. Beyond that was a strip of grass. Beyond that was a stand of saplings, and beyond that . . .

She caught herself (again!) staring vaguely off into space.

Focus!

If Dylan Waverly was a Selkie, that meant Audrey had tried to kill her today. When people tried to kill you, usually you did something about it.

I have to do something. I know I do.

Sure, her self responded. What?

First things first. What time was it? She reached for her phone to check before remembering that it was probably at the bottom of the lake. That at least got her up on her feet to check the pockets of her jeans in the hopes she was wrong. Nope, not there. She picked up the jeans and the sweatshirt and shook them out, then spread them outside to dry in a patch of sun. She looked up at the sky. Noon? Close enough. She realized that a part of her had been listening for Blake to come back to the house, but if it was this late, he’d been back for hours.

Who’d made breakfast this morning? Dylan had said both Noah and Mason were still asleep when he brought her back. Who’d fed them? Would Mrs. Weber be mad that she hadn’t? Would Blake? The questions all seemed to come from far away.

Focus!

What if Blake knew about what Audrey had done? What if he knew it hadn’t succeeded—that Olivia had been rescued? It wasn’t as if she could fight him off. She couldn’t even lock her bedroom door!

It wasn’t the first time Olivia had thought about how vulnerable she felt out here on the sleeping porch, but always before she’d just shoved the thoughts away, like she’d shoved away everything that was too much work to deal with. But all of a sudden it seemed as if the fact she was practically sitting out in the open was something she ought to care about. She couldn’t just wish away the fact that somebody (Audrey. A sea-monster) actually wanted to hurt her. Really hurt her. This wasn’t just tearing her blouse or spitting in her lunch or ripping up her homework or trashing her books and her locker. This was permanent scars and missing limbs and maybe dying in some kind of permanent and painful way.

And she couldn’t even really hide from . . . well . . . anything. The screen door had a hook latch, but one good kick would open it. And the door into the cabin didn’t lock at all . . .

Yeah, that was bad. She should really do something about it, shouldn’t she?

A while later the can of sports drink was empty, and Olivia realized she was (once more) staring at nothing, watching like some disinterested spectator as her mind hamster-wheeled around the simple mundane threat of somebody breaking into the place where she was sleeping. As if she didn’t have bigger problems. And enemies who could probably get at her even if this place had a panic room and she locked herself inside it.

Magic. Elves. Fairies. Sea-monsters. Lifeguards who turn into seals. I have no idea what to do about any of this. She rubbed her eyes angrily, realizing she was weeping. She didn’t know how long she’d been zoned out (this time), but she knew she was running out of time. She couldn’t just keep sitting here. The fact that she didn’t know what to do didn’t change the fact that she had to do something.

You have to get the hell out of Dodge, kiddo.

It was her own thought, but somehow she could hear her father saying it. Well, Dad was an expert in leaving. And in this case, she thought he (or her mental conjuration of him) was probably right. She had to get out of here, didn’t she, before . . .

Did he ever love me? Or was it all one big game to him? Was I even supposed to be here at all? What if I thought he was inviting me for the summer and he was just making a joke, like “hey, I’m going to go to Mordor over the summer, wanna come along?” And then you screwed it up, just like you always do, and then there was no way for him to back out . . .

. . . before Blake and his sea-monster “Lamiae-are-predators” girlfriend rang the bell to start Round Two of the retro horror-comedy Olivia Poole’s Very Last Summer Vacation.

It all still seemed like an elaborate practical joke that only an idiot (like her!) would fall for. Like one of those dinner theater “Murder Mystery Evenings” where the audience had to be the detective and catch the murderer, only everybody knew it was just a game, and nobody was actually dead, and it didn’t matter if they caught the murderer or not.

Only she couldn’t really imagine Blake and Dylan being on the same side about anything. And she’d seen . . .

She’d seen something, okay? She just didn’t want to think about what it had been.

So.

Olivia took a deep breath. Doing things like that was supposed to give you courage and decisiveness, but all it actually did was make her chest hurt even more, as if she’d been crying for hours. Or holding her breath at the bottom of a lake until she drowned. She had to do something.

But what? She couldn’t ask the Webers for help—no, not even if she could manage to wake up Harper Weber and pour enough coffee into her for sobriety. Aidan Weber? It hadn’t taken coming on vacation with Blake’s parents to know that they’d excuse anything he’d done. And while it wasn’t exactly Blake who’d done anything, Olivia couldn’t see any discussion of leaving that wouldn’t involve Blake, Audrey, Blake’s relationship with Audrey, near drowning, and a very special episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oh, wouldn’t that be a perfect solution? They could drive into Endor and call Mom and tell her I’ve flipped out, and I’d be home on the next plane.

But . . . what would Audrey do then? Was being a Lamia like having a secret identity? What would Audrey do to protect her secret? Would the Webers be safe? Hadn’t Dylan been worried about Audrey following Livy to Sacramento? Gothically horrible summer-movie-style possibilities spooled out in Olivia’s mind with vivid intensity: she’d tell the Webers her story, they’d fasten on the only part of it that wasn’t impossible and ask Audrey why she’d dunked Olivia in the lake. And then Audrey would know that Olivia knew her secret, and . . .

What am I going to do?

She hadn’t taken her wallet with her this morning, just her phone. She still had her Mom’s emergency credit card. She could buy a plane ticket home—or just pay whatever penalty there was for rebooking and use the one she had. She could make up some story; her Mom would probably be okay with Olivia saying that she’d gotten bored and decided to come home early. But a plane ticket wouldn’t do her any good unless she was at an airport. That meant Albany, and Albany was a long way from here. She wasn’t sure how to get there except by car, and nobody in their right mind would rent a car to an eighteen-year-old, even if she could get to a place to rent one. Among the many things Endor didn’t have was a rental car place.

Sure, she could ask the Webers to drive her back. And that put her right back at Square One. (“And why do you want to leave so soon, Ollie dear?” “Because your son’s real girlfriend is a cannibal mermaid, Mrs. Weber.”) Aside from the Webers, she didn’t know anybody at Lake Endor who could possibly help her.

Except Dylan.

She touched the necklace he’d given (loaned!) her. She thought of throwing it away, or just taking it off and stuffing it under her pillow—but just because she didn’t do either one didn’t mean that the more she thought about the whole “creature of magic” thing, the more she wasn’t completely creeped out about it. Dylan Waverly seemed like a nice all-American (or all-Canadian, anyway) kind of guy, maybe a year or two older than she was, and he turned into a seal. There was absolutely no way to make that sound . . . normal.

I thought I was vacationing in New York State, not Storybrook!

When Dylan was right there in front of her, looking friendly and normal and kind and nice, it was one thing. But when he wasn’t right there, all the implications hidden around the edges of his words came slithering out again.

“Elves and kitsune and dragons and Nimerigar and . . . And Lamiae.”

She just couldn’t deal with all those “ands.” Call her meek and cowardly and unadventurous, but the prospect of going on some otherworldly “Chosen One” adventure did not make her stand up and cheer. She liked her normal, ordinary, predictable life. Even when it was wrapped in the grey fog of—say it!—depression, it was better than a world that didn’t work by the laws of nature and physics she’d always depended on.

Of course, Dylan could probably fix everything, but you don’t want Dylan’s help. If you did, you’d have asked back at the boathouse. He was offering. God, Livy, you are a complete idiot. Even if you didn’t want his help, you could have said “yes,” and at least you could have gone up to the Resort and made a phone call back to Reality to get some help. Only that would have involved . . .

“Elves and kitsune and dragons and Nimerigar and . . .”

Nope.

What am I going to do?

She couldn’t go back over to the Resort (even if she was willing to risk a long hike around the lake when Audrey might be hiding behind every bush), somehow avoid seeing Dylan, and get to a phone. Half the staff knew who she was by now. Someone would tell him.

But there are phones in Endor. And the town is actually closer than the other side of the lake is. Assuming you aren’t swimming across it. Which I am not.

And at least going to Endor will get you out of here.

Olivia automatically reached for her phone again to check the time before remembering (again) that it was at the bottom of the lake. Well, whatever time it was, it was Too Late, though for what she wasn’t quite sure.

The yearning to just lie down and rest—just for another few minutes; half an hour wouldn’t matter—was so strong it scared her. She had to get out of here. Wherever she went, she had to get out of here. Staying here was stupid, and she’d spent the entire morning staring off into space. It was at least noon now, and that meant she had eight more hours of daylight, but only if she got off her ass and started moving.

Olivia got to her feet, staggering a little, and realized that every muscle ached. A two-mile walk was the last thing she wanted right now. But she was not a complete idiot. If she just sat here, sooner or later either Audrey would come in or one of the Webers would come in, and Olivia didn’t want to have to deal with either. In fact, never seeing or talking to any of them again—including Blake!—sounded like the best idea she’d had all year. She’d go to town and find some way to get out of this mess—preferably without involving her mom. After she’d sworn up and down that she wanted to go off and spend six weeks on the opposite side of the continent with her boyfriend and his family, demanding to come home after two weeks would lead to . . . stuff.

And “stuff” would lead to talking about Selkies—or worse, talking to a therapist—and thank you, no.

Get moving.

Clothes were the first thing. You couldn’t save the world in your pajamas. Not that Olivia had any interest in saving the world right now. Long sleeves to protect her from the sun and long pants to protect her from brambles. Sneakers instead of sandals. Her backpack.

As she sorted everything out, Olivia found herself throwing everything she wasn’t actually taking with her right now into her suitcase. It wasn’t like she was going to drag it with her on her walk to Endor, but it locked, and she felt a peculiar repugnance at the thought of anyone going through her things. This way the place would look tidy, and not as if she’d just wandered off.

It was when she started to pack the empty sports drink can (tidy!) that she realized this was just one more attempt on the part of her brain that kept her in the fog to keep her from actually doing something. She could spend—waste—hours tidying up the little porch. If she didn’t stop herself, it would come to seem perfectly reasonable that she launder the sheets and the blankets, put all the furniture back where she’d moved it from, and . . .

And then it would be dinnertime, and all of the Webers would be around and awake, and anyone who saw her would know she was one of the Summer People and what was she doing walking into Endor at that hour . . . ?

Olivia took a deep breath, refusing to give in to panic, refusing to give in to the grey nothingness, and slammed the suitcase shut. Done.

But it was a very long several seconds before she could force herself to open the screen door and step off the porch.

She’d made the trek to town two or three times since she’d arrived here, and of course, she’d been into town with Blake and Mr. Weber for supplies a few times. The road from the campground into the town was a dirt to gravel to blacktop road about a lane and a half wide, with deep ditches on each side (so you were pretty much stuck with walking in the road) and scruffy pine trees on the far sides of the ditches. It was a pleasant walk that took between forty-five minutes and half an hour, depending on how fast you walked and how many Summer People cars you had to dodge. It was the kind of walk where you could pretty much put your mind on autopilot, because there was no way you could wander off the road and get lost.

At least, once she was outdoors, she could make a better guess at the time: early afternoon. But today Olivia couldn’t turn off her brain even if she’d wanted to and she didn’t know whether she wanted to or not, frankly, because the moment she’d committed herself to doing something, the low-level panic was back in the background of her mind. Despite herself, she kept looking behind her to see if anyone was following her, and when she forced herself not to do that, her steps went faster and faster until she was practically running and found herself straining for breath.

Each time she realized what was happening, Olivia forced herself to stop. But the moment she started walking the whole cycle would start over again. She flinched when a car passed her, even if it was coming from town. Who was in it? Did they know her? Would they tell somebody they’d seen her?

Stop it, Livy. You’re acting like an idiot. Get to town, find a phone, figure out what to do next.

But no matter how firmly she stifled her imagination, she couldn’t stop thinking about the, well, the implications of what Dylan had told her. Finding out that all the creatures everyone thought were just made up stories—finding out that all (or at least some of) the creatures of myth and legend and folklore were real and alive and here . . .

It was something on the order of waking up one morning and discovering an entirely new continent—one already filled with cities and people and things—had appeared on Earth. And that was massive.

And why, out of all the billions of people on Earth, do you think they chose Olivia Helen Poole to tell this to? And the answer is: they couldn’t have. Why would they? You just got stuck in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time, right? It’s all a big horrible accident you’re been stuck with the Big Secret.

But she had no idea what the alternative was. It was hard to imagine the hundreds or thousands of people who must know the truth all keeping their mouths shut. So maybe everyone who found out . . . died. And that didn’t make any sense either, because Dylan was trying to save her life. In fact, he’d already saved it once today.

No matter which fact she settled on, it contradicted the other facts she knew. By the time Olivia reached town, she was sweaty and light-headed with panic. All she wanted to do was sit down and rest somewhere out of the glare of sunlight.

Where?

She couldn’t quite shake the idea that she needed to hide. There were a few benches along the main street, but they all looked too open and public, as well as being so hot at this time of day that they’d probably burn her right through her jeans. Where could she go where anyone who knew her wouldn’t find her—and if they did, they couldn’t just grab her and drag her off somewhere?

The diner. I can find someplace in the back to sit, and nobody’s going to come looking for me there. . . .

The dazzle of the all-chrome front hurt her eyes, but the inside looked cool and welcoming. It was one of the “streamliner style” diners that was pretty much the size and shape of an old railway car. The back of it was set flush into a two story white clapboard house. From what she’d seen the last couple times she’d eaten there, Olivia suspected that the diner’s kitchen was actually inside the house, and the whole “car” was seating area.

She went up the three steps to the entrance and stepped inside.

There were booths all along the front under the windows, and then a counter with stools that stretched most of the length of the building. At the back sides of the counter there was a door on each side leading into the kitchen; the line of booths along the front continued all the way to the doors, though the ones at the sides were tiny two-person booths, not the four-person kind at the front.

It was a weekday, but it was too late in the day for the diner to be full of lunchtime crowds, either locals or tourists. There were a few people sitting at the counter, but all the booths were empty and everybody in the diner seemed to be locals. Olivia relaxed just a bit. She looked around, but didn’t see a pay phone in here anywhere, not that she’d expected to. Everybody had cell phones these days. Maybe she could use the phone at the library? If it was open?

But right now all she wanted to do was sit down where she wouldn’t be seen. Olivia found the farthest back two-person booth and sat so she could see the front door.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mandy Phillips had been raised in a lot of places before her parents died. Her mom was a mechanic and her dad was a chopper pilot. As an Army brat, she’d packed up and moved every two years since before she could remember. Germany, Japan, Guam, California . . . the real constant in her life had been new orders followed by a pile of moving boxes and a new school. Both her parents had been in, and they’d been lucky enough to be posted together most of the time, and when they weren’t . . . well . . . one military base and its on-base housing was pretty much like another, so it wasn’t like the changes were really jarring. Sometimes Mom had joked that Mandy’s favorite uncle was Uncle Sam, and Mandy had never denied it. Mom talked a lot about getting out, but she re-upped every time, and Mandy had always assumed she’d also enlist when she was eighteen, because then her favorite uncle would pay for college.

When Mandy turned fourteen, everything changed. Her dad died in a training accident. She and her mother had barely gotten through the funeral when Mandy lost her too: a drunk cowboy had T-boned her car. Suddenly, Mandy was an orphan. But not alone. Never alone. She went to stay with one of Mom’s friends while she finished out her school year. The Consolation Officer and one of the base counselors helped with everything else.

If she’d just been a couple of years older, her course would have been obvious: she’d go in. But just-turned-fourteen wasn’t anywhere near eighteen, and so that summer, she’d gone to live with Grandmother Tyler in Endor, New York.

Mom had joked that anybody raised in Endor would be glad to take the first bus out of town, but despite that, the Phillipses had been regular visitors. Dad didn’t get along with his family, so Mandy had never met them: her understanding of civilian life revolved entirely around her visits to Endor. She’d eaten any number of holiday dinners at the diner Grandma owned, and had spent her summers there ever since she was eight.

Only suddenly, she wasn’t going there to visit. She was going there to live.

The first thing she’d said when she arrived there was: “Don’t get too used to me, because I’m enlisting the moment I can.” Grams had nodded, and looked thoughtful, and told her that her room was waiting for her.

That had been four years ago.

At first, Mandy had been rebellious and grieving, scornful of everything, impatient with the long bus ride to the county high school down in Hidden (and there had been every possible joke made about the name), insistent that she was only here until she could enlist. Through all of her wild grieving, Rachel Tyler was a calm, warm presence, neither disparaging Mandy’s grief nor indulging it. It didn’t occur to Mandy in those first turbulent weeks that her grandmother had lost a daughter when Mandy had lost her mother. But eventually Time did what it always does: it didn’t erase her grief, but it made it familiar and bearable.

The months passed, and—slowly!—Mandy began to wonder whether she might change her future plans. Maybe—just maybe—she’d stay right where she was.

It wasn’t that she lacked either the money or the grades for college. Uncle Sam took care of his own. But she wasn’t as sure about things as she had been. She thought more and more of making her life right here. SUNY offered a lot of distance learning courses. She could get a degree without leaving Endor, at least for long. Accounting, maybe. Hospitality—she had hands-on experience at the diner, but banks liked to see college credits on a CV. She didn’t even have to settle for helping to manage the diner. There was a garage in Endor, and these days people didn’t look at girls funny if they wanted to train for a mechanics license. She didn’t have to hurry to make up her mind. There wasn’t a rush. For the first time in her life, everything was always the same. She had discovered she liked knowing that everything was going to be the same, and she was going to find herself in the same place, next month and next year. Change had been a constant in her life for so long, she’d never had the chance to experience consistency. She loved the ancient calm of the Adirondacks, sneaking moonlight swims up at the lake, the silent hush of looking out over a world transformed by snow, the baking heat of summer. The only thing she didn’t completely like about her new home was . . . the summer people.

Before she became a full-time resident of Endor, she’d been one of the summer people. She hadn’t noticed them any more than a fish notices water. Afterward, though, it was different. She was a local. And she began to notice what the locals noticed.

The scattered towns of Issachar County depended on tourism for their income. Hunting, antiquing, recreation . . . without those things there’d be no income, no tax base, and pretty soon nothing much here. “You don’t beat a cash cow” was one of Grams’ favorite sayings. That meant being nice to the people from Away. No matter what they did.

Not all of the Away People were horrible. And Mandy wasn’t working at the diner every minute. She’d made several summer friends, and kept up with them during the year. And a lot of the people up at the Resort were nice; she’d talked with Grams about applying for a job up there, but you had to be sixteen to work as a lifeguard and eighteen to work as a housekeeper, and on top of that, except for the housekeepers everyone wore two or three skill-hats and there was a long waiting list besides. She’d put in her application, but she hadn’t heard back yet, and she hadn’t made up her mind what to do if they called her anyway. She’d been up to the Resort a few times, and knew from that that it was a big job to take on. And there was still the prospect of college, whether she went away or stayed.

And all that was fine. But as she came out of her mourning, that first summer, the first time one of the Away People did something jarring came as a shock. Then she began seeing what they were like—not her friends, but the ones who seemed to think everyone and everything here in Endor had been put there for her pleasure. It wasn’t pretty. And if she worked at the resort she’d be around them all the time.

Mandy had been brought up in a world where the antique virtues of respect and politeness were so commonplace as to be invisible. Respect and even deference had been the grease that kept the Army wheels turning. Mom had always used to say: “People say an army travels on its stomach, but it still won’t get much of anywhere without good manners.”

The Away People were a revelation to her. Not only were they boorish and patronizing, they were destructive. They parked on people’s lawns, threw garbage everywhere, and even stole things. But above all, they complained.

Grams had put Mandy to work at the diner. First only on weekends, then part time in the summer. She’d gotten to see their rudeness up front. And here in the civilian world, there was no quarterly evaluation to keep them in line, and no CO to downcheck them if they didn’t improve. They were just something that had to be put up with. Like locusts, Grams said. “Like Professional Privates,” Dad would have said. Professional Privates made it their business to collect their checks and do the absolute minimum. Summer People made it their business to have fun and to heck with anyone else . . . thinking Lake Endor was their personal Disneyland without all the lines, and magic fairies that tidied up behind them, so they did whatever they wanted. In a way, that was true, because the Summer People did what they wanted, and Endor coped. Because no matter what else they did, the Away People brought money with them. And Endor needed it.

So when people like Blake of the Lake—or Audrey Jordan—appeared, you just smiled and kept your mouth shut. The Weber family had quite the reputation in Endor, and it wasn’t just Grams who cautioned her about them. Once she’d been “accepted” by the community, several of the girls at Hidden High School did too. All three of the Weber boys were trouble from the time they could walk, it seemed. But the kind of trouble Blake Weber made changed as the years passed.

She and Blake were pretty much the same age. But if Mandy had been raised to believe in the power of consensus and working together as a group for the betterment of everyone, Blake had clearly been raised to believe he was the master of all he surveyed. At fifteen he discovered girls (which at least cut down his random acts of vandalism). At sixteen he started doing something about it, and not just with his summer steady, Audrey. He acted as if everyone who lived in Endor had been put here for his entertainment, like the robots in Westworld, and he got pretty handsy about it.

None of the girls wanted to complain to their parents, and the boys didn’t see it happen. What could they do? It wasn’t as if it was anything more than a “he said she said” kind of thing: Blake was too careful for that. All that would happen would be that the Webers would get pissed off and make a big stink and maybe stop coming up, and that would have what folks called “a chilling effect” on local tourism. That was something the adults were afraid of.

The kids knew better. The thing to really be afraid of was Blake’s girlfriend. Audrey wasn’t just an entitled little princess, she was vicious. She liked to hurt people, and she’d take any excuse to do it. The only thing to do was not attract her attention. At least Summer People weren’t forever, and while the Webers came into town quite a lot, the Jordans didn’t. But everybody knew about Audrey, just like everyone (except both sets of parents) knew that she was Blake’s summer girl. And if there was anyone that Mandy would have pointed a finger at as the Pet-Killer of Lake Endor, it was Audrey.

That was why Mandy had been so surprised to meet Olivia.

The Webers had been heralded by the usual cloud of letters and emails to various local businesses, so everyone in town knew what day on which to expect them. They didn’t come to the diner very much (Chesley, the short-order cook on the day shift, pretty much guaranteed that anything they ordered ranged from bland to borderline inedible, which was an amazing feat with an ice cream sundae), especially during their first week of residence, so Mandy hadn’t been thinking much about them. She’d been running a bunch of errands for Grams before starting her shift at the diner when she ran into Blake. He’d greeted her effusively, and trapped her into a hug, which she got out of as quickly and tactfully as she could, but she wouldn’t have been caught out at all except for the girl with him. Olivia (Mandy saw her wince slightly when Blake called her “Ollie”) was pretty much the Anti-Audrey, and somehow Mandy didn’t think she was the kind of person who thought summers roughing it in the Adirondacks were fun. If Mandy had met her without Blake, she would probably have pegged her as a guest of the Resort, but even that would have been a stretch. She was pretty in a non-pushy way, and would have looked prettier if she hadn’t looked like a jacklighted doe. She looked like the last possible person in the entire universe who would date Blake of the Lake. Mandy was puzzled, but not puzzled enough to stick around. She’d made her excuses and booked. Blake was the kind of person who couldn’t tell real emotions from faked ones.

The gossip-mongers had been delirious with anticipation of an epic cat-fight between Olivia and Audrey—or at least some kind of fallout—but it never happened. Olivia had come into town once or twice more, but she was usually alone, and always quiet and non-gossipy. She’d eaten at the diner a couple of times, and she’d been just. . . . nice. Really nice, actually. Mandy thought she was the kind of person it might be nice to get to know, but her association with the Webers made doing so improbable. Hanging around with Blake meant (or at least it had before this summer) hanging around with Audrey, and Audrey Jordan was poison.

Mandy did kind of wonder what Olivia would do when she met Audrey—only not enough to make a real effort to find out. As the days passed, there wasn’t the slightest rumor, so Mandy forgot all about it.

Which was why it was such a shock to peek out through the kitchen doors of the diner and see Olivia sitting there, hunched up at a corner table.

She looked awful. Her face was tanned, but it somehow managed to look white and pinched. She was sitting where she could see the entrance. A little hunched over, her elbows drawn in tight to her sides as if everything hurt—or as if she was deathly ill.

Mandy’s first impulse was to rush right out there and fix things, but she curtailed it sharply. Mom had always said that first impulses were often good ones, but to always check her facts. And the fact was, Olivia didn’t know anything about Mandy, except that Mandy was “friends” with Blake of the Lake. And right now Blake’s friends might not be the sort she’d trust.

Listening to her own thoughts, Mandy realized that she was assuming that Olivia’s distress was caused by Blake, and she knew Olivia was staying with the Webers. And that was a FUBAR situation if she’d ever seen one.

She came through the doors and walked behind the counter, grabbing a couple of glasses as she went. Ice, Coke, straws on the side . . . automatically she grabbed a tray and a menu, added the glasses, and walked over to Olivia, sliding the tray onto the table in one smooth motion.

“You look like you could use a cold drink,” she said, sitting down opposite Olivia.

Olivia stared at her, looking like a wild thing caught in a trap. Her mouth opened, but she clearly couldn’t think of anything at all to say.

“I think you also need something with caffeine and sugar,” Mandy said matter-of-factly, peeling a straw and sliding it into her Coke. “I don’t want to be rude, but, you look like someone just killed your kitten.”

“You’re Blake’s friend.” The words came out in a low accusing whisper.

“Well, Grams always says be nice to the summer people, because without them we’d all have to work for a living,” Mandy said, smiling reassuringly. “I wouldn’t call us ‘friends.’ More like I don’t have to tip Mandy because I know her, if you know what I mean.”

That got her a faint ghost of a smile, and Olivia reached for her soda. Mandy waited until she’d taken a drink, wincing a little at the sweetness.

“You look like you could maybe use a little help,” Mandy said. “Or maybe more than a little help?”

“I just . . . I lost my phone. In the lake.”

“Ooops,” Mandy said. “Somebody does that every year, it seems like. By now the bottom’s probably covered with them. Unless Endora’s eaten them.”

She meant it for a small joke; most of the locals didn’t take the idea of Endora the Lake Endor Serpent seriously. But Olivia recoiled, looking confused and frightened, and the soda class bobbled in her hands. Mandy tensed, on the verge of rescuing it, but Olivia managed to set it back on the table before she spilled it.

“I have to leave,” Olivia blurted out. “Not— I mean— Just— Is there a bus or something?”

“There’s the Shortline into Albany, but it only stops here on Wednesdays, so you’d have to wait a week unless you want to hitch a ride down to Hidden. Bus to Albany stops there every morning.”

“So I’ve missed that too,” Olivia said in a low voice. Just then someone opened the door, and the little bell jangled. This time Olivia did spill her Coke. She bolted to her feet, attempting to escape the spreading sugary puddle, her cheeks flaming with mortification. Mandy, no stranger to messes, grabbed several fistfuls of napkins out of the dispenser, efficiently swiping up the mess.

“Oh, look, now, you’ve gotten it all over your jeans. Just c’mon back with me and we’ll get that cleaned up in a New York minute.” Mandy would have said that whether it was true or not—every instinct told her to get Olivia off somewhere quiet where somebody could find out what was going on. That somebody being her, if she had anything to say about it.

Imperiously, Mandy led Olivia through the swinging doors that led through the kitchen, and then through another door that led up a flight of stairs. This was Grams Phillips’ house (and hers); the kitchen of the diner occupied most of the first floor.

“I thought— The rest room—” Olivia stared around the living room in confusion. There wasn’t much changed from Grams’ own time: the floral wallpaper, the clusters of framed pictures, the many bookshelves, were pretty much just as they had been in Endor’s heyday, when the Lodge did a booming business all the way to the end of September.

“Thought you might have to rinse them, or at least sponge them off,” Mandy said. “Don’t worry. I live here with my grams. Nobody else.”

She guided Olivia to the bathroom and waited until she closed the door, then ducked into the kitchen. Tea was better than soda if you wanted someone to talk to you. And she remembered how Olivia had liked that chamomile. She got the kettle on, dumped some cookies on a plate, scooped tea leaves into the pot, added mugs and spoons and sugar, and was back in the living room just as Olivia exited the bathroom. She looked around, clearly taking stock of her surroundings for the first time.

“Yup,” Mandy said, answering her look. “I come from a long line of hoarders and packrats.”

“It’s nice,” Olivia said. Her hair was slicked back and she’d washed her face. There was a little more color in her cheeks now.

“Tea’ll be ready in just a minute,” Mandy said. “You look like you could use some. Or you can tell me to MYOB. Either way, there’s a landline in the kitchen, which feel free to use it.”

Olivia laughed a little raggedly, but at least now she didn’t look completely panic stricken. “Who could I possibly call?”

“Ghostbusters?” Mandy asked, and this time Olivia’s chuckle was genuine, if a little weak.

Olivia knew she was moving mostly on autopilot, and had been ever since she made herself leave the cabin. Just in the last few hours, her life had been crammed with events of such intensity that her bruised mind shied away from processing them. She was grateful to follow Mandy’s lead—a girl her own age, a girl who lived here, not in Sacramento, a girl Olivia trusted simply because there was nobody else to trust.

She sat in the shabby chic kitchen—only she suspected that Mandy’s “Grams” had probably never heard the phrase “shabby chic” and didn’t care about hipster irony—and drank the tea Mandy had poured as she sat at the farmhouse table with the gingham oilcloth tablecloth. There were oatmeal raisin cookies on a green glass plate between them—oatmeal raisin cookies, homemade, each as large as your hand. She took her first bite of one out of stubborn politeness, then discovered she had a raging appetite and wolfed down two of them, barely keeping herself from reaching for a third.

As she composed herself, Mandy chatted on about inconsequential local things—town history, the local football team, what it was like to live in such a small town. “And while I can’t speak for Bobby Gleason and his dad—you probably met one or the other of them; they own the Rexall’s—nobody around here much believes in Endora. I don’t know what’s at the bottom of the lake, but . . .”

Olivia had been raising her mug to her lips, but at the mention of Endora-the-sea-monster, the cup leaped from her nerveless fingers and crashed to the floor.

Mandy bounced instantly to her feet. “Nothing to worry about!” she sang out. “Diner mugs! Isn’t even broken! And there wasn’t much in it.” Within a minute or two Mandy had wiped up the floor, rescued the unbroken mug and set it into the sink, grabbed a new mug from the rack and poured Olivia another cupful.

You saw her too. Tail and all.

As vividly as if she were watching a movie, Olivia could see it all over again. The bottom of the lake, the glitter of soda cans, Audrey Jordan, her red hair billowing around her head like smoke as she strangled Olivia, her long green-gold tail holding her motionless beneath the lake surface. Before she realized she was going to speak, she’d blurted out: “One of the things on the bottom of the lake was going to be me.”

If Mandy had told her she was just being silly, that would have been the end of it, but she didn’t. As much as Olivia tried to stem her confession, it all came pouring out as she wept helplessly. At least she didn’t include the unbelievable parts—Selkies and Lamiae and fairies—but the believable parts were bad enough. Blake Weber had talked her into coming up to Lake Endor with him so his real girlfriend could drown her.

At first she’d tried to keep real names out of it, but Mandy had an unerring ability to put names to “this girl” and “this guy.” Olivia wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or panic-stricken to discover that Blake was universally known as “Blake of the Lake” and Audrey was universally hated.

“It was only a matter of time before she did something like that,” Mandy said angrily. She had hitched her chair over beside Olivia’s and put a comforting arm around her.

“Killed somebody?” Olivia said around a handful of napkins.

“Yes. No! I mean, it isn’t a surprise, but . . . look. You can’t tell anybody because there’s absolutely no proof, but the Jordan family’s been coming up here for about ten or twelve years now—since Audrey was maybe six or eight—and animals started disappearing. Kittens, birds, dogs. It happens: people come up here for vacation, bring their city pets and expect them to adjust and know where their people are. But there was a lot more of it after the Jordans started coming up. For the last couple of years, we’ve lost so many deer in the summer that the rangers have been wondering if maybe a cougar or a wolf pack had moved into the area, or maybe a large-scale poaching operation, but they never found any trace of either one. Just animal bones.”

“You think Audrey’s been killing deer?” Olivia asked blankly.

“Maybe,” Mandy hedged. “But you know what they say about serial killers? They start by killing animals.” She paused a moment. “Remember when I warned you about walking around at night?”

“You said it was rabid raccoons—”

“Well, you just don’t blurt out ‘there’s a potential serial-killer at the campground,’ you know? Not without proof. Maybe it’s coincidence, and Audrey’s as innocent as she likes people to believe—at least of animal murders. But what I know for sure is, she’s bad juju, and she plays rough and dirty. Anything she wants, she takes. And no, her parents don’t have a clue. They think she’s a little angel.”

“But—” But Blake, she’d been about to say. Blake loves her. Is he a part of this too? But her question was cut short by the sound of a door slamming at the bottom of the stairs.

“Whoops! That’s Grams,” Mandy said in an undertone. She bounced to her feet. “Quick! Into the bathroom and wash your face! You’ll look less like a poached raccoon.”

“Ha,” Olivia said dispiritedly. Unlike in books and movies, a few handsful of cold water wouldn’t erase all traces of tears. But it would make her look slightly less rabid in front of Mandy’s Grams. She dashed into the bathroom and closed the door, remembering only at the last minute that she’d left her backpack in the kitchen.

Rachel Tyler hadn’t seen Mandy in the front of the diner, so she’d walked through the back to check. No Mandy there, either. She had the noon to five shift, since that was the slowest part of the day; Tracey could cover the whole place by herself, so it wasn’t a real problem, but Mandy was more conscientious than to blow off her chores without a word to anyone.

As she started up the stairs, she heard Mandy say something—too low to hear—and then the sound of a door close. Company? Well, she’d know soon enough.

Mandy met her at the top of the steps, looking—not guilty, precisely, but very intent. Before Rachel could say anything, she said: “Grams! You know that girl the Webers brought up with them this year? Olivia? Well, she’s . . . kind of in trouble.”

“M’m,” Rachel said. “Boys or money? Or girls?” In her experience, the problems of teenagers came in two kinds, one insoluble, the other not.

“Yeah, well, um, neither. She’s from California,” Mandy said, as if that constituted an explanation.

“M’m,” Rachel said again. “Come into the kitchen.”

The kitchen—little changed from her father’s time, but in those days, things had been made to last—was only a little disheveled. There were two mugs on the table and one in the sink.

“Whatever help we can give, we’ll give,” she said, raising her voice a little at the sound of the stealthy opening of the bathroom door. “Though I think, at this time of day, sandwiches would be more use than cookies.”

“I’m sorry.”

The hesitant voice came from behind her, and Rachel turned to regard Mandy’s latest rescue.

“I didn’t mean to make trouble.”

The girl looked about fourteen, but Rachel knew perfectly well that her eye was “out” when it came to judging ages. Part of the cost of living this long; the world seemed to change faster all the time. This girl was tall, and not quite past the coltish gawkiness of childhood. One of those who grew into their faces, and in a few more years she’d be a beauty. Right now she looked unfinished. Rachel was glad to see she was sensibly dressed: jeans and sneakers and a blue gingham top. Yes, sunblock was a thing that existed, but with so many girls—and grown men and women, too—running around in less than what Rachel would choose to wear to bed, well . . . it would be a miracle if they could anoint all that exposed skin.

The only thing that was out of place about her was the necklace she was wearing. It didn’t seem to go with everything else she was wearing. What did the kids call that style? Tribal.

“You aren’t any trouble, child. Olivia, is it? But it sounds to me like you might be in some difficulties.” She turned away before Olivia could answer. Young things were skittish, for all their bluff and bravado. “Whatever it is, it can wait until we’ve all had lunch. Discussion goes better on a full stomach. Anything on the menu that’ll make you curl up and die?” she asked, opening the refrigerator.

“Well . . . I don’t really eat meat, but, um . . .”

“Then you’re in luck: Mandy’s been experimenting with new menu items, and we’ve still got half a pan of that vee-gan meatloaf.”

“It’s ‘vegan,’ Grams,” Mandy said. She darted Olivia a look of triumph and relief. Rachel pretended not to have seen it. She dug around in the refrigerator and freezer—the Tyler kitchen tended to function as a “test kitchen” for things Rachel was thinking about putting on the summer menu—clients in the fall weren’t as picky, and few folks other than the locals came to the diner in hard winter—and brought out a bowl of non-dairy coleslaw, the pan of mock-loaf, and a half loaf of gluten-free bread. Might as well use up all the “alternative” food in one go. A quick pop in the microwave to thaw and warm and they were good to go.

She got most of the story (all except the parts that had brought Olivia to her kitchen), while she assembled and plated sandwiches and slaw with the deftness of someone who’d grown up literally working in a diner, and got all three of them seated, with tall glasses of herbal iced tea sweetened with blue agave syrup. Rachel believed that anything worth doing was worth doing thoroughly, so “alternative sweetener” it was. Mandy, for whom this was a twice-told tale, prompted Olivia on the parts she elided, but Rachel could tell they were both laundering the story out of respect to the delicate sensibilities of the aged. So what she heard—this time—was that Olivia had been in a canoe and it had tipped over and she had nearly drowned. She was certain there was a whole lot more to the story than that.

“So she dropped her phone in the lake,” Mandy said.

“It’s still down there somewhere,” Olivia said glumly. “Not that it could be fixed, anyway.”

“That happens to a few folks each year. Apple should open a store here in town; it’d never lack for customers. Endora’s probably got quite a collection of cellphones by now.” It was a bow drawn at a venture. Mandy didn’t quite roll her eyes, but Olivia actually flinched.

Well, wasn’t that interesting?

“Grams,” Mandy said (trying not to sound long-suffering, Rachel knew; old people were so endlessly exasperating to the young), “you know Endora’s just a hoax Bobby’s dad came up with to attract tourists.”

Watching Olivia without seeming to watch her, Rachel decided that it was time to send the conversation a little sideways and get the girl to relax again.

“I’m not saying there’s a sea-monster in that bitty old lake. It’d’ve starved to death by now; the only fish in the lake are the ones the Conservation people release every spring. I’m just saying we have our goodly share of odd happenings around here, same as anywhere that people know their history.”

Ah, good. She’d strung out her “crotchety old person” speech long enough for Olivia to regain her composure. Now to find out what the trouble was and if it could be fixed.

“Amanda, why don’t you clear away in here. Olivia and I are going to see if we need to call in an air strike on the lake, or if a tactical insertion is a better plan.”

Mandy snorted wordlessly as she got to her feet. Olivia looked much too tired to protest Rachel’s high-handedness. Good.

Olivia followed Grams Tyler back into the living room. She was vibrating with tension, but numb at the same time, as if she’d lost the sensation—not of touch, but of being in touch—with the world around her. As if it was impossible to react because she could no longer sense anything to react to. It was like having no sense of fear, or maybe like being so afraid all the time so you couldn’t tell whether you were afraid or not. Like navigating the world by memory, blindly, while everyone around you assumed you could see.

She’d come into Endor not because she was afraid of Audrey, but because she thought she ought to be afraid. She’d gone with Mandy because it was easier than not going, and because Mandy had looked so worried when she’d looked at her that it had started Olivia’s thoughts chasing themselves in circles: how bad did she look, should she look that way, when people looked the way she must what kind of thing had happened to them. She’d wanted to tell Mandy everything, but the moment she began, she’d shied away from putting words to the things that had happened. That she’d seen. That she’d been told. Underneath everything else thrummed the baseline of panic—of being down deep below the surface of the lake, knowing she would never reach the air again.

While it was possible to believe that Mandy might be on Blake’s side, or Audrey’s side, it was utterly impossible to believe that Rachel Tyler might be. Mandy’s grandmother seemed like a grandmother in a story: neat pale-blue polo shirt and chinos, sensible lace-up shoes, her gray hair cut sensibly short. She looked like the kind of grandmother who would wear a barn coat to rake leaves in autumn, and make cocoa with marshmallows on a snowy winter’s day. Olivia had little experience with either autumn leaves or snow, and her own grandmothers were brisk and professional, and certainly not grey. But archetypes were archetypes.

Like elves and fairies and unicorns and Selkies? her inner monologue gibed. She glared it to silence (as much as one could glare the still small voice of idiocy into silence), and sat meekly where Mrs. Tyler directed her to.

This was her first chance to study the living room—she’d barely glanced at it on her way to the kitchen. She’d gotten an impression of books and antiques, and not much more, but now that she could get a good look, she discovered first impressions didn’t lie.

The furniture was barely too young to be named “antique”; the apple-green couch with its rolled arms and slick and prickly brocade fabric; the decorative throw pillows with hand-done needlepoint and crewelwork covers (plus a few souvenir ones exhorting the viewer to visit Niagara Falls or plumb the wonders of New York State), the rocking chair with its hook-rug back and seat cover, the comfy chair (and matching ottoman) with its exuberant (if faded) design of angular geometric shapes and swooping arcs. The coffee table in front of them looked handmade and from no particular period—decorative wrought iron legs holding up a top made of pieces of grey barn siding.

The wallpaper was exuberant dark-red cabbage roses silk-screened onto a beige background (whatever color it once had been, it was beige now). It would have been overpowering except for the fact that most of it was concealed by bookshelves. Most of them had started life as curio cabinets, Olivia suspected, but now, instead of hobnail glass and bisque figurines, they held books and magazines, hardcovers and paperbacks and pamphlets and ancient magazines. Where there was enough open space on the walls, family photos that looked like they went back to the Victorian era vied for space with what looked like framed newspaper and magazine clippings.

“Now,” said Mrs. Tyler, seating herself on the chair and setting her mug of tea down on the coffee table, “what really seems to be the trouble? Let’s hear all the details, please, not the edited version you gave me earlier.”

Olivia took a deep breath. Even the details she was willing to admit to seemed gothic and overblown now. Maybe it had all been an accident. A misunderstanding.

“Blake of the Lake didn’t tell Olivia he had a summer girlfriend when he invited her to spend the summer here,” Mandy said. “And Audrey got her out on the lake in a canoe this morning and tried to drown her.”

“I’m pretty sure Olivia can speak for herself,” Mrs. Tyler said placidly. “Is that how you lost your phone, Livy?”

“I had it when I fell out of the canoe,” Olivia said in a guilty rush. “It was my own fault, really . . .”

“Well, people don’t go out in a boat intending to fall out of it, although they should really prepare for all possibilities. Now, ‘drowned’ is a pretty harsh term, you know. If somebody tries to drown you, well, they’re committing a crime. What does your Mr. Weber say to that?”

Olivia stared at her, desperately willing herself to come up with an answer and failing. Blake didn’t know what had happened. She was sure of it. How sure can you be when you don’t really know him at all?

“Well, that’s a question for another time,” Mrs. Tyler said, answering herself. “You seem to be in pretty good shape, considering that you didn’t have any help getting out of the lake.”

“Actually, I did. One of the lifeguards at the Lodge came and dragged me up off the bottom.” Anger finally lent her glibness. “If he hadn’t, I’d still be down there,” she said fiercely.

Gram Tyler looked at her speculatively. Not like someone who didn’t believe her, but like someone who didn’t think she’d heard the whole story yet. Which, of course, she hadn’t.

Without her conscious volition, her hand went to the necklace she wore. Her thumb rested beside the large amber bead. It felt warmer than her skin, and she couldn’t quite remember whether amber was supposed to feel warm or cool.

“That’s a pretty thing,” Mrs. Tyler said, nodding toward the necklace. “I wouldn’t risk wearing something like that out on the water, myself.”

“It’s waterproof,” Olivia said tightly. In her own ears, her words sounded guilty. She thought about Dylan, whose temporary gift it was. He’d said it would protect her from Audrey, and despite herself, she shuddered. She remembered Audrey in her yellow bikini, looking so . . . normal. She couldn’t even convince this nice old lady that Audrey was a murderess. How could she convince anybody Audrey was a sea monster?

“So it is,” Mrs. Tyler said. “Coral and shell, and even amber, all come from the ocean.”

“But amber is fossilized tree sap,” Olivia said, diverted by the almost non sequitur.

“So it is,” Mrs. Tyler said. “And these days people mine for it, just like in Jurassic Park. But the first pieces of amber that anyone heard tell of were washed up on the sea shore.”

“Because amber floats in salt water,” Mandy said impatiently. “But we’ve got to do something!”

“Oh, I don’t really . . .” Olivia’s thoughts filled with horror. If people “did something” that would mean a big hot mess. And she didn’t even know what anybody would say, but she did know that Blake’s dad would come down on them with both feet.

“Well,” said Mrs. Tyler firmly. “Let’s settle on something. Maybe that red-haired minx tried to pull a dirty trick on you. Maybe she meant more than a dirty trick, But there’s no witnesses to it except you and she.” Mrs. Tyler now turned her calm gaze on her granddaughter. “Livy says one thing, Audrey says another, and guess who will be believed?”

Mandy made a rude noise, but looked resigned.

“I believe you.” Livy felt her eyes widen, but Mrs. Tyler wasn’t finished yet. “I believe that red-headed wench would do anything to eliminate competition, including trying to drown you. But the police here depend on tourist money, and the Webers and Jordans have a lot of history here and spend a lot. You can guess where this will go. But obviously, you simply cannot stay here where that red-headed minx can continue to torment you—or make another try at you. So let’s just settle on a story that everyone can agree on that will get you on a plane back home the quickest.” Mrs. Tyler looked back at Livy. “I suppose that now that you’ve found out young Weber has another girlfriend, you’d just like to go back home and forget any of this ever happened, am I right?”

“Oh, yes!” Olivia said gratefully. That made a good story. A safe story, one that everybody could believe and not make any fuss over. One even Mom would take without a second thought. Why hadn’t she figured that out for herself?

The thought of never seeing Dylan again hurt, just like thinking of leaving a really good story half-read. But she stifled the thought firmly. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was her pretend boyfriend. Once she got home, she’d look up the address of the Lake Endor Lodge and mail his necklace back to him.

And then maybe she could just pretend none of this had ever happened. And the next time somebody started going on about how wonderful elves and unicorns were, she’d run away as fast as she could. Maybe I should go live with Dad after all . . . the thought came, unbidden.

But then, as always, she had second thoughts. Stupid, stupid, second thoughts. It didn’t seem like the right decision, somehow. But she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Well, you look old enough to know your own mind. And that’s an old, old tale, which means it’s one everyone will believe. I suppose your parents might like to know what’s going on before you show up on their doorstep, though.”

“I can just call Mom from the airport when I get there,” Olivia said. “Really, my mom’s a lawyer and summer is about her busiest time, and I shouldn’t bother her until I’m actually about to come home. She doesn’t even have to come get me herself. I can call an Uber. I’ve got my return ticket. I just need to get to the airport.”

“And write a note to Mr. and Mrs. Weber so they won’t worry where you’ve gone,” said Mrs. Tyler, in a tone that suggested she was just finishing Olivia’s sentence. “I can run you down to Hidden tomorrow morning when I go to pick up the papers. You can catch a bus from there.”

“And she can stay here tonight,” Mandy said.

“Well, she can’t sleep in the street,” Mrs. Tyler said. “But I do strongly suggest that you phone your mom tonight. If she hears from the Webers first, I don’t think it will end well for you.”

Olivia coiled a length of hair around her finger, frowning as she thought. It was three hours later here than it was at home, and Mom did not like being called at the office for anything short of Armageddon. Olivia did a quick calculation. “I don’t want to call her at the office. But she won’t be home for hours yet.” And maybe she could think of some way to get out of calling home by then.

“Well, there’s no hurry,” Mrs. Tyler agreed, much to Olivia’s relief. “But it’s a pity you won’t be staying longer. I know the town isn’t much to see, but there’s a good deal of fascinating history hidden in these mountains.”

“Oh, Grams!” Mandy said with fond exasperation. “Nobody cares about ancient history these days. Especially when it isn’t real.”

“Reality is a matter of opinion, Amanda,” Mrs. Tyler chided. “It’s as interesting wondering about why people think things are real than whether they’re real or not. Two centuries ago everybody believed that bad smells cause disease. They believed that heart attacks and seizures were caused by being shot with a fairy arrow. Isn’t it interesting to find out why?”

“Not really,” Amanda muttered.

“For example,” Mrs. Tyler went on, as if she was reading Livy’s mind and deliberately changing the subject to something that didn’t make Livy’s stomach churn with fear just thinking about. “Consider your young friend Olivia’s necklace. She might think it’s just a pretty trinket, but ancient peoples believed each of those items had power and meaning. Amber, for example, used to be thought to be lightning that had somehow been frozen into a solid.”

“You’ll have to excuse Grams,” Mandy said to Olivia. “Sometimes she thinks she’s Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.”

“Nonsense, dear! If I’m going to be anyone, I’m going to be Indiana Jones: his clothing is much more practical and his adventures are more entertaining. But I suppose I’m boring our guest.”

“Not at all!” Olivia said hastily. Then she remembered she’d had a vague idea that she’d meant to investigate some of Dylan’s claims. Not that it would change what she’d seen. But she still doubted her own sanity. “I was just wondering . . . about the fairies and things. Didn’t some of them—I mean, didn’t people used to believe that some of them—live in lakes?”

“Oh, lakes, rivers, oceans, springs—just about every body of water had some sort of creature associated with it. Rusalkas and banshees are both associated with rivers, nixies with pools or springs. Of course, that’s Europe. Here in the New World, the newcomers were more interested in shooting the people who knew the old tales than learning from them. Now let me see . . . You look like a reader, and I do have a book around here somewhere . . .”

Mrs. Tyler got to her feet and began hunting through her bookshelves. Mandy caught Olivia’s eye and gave her an eyeroll-and-grimace, but Olivia could tell her heart wasn’t in it. “Grams always wanted to be a librarian,” she said confidingly. “But people didn’t let girls go to college during the Great Depression.”

“I’ll have you know that I was born long after the invention of the automobile, let alone the wheel, and—ah! Found it!” She turned toward Olivia, a book in her hands.

But she’d seen this book before. Romance of the Waters. The antique book of folklore at the library.

Wasn’t there something. . . .

Just then the clock on the wall chimed. It was in the form of a black and white cat whose eyes rolled and whose tail whisked with every tick, and Olivia couldn’t decide whether it was adorable or horrible. She glanced up at it reflexively. It was already three o’clock! Blake would be up from his after-swim nap by now. Would he be looking for her? Or would he be with Audrey?

And what would Audrey say to him about her? About this morning . . . ?

Mrs. Tyler, too, had noted the chiming.

“Well, that’s my cue. Time to get ready for the dinner rush. It’s Taco Thursday, you know. Can’t disappoint the clients.” With that, she got to her feet. “The telephone,” she said meaningfully, “is in the kitchen. I’d suggest you use it, if only to change your return flight, but it’s none of my beeswax one way or the other.”

“Thank you for everything,” Olivia said. She wasn’t yet sure she was going to take Mrs. Tyler up on her offer to let her spend the night here, but she did intend to be down in Hidden in time to catch the bus to Albany.

Mrs. Tyler nodded. “Both of you keep out of trouble,” she said, and headed down the stairs.

“I hope you aren’t annoyed by all the ‘good advice.’ I’m pretty sure Grams thinks I’m still eight years old half the time,” Mandy said.

“Well, she didn’t throw me out, try to call my mom, or tell the police, so it’s all good.”

“Yeah, well, she can’t exactly call the police, you know. She’s right.” Mandy sighed. “In a contest between what Audrey says and what you say, you’re going to lose. I believe you, but there are no witnesses. The cops will look at the whole situation and figure you’re trying to get Audrey into trouble because you’re jealous. It’s better if you just get out of here as soon as you can. You’re eighteen, right?”

“Yeah. Last March,” Olivia said, puzzled.

“In that case, you’re a legal adult,” Mandy said. “You can go wherever you want to.”

Yeah, except for the fact Mom would reach orbital velocity and probably Dad too if I went anywhere but home. “What do you think I should do?” Olivia asked impulsively.

“Go home. Now. Get as far away from that cheating drama queen and his psychotic girlfriend as you possibly can—as fast as you can,” Mandy said promptly. She cocked her head, studying Olivia carefully. “You weren’t Prom Queen or anything like that in high school,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Um . . .” Olivia said, feeling her face go hot with humiliation. So Mandy thinks I’m a dork, too, just like everyone else.

“Every high school—and college, and job, and anything!—is exactly the same,” Mandy said. “They all have four factions: the freaks, the geeks, the rah-rahs, and the jocks. The rah-rahs pair up with the jocks, and the rest of us keep our heads down and pray for a meteor strike,” Mandy said. “But my point is: if you’d been a rah-rah, somebody would’ve warned you about Blake a long time ago.”

“She did,” Olivia whispered, almost inaudibly. Mia had tried to warn her. Mia had risked their friendship to try to warn her. It was probably far too late to mend things with her, and the thought made Olivia’s heart ache. Without her phone, she couldn’t even text her.

“I have to be nice to him—or at least polite—because the Webers are Summer People and they spend a lot of money here,” Mandy went on. “But you don’t. So I can tell you what everybody in Endor knows: Blake Weber is a handsy creep who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’”

Olivia glanced up at her in horror, then bent her head over the book again. She didn’t want to defend Blake—even after her shocking disillusionment—but it sounded like what Mandy was saying was . . . “He isn’t like that,” she said quietly.

“Oh yes he is,” Mandy said. She went on talking, but Olivia no longer heard her.

Because as soon as she opened the book, she saw the illustration of the Selkie. And the memories came rushing back.

“. . . and yet, a mortal woman’s tears can bind even the king of the Selkie kind with a love unbreakable. Should she be in grief for an unfaithful mortal lover, let her but weep beside the water like the ferns that do drop their tears, and she will call a Selkie from the sea to be her faithful and constant lover . . .”

Her faithful and constant lover.

Dylan.

She’d bewitched him. Taken away his free will. His choice. She swallowed hard. She hadn’t meant to. But done was done.

If there were such things as Selkies, and he was one.

If she wasn’t just losing her mind.

“Olivia? Livy?”

She started guiltily, slamming the book shut.

“You weren’t even listening,” Mandy said with a sigh.

“Everybody says that,” Olivia muttered. She blushed with embarrassment at the sulky tone of her voice. This was no way to act with someone who’d been nothing but kind to her.

“Well,” Mandy said, “doesn’t matter. I just thought you’d like to know that you weren’t the only one he’s tried his playboy caveman stuff on. Not that there’s any more proof than ‘he said she said,’ and Grams always says God is on the side with the most expensive lawyers. It’s like Audrey trying to drown you—we all know there’s no contest between ‘Money’ and ‘locals.’ But the important thing is that you’re woke now.”

“Yeah,” Olivia said with a sigh. “And you know what? When I get home and tell Mom all about how I spent my summer vacation, I’m going to leave out the ‘homicidal girlfriend tried to drown me’ part.”

“Probably a good idea,” Mandy agreed. “Unless you think she might follow you home to try again. But you’re in Sacramento and she’s in Boston, so you’re probably safe.”

“And maybe it was all an accident,” Olivia said forlornly.

She jumped and squeaked as Mandy seized her by the shoulders and shook her. “It wasn’t!” Mandy said fiercely. “Don’t you gaslight yourself and say it was! You didn’t lie to me when you told me about it. Don’t lie to yourself now.”

I’m hallucinating talking seals and cannibal mermaids and you’re assuming I’m in touch with reality? Olivia inhaled shakily. “I don’t care what I believe. She’s Blake’s girlfriend, and he should’ve told me he had one before he invited me up here.”

“He should’ve told his dad he had one,” Mandy snickered. “Mr. Weber doesn’t want anybody getting in the way of Blake’s stellar sports career. Did you get The Talk about how it wouldn’t be fair to you when Blake of the Lake has to dedicate himself to a rigorous training program and years of privation to realize his future greatness?”

“Maybe?” It sounded familiar, anyway. Or as familiar as something you’d ignored at the time could sound.

She wanted to anchor herself in the here and now—or at the very least be able to follow the conversation with Mandy—but she kept looking guiltily down at the book in her hands. What would it be like to be forced to be in love with somebody? Sure, Blake had never loved her and had led her on for some incomprehensible reason, and it hurt to remember how happy she’d been before she knew. But she knew now and she wasn’t in love with him now, and she could barely imagine how horrible it would be to have had that kind of rude awakening and still be in love. And not be able to do anything about it.

Or was there something? If there was a way she could free Dylan, she owed it to him to at least try. He’d saved her life, after all. (This time, the mental cramp she got from thinking: Selkie/Lamia/Murder/Magic/He-Was-A-Seal/She-Had-A-Tail passed almost immediately. She was getting used to believing it—or more exactly, she was getting used to the idea that other people believed it and it wasn’t nice to be rude to them.) She fingered the necklace Dylan had loaned her. Keeping it didn’t feel right. Maybe if she gave it back to him, that would break the spell?

“You sure your grandmother won’t mind driving me down to the bus station tomorrow morning?” Olivia asked.

“She’s got to go down to Hidden to get the papers, anyway,” Mandy said. “Hope you don’t mind getting up at 4:30 a.m.” She shuddered theatrically and Olivia forced a smile. She’d thought, when she came to town, that getting out of here was the most important thing in the world. Now she was thinking about Dylan. She didn’t love him—she was certain of that—but you didn’t have to love somebody to be kind to them. If she just disappeared, he’d never be sure of what had happened to her.

And there was the necklace, which clearly meant something to him.

“Unfinished business,” she said aloud.

“What?” Mandy asked. She’d picked up a tablet that had been incongruously shoved in among a bunch of nineteenth century magazines and was paging through her email.

“I need to tell Dylan I’m leaving,” Olivia said. “And give him back this,” she added, flicking the necklace.

“Cute Dylan from up at the Resort gave you that?” Mandy asked in disbelief.

“No!” Olivia said hastily. “He loaned it to me. He said it was like a good luck charm.”

“Couldn’t you just mail it to him?” Mandy asked dubiously. “It’s about a two hour walk to the Resort from here if you don’t swim the Lake.”

“I’m never getting into any body of water larger than a hot tub for the rest of my life,” Olivia said fervently. But the rest of what Mandy said sounded sensible. “I’ll write him a note and mail it to him. And I guess I should write to the Webers, too, and tell them I just decided to go home early.”

“And there will be much rejoicing,” Mandy intoned solemnly. “It’s a shame you’ll miss the Fourth of July fireworks display, but homicidal girlfriend trumps slice of vanishing Americana.”

Olivia found herself startled into a real laugh, even if a small one. “And I’ll write to you, too,” she said. “I mean, if you’ll give me your email.”

“Deal,” Mandy said instantly. “Now, let’s go find a box.”

CHAPTER NINE

As soon as Blake turned away from the canoe, Audrey headed back to the shore. If Blake noticed and complained later, well . . . it was time he learned who was boss. Her breath came in stuttering gasps, and tears of pure fury leaked down her cheeks as she thought about the Selkie.

Her trips through the Portal, even though there’d been many of them, had been of brief duration and surrounded by caution. She couldn’t afford to go missing here, and she had even less desire to end up as somebody’s dinner there. Many of the cross-Portal creatures seemed to know her true name—Peneia—and any that didn’t want to eat her were afraid she’d eat them.

But the other thing they liked to do was gossip. It was how she’d learned about the Selkies—not the myth creatures in fairy tale books, but the living creatures. Some folk said the Selkies upheld the law and did what was right and good for all the Sea Folk. Others said they were sanctimonious—and good eating.

One of the constants of The Other Side had been her ability to sense when other creatures like herself—or actually, other creatures that could talk—were anywhere nearby. She’d thought it was just another one of those things that didn’t work here in the Real World, but she’d sensed the Selkie in the lake before it had rammed her. Only she couldn’t sense it now, and that made her even more furious, because she desperately wanted something to kill. Not for hunger, and not for the beauty of seeing some helpless mutilated thing gasp out its last breath, but because the only thing that could make her feel better right now was the screams of some small thing in agony and terrified.

She continued to seethe as she beached the canoe and jumped out. It could float away and sink for all she cared. It was barely dawn now, but there were lights already on in several of the cabins, including the Jordans’. She stalked past all of them and continued along the path into the trees. How dare he? Oh, how dare he!

Who was he?

It took some time to work off the edge of her rage, but once she had, the puzzle gained her attention.

The Selkie certainly hadn’t come through the Portal to save little Ollie. It hadn’t been glowing. The beast had already been here. And sure, the Selkies were the Boy Scouts of Fairyland, but nobody had mentioned them as having mystical injustice-detecting abilities. It had to have seen her, seen her tip Ollie into the lake, seen her in her Lamia form—and seen her from somewhere very near by.

The Resort.

Audrey had spent a lot of time over there since Ma and Pa Jordan had started bringing her up to Lake Endor; nobody much bothered a pretty girl in a bikini who knew how to suck up to adults, and the Resort and Lodge had much better facilities than the shithole cabins on this side of the lake. Tennis courts. Pools. Nightlife.

And no particular guests who’d be up and about at four in the morning.

It’s one of the staff. It’s got to be. She sat on a rock and pounded her fist softly against her knee. But the staff up at the Resort didn’t really change much from year to year. In fact, the only new face this year had been . . .

Bingo.

. . . the hunky lifeguard with a mysterious past and no fixed address. Dylan Waverly. Audrey smiled. Dylan Waverly, last seen whisking Olivia Poole out from under Blake’s nose. There were too many coincidences here for her to be wrong about this. Only . . .

Why didn’t I sense what he was before? Magic?

She gazed through the trees. The roofs of the resort were barely visible on the far side of the lake. Dylan was there, and he might have rescued little Ollie, but she wasn’t certain, and that annoyed her a great deal. Audrey had a problematic relationship with magic. She knew it was real—she had proof it was real—but she’d been raised in twenty-first century Boston Massachusetts. It didn’t seem really legitimate to her, or like something with any form of predictable rules. Maybe only the shape-shifting parts worked on this side of the Portal and the rest didn’t.

Doesn’t matter.

She’d been planning for this summer to be a last fling—setting up Blake to take the fall for murdering his girlfriend—but now she was thinking she might have to move up her timetable. She could still set Blake up as the fall guy . . . but now he’d be the centerpiece of a brutal spree killing, in which his entire family, their dear friends the Jordans and the Jordans’ beautiful adopted daughter Audrey, and the Webers’ summer guest (and charity case) were all slain. Given what a stage-daddy Weber senior was, no one would have any trouble believing Blake had snapped and gone postal. It was too bad that she couldn’t stick around, the sole survivor of the hideous bloodbath, desperately attempting (and tragically failing) to save her parents (and that whiny drudge) from the murderous swim team captain, but she didn’t trust the police to get everything conveniently wrong. No. She’d have to vanish once and for all when they all died and be the mysteriously missing body.

But the Selkie had to be dealt with as well. And before everything else, because if he had interfered once, he’d probably do it again. Audrey frowned harder. Now everything was so complicated! Not like either of her sets of plans, and putting the two sets of murders together didn’t help matters either. Oh, but wait . . .

If Blake—all by himself—grabbed Ollie, Audrey could find some way to get word to Dylan. Blake probably wasn’t as strong as a Selkie, but that wouldn’t matter. She’d make sure Blake had one of her Dad’s fish-gutting knives, and she could hit Dylan over the head with a rock or a board or something, or . . .

Wait.

Audrey scrunched her face up in an expression she’d never allow any of the boys she enchanted and girls she tormented to see. She’d heard something the last time she was on the Other Side . . . Some kind of third-hand gossip, from a pod of nixies that were all irritated at the prospect of having to leave their home waters. The tale they’d told had been garbled, but it was something about Selkies . . .

Her red-painted mouth stretched wide in a silent crow of triumph as she dragged the bit of gossip back into her consciousness. Some Selkie fake-royalty had gone missing, and everybody was looking for him. Now, a Selkie prince on the run wouldn’t be running in that magic world, so he had to be here, in the real one, where it would be a lot harder to find him. And a Selkie prince wasn’t going to have a lot of real-world skills to live on. But a Selkie of any sort would be a world-class swimmer and a pretty good lifeguard. Like Dylan. Bingo. She bet if she dragged him back through to the Other Side there’d be a reward or something.

That would be great. She’d use Ollie to find Dylan and decoy him to an ambush. Then she’d hit him over the head and drag him through the Portal and collect the inevitable reward. Then she’d come back, grab Ollie, stash her somewhere that she’d be available for playing with later, and then she could come back here and watch the Weber family fall completely apart. Or give Blake a little push so he cut the Weber family apart.

Yes. That would work. And it would make this summer epic.

Now all I need to do is convince Blake that dear little Ollie is about to ruin his life. . . .

Audrey had banked her rage down deep by the time Blake finished his morning swim. She was sunshine and smiles as she met him at the dock. A quick search of the Weber cabin while Blake showered told her that little Ollie wasn’t here. Maybe she was on the bottom of the lake? No, she’d still been alive when the accursed hellbeast had attacked, and everyone she’d talked to on the Other Side said that Selkies fancied themselves guardians of humanity. It had probably rescued her. In a way, she hoped it had. Wouldn’t it be fun to follow Ollie around like her new best friend and watching her decide which she was more afraid of: Audrey, or telling the world that Audrey was a were-mermaid and getting locked up in the loony bin?

On the other hand . . . Blake.

Drunk Mommy wasn’t up when Blake came out of the shower, but the brats came running fast enough when Blake started making breakfast. They gave Audrey a wide berth when they saw her—she was glad to see they remembered last summer’s lessons—and started whining about where Ollie was, because they were hungry . . .

Blake fobbed them off with peanut butter sandwiches. (It worked, but mostly because Audrey made a hissing face at them while his back was turned.) He brought the plates over to the table and they dug in.

“I’d better leave a note,” Blake said. “We’re out of eggs again. I guess Ollie can run in to town and get more.” He looked around vaguely, as if expecting her to appear.

“She’ll be doing some kind of running, anyway,” Audrey said. She smoothed her face into a look of wide-eyed innocence just before Blake glanced sharply at her.

“I thought you said she came back here when she decided not to go out on the lake,” Blake said.

Audrey shrugged sweepingly. “Maybe. She isn’t here now. But girls talk to each other, bae.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Blake asked suspiciously.

The one drawback to dear old Camp Endor was its utter lack of privacy. There were a couple of cabins still empty—peak season here was August—and one on the end of the row that was getting renovated, but most of the time people’s parents were right underfoot. It would’ve been much easier to set her glamourie if she’d managed to drown Ollie this morning, since Blake would have felt guilty enough that his own mind would do most of the work of the spell.

But Blake Weber wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, so . . .

“Considering that she looks like a backward twelve-year-old, she ought to be grateful for your attention,” Audrey said . . . and pushed. “You’d think that would be enough for her. But a little bird told me she’s not happy with things here.” She arched an eyebrow at him.

Everybody said that you couldn’t get things just by wishing for them, but ever since she’d started travelling through the Portal, Audrey had found that just wasn’t true. If she wanted something from someone hard enough, she could usually get them to do it. Blake was easy to manipulate.

He rubbed his temples as if he had the start of a headache. “Why does she always have to make trouble?” he muttered.

Audrey carefully stifled her triumph and put on her most sincere and sympathetic expression. “A lot of people, you know . . . when they get close to someone who’s famous, or on their way to being famous . . . they aren’t grateful, the way they should be for getting to hang around. They just hate. And they do anything they can to take that chance at greatness away from the person who’s worked so hard to deserve it.”

“I’ve worked hard all my life,” Blake grumbled. “She can’t . . .”

“Isn’t her mother a lawyer?” Audrey asked artlessly. She’d gotten most of Ollie’s bio out of Blake in a phone call last month, and the rest of it within an hour of seeing him again. She was rewarded with a low growl. “Those girls back home didn’t have that advantage and your old man managed to get them to shut up. That won’t be so easy with her. You should have a talk with her,” Audrey said. “Before she does something stupid.”

“Yeah,” Blake said thickly. “A nice talk.”

It took Audrey another hour or so to get Blake pointed in the right direction, and after that, she prudently pushed him into sleep.

After all, she didn’t want to be anywhere around when he decided to give little Ollie what she deserved.

With one thing and another, it took Mandy and Olivia an hour to find a box for the necklace, to pack it up and address it to Dylan Waverly c/o the Lake Endor Resort and Lodge. Mandy even unearthed a stash of ancient Resort stationary with an engraving of the Lake Endor Lodge looming above a lake with a very Hiawatha-ish canoe moving across it so that Olivia could write a note to the Webers. Mandy suggested she could write a note to Dylan, too, but what could she say? “Dear Mr. Seal, I am sorry that I took your autonomy away with a magic spell. Please never speak to me again. Love, Olivia”?

How about no?

She had to do something about the situation. She knew that much. One, she had to find out if it really was an actual situation. Everything in books wasn’t true. And two . . .

If it was true, she had to fix it. Somehow.

So when everything was ready to go, she told Mandy she’d run the letter and the package over to the post office, and then grab a pizza for dinner.

“Good idea,” Mandy said. “Even Grams doesn’t want to eat her own cooking every night.”

And then Olivia tucked both items into her backpack, and went down the stairs, and turned left instead of right, and went out the front door of the house instead of through the door to the diner’s kitchen.

And then she didn’t go to the post office at all.

It was barely four o’clock. The sky would be light until eight. It was barely a half hour back to the cabins, but that wasn’t Olivia’s destination. The Lodge was.

I know I don’t understand any of this and I don’t even know what’s true from what isn’t, but I know one thing: if you’re in love with someone who isn’t in love with you, it hurts. If there’s any chance that’s true, then I’ve got to make it untrue.

As she elaborated her plan to herself it seemed eminently sensible. She’d start with the Lodge, get things straight with Dylan, and give him back his necklace. She’d call Mandy from there so Mandy wouldn’t worry; she had Mandy’s phone number for the unlikely future in which she replaced her phone. Then she and Dylan could go back to the Webers’ and she could get her suitcase. She wasn’t quite sure who would be at the cabin, but if either of Blake’s parents were there, she could tell them there was trouble at home—nobody knew her phone was at the bottom of the lake, after all—and say she was taking the bus down to Albany and flying home. If Dylan was with her, Olivia was certain she could avoid Blake volunteering himself to drive her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him, but she knew Blake could talk her into anything if he had enough time, including staying at Lake Endor.

And she was deathly afraid of Audrey. The look in those green eyes—Audrey was never going to give up trying to kill her, not for anything.

Once she was gone from here, Olivia swore to herself, she never had to think about Audrey, or magic, or anything like that ever again. She could go home, and . . . Well, she could decide how to feel about all of this later. If there ever was a later where she could feel anything at all. Right now she wasn’t even sure she was doing the right thing. It was just that everything else she could think of doing made her feel worse.

Once she was outside of town, Olivia breathed a little easier, though by now Mandy was probably starting to think about looking for her. The first time a car went by her—going too fast on the narrow dirt road, of course—she jumped into the ditch to hide. But it was only some of the townies going home after spending the day at the lake.

And I look a lot more suspicious skulking than I would if I just walked along the road as if I had a perfect right to be here. And I do! I haven’t done anything wrong. Unless you count finding out somebody’s secret identity . . .

She clambered back up to the road and brushed herself off. She had a baseball cap in her backpack; if she wanted to disguise herself (or just keep from getting too badly sunburned) that would be a good start.

“Hey there, Ollie.”

She spun around wildly and found herself face to face with Blake.

Tiamat stirred up the muck of the depths in irritation. One of the Farraige Olc approached. Probably with the same excuse as last time. We have not found him, ineffable one. We do not know where he is. Some powerful magic masks the Champion’s presence. Feckless! Useless! As if she did not know that already! Because if they had found him, it would not be a single creature swimming timidly toward her, it would be a procession of the Farraige Olc to bring her to the Arena and combat . . . or, more aptly, massacre. Still, it would be a death, and the Selkie prince that had been clever enough to hide himself all this time might, possibly, give her some semblance of a challenge, at least for a little while.

Tiamat suddenly reared her bulk up from the sea floor, causing the Ceirean swimming towards her to turn into a confused ball of fins and sinuous tail for a moment, before frantically backswimming. Tiamat rumbled with amusement, despite her annoyance. That never got old.

“What?” she growled, her voice making the water vibrate.

“We have found him, ineffable one,” stammered the Ceirean.

She roused up to her full height, towering over the Ceirean, whose name she could not be bothered to learn. “What?” she roared, causing the Ceirean to knot itself into a ball again. “Where? Where is my procession? Why do you not lead me to him?”

“B-b-because he is not . . . reachable,” the miserable creature babbled. “He is not in the Sea or the Undersea. He is landbound. And—”

“Do you expect me to crawl over dry land like a craven Wyrm?” she shrieked. “Seize him! Take him! Bring him to me! Or force a Portal to where he is and open it to me! Go! And do not return to me until you can tell me that you have him here or show me the way there!”

The Ceirean retreated hastily. Tiamat settled back into the ooze, seething. And yet . . . satisfied. At long last, affairs were moving.

Soon there would be blood.

This was an exceptionally bad idea.

It wasn’t exactly his fault. Selkies had little involvement with the Greater Magicks. It was true, they possessed a few of the ancient treasures, but that conferred as little understanding of magic as the possession of a toaster would confer upon its owner an understanding of electrical engineering.

And thus, Dylan Waverly could be entirely forgiven for not knowing what would happen when he gave Olivia the talisman.

The talisman told him she had vanished from the world, while his spellbond told him precisely the opposite. The two warring magicks quarreled in his brain and provided him with the worst headache he’d ever had in his life. It was like wearing a set of glasses with the wrong prescription. Lila had taken one look at him when he showed up for his morning shift at the pool and ordered him to go see the nurse and then to take a nap.

He went to the nurse, dutifully accepted two aspirin and the diagnosis of “too much sun,” and went down to the boatshed instead of his room. It felt good to be near the lake, even if he couldn’t go in.

The diving platform in the middle of the lake was crowded. This might be a weekday, but it wasn’t a school day. It was the end of June, and all of summer stretched out before the under-eighteens like a land of dreams. He could see Audrey out in the middle of the platform sunning herself—like a leopard among puppies—and that was reassuring in a way. It meant she wasn’t currently trying to murder Olivia. Blake must be asleep—after his dawn swim, he usually wasn’t seen again until noon or so.

And Livy . . . ?

Dylan didn’t know. It was as if she’d been erased from the world—except for the spellbond that told him she wasn’t. He wished he was with her. He wished he knew how she was taking things. It wasn’t easy to have your entire worldview turned inside out and upside down before breakfast, and he feared that once she had rested, she would dismiss all she had experienced—except for the fact that Audrey had tried to drown her—as a hallucination. He wished he could be certain she was safe.

And as much as he wished for any of these, he wished he knew what she thought. Would she come back, try to get to know him, perhaps even love him? Or would she flee him and the strangeness he represented, and leave him heartsore and longing for the rest of his days? It was many, many years—as the Mortalkin reckoned time—since a pair of willing hands and a strong back had been enough of a passport for a stranger in a village or town. If she’d been a girl in a long-ago fishing village betrayed by her betrothed, it would have been easy to get her and her family to accept a stranger from the sea. Especially a strong fisherman who always came home with a full catch.

You might as well wish that Mhuir Chéasta and Farraige Olc were one folk again. Or that Mortalkind did not poison ocean and land as if there were an endless supply of both!

Dylan sighed. There was no way out but through. It was hardly worth worrying about, really, since the Farraige Olc were poised to make war on humankind, and sooner or later they would stop waiting for him to show up again to be murdered by their Champion.

He had no idea what would happen then. But he was pretty sure it would involve Oberon, and nobody wanted Oberon’s attention, no matter which side of a quarrel they were on. The Finvolk didn’t align themselves with either Court, nor have much to do with them, but Dylan knew for a fact that both Seleighe and Unseleighe Courts went in fear of Oberon’s involvement. And if he involved The Morrigan as well, which he might? Worse. Exponentially worse.

He never thought—and still didn’t—that it could possibly be enough to save his people. All of his people. The sea was a harsh nursery, and both Selkie and Lamia belonged there.

Why did we come to this quarrel? We could have left this fair world to the Mortalkind and found new oceans in plenty. True, the Courts withdrew long ago, but even they visit here often enough. Why did we come to this?

For just a moment, Dylan was on the verge of an answer, then he startled awake and realized he’d been sleeping. The sun had moved halfway across the sky; not twilight yet, but soon. He stood and yawned and stretched, rubbing his forehead reflexively. The headache had abated somewhat.

And just then he realized something more. Something he should have noticed hours before.

The Portal at the bottom of the Lake was awake.

And it was opening.

Olivia barely had time to register the sound of Blake’s voice when she felt him grab her. He didn’t grab her from behind. She was staring right at him, so stunned by seeing him in this unexpected place, that her mind clutched and froze, groping for his name. The moment seemed petrified, as if movement was impossible, when it was interrupted by the sharp immediate bite of skin against skin. He grabbed her and yanked her forward, and as if that was the necessary shock to reboot her brain, she set her feet and resisted him. He had a car she’d never seen before—no, it belonged to the Jordans, she remembered—and the thought that Audrey might be with him made her start to struggle.

Blake shook her, hard enough that the world became a jarring set of disjointed images as he dragged her around the back of the car. For a giddy surreal moment Olivia thought he was going to drag her around to the driver’s seat, that he’d come looking for her because he wanted her to drive him somewhere.

In another second she would have begun seriously fighting back, but she didn’t get that second. The trunk lid rose as Blake dragged her around the back of the car. He slammed her at the bumper and then finally let go of her shoulders, only to grab her by the ankle and yank her leg upward.

In a moment, she was on her back in the trunk. Another moment and her legs were crammed in on top of her like someone else’s luggage, and then the lid slammed down.

She was crammed in so tightly she could barely breathe. The sharp edges of the box in her backpack dug into her shoulder-blades, and the inside of the trunk lid pressed her knees into her chest. She’d barely exchanged the panic of assault for the panic of asphyxiation when the car began to move, adding nausea and vertigo to her problems. She squirmed and struggled frantically as the car bucketed down the road much too fast. She didn’t even remember which way it had been pointing when Blake first hailed her, and maybe he’d turned and she just hadn’t noticed? Or forgot? Maybe she was forgetting lots of things; maybe that would kill her. Maybe she’d forgotten the one thing that could save her now.

Stop it, she told herself loudly. There’s nobody else to save you. You have to do it yourself.

After what seemed an eternity of starving for air, Olivia finally got herself over onto her side. She arched her back, putting her feet against the frame of the trunk, and pushed. She was rewarded with a little give; this was one of those cars where the back wall of the trunk was just a thin piece of board to make the back seat lie flat. She pushed harder, straining with the effort; the back seat moved a little, just enough to give her a crack of light at the top of the seat, and then caught on something. A safety lock, maybe. So she had a little light and a little more air, but no matter how hard she shoved, she couldn’t break the board or the locks.

Maybe I can kick it out. With the jouncing of the car actually helping, she writhed her way in a circle like a slow-motion break-dancer, until her feet were where her back had been. Then she kicked—or rather, stomped with her uppermost leg, putting all of her strength into it. She didn’t even notice that the car had stopped until the trunk lid popped open again and she looked up, startled and squinting, to see Blake’s head silhouetted against the sky and tree-branches. Before she had time to react, he grabbed her by her hair and hauled her out.

It hurt so much her eyes watered as he grabbed her right arm, twisted it up behind her back, and pulled her into a standing position, his left hand still locked in her hair. She screamed, and he let go of her hair to clap one hand over her mouth while the other viciously twisted her arm more, making it feel as if all the joints were separating. She gasped with pain.

They were right at the half-repaired cabin at the end of the row. Its door stood open; he shoved her through it, finally letting go of her arm to slam the door behind them. She stumbled and fell, catching her weight on her hands, and flipping over to stare up at him.

The cabin was the same layout as the Webers’—it looked as if this room was almost finished. The floor was still covered in a canvas drop-cloth, spattered with paint, and so were the windows, but the walls and ceiling looked freshly painted and there was a new Franklin stove installed in a corner. Blake glared down at her.

She opened her mouth.

“Go ahead and scream,” Blake sneered. “You’re too far from the rest of the cabins for anyone to hear you. You think I’m gonna let you ‘MeToo’ me and ruin my swimming career? You think I’m gonna let you go to Stanford and tell them all about how I raped you and Audrey helped?”

Since Livy’d had no notion of doing anything of the sort, she felt her mouth drop open as she stared at him. She was so much in shock she didn’t move as he grabbed a coil of clothesline from a corner and began wrapping it around her, pinning her upper arms to her chest, as he continued to rave about things she was supposedly thinking of doing or had done that had never even happened.

And that had her scared more than being tied up did. Had he really snapped like Mandy suggested he could? And if he had . . . was he going to kill her now?

Just as he finished tying off the rope with a double knot, still ranting, Audrey came flouncing in and shut the door behind her, as the last light of sunset cut underneath the trees and in through the west window.

“A present, Blake?” she cooed, spotting Livy—which wasn’t hard to do since the room wasn’t all that large. “And you’ve gift-wrapped it! How sweet!”

Blake whirled, staring, as if he hardly recognized Audrey. “She’s not getting away with this!” he swore, his eyes wild. “I’m not letting her get away with this!”

“Of course you aren’t,” Audrey replied, smiling with relish. “She’s going to get everything she’s got coming to her. And so is that stupid Selkie! My friends are coming, they’ll be here any minute now, and then you’ll get to give them Ollie, and I’ll get to give them the Selkie, and then—” She simpered. “Then you’ll have your reward—”

From the east, the lake-facing side of the cabin, a sound erupted. It was like thunder, except it went on and on. It shook the cabin so hard that Livy felt the boards vibrating under her, and in spite of herself, she shrieked, a cry that was utterly drowned in the roar.

Blake took the two steps required to get to the window and tore the drop-cloth down as the roar continued. His mouth dropped open as he stared.

The lake boiled, the center alight with an eerie blue glow. Rising up from the center of the glow, bathed from below by the light, a monster flung its head high and bellowed in fury.

The swimming platform was gone. Splintered boards floated around the creature. It looked like some sort of deep-sea horror, a bony head with teeth as long as Livy’s arm, thin and needle-sharp, strange, opaque white, blind-looking eyes. A spiny crest started in the middle of its blunt face and traced the lines of its back all the way down past the waterline. The whole thing was a sort of ghostly pale-green color.

But it had a neck . . . and shoulders . . . and long arms with spiny fins that ended in webbed hands sporting razor-talons. It must have been three stories tall above the water, and who knew how much was still underneath? And all that Livy could think was . . . that can’t be Endora?

CHAPTER TEN

Dylan ran out of the boathouse in time to see Tiamat rising from the water of the lake. His heart stopped, as the Leviathan turned and stared at the Resort—at him? And then, she roared out her intentions illuminated from below by the now-open Portal.

She was a terrible sight in all her strength. More than ever, he felt deep in his gut what an impossible task it was for a mere single Selkie to win in any kind of battle with the Leviathan. Her voice thundered, not only in the range that mortal ears could hear, but above and below that range, vibrating his blood and bones. And her blank white eyes betrayed absolutely nothing.

And he knew, he knew, that she would not be content merely with slaying him. She’d slay everything here, and if confronted, say she’d done it after he was dead, not before. The mortals at the Campground, at the Resort—anything that could not get too far from the water for her to crawl was doomed.

The Portal . . . he could get help through the Portal. If he tossed his Talisman through there, his mother would sense it and know he needed help. And she would know it had come from him. But Olivia has the Talisman, and I don’t know where she is . . . On the other side of the lake? In town?

Already on her way home?

Perhaps giving it to her was not a good idea after all. . . .

On the other hand, if he died outside the Arena, Tiamat would die too. And she knew that.

Which would be why she would slay and slay and slay, now, before she died. Her hatred of mankind was endless, endless enough for her to throw her life away to sate her lust for their blood.

Mortals only heard the sound of never-ending thunder. Dylan heard her challenge.

“Selkie! Coward! Come out and face me! Or I shall destroy everything in this place, and devour all these Mortalkind that you love! Then I shall take you by the throat and drag you back to the Arena, where I will torture you in front of your kin until you beg me to slay you. And only then shall I finish your miserable life, and launch the war against humanity! And you will not be able to stop me!”

. . . or that. While he’d been running and hiding . . . she must have been planning.

But Dylan’s first thought was for the mortals, and not himself. Clearly Tiamat thought he was a creature of impulse, and she was stupidly expecting him to respond to a traditional challenge in the traditional way—stepping out and announcing his presence.

Actually . . . she gets it both ways. If I step out now and she drags me to the Arena, she can come back and kill everyone here once she wins. And if I don’t—she can kill everything she can sense until she finds me, drag me to the Arena, finish me off, and come back here to give the impression she started the war here. Who is going to challenge her lie?

But if she didn’t see him in the next couple of minutes, he had no doubt she’d do exactly what she said she’d do, and start killing.

So it’s a good thing she’s confined to the water! Any mortals who’d been in the lake were surely on shore by now—

But mortals are fools, fools that will rush to a danger to take pictures with their phones, as if holding the phone before them makes them invulnerable. . . .

Then he realized he was staring at the answer to keeping them away. The palm-sized red buttons on either side of the internal docks in the boathouse that said Civil Defense. Dennis had told him about them—sirens (in the howling sound sense, not in the “lure you to your death” sense) that had been installed at the beginning of the Second World War, were used for weekly “bomb drills” during the Cold War, and could be used to signal the approach of tornadoes or dangerous storms.

“Why doesn’t it say ‘Emergency Siren,’?” he’d asked.

“Because you don’t put the words ‘Emergency’ or ‘Siren’ on anything that’s where a kid can see it, unless you want some prankster to set it off all summer.”

He ran along the docks and slapped his hand on it. And at first nothing happened.

And then a kind of groaning noise erupted somewhere over his head, a groan that rose in pitch and volume until it became a near-deafening undulating wail. This was supposed to warn every guest in the Lodge to take cover in the basement, every guest in the outlying buildings to do the same, and as for the campers across the lake—

—well, supposedly there was a storm shelter. Good luck finding it if you didn’t know where it was. But they’d probably huddle in their cabins, which served the same purpose so far as he was concerned. The Leviathan could get to them on land, but only if she knew they were there, and if they were quiet, she might leave them be.

Most of the Lodge staff was supposed to do the same, except for the lifeguards and groundskeepers, who were supposed to come here, in case there was someone caught on the lake who needed rescue.

He realized that only belatedly, as the door crashed open and Lila, Zeek, and Dennis came tumbling through it, followed a breath later by everyone else. They all stared out the open boathouse doors at Tiamat howling her challenges in the center of the lake, mouths dropping.

“What. The actual. Fuck,” said Zeek.

Or at least, that’s what Dylan thought he said. Between the screeching of the siren and the bellowing of Tiamat, this was mostly lip-reading on his part. But Selkies did have magic for this, for there were times when the sea itself roared and storms overhead bellowed, and there was no hearing anyone speaking unless the simple spell of the Sphere of Silence was invoked.

So that was what he did.

It wasn’t exactly Silence, but it did mute the outside noises quite a bit.

“What the actual fuck!” Zeek repeated, now looking at Dylan.

“There’s a monster in the lake!” Dylan said, gesturing at Tiamat.

“I know that! What the hell, Dylan?”

“I think he means we need to do something about it before it hurts someone,” Lila interjected before Dylan could think of a reasonable answer that wouldn’t involve an hour and changing back and forth from seal to human. She clutched at her hair at both temples. “We have to do something before that thing starts snacking on campers. Now. This is way above the county sheriff’s paygrade. Or the State Troopers. We’re hours away from help. Except maybe the Air Force, and those guys tend to leave a lot of collateral damage even if we could convince them to send fighter/bombers.”

“And if we called them they’ll probably figure it was a prank, and by then that thing would eat everyone here,” added Dennis.

“I saw it come up out of that glowing place in the middle of the lake,” Dylan lied helpfully. “If we can hurt it, it’ll probably go back the way it came.”

“I’ve seen Pacific Rim,” said . . . well, just about everyone, in a ragged chorus. They looked at each other. Dennis suddenly grinned and cracked his knuckles.

“It’s Kaiju-punching time!” he crowed, to Dylan’s mixed relief and alarm. Relief, that he wasn’t going to have to do this alone. Alarm—because these were just children!

“And just what have we got to punch with?” That was Sam; to Dylan’s shock the assembled teenagers didn’t look half as terrified as they should have. In fact, they looked as if they felt the way Dennis did. “I don’t see any mechas lying around!”

But . . . if they didn’t do something, and do it before Tiamat rallied herself, weren’t they all dead anyway? Especially if more of the Farraige Olc came pouring through after Tiamat. “Fireworks?” he said, pointing in the direction of the concrete blockhouse where they were stored.

“I’m on it.” Joyce pelted out the door.

Sam, who had been staring out at Tiamat with furrowed brows, suddenly brightened. “We’ve got a whole lot of banned insecticide I haven’t been able to get anyone to take and dispose of!” he said. “I bet that thing won’t like it, and I’ve got pump-sprayers for hot-spotting in forest fires that can send it forty feet.”

“But it’s banned!” Lila protested. “The lake—” And then her mouth snapped shut. “Never mind. I just wish we had napalm or something.”

“The flame-throwers!” Bobby, one of the groundskeepers, brought up his head. “I’ll get them!”

He ran out as Lila stared at Sam. “Flame throwers?”

“For controlled burns so we don’t get forest fires,” Sam explained. “And wasp and hornet nests.”

“Would BioShock algae killer hurt that thing?” Devra was still staring out the boathouse door, as twilight descended, and Tiamat continue to bellow challenges, and thrash in the water.

“I don’t think it’s going to stand there and let you pour algae-killer down its throat!” Lila protested.

Dennis and Zeek looked at each other. “Super Soakers!” they exclaimed in one voice, and ran out as well. At least this time Dylan knew what they were talking about. Super Soakers, water-guns on steroids that could shoot a stream of liquid for yards, were banned at the Lodge ever since someone had gone to the hospital with an eye injury because someone else thought it would be funny to put hot sauce in the water. So every year several kids ignored the ban, and every year a couple of Super Soakers got confiscated. They had quite the collection, and there had to be at least two that could hit Tiamat in the mouth at a distance.

“Let’s get the jet skis ready,” Dylan said, feeling his gut twist and his heart sink, hating that he was letting these foolish mortal children go into danger, and knowing he had to, because short of getting help from Home, there was no other way to keep Tiamat from slaughtering everyone here as she had threatened to do.

And whose fault is that, but mine?

Audrey and Blake had run out, leaving the door wide open, and even if Livy hadn’t been able to see the monster in the lake, she sure would have been able to hear it. It sounded like the worst thunderstorm she’d ever heard in her life. The sound vibrated the ground and rattled her teeth. And at this point the grey fog that had been clouding her thoughts for more than a year had been blasted right out of her head. Scared witless warred with angry and outraged, and the latter was winning. She wasn’t going to just sit here and wait for them to get back!

And Blake was terrible at bondage.

All it took was some squirming and getting her thumbs under the bottom coils of the rope and she shrugged out of his lame-ass attempt at tying her up and pulled the tangle over her head. She almost threw it across the cabin, but thought better of the idea as she scrambled to her feet. It might come in handy. Cautiously she peeked around the edge of the open door, but Blake and Audrey were nowhere in sight. Still, she took no chances; bent over double, she scuttled from tree to tree, flattening herself against each trunk as she reached it, waiting breathlessly for an attempt by either or both of the two to recapture her.

Dylan has to be in the middle of that mess. I just know it. I only know of two magic-creatures here, and I bet that thing has either come for one or both of them, or—

But Audrey had been as surprised to see the thing as Blake was, so Audrey couldn’t have brought it here herself.

Well, then it’s come for Dylan or Audrey, but it looks like it’ll eat anything that it can catch as an appetizer.

Between the monster and the bad-weather siren, it was impossible to hear anything—but Livy didn’t need to hear the jet skis roaring out of the boathouse. They were easy enough to see.

There were six of them. Each one carried two, four with the driver upfront, and someone behind, two with a second person on the rescue platform at the side. As they circled the monster, it seemed confused for a moment by these fast-moving things—but so was Livy. What the heck do they think they can do? Make it dizzy?

The monster made a swipe at one that dove in close—and that was when Livy realized the passengers weren’t just sitting there.

They were armed.

A long tongue of fire spat from the end of something the passenger was holding, and connected with the monster’s outstretched claw. The monster screamed, and jerked its arm back, as a second jet ski dashed in close enough to send a blast of fire at the creature’s torso before speeding away out of reach.

Flamethrowers? Where did they get flamethrowers?

The monster opened its mouth to snap at the jet skis. This time the one that came in close didn’t send a plume of flame at it—the passenger pointed what looked like a Super Soaker at it, and a stream of something shot right into the monster’s mouth. Whatever it was, the monster didn’t like it.

All Livy could do was stare.

Dylan had numbered off the jet-ski teams, one through six. He had Sam up beside him on the rescue-sled with a flamethrower as team one; the other flamethrower was in the hands of Bobby with Lila driving for team two. They were the ones who were going to have to dive in the closest, because the flamethrowers didn’t have the reach of the SuperSoakers or insecticide sprayers, and next to Dylan, Lila was the best driver. The other jet skis didn’t have rescue sleds, but their passengers also didn’t have heavy, unwieldy metal cans of gasoline to balance.

“We circle her, odd numbered teams go clockwise, even-numbered go counter-clockwise,” he’d told them. “That should keep her confused. You lot wait until Lila and I give her a good scorching. That should make her try to snap at us or open her mouth to howl in pain. When that happens, one team at a time, in numerical order, dives in close enough to get your poisons into her mouth, and you dive right back out again. Then Lila and I go in again for another dose of fire. There is never to be more than one team close to her at a time. Is that clear?”

They all nodded, soberly. Except for Dennis, who hefted his Super Soaker as if he thought it was a machine-gun, and grinned, as if this was something he’d been waiting for his entire life.

Fortunately, Joyce was driving, and Dylan was pretty confident she wouldn’t do anything but obey his order.

“All right then!” he shouted. “Go!”

He definitely heard Dennis whoop as they sped out of the boathouse.

Blessed Dannae, let him not do anything stupid. Or at least, more stupid than we already are.

Then it was too late for thinking. They closed with Tiamat, who seemed as bewildered by the small, fast-moving objects as he had hoped she would be. She had been kept carefully by the Farraige Olc Undersea, well away from mortals and their doings, since at least the time when steam began to replace sail. She had no idea what she was seeing right now. She could catch a speeding dolphin, but even dolphins had been known to confuse her with tactics like this.

“Now, Sam!” he shouted, as she made a snatch for them with one enormous taloned hand. Instead of darting away, he drove in close to her, to give Sam the best shot at burning that hand.

And his back and neck suddenly felt as if he had a lava-bubble behind him as Sam fired his torch at her.

He was only able to engulf the hand in flame for a moment, but that moment was enough. She snatched her hand back, her roars of challenge turning to a shriek of surprise and pain, and Dylan turned the ski practically on its side to get them out of her range again.

They went back to circling; Lila had seen what he had done, and was already copying him, skimming in close enough to Tiamat’s back that Bobby could paint her scaly hide with a nice stripe of fire. She shrieked again, and turned, but they were already out of her way. As she tried to sort out the skis and drivers to find the ones that had hurt her, Joyce took advantage of her distraction to dive in, and with a scream of his own, Dennis unloaded his Super Soaker full of BioShock right down her throat.

The sounds Tiamat produced told Dylan everything he wanted to hear; whether it just tasted nasty or was actually doing her some damage, Tiamat did not like the algae-killing chemical, not one bit.

The next round—insecticide this time—missed her mouth and hit her eye. But that was good enough to send her pawing frantically at her face, driven mad with the pain.

Now they had a rhythm set, and they attacked her as if they had been rehearsing this moment all their lives. Fire, fire, four chems, then fire and fire again. She had given up on trying to catch them now; instead she frantically tried to defend herself.

But this was a new thing for Tiamat, who had never had a serious challenger in all of history. She was not used to losing, and her small, unsophisticated mind simply could not grasp the idea that losing was even possible.

She had never been hurt before—or at least, not by anything more powerful than a Force Five hurricane or a lava-bomb. Certainly she had never been hurt by anything that had fought with her. And as they dove in, one after the other, unloading their improvised weapons on her, it began to dawn on her that she was being hurt, and badly. Her shrieks of pain turned to mingled pain and despair, and just as Sam’s flamethrower sputtered out, the last of its fuel gone, Tiamat howled with utter anguish, a sound that made Dylan’s hair stand on end, doubled over, and plunged into the depths of the lake, heading back down to the Portal. Fleeing as if her life depended on it.

Leaving the jet skis burbling to a stop, to bob up and down in the water above the glowing Portal.

For a moment, only the wail of the siren pierced the darkness. Then the groundskeepers and lifeguards broke out in spontaneous whoops and cheers.

Sam pounded Dylan’s back and flourished the business-end of his flamethrower in the air. Dennis howled like the proverbial banshee.

Dylan alone remained quiet, staring down at the glowing circle of light beneath them. The Portal is still open.

This isn’t finished.

And that was when the Portal blackened, not because it was closing, but because hundreds of Farraige Olc darkened its light with their bodies as they poured out of it.

The first of them erupted from the water as someone on shore shut off the siren. The Farraige Olc stared at the humans on their burbling jet skis. The humans stared back at them, wide-eyed with shock.

Only Dylan kept his wits about him. The open water was no place to be, not when there were a dozen monsters for each of the skis, and more pouring up from below.

“Run for the shore!” he shouted, and gunned his ski.

Livy clung to the tree and watched in shock as the half-dozen jet skis circled the monster. The riders looked impossibly small and weak, even helpless against the thing—and yet, somehow, they were hurting it! This was like something out of a movie, and to be honest, she was having a hard time believing her eyes.

And then, with a howl of pain, the monster plunged back into the lake. But the glowing spot in the middle didn’t go out.

“Audrey, come on! We have to get away from here!” Blake’s voice, a full octave higher than normal and actually sounding frantic and terrified, cut through the sounds of the emergency siren. Livy looked away from the scene of the battle, and off to the side, and there were Blake and Audrey, engaged in what looked like a struggle. He was trying to pull her away from the water. Which was the smart thing, obviously. But she seemed to be trying to pull him into it. It made no sense. It made no sense at all. . . .

And then, suddenly, it did.

“Lamiae are predatory. And carnivorous.”

The hands pulling her under. The sharp teeth between those red, red lips.

“Lamiae are carnivorous.”

Blake might have wanted to hurt her, but he didn’t deserve to get eaten!

What am I going to do? The last time . . . she’s stronger than I am! She tried to look around for something to use as a weapon, but there were so many people here with wood stoves and fire pits that the ground was pretty well scoured of anything bigger than a twig. The only things within reach were a couple of aluminum lawn chairs, some beach balls and a lone plastic shovel.

Still, she had to try. She started to run, thinking maybe she could tackle Audrey long enough to get her to let go of Blake.

And then what?

Never mind—

She was within ten feet of the pair, who continued to struggle. Blake was oblivious of everything around him, but Audrey finally caught sight of her and half turned on her, snarling.

Livy skidded to a halt as Audrey let go of Blake, although he didn’t let loose of her. Audrey had one hand free, and looked as if she was going to slash at Blake’s to make him let go, when a jet ski roared up onto the shore startling them both and breaking the tableau apart.

Dylan ran for Livy. Blake fell on his ass. A guy Livy didn’t know, clutching a large tank and a long tube, tumbled off the rescue platform attached to the ski. Audrey made this—sound—like canvas tearing, and sprinted for the water, diving in before anyone could stop her.

Dylan grabbed Livy and held her, but spun around at the same time. “Sam, there’s more stuff coming up out of that—”

“I’m on it,” Sam said, dropping the tank and the tube. “I know who has hunting rifles with them over here.” He dashed off into the darkness, heading for the cabins.

Livy looked reflexively in the direction of the bright spot in the middle of the lake. Except it wasn’t bright anymore. The water churned, and the light was full of moving shadows. She couldn’t make out what was going on exactly, but something, or rather, somethings, plural, were coming out of it.

“Oh God,” she said, bringing one hand to her mouth.

“I don’t think He’s going to help us,” Dylan said grimly. “That’s the front ranks of an army coming up. Whatever is going to come out of there is going to outnumber every man jack and woman jill here at the lake by ten to one.” He had his arm around her, but the embrace didn’t feel protective. It felt desperate.

Blake scrambled to his feet. “Somebody has to go for help!” he said.

“Where?” Livy demanded. He turned to stare at her. His eyes were huge in his face, looking shocked—but more normal than he had when he was tying her up. “The county sheriff? The fire department? Who would believe us? What are you going to tell them? We just drove off Endora but her entire family is coming out of the lake to eat us?”

Blake stared at her as if he had never seen her before. Someone had finally turned off the siren, but the night was scarcely quiet. There were—sounds. Thrashing and burbling, whispers and the tentative notes of—was that singing? Whatever was coming up out of the center of the lake, the things seemed to be taking their time and sizing up the opposition, or potential opposition.

“What’s out there?” she whispered, not expecting anyone to answer her.

“Sirens,” Dylan said, grimly. “And rusalka, lorelei . . . mer-folk too, but not the sort you see in the moving pictures. These are the shark-kin, and they are as sharp-toothed and hungry as their cousins. And Ceirean, I have no doubt, for they served Tiamat most closely and will want to avenge her defeat. The Farraige Olc have violated their bargain with us, and by the time anyone intervenes it will be too late.”

“What does that mean?” It was Blake, who finally looked sane—and stunned. “What does any of that even mean?”

Dylan glanced over his shoulder at Blake, snarling slightly. “What it means, Blake of the Lake, is that unless we can summon help, which seems unlikely, we shall all shortly be very dead.”

Blake stared at him, his mouth open, in disbelief. “But—”

“Look with the eyes God put in your head, you fool!” Dylan shouted, waving at the lake, which continued to boil as more things came up from that glowing spot. “Unlike Tiamat, some of these creatures are not confined to the water! And where shall we get help? Are you concealing a nuclear weapon in your cabin? Have you a phalanx of tanks at your disposal? Who would believe you if you called for help?”

Blake’s mouth opened and closed, making him look as if he was gasping for air like a fish.

“There must be something we can do!” Livy cried. “What about getting help from—your friends?” She wasn’t entirely sure what an armada of seals could do to help, but it was better than sitting here and waiting to be eaten!

“If the necklace I gave you could be tossed through yon Portal, it might summon aid,” Dylan said slowly, then shook his head. “But I am wanted by every creature out there. I could not get within a hundred yards of it without being set upon by two dozen or more, and not even I can overcome such odds.”

Livy pulled off her back pack, fumbled out the box and tore it open, pulling the necklace out and shaking it at him. “We’ve got to try!” she insisted. “I’ll go!”

But Blake had gotten to his feet, and held out his hand. “No, I can outswim you three times over. I’ll go.”

Livy and Dylan both stared at him. He gestured again. “I’m serious. I’ll go.”

Sam came running up at that moment with an armload of rifles and ammunition boxes. “Here,” he said, thrusting one of them at Dylan. “Joyce must have—”

Just then, the sound of a screaming rocket pierced the night. A few seconds later, it literally went off in the center of the mob of eldritch creatures, sending red and blue balls of fire in every direction. And from the sounds of screaming, some of those hit targets.

“—gotten into the shed by now. She’s setting off the fireworks,” Sam concluded. “I’m pretty sure everyone else is arming themselves. If we scared off that Kaiju, we might be able to do the same for these things.”

“Aye, and it will distract them from—” Dylan snatched the necklace from Livy and thrust it at Blake, who took it. “Go! Get as close as you can and throw it in, then flee for your life! I will follow and do my best to keep them off you.”

“Wait!” Livy cried, and ran to pick up the coil of clothesline from where she had dropped it. She brought it back and tied it around Blake’s waist.

“What the hell, Ollie? There’s not more than fifty feet of—” Blake began, then shrugged. “Never mind.” He clenched his fist around the necklace, ran for the lake and made a long, flat dive into it. Dylan followed. Livy didn’t see him turn into a seal, but several hundred pounds of seal would be a lot more use than a couple hundred pounds of human.

“Here,” Sam said, thrusting the rifle he’d tried to give Dylan at Livy.

“I don’t know how—” she protested.

“Watch what I do and fire at that mob. You’re bound to hit something.” He racked in a shell, raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. “And watch out for the kick.”

As Dylan had known, the moment he hit the water, he got the attention of the Farraige Olc. But he didn’t intend to fight them, not this time, and he was counting on their greed and eagerness to get in each others’ way. All he needed to do was keep from getting caught.

All. Ha.

He dove beneath Blake, who sped through the water faster than he had suspected a human could travel. But he did his job, attracting all the Farraige Olc nearby, and leading them in a twisting, turning chase. His ploy worked better than he could have dared dream. The varied monsters got in each others’ way, or deliberately cut each other off, trying to catch him themselves. They struck for him and hit each other; squalling in pain, some of them turned on each other and began separate snarls of fighting. Dylan took advantage of that to double back and ram them as hard as he could, feeling bones break as he did so. Little stings of pain lanced across his tail and his flippers as a talon or a tooth caught him, but not enough even to distract him. And now there was blood in the water, Farraige Olc blood, and more of the creatures came, this time to rend and tear at the wounded. Soon there were fights breaking out all over in Blake’s wake, and Dylan continued to lead the ones that still concentrated on him a twisted, turning chase.

A raking talon caught him and tore him from mid-back to tail, but he dared not allow the wound to stop him. Blood-maddened beasts swirled everywhere now, everywhere but where Blake steadily arrowed towards the center of the Lake and the Portal.

And then, they were above it, in a churn of pieces of the floating dock and floating bodies and pieces of bodies. Sam, Joyce, and the others were taking their toll! Dylan saw Blake bob up, then double over and dive, and he redoubled his efforts to keep all eyes on himself, as the mortal plunged down, down, down, hovered above the open Portal for a moment, then made a throwing gesture.

Dylan closed his eyes and dove for the bottom at the same time, but the flash of light the Portal gave off when the talisman crossed it made him see the inside of his own eyelids. He felt something brush him, blindly turned his head to snap at it—and caught the rope tied around Blake’s waist in his teeth.

He held it and bolted for the surface, the mortal a dead weight behind him. Swim he ever so fast, Blake of the Lake still could not outswim a seal.

He opened his eyes as he surfaced for a breath, and took a quick look around. A scant second later Blake surfaced beside him. Around them floated dead and wounded and dazed monsters, and tangles of fighting bodies. Blake’s head snapped from side to side as he trod water. He looked terrified, but he struck out for the Resort side of the shore anyway, as another rocket burst right inside the open mouth of a Ceirean horror.

Dylan dove and came up under him and the lad at least had the mother-wit to grab him just where his flippers met his body, and the two of them sped for the wharf, chaos all around them. A few feet short of the dock, Dylan shook the lad off, dove and came back up again in his human form, in time to see Lila and Zeek seizing Blake under the armpits and hauling him up. He heaved himself up onto the dock in the next moment, and got his legs out of the water just in time to avoid the nasty teeth of a mermaid. And was near-deafened the moment after that as Dennis shot off a rifle at the creature right beside his head.

And got her, too. Blood and water boiled as she thrashed a moment, then stilled, and floated fin-up and motionless.

Then the body vanished as another of her own kind seized it and carried it away.

The Portal flashed again. And this time, turned a brilliant yellow.

“Jesus, now what?” he heard Zeek cry, dimly, through his ringing ears, as more shadows occluded the yellow light pouring up from the bottom of the lake.

A giant—bubble—rose up from the waters. A bubble containing a dozen humanlike figures. But the surge of power Dylan felt told him these were not human, and not Farraige Olc and everything in him screamed at him to bend the knee and bow his head.

“Don’t shoot!” he shouted instead—too late, but no harm done, as the barrage of bullets pinged off the bubble and a rocket ricocheted off the top and into the sky to explode in a chrysanthemum of orange stars.

Oberon turned his head to gaze at it, then turned his attention to the chaos around him.

“ENOUGH!” he shouted. And everything . . . stopped.

He waved his hand, and he and those with him walked on the foaming lake water to the shore, as a second bubble, and a third, and a fourth rose from the depths, each with its burden of High Court Elves, Seleighe and Unseleighe alike, united, for once, in rampant disapproval of what had happened here.

Now Dylan went to his knee, as Oberon and the black-haired, black-eyed woman beside him stepped onto the dock. This was not Titania, so it must be the Morrigan, the Queen of the Unseleighe.

Dylan’s fellow Resort employees were either stricken into silence by the sight of them—or by Oberon’s magic. Dylan kept his eyes on the dock, but he could feel Oberon’s gaze on the back of his neck.

“Explain,” the High King said.

“I took the talisman to prevent war with the mortals,” Dylan said, his mouth dry and his hands shaking. “Such a war could only end badly for us all. So I took the talisman and fled, to delay the challenge as long as I could.”

“Indeed,” said a female voice, cold, and full of sardonic amusement. “And for once, I agree on that with the High King. These Mortalfolk are too canny for their own good. If the Farraige Olc pursued war with mortals, there would soon be war Underhill as well as Over. They would forget their petty quarrels that enrich my folk so well with pain and sorrow, and unite against us, and they would not stop till every creature of magic was dead.”

Dylan wasn’t sure whether he should be encouraged or terrified that the Morrigan agreed with his reasoning.

“You should have come to Us, Light Court or Dark,” Oberon rumbled. “Either would have intervened.”

“That was not for me to do, High King,” Dylan stammered. “I was but the Champion of the Mhuir Chéasta. And the Farraige Olc chose a Champion I could not win against. So I ran and hid, seeking to delay as long as I could.”

“What think you, sister-Queen?” Oberon asked.

“Prudent.” That was all the Morrigan said.

He felt Oberon’s eyes on him. “Continue.”

“I came here. There was a girl. . . .” He felt his cheeks burn.

He heard a faint chuckle. “Selkies,” said Oberon, and sighed. “And she wept seven tears of a breaking heart into the lake and you were ensnared.”

“But there was also a Lamia. . . .” Now he was not certain how to go on, and looked up into the High King’s impassive face. Oberon was in his full regalia; thin, golden crown about his head, full royal robes, heavy with gold embroidery and jewels, colored in the many hues of a summer forest. The Morrigan was also in her full regalia, silver crown, black gown and cloak glittering with black pearls, black sapphires, and silver embroidery. He looked back down and gestured towards Blake. “This mortal broke her heart for the sake of a Lamia. The Lamia tried—”

“—to eat her, of course,” the Morrigan said impatiently. “It’s what they do. Idiots. Where is this Lamia?”

“I have her, Great Queen.”

Dylan looked up again, to see a silver-haired elf in black hunting leathers striding towards them, one hand pinching the back of Audrey’s neck. Audrey struggled to get free, but clearly she wasn’t making any headway. The elf threw her down at the Morrigan’s feet.

“Hey!” Audrey snapped impatiently, “How dare you? Don’t you know—”

“Silence,” said the Morrigan, and Audrey froze with her mouth still open to say “who I am?”

The Morrigan turned her attention back to Dylan. “Do go on.”

“I gave the maid the talisman. That revealed me to the Farraige Olc, as I knew it would, but it would at least keep the Lamia from seeking her and finding her,” he said, simply.

The Morrigan sighed heavily. “Because of course you did,” she said. “Selkies. Ever the gallant. Ever the protective. Oh, so very, very predictable.”

Oberon smiled. Ever so slightly.

“But rather than sending lesser creatures to take me, Tiamat herself came for me.” As he saw Oberon’s face darken, he began to feel a little hope. “She came through the Portal in full sight of all the mortals here, and threatened to destroy them all, then drag me to the challenge ground and destroy me as well. She claimed it was her ancient right.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” the Morrigan and Oberon said at the same time. They looked at each other, and the Morrigan made a graceful gesture for Oberon to continue.

“My mortal friends and I repelled her,” Dylan continued.

The Morrigan nodded thoughtfully, Oberon with approval. “And this is why we do not want mortal attention,” Oberon said meaningfully, and toed Audrey.

“And then the Farraige Olc came through the Portal.”

“And all mortal hell broke loose.” Oberon shook his head. “I assume this is why you sent the talisman back through?”

“Aye, my lord,” Dylan agreed. “I did not know what else to do.”

“Fortunately, your mother knew well enough to come to me.” Oberon frowned. “What is it the mortals say? This is a hot mess.”

“Allow me, Oberon,” Morrigan smirked, and raised her voice slightly. “My people! Gather the dead and the wounded and do with them as you will, so long as you leave no trace of Finvolk this side of the Portal!”

There was a rush among the elves and other creatures behind the Morrigan; Dylan had a feeling that the wounded were going to envy the dead before too very many minutes had passed. The living had probably fled back through the Portal as soon as Oberon’s party had cleared it.

“That deals with . . . as the mortals say . . . cleaning up the trash,” the Morrigan continued.

Oberon nodded, and looked to Dylan. “You know this place, Selkie. What terrible misfortune could have befallen here that would leave the mortals alive, but a scene of wreckage?”

“I caused an alarm to sound that meant dangerous weather, my lord,” he said after a moment of thought. “A terrible freak storm—and all the mortals should have been gathered in the cellar of yon Great House for such.”

“Bring me all the mortals, my people!” Oberon ordered. “On every side of the Lake.”

“I think you can leave out the town,” Dylan said helpfully. “It’s far enough away I doubt anyone saw anything, and if they saw flashes of light and heard noises, and we tell them it was thunder and lightning, they will believe it.”

Oberon nodded. “Let it be so, then.”

The Morrigan waited with patience at Oberon’s side, as campers and Resort guests and staff were rounded up and brought to him. Most of them seemed in shock, as well they might be, if they had gotten even a glimpse of what had been going on. In groups of ten to twenty, Oberon effortlessly cast spells on them to make them forget what they had seen and remember only a terrible storm. Then they were taken to the basement storm shelter of the Resort and cast into sleep. Finally, there was no one left but Blake, Livy, and Dylan’s fellow lifeguards and groundskeepers.

“All but you, maiden,” Oberon said, motioning to Livy to stand at Dylan’s side.

Dennis looked at Oberon mournfully. “You’re going to make us forget too, aren’t you?” He sighed. “I finally get to fight a Kaiju and I won’t remember it!”

“Be pleased we let you live, mortal,” the Morrigan said, in a sweet, yet cold tone of voice that made Dennis blanch.

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered, and then they were all being led away, looking dazed, to join the others.

“Now,” the Morrigan said, looking at Audrey, who was still sprawled at her feet. “I will deal with this . . . trash.”

She bent down and seized Audrey by the hair, pulling her to her feet. “Your kind is stupid, venial, and greedy, but I have never seen a Lamia quite as stupid, venial, and greedy as you, girl,” she hissed into Audrey’s face. “You could have done literally anything better than what you did. So. Here is your punishment. I shall strip your powers and your abilities from you, and make you naught but the stupid, stupid human you resemble. You shall live as a mere mortal from this day forth, forever walking land on two legs, and forever remembering that you could have had it all, and threw it all away, because you could not think ahead.”

“No!” Audrey screamed, but of course, there was no point in protesting. The Morrigan made a grasping gesture, and Audrey screamed in pain and arched her back as if the Morrigan was pulling something out of her—Dylan, his Othersight perfectly clear now that he wasn’t wearing the talisman, saw something not unlike greenish gold mist being sucked out of Audrey’s body and passing into the Morrigan.

Audrey stopped screaming, then made a choking, gasping sound, and the Morrigan smiled in deepest satisfaction. The last of the mist passed into her, and she dropped Audrey, who collapsed at her feet.

There was nothing enchanting about Audrey now. She looked like someone who’d been dragged across the ground, then slapped around a bit. Even her red hair seemed duller. She huddled on the dock and sobbed.

“My work here is done, Seleighe King,” the Morrigan said, with a sly smile at Oberon. “It was unexpectedly pleasurable working with you—such a pleasure that I believe I will feel no need to repeat the experience for quite some time.” She raised her voice. “My people! The High King will command you in destruction! Obey his orders, then return to me!”

“Indeed,” Oberon replied, watching her through narrowed eyes. Then he bowed to her. “Farewell, Queen of Air and Darkness.”

She walked out onto the water, a bubble forming around her. “Farewell, King of Spirits and Shadows.”

They all watched her stroll out into the center of the lake, watched the bubble sink into the water, and then she was gone.

Oberon turned to one of his guards. “Let the wench keep her memories to torment her, but place her asleep among the others.” The guard picked up the sobbing Audrey none-too-gently by the arm, hauled her to her feet, and dragged her away.

Oberon turned his attention back to Dylan, who still knelt at his feet. “And so, we come at last to you.”

“Aye, my King,” he replied, quite prepared for anything—including what Morrigan had done to Audrey.

And yet. . . .

And yet there was Livy, still standing on the dock just behind him. Oberon had not yet ordered her memory altered, nor sent her to the shelter with the rest. So . . . what. . . .

“What am I to do with you, my foolish young Selkie?” the King said. “This is a rhetorical question, of course. I do not require your opinion.”

“No, my King,” Dylan murmured.

“Some would say you are the cause of all this trouble,” Oberon continued, his grass-green eyes looking down on Dylan. “After all, if you had not sought to evade the Challenge, if you had not come here, if the maid had not bound you to her, none of this would have happened.” He sighed. “And yet . . . if you had fulfilled the Challenge, you would be dead, the Farraige Olc would be prosecuting their war with humankind, and The Morrigan and I would have an even larger mess to clean up. So . . . by precipitating a smaller disaster, you averted a larger one.”

The silence seemed to beg for an answer. “Thank you, my King?” Dylan ventured.

“Well. A complicated situation requires a complicated solution. I am not going to punish you.”

Dylan silently sighed in relief.

“Your opponent is in no condition to prosecute a battle,” Oberon continued. “In fact, she is going to be spending most of the next hundred years nursing her wounds in the abyss. In addition to that, she violated the agreement that balances the Dark Court and Light. An occasional human snack is one thing. Showing yourself to an entire population and threatening to devour them all is quite another. The Morrigan and I have agreed that the Challenge is null and void.”

This time the sigh of relief was not silent. Oberon smiled, very slightly.

“The Mhuir Chéasta and the Farraige Olc will have to come to some kind of agreement, but The Morrigan and I have also agreed that a war upon humankind absolutely will not form part of that agreement.” Oberon’s voice turned hard and cold. “She has volunteered her people to enforce that. I accepted her offer.”

Dylan shivered. The creatures of the Unseleighe Court were some of the most terrible Underhill. And many of them would not be in the least handicapped by having to deal with creatures of the waters . . . he would not want to be the quarry of The Morrigan’s Hunting Party.

“Now as for you and the mortal lass. . . .” Oberon raised his eyes, presumably to look at Olivia. “Livy, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” Livy whispered behind him. “I mean, yes, Your Majesty.”

“Polite. I like that in a mortal.” Oberon actually chuckled. “Do you wish to keep your memory of . . . all this? Or would you be freed of the burden?”

Dylan felt his eyes nearly jump out of his head at that offer. If she forgets . . . she’ll forget me. Except as one of the lifeguards from the Resort. Could I court her anyway? Would she stay? Or will she flee homewards? His mind swam in confused circles.

“I think I need to remember,” she said, finally. “Otherwise it’s all going to be too confusing. And I really, really need to remember what Audrey tried to do to me.”

“Very well, child,” Oberon said graciously. “I owe your mother a boon, so let it be this. Nay—” he held up a hand. “The secret is not mine to give. Ask her yourself when next you see her. Now, about the bond betwixt you and the Selkie—”

“I didn’t mean to!” she cried.

Again, he held up his hand. “This, I know. I cannot free him of it; it is ancient magic and difficult to undo.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Livy asked. And Dylan was so proud of her; aforetimes it would have come out as a wail; but she spoke the words as one who was determined to do something, one way or the other.

“I will consult with my best magicians, mortal and not. Perhaps we shall have some answer for you. For now, I will ask the two of you to join the others in slumber.” Oberon gestured to another of his guards; a handsome, dark-haired elf offered a hand up to Dylan, and took Livy’s arm, and guided them towards the Lodge.

The last he saw of Oberon, before the doors of the Lodge closed behind them, the Seleighe King was directing his underlings in some purposeful destruction, the breaking of trees, the destruction of the docks and boathouse, and the decimation of the campgrounds across the lake to give credence to the memories of a terrible storm.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Livy and Dylan woke before most of the others. She pretended to stay asleep, not really sure what to say to Dylan—or anyone else for that matter. It was really dark down in the basement; the emergency generators outside made the concrete and stone walls vibrate, and she felt them more than heard them. There weren’t any windows either, just a couple of dim emergency lights. Old filament bulbs—not more than forty watts each, so they hadn’t been replaced—or, probably, used—any time in the last twenty years. It smelled damp, and a little like mildew, and she wished she had had a blanket before they’d put her to sleep.

Dylan got up immediately, and went outside. He was there for quite some time, finally returning just as others began to wake up, starting with his fellow lifeguards. “It’s all clear, everyone,” he shouted across the room, his voice waking others. “But it’s a mess out there.”

Some people, predictably, staggered to their feet and stumbled out to see just what Dylan meant. Livy held back, waiting until the Webers and the Jordans got up and ventured out. She’d made sure to leave a lot of space between her and them. Audrey, especially.

Audrey didn’t even seem to see her, or anyone else. She had her arms wrapped around her, and shivered. Her hair was a tangled mess, and she moved like someone who had been badly hurt, even though all Livy could see were scratches and the bruises on one arm where the elf that had taken her away had grasped her none-too-gently.

When Olivia finally emerged into the brilliant dawn, blinking at the light, her jaw dropped. Because it looked exactly as if a tornado had touched down.

Most of the Resort buildings were pretty much intact, but there was some roof damage and shingles and broken branches and scattered bits of outdoor furniture all over the lawn. The boathouse was gone, as were the docks. The pools were full of debris, and the high diving board was a twisted wreck. The jet skis lay on their sides, scattered over the shore, though it looked to her as if they weren’t really damaged. The Pavilion was gone. Tree limbs were scattered everywhere, with one or two trees snapped in half.

Most of the Resort guests ran for the parking lot to see if their vehicles were all right. But the campground visitors all stood at the shoreline, staring in shock at the carnage on the other side of the lake.

Because the damage was much, much worse there.

Whole trees were down, some of them crushing cabins. It was hard to tell from here, but Livy though that two of those crushed cabins belonged to the Jordans and the Webers.

Well, there’s my excuse to leave, she thought . . .

Just then, a graying woman with shoulder-length hair emerged from the Lodge with a bullhorn.

“Anyone who needs a phone to call their insurance companies, queue up for the six house phones in the lobby,” she announced. “Any campground people who need a place to stay until your insurance provides you with a replacement vehicle, queue at the registration desk, we’ll give you a room free. If there is anything else storm-related you need help with, come to me in the main office.” She repeated this three more times, then marched briskly back inside. Livy blinked at her calm efficiency.

Some people were trailing back from the parking lot already, either looking relieved or devastated. A moment later, Lila came rattling across the lawn in an old, beat-up red van. “Any of you campers that want a ride to the campground, I’ll get you as far as I can, but once we run into downed trees, you walk,” she shouted from the open driver’s side window. Predictably, Aidan Weber bulled his way to the front of the tentative line, holding Blake’s elbow. Harper Weber wandered back inside, probably in search of a drink. The younger boys tried to shove their way inside too, but their father shoved them away. “Stay here!” he ordered. “Watch your mother!”

“But my Xbox!” Noah wailed.

His father actually smacked his face. “Shut up,” he hissed. “Go in the Lodge. Stay with your mother.”

To Livy’s surprise, no one protested this borderline child abuse. Probably because they think the brat deserves it.

“Livy,” said a quiet voice behind her. “I got a jet ski down in the water and she starts fine. If you’d like to go over and see if your things are—” She turned, and Dylan shrugged. “Going with me, you’ll get there before Blake of the Lake and his father do.”

Despite having just sworn that she’d never go in a body of water bigger than a hot tub, Livy found herself nodding. “I guess it’s a good thing I packed my suitcase before all this—” she said, and laughed a little. “With any luck, we won’t find it in a tree.”

The Webers’ cabin had been smashed flat. Water fountained up from a broken pipe. While Livy made her way around to the back porch, to see if there was any sign of her suitcase, Dylan searched for the electric and water shut-offs.

Amazingly, she did find her case, amid a litter of broken branches. When she had tugged it free, she stood back for a moment to take in the destruction.

If she hadn’t known Oberon’s elves—Omigod. Elves. They’re real. And just as hot as the ones in Lord of the Rings—had done all this, she would completely have believed it was the work of a storm. The huge tree that had taken out the Weber’s cabin and the Jordan’s cabin had also flattened the Webers’ rented van. I hope they opted for the insurance, she thought with a little internal sneer. Those cabins that had not gotten structural damage from trees or tree limbs had had their roofs blown off and windows smashed. The camping and recreational gear that had been piled around the cabins, and the contents of said cabins was everywhere. Grills were wrapped around trees. Lawn chairs stuck out of windows. Clothing festooned the branches.

Aidan and Blake came trudging up on foot just as Dylan got back from turning off all the water and cutting the electricity at the main transformer. Aidan surveyed the damage in shock.

Dylan nodded curtly at Blake, and moved on towards Mr. Weber, who for once didn’t seem to know what to do. Blake sidled up to Livy, who eyed him with a frown. What does he remember?

“Uh . . . hey Ollie . . .” Blake began.

“It’s Miss Poole to you,” she said, in icy anger, as part of her thrilled to the fact that she actually felt icy anger, and that horrible grey fog seemed to have been blown away during the fight.

“That . . . stuff, with the car, and the rope . . . last night. That was just a joke. You know?” Blake said, shrinking in on himself. “We were just . . . Audrey and me . . . we were . . .”

“You listen to me, you weasel!” she hissed, turning on him. “People back home warned me about you, and I didn’t believe them, but now I know the truth about you, Blake Weber. And you are just damned lucky this—storm happened, because otherwise you’d be explaining your little ‘joke’ to my mother the lawyer!”

Blake blanched. “Wh-what are you going to do?” he stammered.

“I’m going to go home, and forget I even know your name,” she spat, and turned and left him standing there, looking oddly shrunken.

She pulled her suitcase over the debris-laden ground until she got to Aidan Weber, still standing there, staring at the wreckage, with Dylan at his side. “I found my things, Mr. Weber,” she said, politely, because even if Aidan Weber hadn’t been much help, he at least hadn’t tried to hurt her. “Dylan brought me over, and he’s going to take me back to Endor. I have a friend I can stay with overnight who’ll take me to Albany tomorrow. I know you are going to be busy, so I’ll get out of the way now.”

“Certainly, thank you, Olivia,” Mr. Weber said absently, still staring at the mess, clearly having no idea where to start.

Livy nodded to Dylan, and they picked their way through the debris back to the shoreline.

“Where have you been?” Mandy screamed, startling everyone in the diner as she ran to hug Livy. “Grams and I have been frantic!”

Livy dropped the pull-handle of her suitcase and hugged Mandy back, and to her shock, found herself starting to tear up. “I’m sorry!” she said contritely. “I started to take the necklace to the post office, but I didn’t have enough money for insurance, so I thought I’d better take it in person. And I got there, then I had to find Dylan, and then the storm started.” Better to just leave out the kidnapping and Audrey and . . . yeah.

Mandy grabbed her suitcase handle in one hand and her wrist in the other, and towed her through the door to the kitchen. “You have to come tell Grams, she was about to send the National Guard.”

A few minutes later, and she was seated at the kitchen table again, this time with a grilled cheese-and-mushroom sandwich and milk. “. . . so the storm siren went off, and Dylan dragged me into the basement shelter with everyone else, and we all just fell asleep in there because they said it would be dangerous to go out in the dark. And there wasn’t a phone down there so I couldn’t call you.”

“You probably wouldn’t have gotten through anyway,” the old woman observed. “The lines are probably down. We saw flashes and heard the thunder from here. It’s a mercy it didn’t hit Endor too.”

“It just blew up out of nowhere,” Livy improvised. “Maybe you should call the National Guard after all. The campground is wrecked.”

“The Lodge?” Mandy prompted.

“It’s mostly okay. The worst damage is on the far side of the lake. The swimming platform is gone, the docks are gone, the Webers’ cabin is flat. I was just lucky I’d already packed my suitcase and stuffed it under my bed.” She smiled a little at Mandy’s smirk. “Yes, Blake of the Lake’s entire wardrobe is spread out over about a quarter acre of trees.”

Mandy stifled a giggle with both hands.

“Anyway, Dylan took me over on a jet ski and brought me back the same way. Mr. Weber got there just before I left and I told him I had someone I could stay with overnight who would take me to Albany in the morning. Then Dylan brought me here in the Resort truck and went back to help clean up.” Now she looked up at Mrs. Tyler contritely. “If—”

“There’s no ‘if’ about it, young lady,” Mrs. Tyler said firmly. “You stay here tonight, and I’ll take you to the airport myself in the morning. Mandy can handle anything that needs handling until I get back. But first, you finish that sandwich and you call your mother.” Her mouth quirked in an almost-sardonic smile. “At least you can leave out that business about the red-haired minx and Blake until you get home. That freak storm should be more than enough of an excuse . . . for now.”

Livy felt about five years old. “Yes, ma’am,” she said meekly.

It had been a grueling trip. Olivia’s mother had picked her up from the airport herself. By that time the freak storm at Lake Endor had made the national news, mostly thanks to a bright spark from Endor who’d run up to the Lake and taken lots of devastating-looking footage.

“I still can’t believe no one was hurt!” her mom was saying for at least the fifth time, as they finally pulled into the driveway. “Thank God you’re all right!”

By all rights Olivia should have been ready to drop, but getting up at four a.m. to make the trip into Albany had messed up her internal clock, and an awful lot of coffee and tea had finished the job. And besides . . .

She followed her mom into the house, and as soon as the door was closed and she’d dropped her suitcase, she decided to just grab the bull by the horns.

“Mom,” she said, and her tone of voice must have been so . . . odd . . . that her mom turned quickly in place, and stared at her with startled eyes. “What do you know about elves? Not movie elves. Real elves.”

Her mother went white, then red, then white again. “Did your father—”

“Dad has nothing to do with this,” she said, then made a shot at a venture. “Oberon said I was supposed to ask you, that he owed you a boon.”

Her mother made her way into the living room and dropped down into the nearest chair as if her legs couldn’t hold her up, staring up at her. “Oberon . . .” she said, faintly.

“Oberon,” Olivia said helpfully. “King of the . . . uh . . . See-lee?”

“Seleighe,” her mother corrected, absently.

“Tall, silver-haired, green-eyed, pointed ears, and freaking scary?” she continued. “Also hot, but . . . yeah, no.”

Her mother swallowed audibly. “You’ve—seen him.” It was a statement, not a question. “At the Lake? Of course it was at the Lake, you haven’t been anywhere else . . . was that what the storm was all about?”

“I think I need to start at the beginning,” Livy said slowly, and sat down across from her mother.

Choosing her words with great care, she told her mother everything. In some ways, it was a complete relief to finally let the truth out—in others, she kept expecting her mom to pick up the phone and call the men in the white coats.

But her mother listened. Well, she was an attorney, she was good at listening. And she didn’t even interrupt, not when Livy got to the part about interrupting Audrey and Blake’s little picnic and she turned pink with anger.

But when she got to the part about Audrey trying to kill her . . . her mom leapt up off the chair, her face a mask of rage, and for one moment, Livy thought . . . well, she didn’t really know what she thought, unless it was that her mom was going to head straight for New York and track Audrey down and strangle the bitch with her bare hands.

But she took several deep breaths, clenched and unclenched her fists and sat down again. “Go on,” she said. “She had a tail like an eel, only golden-yellow.”

“And that was when Dylan saved me.”

Her mom was clearly still livid with anger, but that anger cooled as she listened to the part about Dylan telling her about Selkies, and then showing her how he could transform. In fact, her face got a little wistful. “I wish I could have seen that,” she said. “It’s been—never mind. Go on.”

Then she got angry all over again, when Livy described Blake kidnapping her. “I know Audrey used magic on him,” she said, as her mother’s eyes flashed, “But . . . I bet she didn’t have to use much. Mia tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, honey,” her mom said, softening, and putting one hand over both of Livy’s. “He fooled me too, for an entire year. And I’ve seen his kind in show business, so I should have known better.”

By the time Olivia got to the part where the monster appeared in the lake, her stomach, which had not been at all happy with the gallons of coffee and tea she’d poured into it, decided it had settled and she needed to feed it. It growled very loudly.

Her mother jumped, and stared at her for a moment, then they both broke out into nervous laughter. “Break for dinner,” her mom said firmly. “This sounds like Act Three. All I have are some pathetic microwave Meals for One, but at least one of them is curried lentils—”

“That’ll be great,” Livy said, hastily.

They both ate quickly; Livy nearly burned her mouth, she was in such a hurry to finally unburden herself of everything. And as soon as she’d eaten the last lentil, she started again.

This time her mother just sat there with her eyes getting bigger and bigger.

“And then Oberon’s guy left us with the rest of the campers. He let me pick a place to lie down, and touched my head, and that’s all I remember until I woke up,” she concluded.

Her mom sat there, turning her glass around and around in her hands.

“That’s my story, all of it,” Olivia said, finally, breaking the silence. “What about yours?”

“Mine . . . wasn’t as exciting,” her mom said, after another long silence. “I don’t know whether to envy you for your adventure or be horrified. I probably should be horrified, but to tell you the truth, my adventure sounds rather pathetic next to yours.” She sighed. “When I was fifteen, my parents went on vacation without me. They figured I was old enough to take care of myself for a couple of weeks.” When Olivia looked at her with something like horror, she half-smiled. “There were no such things as ‘helicopter parents’ when I was that age, and pretty much every kid was a ‘free-range’ kid. I was a nerd, and they correctly figured that the worst thing that would happen would be a couple three-day-and-night Dungeons and Dragons marathons. I couldn’t go with them because I had a full-time summer job at the mall, at the food court. This was an outdoor mall centered around a heritage grove of oak trees. And that was the year I noticed there were slightly spaced-out groups of what looked like kids between the ages of sixteen and their early twenties that spent every minute the mall was open there, and were even there before the stores were open and after they were closed. And some of them had pointed ears. That was before what you kids call ‘cosplay’ was a thing, but sometimes the fantasy and science fiction nerds would dress up to ‘freak the mundanes.’ So I just figured they were even nerdier than I was.”

“But they were elves,” Olivia stated.

Her mom nodded. “One night right after my parents left, I was the only one closing up, and when I went out the back door, I heard someone in pain. And I found one of these kids next to the dumpster . . . only he wasn’t wearing jeans and a tee, he was in full-on fancy dress, like thousands of dollars worth of embroidered and cutwork leather. And his ears wouldn’t come off.” She took a deep breath. “And my head immediately went to—holy hell, this is a real elf. So instead of being sensible and calling 911, I got him to my car and took him home.”

Olivia stared at her mother, unable to believe this solid, sensible, practical woman had—

“Hey, I wasn’t always like this. I gave birth to you, didn’t I? Sounds like this sort of thing runs in the family.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I nursed him for a few days in the living room, and he came around long enough to beg me to take a note to the oak grove and pin it to the trunk with this tiny silver dagger he gave me. I did that just before work, and . . . it disappeared. And when I got home from work, Oberon and some of his soldiers were in my living room.”

Olivia’s mouth formed a silent “O.”

“I kind of freaked without freaking, so Oberon explained to me how his people get their energy from human creativity, and how there are places in the world where their space comes close to ours and they can cross over. And he thanked me and said I could keep my memories, and he said he owed me a boon. Then his guys picked up my elf and they all went out the back door and when I ran after them to see where they went, they were gone.” Now her mouth turned down in a sour frown. “I figured, hey, if elves live on human creativity, I’m not really creative, but I can go into something that helps other people be creative, so I went into entertainment law, and do my best to protect the creative people from the sharks. And it was enough, you know? Enough to know there is magic out there, and elves, and I’m doing my part to keep that going.”

“I . . . don’t know what to say,” Livy said, finally.

“I never told a soul, except your father. And that was fine, right until we started fighting. And then it turned into his first and last weapon in every argument.” She reached across the table and took Livy’s hand. “And I knew you were having trouble, but I thought you’d be able to work it out for yourself, and I was afraid that if I took you to a counselor, he’d use that to say I made you c—” She couldn’t say the word.

“Crazy. I get it, Mom.” And she did. She really did get it. Besides, even if her mom had taken her to a counselor—she wouldn’t have cooperated.

And suddenly, the whole day, getting all this off her chest—having Mom spill her story—it all caught up to her. A ton of exhaustion hit her like an avalanche of pillows, and she yawned hugely.

Her mom let go of her hand. “Honey, you’ve had an ordeal. Get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Now too tired to say anything, Livy nodded. She didn’t even bother to get her suitcase from the living room; she just went straight to her room, pulled on some fresh pajamas and didn’t even remember getting into bed.

She woke to the smell of waffles and coffee, and the sound of her mother talking—one-sided, so she was probably talking into her phone. She padded barefoot into the kitchen (no more freezing cement slab floors!) just as her mother finished. “—yes, that’s fine. Have him call me collect. No, it doesn’t matter what time. Thank you.”

She hung up, and turned to see Livy standing in the door. “Waffles and vegan bacon, and I just arranged for your young man at the resort to call me.”

“What, Blake?” Livy said, alarmed, then realized of course it wouldn’t be Blake. “Dylan? Why? Oh—”

“Exactly,” her mother said, nodding. “We can’t just leave him hanging. It’s not ethical.”

Livy kept her mouth shut as she collected waffles. It was no use arguing with her mother when she said the word “ethical.”

Besides, she’s right.

Normally her mom wasn’t much for cooking, but one day one of those motel-breakfast-type waffle makers turned up at the house during one of the periods of reconciliation with Dad, and there were usually waffles for breakfast on weekends. Or whenever Mom was stressed and had time. Or for dessert. Or sometimes, even for supper . . . when her mom was stressed. Livy had gotten the idea rather quickly that making waffles was her mom’s way of handling stress. Could be worse. Could be Harper Weber.

Livy preferred hers with fresh fruit, and there was a bowl of blueberries, so . . . Mom’s going to get her way. And anyway, she’s right.

The phone rang three or four times before breakfast was over, but it wasn’t Dylan until after they were done and Mom was cleaning up. Her mom mouthed his name, and wiggled her eyebrows to indicate that Livy could talk to him if she wanted, but she shook her head, and listened.

“Mr. Waverly—” she paused. “All right then, Dylan. Livy told me everything. Yes, everything. I—ah—have some history with Oberon.” She listened some more. “Well, there is your geas . . . .”

What’s a geas? I didn’t say anything about a “geas.” I guess Mom knows more about magic than she told me. . . .

“Well, I would like you to come here at your earliest—yes, that would be fine. Yes, you can certainly bring your older sister if you think that would help. Yes, we have more than enough room for you both. I can arrange for plane—oh, well, of course, if you’d prefer. All right then. I am looking forward to meeting you both.”

She hung up. “He’ll be here in three days. The resort is cutting back on lifeguarding staff since the lake is off-limits to everyone until it’s been cleaned up.”

So . . . I have three days to get used to the idea of seeing him again. She swallowed hard. I’m not sure what to think about that. . . .

She still wasn’t sure what to think about it when the doorbell rang three days later, and she opened it to find Dylan and a willowy dark-haired girl with the huge, brown melting eyes of a seal (ha), wearing a beautiful white, ankle-length sundress that made her look like a goddess, standing on the doorstep, suitcases beside them. Her mom appeared almost instantly, which was a good thing, as Livy was almost too tongue-tied to invite them in.

Within a few moments, they were all sitting in the living room, sipping iced coffee. “I’m mortally glad our kind doesn’t suffer from the same weakness as our Sidhe kindred,” Moira Waverly was saying, as she and Mrs. Poole made overtures towards each other.

“Caffeine poisoning? Yes, Oberon told me that was what was the matter with the Seleighe lad I found as a girl. Must be inconvenient.” Livy was still tongue-tied, in awe of the fact that her mother could chit-chat so casually with magic people. People who turned into seals. . . .

“It is. But you didn’t ask us here to discuss such things, Mrs. Poole,” Moira put her cup down on the coffee-table, making sure to use the coaster. “You asked us because of my brother’s entanglement with your daughter, and what’s to be done about it.”

“I didn’t mean—” Livy said in a small voice.

Moira turned those beautiful eyes on her and smiled gently. “Of course you didn’t, my heart, and we know that. And in the end, it all came out for the better, except for the geas.”

“Well . . . when I consider the kind of young man I thought was right for her, I have to say I’m not . . . opposed to this,” Mrs. Poole said thoughtfully, looking at Dylan.

Dylan turned bright red. “Mom!” Livy said, mortified.

“It could have been Blake Weber,” her mom pointed out.

Moira sat back on the sofa, her gaze turning speculative. “Really, now . . . I didn’t expect this. What does Livy’s father think?”

“Thomas Poole and I have filed for divorce,” Mrs. Poole said, in a tone of voice that suggested that no one argue with her about this. Ever. “Livy is eighteen, and he has nothing to say about her choices of boyfriends, or girlfriends, or any other sort of person she’s attracted to.”

“Mom!” Livy wanted to sink into the couch.

“However,” Mrs. Poole held up a finger. “Livy hasn’t said anything about how she feels about Dylan. And she’s the most important person in the room when it comes to this subject other than Dylan. So, Livy?”

Her cheeks flamed. “I—don’t know. I like you, Dylan. But—I don’t really know much about you.”

Dylan looked as if he was going to launch into a flight of poetry, and Moira cleared her throat and looked at him meaningfully. He flushed. “That . . . is true. I cannot deny it.”

“Oberon has said that it would be possible to change the geas, slightly,” Moira put in. “Instead of making it last forever, make it of seven years duration, one year for every tear dropped into the lake.”

Livy kept her mouth clamped shut on her protest that she didn’t know how many tears she’d dribbled into the lake. If Oberon could change this thing, and limit it, she’d take what she could get.

“So, let me ask you this. Is there someone you can stay with in San Diego and some sort of meaningful job you can do there? As if you were one of us?” Mrs. Poole asked, her eyes fixed on Dylan.

Dylan looked at his sister. She nodded. He gestured to her to speak.

“The lad’s a fine mechanic for watercraft. And we have—Seleighe kin—who would be willing to write him up letters saying so. There is a small hame in San Diego, I do believe, where he would be welcome.” Moira nodded. “So, aye, that can be done.”

“Then I propose that you allow Livy some time to settle in at college. Exchange phone numbers and email addresses—I’m sure someone can get you a phone, Dylan, and teach you about email. Then, say, around the beginning of November, you can start dating. Over the breaks, you can all stay here with me; that includes you, Moira, if you like. I’m sure your family would like to have someone keeping an eye on Dylan from time to time.”

Moira’s eyes twinkled as Dylan reddened again. “To be sure,” she murmured.

“Meanwhile, Livy will get a solid education in something that will give her a career, in case being a seal-wife doesn’t work out.”

“Mom . . .”

Dylan grabbed Mrs. Poole’s hand and kissed it impulsively. “You are a fine, wise lady, Olivia’s mother. I can never—”

Mrs. Poole took her hand back. “Save the charm for my daughter, young man,” she said, although her eyes looked amused too. “Oh, and for one other person.”

“And who would that be?” Dylan looked eager to conquer anyone.

“Her best friend, Mia.” Her mother looked meaningfully at her, and she flushed. “Mia saw right through Blake Weber, and I think I’m inclined to trust her judgment. I propose that the two of you settle in, then you, Olivia, call Mia and ask her to come over to meet your new friends over supper.”

Olivia’s cheeks burned . . . but Mom was right. Again. And she hadn’t even tried to text Mia since she got home. . . .

“And in between then and now?” Moira asked, archly.

“In between then and now, we’ll all be working on the version of the story Mia will hear.” Her mom smiled complacently. “I’ll help. I’m a lawyer after all. I do this all the time.”

“She does,” Livy assured them, smiling at her mother. “And she’s good at it. She can be a real shark.”

“Ah, is that so, now?” replied Moira speculatively. “A shark, is it? This, I can understand. Perhaps we should be involving you in our negotiations with the Farraige Olc.”

Mrs. Poole smiled broadly. “That,” she said, with complete conviction, “Would be a pleasure.”