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I couldn’t hear the people anymore, or see any headlights. “Maybe.”

“Okay, imma turn my lights on.” Gradually, a soft purple hue illuminated the waist-deep water around us, radiating off Zee’s wings in gentle purple waves.

“Wow . . .”

“I know, I’m fuckin’ amazing. But also, Fancy Fangs’s head is underwater, so you might wanna⁠—”

“Oh!” I hitched Victor up, creating a waterfall from all his messy hair. Zee reached out, offering to hold him, so I scooped our limp, very wet vampire into his arms.

Victor’s head flopped face first into Zee’s shoulder, but I could see all of his back now.

“Okay, so his shirt is all torn,” I said. “But his skin’s all healed up, which is probably good because there’s weeds and green slime all over him, and me, and your wings, Zee. But he’s definitely not dead.”

“Not dead is good.” Zee grinned, and I grinned back, only now realizing how worried I’d been.

Our bags were back on the road. We were in the middle of some kind of swamp, in an area we didn’t know, with nothing but the wet clothes on our backs . . . but we had each other. If we had each other, we could accomplish anything. We were going to be just fine.

Zee’s grin froze on his face, then crack by crack, fell away. “So, maybe don’t look,” he mumbled through firm lips. “But there’s fuckin’ glowing eyes . . . everywhere.”

“What?” Of course I looked.

The purple glow from Zee’s wings lit up what appeared to be a thousand eyes shining from the gloom. Small eyes, biggish eyes, oddly blinking eyes. I swallowed hard. That was a whole lot of critters. And we were in their back yard.

“Whadda we do?” Zee whispered.

If these little guys were anything like gremlins, then we’d need a Little Jimmy to talk to them. But being all out of pixies, out best option was to get out of their territory. “You know . . . I think it’s best if we keep moving.”

“Yup, uh-huh, okay.” Zee flopped Victor over his shoulder and we inched backward, around the big tree and away from the army of eyes. Zee dimmed his glow, hiding us from the thousand eyes, but without his glow, we also had no idea where those creatures the eyes belonged to had gone. Which was worse.

A chirping sound tittered somewhere off to our left. Then another, a little ways behind. Then a throaty croak from our right.

A chill skittered down my spine, despite the warmth. “We need to get out of the water.”

“Trees are too thick. Can’t . . .”

I could have shifted, but it would have been like setting of a dragon bomb, and not the best way to make new friends. We could really have used Victor’s expertise on this. He would have known whether anything watching us was dangerous or friendly.

“Wait, I think I see a light . . .” Zee whispered, changing course through the gloom.

The water had risen above my waist and tugged on my shirt. Something bumped my leg. Probably a rotten log. Nothing to be concerned about.

Zee stopped. “Summink touched my leg,” he hissed.

“Mine too. Just keep moving.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I’m the bait out front.”

“You want me to go in front?” I was a big scary dragon, after all.

“Yup, you die first. I’m carrying the vampire.”

I shuffled around Zee and waded through the soupy water toward the blinking light in the distance.

“You think he’s faking bein’ asleep and fuckin’ laughing inside right now?”

It was possible. Victor’s humor did skirt toward the darker side. He’d probably have been finding all of this hilarious had he been awake to enjoy it. Although . . . he did not like getting messy or having his hair tangled, so he wasn’t going to be too happy about that when he did eventually wake⁠—

“Do not move,” Victor said, still slung over Zee’s shoulder.