Tex was unsurprised to find Scarlet waiting for them at the top of the stairs, her critical gaze taking careful stock of their condition. Gizelle was sitting cross-legged on one of the lounge chairs, a towel cradled in her arms. The sunrise was gaining strength, and casting glowing orange light over the white deck.

“I presume the boat was lost,” Scarlet said without preamble.

“Bastian dragged the biggest piece back, but I’m afraid it’s not terribly seaworthy,” Tex told her, too tired to be intimidated by her non-nonsense air. “Everything was lost.”

“Except you, I’m glad to see” Scarlet said gently, her nod including Laura. “Insurance will cover the rest. I presume it was not merely an… accident.”

At Tex’s side, Laura suddenly went stiff, and Tex looked to see Fred, standing at the foot of the stairs from the bar deck.

They were both watching him when he caught sight of them, and the expression of disbelief and anger was so brief that Tex actually doubted he’d seen it.

Laura had no such doubts.

“If you want answers,” she told Scarlet furiously, “ask him!”

Fred managed to look innocent and slightly offended at the same time. “What do you mean, Jenny? Are you okay? What happened?”

“What I don’t understand,” Laura said, voice heartbroken, “is why. Why would you try to hurt Jenny? Why would you try to hurt me? What did we ever do to you?”

Tex was still watching Fred’s face, held back from roaring across the tile to smash the man into the ground only by Laura’s hand on his arm.

For just a moment, Fred looked shocked and angry, but it was so swiftly masked in hurt innocence that Tex might have been fooled if he hadn’t been watching for any sign of guilt.

Before he could do more than growl, there was a streak of fur, and the otter that Gizelle had been holding bolted towards Fred, shrieking in fury.

Fred stepped back, nearly tripping on the first step up to the bar deck.

The otter chittered and growled and seemed bigger than an otter ought to be.

Gizelle dashed after the creature, and knelt a short space away from it, gazing intently at it. “Use your words,” she scolded gently. “Remember yourself!” She ignored Fred completely.

Tex was still trying to figure out how to attack Fred without stepping on the otter or mauling Gizelle on his way, when the otter shimmered, seemed to hiccup in form.

It was the most painful shift that Tex had ever witnessed, as if otter and human were fighting for control of the form. Fur stretched, limbs took unnatural shapes and lengths one at a time. Finally, it became...

“Laura?”

He had to check to see that Laura was still standing at his side, mouth open in shock.

“Jenny!”

Then his mate was leaping into the chaos, weeping and throwing her arms around a mirror image of herself.

“You’re not dead, I couldn’t feel you anymore, I thought you were gone.”

“Couldn’t,” Jenny said, awkwardly. She was swaying, as if exhausted and not sure how her own limbs worked. She picked up a hand, which Tex realized still had short webbed fingers and claws and inspected it thoughtfully. “Lost.”

Gizelle looked at Laura warningly. “She’s not very found yet,” she said.

Tex was not looking at Fred anymore, captured by the drama unfolding.

“I’m not sure if this simplifies or complicates matters,” Scarlet said mildly at his elbow.

Fred turned as if to flee, and Tex caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. He moved without thinking, crossing the space between them and grabbing him by the back of the neck. His bear wanted to crush the loathsome man, bite his windpipe, and maul his smug face, but Tex reined him back, satisfying his blood lust with a simple shake that left Fred gasping for breath.

Laura wrapped her towel around Jenny’s naked shoulders and drew her to one of the lounge chairs. “What happened?”

“She needed help,” Jenny answered, in a sing-song voice that Tex knew wasn’t hers. “I saw a place for me.”

“Was it Fred?” Laura asked, desperately. “Did he booby-trap my car so that you got hurt?”

Jenny cocked her head at her. “Booby-trap?” She considered. “Yes. And another car, long ago.”

Laura sucked her breath in. “Our parents?”

“They had things he want. Things he valued. Mo-ney?”

“There was no money,” Laura scoffed. “We were paupers.”

“There was!” Jenny said, more strongly now, more like Laura would have, Tex thought.

It was very disconcerting, seeing two of them together, features so familiar and dear. It was even more disconcerting watching Jenny struggle with her otter companion.

“What happened to it?” Laura asked, incredulously.

Jenny seemed to rally herself. “Fred very carefully managed it away for us, so it looked like it was just bled away on the market, or lost to taxes, but it was really going into his accounts. And he didn’t tell us about the life insurance at all. But I caught him, and I figured out what he’d done.”

“Your laptop. He blew up your laptop after he saw that I’d accessed your accounts.”

Laura’s mirror nodded firmly. “He’d do that,” she agreed.

“And the boat,” Laura said, “He blew up the boat after I told him that I had everything I needed on the cloud. I was just talking nonsense, but he thought I’d figured out what you had figured out, and was going to expose him.”

“I had enough on him to send him jail for a very long time, and we would have been very rich indeed. Mom and Dad’s life insurance policy alone would have set us both up for life. We were millionaires, Laura. We just didn’t know it.”

With a moan, Jenny’s eyes rolled up into her head and she slowly shifted into an otter who took two wobbly steps and fell at Laura’s feet.