Twelve

I’d known that Lurine carried a lot of clout among the water elementals. I hadn’t known exactly how much.

At her suggestion, we drove over to Sedgewick Estate.

“It’s all the same river,” Lurine said in a pragmatic tone. “And it’s secluded enough out here in the sticks. We’ll get Gus to stand guard.”

Of course, we had to visit with my mom first. She and Lurine exchanged greetings like long-lost friends, even though I knew they talked on the phone every week. But I guess that’s not the same as meeting face-to-face. They had a bit of a falling-out when Lurine tried to give Mom a check big enough to pay off the mortgage on her lot and then some, but that was years ago.

“How’s the investigation going? Have you found the spider yet?” Mom asked me, a little furrow between her brows.

“Spider . . . ?” I remembered her reading again. “No, not yet. We’re here to question the naiads.”

She nodded in understanding. “I’m sure Gus will be happy to make sure everyone keeps their distance.”

Sedgewick Estate is a pretty tight-knit community in its own little way. It’s always drawn a fair number of eldritch folk, maybe because it’s a bit isolated and close to nature. Still, for Lurine’s sake, it would be better not to have an audience.

Gus’s unit was the farthest one on the estate, a single-wide situated under a big willow tree. The exterior was draped in camouflage netting, giving it a sort of cavernous, moss-covered-hillock appearance, which was appropriate, since Gus was an ogre.

To the best of my knowledge, Gus hasn’t eaten anyone in the last century or so, at least if we’re talking people.

Cats and dogs, I’m not so sure about.

Gus answered our knock right away, unfolding his mammoth seven-foot-tall frame through the doorway and ducking under the netting. To the mundane eye, he looks a bit like Andre the Giant, and if you don’t know who that is, you really need to watch The Princess Bride. To the eldritch eye, he looks like Andre the Giant if Andre the Giant were hewn from boulders and stitched together with leather.

“Good evening, ladies,” he said in a deep rumble, baring teeth like smaller boulders in a shy smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Lurine’s going to summon the naiads,” I said. “Can you make sure we don’t draw any spectators?”

His smile broadened. “Of course.” He glanced at Mom with puppy-dog eyes. “Present company excepted, I hope?”

Um, yeah. Gus the ogre has a crush on my mother.

“Of course Marja’s welcome.” Lurine patted Mom’s arm. “She’s an honorary member of the community.”

I fidgeted. “This is a police investigation.”

“It’s okay, honey.” Mom smiled at me. “I’ll stay on the shore with Gus, out of hearing range. I just want to watch. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a naiad; they don’t usually come out this far.”

I sighed. “Fine.”

We trooped down toward the river. Some yards away from the shore, Gus planted his looming figure on sentry duty. It was late enough in the day that the sun was riding low in the west, beginning its slow descent toward sunset, and a few people were out on their decks, manning barbecue grills.

Gus raised his hands and cupped his mouth. “Better you should go inside for a little while, okay?” he boomed. “Go inside and close your curtains! Important community business here!” There were a few groans and catcalls, but everyone obeyed. For an ogre, Gus is an amiable fellow, but not someone you want to cross.

“Ready, cupcake?” Lurine asked me.

I nodded. “Yep.”

At the river’s edge, Lurine shucked her sundress and waded into the murky water, her bare feet stirring up eddies of muck. “Let me call them first. I’ll come back for you.”

“Okay.”

In the blink of an eye, she shifted, her shapely human lower half giving way to those vast, glistening, muscular coils. If you crossed a giant anaconda with a rainbow, that’s pretty much what the bottom half of a lamia would look like. Propelled by her undulating coils, Lurine glided across the surface of the river through a thicket of sedge grass, her torso disconcertingly upright and towering in the air. When she reached open water, she halted.

Her immensely long, powerful tail thrashed, churning the water. She raised her voice and summoned the naiads in a foreign tongue, every word precise and ringing with bronze-edged irritation.

I don’t know what she said, but she sounded pissed.

There was a long moment of silence, echoes dying across the bay. And then the water rippled with myriad arrow-headed wakes as the naiads, undines, and nixies came in swift answer to Lurine’s summons, rising to bob in the river, heads lowered in acknowledgment.

Lurine’s tail snaked back toward me and proffered a loop, the iridescent tip beckoning. Not exactly what I’d expected when she said she’d come back for me. When I hesitated, she glanced over her shoulder with mild annoyance. “I’m not playing, Daisy. Are you coming or not?”

“Coming.” I pried off my sandals and stepped onto the offered loop of her tail. It dipped slightly beneath my weight, and I nearly slipped. “Whoa!”

A coil wrapped around my waist, steadying me. “Gotcha, cupcake.”

Okay . . . gah!

Lurine retracted her coils, me within them, and in one swift rush I was floating above the river and the aquatic mean-girls club, securely encased in a lamia’s grip. Yep, definitely hot—also pretty exhilarating, like the weirdest amusement park ride ever.

The head naiad bobbed and glared at me beneath her lashes. I cleared my throat. “Um . . . hi again.” I raised my left hand, the one marked with Hel’s rune. “Remember me?”

Her voice was subdued, but icy. “Yes, of course. The sun has not set on our brief acquaintance.”

Lurine’s tail thrashed in warning. I rode out the convulsions, my bare toes gripping her water-slick coils, one hand clutching her shoulder. “Level with me. A boy died, okay? Just tell me what you saw.”

They conferred in their silvery voices. The sun sank lower, turning the rippled surface of the water to hammered gold.

At last a pair of timid undines with pearls from my morning’s offering twined in their translucent hair came forward. “The boy didn’t drown in the river,” one of them said in a faint, wispy voice. “They put him there.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Who did? His friends?”

They exchanged a glance. “We don’t know. It was dark,” the other one said. “They were in a boat without lights.”

“How many people?” I asked. “Human or eldritch?”

“Four,” the first undine said. “Two were human. Two were not. The two who were not put the boy in the river.”

“You said the boy didn’t drown there.” I frowned, thinking. “So he was already dead, then?”

The undines nodded in unison. “Drowned.”

“Drowned, but not in the river? You’re sure?”

“All of us know what drowned men look like, halfling,” the head naiad said with disdain. “We have seen many hundreds of them.”

“No doubt.” I wouldn’t be surprised if she was responsible for a few of them. Ignoring her, I concentrated on the undines. “Okay, the two who weren’t human. What were they?”

“Pale,” one said.

“Hungry,” the other offered.

“Vampires?” I hadn’t considered the possibility that the kids were blood-sluts in the making. But by the look of him, Thad Vanderhei hadn’t been drained, and I’d never heard of vampires drowning anyone.

The undines shook their heads. “No.”

I grimaced. “Ghouls?”

They did their nod-in-unison thing again. I wondered whether undines were a bit simple. It might explain why the naiads were so bitchy, having to share the river with them. “Maybe,” one said. “Not for sure.”

“Okay, so they put the boy in the river. Then what happened?”

“We don’t know,” the other said. “We swam away as fast as we could.”

Lurine muttered something under her breath, the end of her tail lashing ominously. The undines looked scared.

“It’s okay,” I assured them. “I don’t blame you. I would have run away, too. Can you tell me anything else about the people in the boat? Were the humans the boy’s age?”

“Yes,” both of them said. “We think so.”

“Good, very good.” I nodded encouragingly. “What about the other two men? The maybe-ghouls?”

“Not men,” one corrected me. “One man and one woman.”

Huh, interesting.

I pressed them for as many details as they could remember. All I got was that the man and woman were not young, but not old either. The man had dark hair, but they weren’t sure about the woman. The boat was a small motorboat, not a sailboat or a houseboat, but the kind you would take on a short pleasure cruise or fishing trip. Since that described a hundred boats in Pemkowet, it wasn’t a lot of help.

Still, it was tons more information than I’d had an hour ago.

When I couldn’t think of any further angles to pursue, I thanked the undines for their help. “I appreciate it. This is very, very helpful.” I glanced from them to the head naiad. “Why were you so reluctant to share it? Why did you make it so difficult?”

The undines were silent.

“Because it is dangerous to get involved in such affairs, halfling,” the head naiad said with exasperation. “We do not know who killed the boy or why. There are those who have hunted our kind for sport over the ages.” She waved one alabaster arm, indicating the broad sweep of the river. “In this age, it would be altogether too easy to take vengeance on us. Mortal folk have all but poisoned the waters through carelessness. Imagine what one of the soulless ones could do out of spite.”