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“Huh?” Silvan turned back, then toward the half-rotted dock. Tied to a piling was his great-grandfather’s tin rowboat. It was small, sure, but they didn’t build things the way they used to, did they? The thing was solid and unbreakable. It had successfully made hundreds, if not thousands, of trips across Lake Salvador, most of those specifically to harvest Fenrir’s Rose. “It might not be a yacht, princess, but it won’t flip unless you start dancing.”
“Of course I won’t be dancing, you jerk,” Romy grumbled and stormed down the slight embankment. She jumped onto the dock like she hoped to wake the dead and marched straight to the boat, hands practically glued to her hips.
The lake was dark, with a blanket of foreboding made no better by the smattering of torches from the bayou homes. Next to the dock was an old boathouse. It was little more than a shack but a decent shelter during a downpour.
Silvan pulled up behind her. She leaped in surprise. “Jumpy tonight,” he said and stepped into the boat. One foot on a bench, he reached a hand to her. “Come on.”
“I can do it,” she barked, but her face told another story.
She seemed stubborn enough to draw it out until Labor Day, so he decided on another course. While she was frowning, angling her body in different ways, Silvan launched up, grabbed her around the waist—earning him some delicious squeals he would come like a madman to later—and set her down in the boat.
“You’re… you shouldn’t touch me unless I ask for it.”
Silvan grinned as he unwound the rope from the piling. “Planning to ask me later, then?”
“What? No!” Romy exclaimed, but he heard the truth between her words.
“Sure.” Silvan finished and moved to the stern, leaning in to push off from the dock. Once they were in motion, he grabbed both oars, settled in, and nodded for her to sit across from him. “Never been in a rowboat?”
Romy bowed over her knees and shook her head.
“Lake is quiet,” he said. “Can you smell that?”
“What?”
“The bayou. It smells different to everyone.”
Romy smirked. “A wolf would know.”
“Ha.” Silvan scoffed. “Wolves have keener senses, true, but humans and preternaturals alike have talked about what the bayou smells like to them. It’s always different.”
Romy narrowed one eye. “You bring a lot of faeries and elves out here?”
Silvan grinned. “Not too many.”More like none.
Romy rolled her eyes and cast her gaze into the darkness. “Sweet moss.”
“Huh?”
“Smells like sweet moss to me,” she said. “Like lilies are growing out of the mossy logs.”
“Hm.” Silvan nodded to himself. “Smells like a tableau of shit to me. Like seventeen thousand layers of it.”
Her eyes flew wide, then her mouth. She started laughing. “You’re like, a poet or something, eh?”
Silvan buried a smile downward. “Or something.”
“So what… what do you think happened back there? At the meeting?”
Silvan tensed. “Dunno.”
“Probably shouldn’t tell you this, but my grandmother suggested a traitor. Whoever was behind it got just what they wanted too. Total chaos. Itwasweird. Has anything like it ever happened before?”
“No.” He went silent. He didn’t know what had happened and wasn’t sure he wanted to. But one thing was certain: therewasa traitor somewhere in the council, and nothing would be the same until they rooted them out.
“I don’t think… Silvan, I really don’t believe my mom wrote those words.” She scrunched her face, shaking her head. “I mean,yes,it was her handwriting, but she takes her role very seriously. She wants to find Claude’s killer, I promise you. I don’t believe for a moment she’s given up like that.”
“Aye, well, we shouldn’t be talking about this. Me and you.” He tapped his chest and pointed at her. “Bad enough I’m taking you to a place forbidden to all except us. And that’s…”Haunted.
