Chapter 23

“This has to be it,” I said, stopping several feet from the dark water. Malik’s directions had been easy enough to follow, we weren’t even that far off of the main trail. Easier to eat children if they are likely to wander to your doorstep. I shivered and edged back a step from the pond. “Now what?”

Falin gazed across the expanse of algae-encrusted water. “Now we knock on her door.”

He stepped forward, lifting a blade out of who-knew-where he kept them magically concealed. Dragging the edge of the blade across his palm, he opened a thin slit. Blood welled to the surface and he walked up to the edge of the pond. Fisting his hand over the water, he let several fat drops of red blood fall to the slimy green surface. Then, in a voice that had to be magically amplified, called out, “Jenny Greenteeth, I summon you. As knight of the winter court, I compel your attendance.”

“Will that really work? You can compel any fae in winter territory?” I asked, watching the still surface. The pond wasn’t large, maybe fifty feet at its widest point. During the summer droughts, all but the deepest sections probably vanished.

“If she was a regular courtier or independent, and assuming she’s home, then yes, it would work. But we don’t know who she’s sworn herself to. I can’t compel a noble, nor a fae sworn under a noble.”

And Icelynne had said she thought the alchemist was Sleagh Maith. If Jenny was sworn to him, this wouldn’t work. Of course, for it to work at all, we had to hope we were in the right place and she was home.

Nothing moved or disturbed the water.

Malik had been spot-on in his assessment that the pond had been fouled. The stagnant water stank, algae covered all but a few murky spots, and the mud around the edges was littered with decaying fish and seaweed. But this was the floodplains. It consistently flooded and then drained back—who was to say this wasn’t the pond’s natural cycle. Except that the nixies won’t go near it. From what I knew of them, nixies were harmless and rather childlike water spirits. They did have a propensity to predict deaths while they danced across the water, but they just predicted it, they didn’t cause it. They were attracted to all decent-sized bodies of water, so their avoidance of this pond might truly be odd. Malik had certainly implied it was. But then again, fae often relied on implication to skirt the truth. Not being capable of lying meant you had to get creative.

The water remained still.

“Do you think she’s out or are we in the wrong place?” I asked, willfully ignoring the possibility she simply didn’t have to answer.

Falin wrapped a handkerchief around his palm—people still carried those?—and frowned at the expanse of unmoving water. “I’ll have some agents stake out the area, for if she returns.”

That was a good idea. I walked a few more feet along the edge of the pond, trying to see if it branched off. Something tugged on my senses, and I stopped.

Falin pulled his phone out of his pocket, and then scowled at the screen. “No signal.” He looked around, as if trying to judge what spot in the nature preserve was more likely to get cell signal. “We’d better head back.”

I nodded, but the movement was distracted as I tried to zero in on what my senses were picking up. It wasn’t magic, at least not Aetheric witchy magic. But there was something familiar about it. I took a few more steps—in the opposite direction of the path we’d taken to get here.

Falin was still holding his phone up in the air, searching for bars, but he turned when he noticed I wasn’t following him. “You coming?”

“Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, I’ll catch up in a minute.” What was that? It tickled along my skin, but it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, and unlike the chill of grave essence reaching for me from the various animal bodies in the area, this felt . . . warm.

“I’ll be just down the path,” Falin said, but a frown claimed his expression, and he didn’t head in the direction he’d indicated.

I gave him another nod, barely listening as I reached out with my senses. There was definitely something here. It didn’t feel malicious, but I still stopped to pull my dagger from the sheath in my boot. After all, I had no idea if Jenny was hiding somewhere out of sight.

Picking my way carefully through the underbrush, I followed the trail of magic like it was a bit of unwound string I could track back to its ball of yarn. It led me away from the edge of the pond, through a small copse of trees, and to a clearing. In the very center of the clearing stood a small sapling, and the trail I’d been following culminated around the thin tree.

I approached it carefully. Despite the fact we were half through October, dark glossy leaves still clung to the branches and flowers bloomed sporadically amid the green foliage.

An amaranthine tree.

I was far from an expert on Faerie flora, but the only other amaranthine tree I knew of grew in the center of the VIP section of the Eternal Bloom, and it acted as the door to Faerie. I didn’t know for sure if all of the trees marked doors, and if they did, if those doors randomly sprang up wherever the trees took root, but I did know I didn’t like this tree being so close to the fouled pond.

Also, the tree wasn’t that far off the path, and in my experience, the flowers had a hypnotic quality. All Nekros needed was for hikers to start disappearing after stumbling into Faerie and becoming changelings. Besides, because of the agreements made after the Magical Awakening, it was illegal for a gate to be unguarded and unrestricted for that very reason. Someone official needed to know about this tree, and hey, I happened to be in the forest with the lead FIB agent—you didn’t get much more official than that when it came to fae matters.

I sheathed my dagger and dug my phone out of my pocket. It, of course, had no signal.

Damn.

I snapped a couple of pictures with my phone and then studied the clearing around me, trying to pick out landmarks. I could probably follow the flow of magic back to the tree, but just in case, I wanted some markers rooted in mortal reality. If there was one thing almost all folklore agreed on, it was that finding a door to Faerie once didn’t indicate you’d ever be able to find it again. Granted, those stories were about humans interacting with Faerie, but still, better safe than sorry.

I made my way back to the pond’s edge, noting anything I thought could help guide me back to the sapling. I was so busy searching for landmarks and checking the phone for signal that the splash of water directly behind me didn’t register.

At least, not until a pair of green-tinted arms wrapped around my shoulders, a hand clamped over my mouth, and I was dragged backward, into the befouled water.

•   •   •

I screamed, but the water was already rushing up all around me and the sound emerged trapped in bubbles. The afternoon sun vanished behind a veil of algae. My eyes stung from the dirty water, but I didn’t dare squeeze them closed.

And the arms continued dragging me down and down, the light of the surface winking away.

The pond couldn’t possibly be this deep, not this close to the bank.

But it was. Somehow.

Thrashing, I struggled to retrieve my dagger from my boot. A slimy strand of black seaweed wrapped around my wrist, pulling it away from my body. Another strand wrapped around my other wrist, then my upper arms, my ankles, my waist, until I was immobilized. Only then did the arms encircling my shoulders release me.

In the dark water, I could only just make out the shape of the figure as she floated up, over my head and then spun so that her upside-down face was inches from mine. Jenny smiled, flashing those pointy green teeth of her namesake.

“Oh my,” she said, tutting under her breath. Despite the laws of acoustics in water, I heard her words clearly. She didn’t even make bubbles as she spoke. “You’re old enough to know better than to play around my bog.”

I scowled and pulled at the restraints holding me.

“Why so quiet?” She laughed. “A little smarter than you look, then. But conserving your air won’t help. And that scream when you first went under is going to cost you.”

She was right. My chest burned, my lungs aching with the need to draw breath. How long had I been underwater already? A minute? A minute and a half?

Jenny twisted upright and floated down until we were face-to-face again. Her dark hair flowed around her, blending into the murky depths of the water as she gave me an appraising once-over. I kept struggling.

“He wants you alive,” she said, her smile fading. “I don’t see why. But how much more air do you have? Maybe you accidentally drown while I subdue you.” She pressed a long-fingered hand over her chest. “There was just nothing poor Jenny could do.” She laughed again.

Crap. I had to do something. Fast.

I dropped my shields, looking around. There were dead things aplenty on the bottom of the pond—I could feel their picked-over bones—but thankfully none were human. Unfortunately, deer and hog shades weren’t going to do a lot to prevent me from drowning. I glanced at the seaweed holding me, hoping against hope it was simply a glamour I could disbelieve away.

It wasn’t.

The seaweed was not only real, but alive, so I couldn’t drag it over to the land of the dead and rot it away. Damn. A bubble of exhausted air slipped from between my lips. I needed oxygen, and soon.

Jenny watched me, giggling with delight as I struggled in vain.

I considered trying to pull raw Aetheric energy and shape it into something useful. A fireball to burn away the seaweed? Underwater—would that even work? Or maybe a pocket of clean air around me. But even if I knew how to form those kinds of spells, which I didn’t, whatever or wherever this pond was, it didn’t exist completely in the mortal realm because I could see only the thinnest strands of Aetheric energy.

More expended air escaped my now-tingling lips.

No, I wouldn’t die like this. I wouldn’t.

But I was out of time. My body took an involuntary breath of water.

The water felt heavy and thick as it rushed into my lungs. Pain spread across my chest and my thrashing turned from struggles to escape into spasms.

Jenny clapped her hands. “Oh, this is my favorite part.”

My body heaved, trying to expel the water, but there was nothing but more water to take its place. The pain in my chest was unbearable, but my arms felt numb, heavy. My legs too.

I heard a splash from somewhere in the distance, and a loud, echoing boom. Then there was only darkness.