“Crabs have legs.”
“Crabs don’t live in fresh water.” She bobbed on the current, her dark hair floating, and for an instant, I was hallucinating. Her face morphed… and I was staring at Julien’s face, his laughing brown eyes. That funny, quirky half-smile.
Then she morphed back into her nymph self and asked, “Still want to argue?”
I blinked, but shook my head as the nymph hooked her fingers into my coat. “Trust me,” she said, turning upstream. “This will all make sense in a minute.”
More like twenty minutes of being dragged through an ice bath. I didn’t know how athletes did it, sat in tubs of ice, or the idiots who made the polar bear plunges. The nymph was oblivious to the discomfort, but she lived in the water. Her metabolism was definitely not human. Randomly, I’d hear a splash and catch flashes of an iridescent green tail breaking the surface, the powerful, scale-covered muscles flexing.
I’d always speculated—why would river nymphs be limited by legs, when tails were far more practical? If they changed shape, a shifter talent, then why not adapt to both land and water? Lorielle had shifted from a crab-like shape into a female with human arms and legs. And the night I chased after Julien until his phantom disappeared into the Claw, the splash reminded me of a fish jumping.
“Was that you? The night I was upset and racing along the old dock?”
“Anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?”
“Then it was you.” I sensed the tremor running through me since my body had deadened into an inert state. She’d morphed into Julien that night. Only for an instant.
But I refused to wander down another rabbit hole. The pain in believing… no, I would not hope. Not again. I would not curl sleeplessly in bed at night, circling around and around about smoke that was black and not red. Refusing to listen to the voice in my head screaming, see it, see it, see it.
The worst torture in the world was clinging to hope when there was none.
“How do you know Julien?” I demanded, as dread weighed heavily in my heart.
The nymph’s answer was short and not sweet—she heaved me out of the water and onto a flat, rocky ledge; I flopped like a dying fish, my mouth open, gasping for air. My arms twisted beneath me, water streaming from the soggy coat, from my hair.
“Refusing to move is a bad idea,” the nymph said as her tail morphed into legs covered in jeans. Something wolves wished they could do, shift with clothes for the times when shifting was unexpected, although they’d probably never admit it. “You’re hypothermic. Better get the blood flowing.”
“Are all river nymphs as insane as you?” My fingers refused to flex, so expecting me to roll over and stand up to get the blood moving certainly counted in the insanity column.
“Freeze to the rocks, then,” she hissed. “The hybrids can scrape you off when they get here.”
The reminder that they were tracking me had my fingers fisting. The witch had warned me. If she was right. If the defaced runes enabled the vampires to track me like a wandering dog…
I eyed the snowflakes drifting from a silvered sky. The nymph was wringing out her wet hair. Behind her, the opening of a cave beckoned. I caught the faint warmth, wafting out like an embrace. Promising comfort.
My sigh was more like a grunt of frustration. The nymph smirked. I ignored her, every muscle in my body cramping. The effort to push upright had my lungs spasming. Each breath I snatched was as frigid as the water. But the rock ledge beneath my unbending fingers was wet and not icy; I blamed the odd geology around the cave. Perhaps a geothermal vent was inside, or a natural hot spring bubbling to the surface.
The nymph shot me a look that said, hurry the fuck up.
Gritting my teeth, I vowed not to show weakness to a nymph I still hadn’t decided was trustworthy.
My body jerked as if it wasn’t mine while the nymph moved with a graceful gliding, bending beneath a low, arched ceiling, then into a cave. Wedged into stone niches, the burning candles provided a soft light. Shadows crawled over the shiny black walls, damp with moisture—steam.
I didn’t know what was worse—the sting like pricking needles as my skin thawed, or the lumpy weight of the coat. Whatever material had insulated the coat, it was now soggy and balled against the bottom hem, with steady streams of water running down my legs and into my shoes.
“Ugh!” I tugged at the zipper, let the coat slap wetly against the cave floor. “What is this?”
“A little farther and you’ll see.”
We entered a widening space, well-lit with dozens of candles. Steam rose from a pool of water that shimmered with an aqua light. Bioluminescence, natural or magical, not that it mattered. Flat rocks surrounded the pool. More rocks functioned as chairs or tables with plates and glasses, although the dishes hadn’t been used. Piled along the walls were mounds of clothing belonging to men, women, children. Haphazard, and not anything the nymph wore.
“You’re a collector,” I said, breathing in the musty scent.
“I collected you, didn’t I?” She gestured. “Find something dry before you fall over.”
“Fine.” Gingerly, I lifted bits and pieces from the pile, holding them up, judging the cleanliness, the sizes. Pretending to be busy while I scanned the cave. Nothing… nothing… and then something.
Slowly, I turned, my heart pounding, the hated hope surging.
