Sarge snarled, snapping his teeth in my direction, and my hand shot out and smashed him right in the nose. He dropped to his belly, eyes shut tight. “You are being a total shit. I don’t know why, and I don’t care at this point,” I said.

Eric and Feish hurried back down the slope. I didn’t want to leave either of them alone, so it was best that they went together. I watched them go to the boat and get in before I turned my back on them.

Suzy, though, would be alone if I left now. And if I remembered right, she had a car.

I walked over to her and touched her arm, feeling the clamminess of her skin. “Come on. I can drive if you want.”

When I directed her toward the gate, she went willingly enough. I realized that no other mentor had witnessed what had gone down. I wanted to go find Eammon, but I didn’t dare. Because I had a feeling that Sarge would do more than snap his teeth if I pushed this right now. “I’m sorry you got sucked into that,” I said.

“Not your fault. He’s lost his mind. But I need this job, I can barely pay my rent right now,” she whispered.

“Let’s go get a drink,” I said. “We can discuss our options.”

And that is how I ended up in Suzy’s battered old car—dusty blue if you didn’t count the rust spots as orange—which barely had room for two in it because of all the stuff jammed into the backseat. I twisted around to try and identify the items that were taking up all the room and ended up shaking my head. There was too much of it, contained in boxes and bags, and it smelled a little funky. “Are you living in your car?” Was this what she’d meant about her rent being too high?

“No.” She flopped in the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine turned over surprisingly well for what the car looked like. “I just don’t trust my landlord, so I keep some of my stuff in here.”

“Paranoid much?”

“Oh, totally.” She bobbed her head and grinned, but the grin slid off her face. “Life is much better if you think everyone is out to get you. That way, you’re never surprised when the knife finally comes swinging your way.”

I rolled my eyes. “That sounds like something Corb would say.”

“He is my trainer, or I guess he was.” She tried to smile at me again, but the edges of her lips trembled. “And he had his reasons for picking me. One of them is that we think alike.” Her eyes swept over me.

“What was his other reason?” I smiled back at her so she wouldn’t think I was being a bitch. Apparently it didn’t work. She glared at me, and tears pooled at the corners of her eyes.

“It’s not like that. I mean, yes, he’s hot but . . . he’s not interested in me, he made that clear,” she snapped.

I held up both hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t being a jerk. I was just wondering if you had a connection to the shadow world. Eammon picked me for my family connections and previous training.” At least, that was what I assumed. I’d never told Eammon who I was, but I had to admit it was too much of a coincidence for him to have randomly approached me.

“Oh,” she said, all the ire going out of her. “I think it’s because my mother is half siren.”

I stared hard at her. “Seriously? Like you could sing a man to his death and . . .”

“And make him enjoy it while he died? In theory, yes. But the truth is my blood is too diluted. So the siren in me calls men, but I can’t kill them unless I use a weapon. Corb was immune to my call, and I liked that.” She seemed a little too sad about that for my liking.

I cleared my throat. “So are you dating anyone right now?”

She glanced at me. “Are you hitting on me?”

I rolled my eyes. “You know what, just because you are young and beautiful does not mean that everyone wants to sleep with you.”

“Sure it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. I am just trying to get to know you since we both got kicked out of the Hollows. Also, you need to get used to the idea that at some point you won’t be the young one anymore. You’ll be just like me, fighting to prove yourself.” And apparently losing that fight because one stupid werewolf got his tail in a twist.

I bit back the rest of the words that wanted to pour out of me. How it was hard to get anyone to take you seriously if you were a middle-aged, divorced woman starting a new career. How I was finding it all beyond exasperating. Irritating as duck.

She giggled at me. Freaking giggled. “I will never be you.”

I gritted my teeth and stared out the window. “One day, you’ll understand, and by then you’ll have wasted your youth thinking it would last forever.”

“No, seriously, I won’t age. That’s the perk of siren blood. I’m over fifty already.”

I might have strangled her right then and there if not for the fact that she’d tried to stick up for me back there with Sarge. She was older than me, but had none of the side effects of age. I settled for twisting around to stare hard at her. She shrugged and turned the car onto River Street. “Look, I don’t age like a real human. I really am still like a teenager in a siren’s lifetime.”

Yes, I could see that with my own eyes—she didn’t look a hair over nineteen. “Great.”

“It’s not my fault. People don’t see me either, you know. They see a young blond white chick, and they think I’m an idiot. That I couldn’t possibly have a brain in my head, or muscles in my body. Because I’m pretty.”

“Heartbreaking,” I drawled.

“It really is,” she whispered.

I twisted in my seat. “I have a friend who is a woman of color, her name is Mavis. If you want to talk about being treated cruelly for no reason, taken for granted, and walked all over as if you are nothing, then you can talk to her. She has a shit deal. But don’t complain to me because you have perfect skin, teeth, and hair, and there are some things in life you have to actually work for. Do you expect that everything should just be handed to you? Get over yourself.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “That was mean.”

I was angry now, and whatever compassion I might have had for her because of the Hollows situation was gone. “That was honest. Pity no one has told you that you have a leg up that most women would kill for.”

And yes, maybe that was harder than the situation warranted—again, she’d just lost a job. Damn it, we both had. What the hell was I going to do now? I rubbed my hands over my face and let out a deep sigh. “Look, I’m sorry if that was harsher than it needed to be.”

“Doesn’t make it not true.” Suzy tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “We’re both in the same spot now. Stuck.” We were both quiet until she parked the car a few minutes later.

She turned to me. “Whenever I’m stuck, I get my cards read and it helps me figure out what to do next. I can’t think of a better time for that than right now, after I lost a chance at a job that I loved. I’m going to a tarot reader, do you want to come?”

I got out of the car. “You sure you want more of my pithy, hard-ass truths?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “It’s been a long time since anyone has been anything but afraid of me. Even my mother.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? I give you a smack down after you got fired for sticking up for me, and you still want to be friends?”

She shut her car door with a loud slam that bounced through the night air. Just after dinner for most people, there was still a lot of movement along the river’s edge. Lots of people out walking hand in hand.

“I think honesty is a great foundation for a friendship, even if it is with an old lady.” She grinned at me and I glared at her.

“That’s rich coming from the half-century chick. And just so you know, I think I see a wrinkle,” I shot back.

Her hands flew to her face. “Really?”

“Left eye,” I said.

She gasped and bent to look in her side mirror. “I don’t see it.”

Suzy kept on talking, muttering about dermaplaning, laser therapy, and a spell that her mother had given her on her deathbed. But my eyes were drawn to the river flowing in front of us. River Street was named because—you guessed it—it ran along the Savannah River. The river was wide and deep and dark, flowing out to the Atlantic Ocean. I’d spent my childhood looking at it, and yet that night it seemed entirely different. Maybe it was the quiet of the night, or the clear sky above that allowed the stars to reflect in the water, but the river called to me. It felt like more than just a river.

I was at the top of a set of stairs that led down to the actual river when Suzy caught up to me. “Did you really see a wrinkle?”

“Must have been my mirror,” I murmured. “Does the water seem different to you?”

She paused and looked out over the river. Her breathing slowed and then hitched. “Yes. It’s alive tonight. It happens at certain times of the year. It is full of the dead, you know.”

I jerked around to look at her. “What?”

Her eyes were misty as she stared into the water. “The dead of the ships that went down, of course, but also the supernaturals who scared the locals. They don’t talk about that in the history books, or even in the tours. Dead people suspected of being supernatural were stuffed into coffins full of rocks, wrapped in chains, and sunk out in the river. It’s deep enough they could do that.”

There was a moment, just a split second, where I thought I could see the past, see the panic on people’s faces as another sweep of plague ravaged their city. They’d been desperate, the kind of desperate where they’d do anything to stop it. The vision changed, and I watched as the panicked humans stuffed living people into coffins, wrapped the death traps in chains, and rowed them out to the middle of the river. Some fought back, and a few of them had fangs that drew blood, something that only emboldened the humans and filled them with righteous certainty. I blinked as the images faded to nothing.