Page 32 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

Gone.

“Coffee?” the alp repeated. There was a spark of interest in its voice. It felt like a whisper against the shell of her ear, an echo in her skull. Even the shape of its body eluded her, shifting in the shadows like light over rippled water. All that was solid was its stupid hat.

“Yes,” she wheezed, resisting the urge to tack on something acerbic. “Coffee. You like that, don’t you? If you let me go, I’ll give you some.”

“Lying?” it said, a childish hopefulness tingeing the word.

“No,” Lorelei said slowly. She felt perfectly ridiculous, speaking to this beast. “Not lying. Now get out. Once I’m in the hallway, you can follow me.”

She felt its delight more than she saw it, a crackle in the air like lightning. By the time she blinked, it had transformed itself into a skein of shadow and slipped out through the keyhole.

Lorelei rested her head on her knees, sucking in greedy lungfuls of air. The dissipating rush in her head and the soreness in her chest made her want to weep from some bizarre combination of stress and relief, but she fought down the impulse. Instead, she focused on the newfound clarity of her mind.

She pulled on her coat, lit a lantern, and surveyed the room. Her window was latched, but her lemon-and-bell chimes lay in a heap on the floor like a discarded toy. It did not take much effort to reconstruct what had happened. One of her dear colleagues had come through the door, torn the wards from the lintel, and lifted the chain from around her neck while she slept her drugged sleep. They had tried to kill her in the most cowardly, indirect way possible. She almost admired it.

As she crossed the room, something on the floor reflected the light. She picked it up and held it up to the lantern. A brass button, abandoned like a glass slipper in a ballroom.

It was too large to have come loose from agown—andtoo inelegant to belong to Ludwig. No, she’d seen this many times before on many different people: a button from a military uniform. Lorelei closed her fist around it as a sick sort of triumph slithered through her.

Johann.

He’d been careless. This was hardly enough evidence to convince the others, but now she had a target to pursue. At least for tonight, all that remained was to deal with her unwelcome guest.

She slipped into the hallway. The bells hanging from Sylvia’sdoor—theone just across from herown—glitteredthrough the dark. The sight of her unbroken wards comforted Lorelei more than she cared to admit. She could sense the alp behind her, practically vibrating with excitement, but she caught only a glimpse of its black garment from the corner of her eye. It kept stubbornly to the shadows.

She’d read several of Sylvia’s accounts of her run-ins with alps, stories told with far more flourish than necessary. They were, evidently, self-conscious about their appearance. If you looked at them head-on, they turned invisible, feathering themselves into the darkest recesses of a room, or transformed themselves into something more beautiful. Sylvia had a particularly popular tale of how she’d banished one by presenting it with a mirror. Lorelei didn’t know exactly how their magic worked, but she knew that they needed their tarnkappe to shape-shift.

She led the alp to the kitchen. It had a ghostly air this late at night, without the cook and the beleaguered servant who brought them their meals. She puttered around, boiling water and rummaging through the cabinets until she found what she needed. She tried her best to replace everything as she had found it, lest Cook think the kitchens haunted (again).

Possessed by a moment of hysteria, she considered asking it how it took its coffee. How had her life so swiftly unraveled? Not two days ago, she was primed to become one of the most respected folklorists in the nation. Now she was providing hospitality to imps.

Once it had brewed, she inhaled the rich, dark aroma and poured the coffee into a mug. Unconsciously, she had chosen Sylvia’s favorite, the one with the engraved silver handle and champ levé enameling. She hated that she recognized it. She crouched beside the stirring shadows. The alp’s tarnkappe bobbed, red as blood in the darkness. She thought of her dream, of blood unspooling from Aaron’s wound, and suppressed a shudder.

“Here,” she said, as sweetly as she could muster. “For you.”

The alp took the cup from her. Just as its little clawed fingers curled around the handle, she snatched the cap from its head. It shrieked, reeling back. The mug shattered. Porcelain went skittering across the floor, just as the shadows dissipated to reveal a small, loathsome creature covered in coarse fur. Lorelei did not bother trying to hide her revulsion.

“Lying!” it cried, rending its face.

It was all a bit too dramatic to be convincing.

“None of that now. You shall have your coffee and your tarnkappe both if you tell me what you’re doing here. Did someone let you in?”

“No one, no one,” it whimpered. “Please.”

“Think carefully.” Lorelei fixed it with a nasty smile. “I’ll tear it in two, and where will that leave you?”

She tugged on the seams. A stitch popped, and the alp wept anew.

“What on earth is going on in here?”

Lorelei startled at the sound of Sylvia’s voice. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen with an expression caught somewhere between horror and irritation. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, as wild as flame. Again, Lorelei found herself having to blink against the foolish thought that she looked spectral in the pale moonlight.

“Lower your voice,” snarled Lorelei. “What areyoudoing here?”

“You keep sneaking out!” Sylvia spoke in a stage whisper that set Lorelei’s teeth on edge. “And it seems I was right to follow you, since I’ve found you tormenting this poor creature.”

“This ‘poor creature’ tried to kill me in my sleep.”