He seemed to read her mind without even possessing her. Her shoulders tingled as his spectral arm went around her. “She’s so proud of you, Chlo. How can I make you believe it?”

  He couldn’t, and she was so tempted to invite him in at that moment. She never thought she’d ask for possession outside of a dangerous situation. It was uncomfortable, but it had been a helluva day, and it would have been nice to be enveloped by his comforting presence.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “How are you feeling?” Helen asked Ligeia when they were alone.

  “I’d be better if you’d have let me stay with you in the clearing the whole time,” Ligeia mumbled. She slouched as she walked, making it look like her baggy clothing was still with her in spirit, even though she wasn’t wearing a stitch.

  Helen sighed. “You were safer—”

  “I know, I know.” She rolled her eyes epically, then groaned when Maera waved from down the beach. The rest of the nereids bobbed in the waves offshore. “But you didn’t have to wait out here with them. Eudore is having this on-again, off-again thing with a selkie, and she will not, like, shut up about it. And the rest are all like, ‘gimmie the hot goss,’ and I’m like, there obviously isn’t any because she told the same fucking story eight times. If I have to hear what this selkie’s like in bed once more, I’m gonna puke.”

  Helen bit her lip to keep from smiling. That all sounded way worse than freeing a pharaoh and getting the kiss of the millennium. But since Ligeia hated talking about relationships—like, obviously—she wasn’t about to share that last tidbit.

  It was a nice thought to hold in her heart as she waded out to sea, and the nereids began transporting all of them through the waves, back to the sanctuary. All her fears and doubts concerning Chloe were still there, but someone had turned the volume down on each of them. She didn’t have to focus on the danger since Chloe wasn’t actually present; she could enjoy the tingles that ran all the way to her toes. How long had it been since she’d indulged her feelings like this?

  How long since she’d actually felt them?

  When the nereids brought her to the surface the third time, she realized how far they’d come without her paying attention. Even in the failing light, they’d never get lost. They knew all the currents by heart. Helen squinted into the darkness at a speck of light. Strange. The glamour should have hidden every light. The nereids pulled up sharply as if they’d detected something different, too.

  “Ahead,” Helen said, “slowly.”

  Maurice rested on her head as the nereids brought her closer. More lights shone through the trees. “Are we at the right island?”

  The nereids glanced at one another. “We are,” Maera said confidently.

  Ligeia gasped. “Then…”

  “The glamour is down.” Cold fear seized Helen’s heart.

  “I’m going ahead,” Maurice said.

  Helen grabbed for him, but he was away like a shot. “No, Maurice, stay…shit.” She grabbed Eudore’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”

  They swam quickly, and Helen caught a flicker of light from the east side of the island and a plume of smoke. Fates protect us.

  They came ashore next to the smoldering ruin of the boathouse. The hut that housed the Sphinx’s communication equipment had one door hanging off its hinges, and the inside was dark. Helen held her breath as she poked her head in and switched on the light, but thankfully, no one was inside.

  A black pit sat in the middle of the beach like a hole in the world, the sand and trees beyond blackened as if the fire that had destroyed the boathouse had spread from that crater. She would have put money on some sort of missile. The yacht appeared to be missing, but Helen couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing until she knew who had taken it.

  “Stay near the beach,” she said to the nereids. “Call the local dolphins and whales and try to find out what happened.”

  “Shouldn’t we stay with you?” Maera asked.

  Helen pointed back toward the sea, praying they obeyed. If whoever had attacked the sanctuary was still here, she wasn’t risking anyone else. When Ligeia stayed on her heels, Helen almost shoved her. “You can’t—”

  “Fuck you if you think I’m letting you go alone.”

  Well, Helen didn’t have time to force her. She jerked her head toward the path. They’d check her house first, the closest building to the beach. Her heart hammered like a drum, her imagination turning every dark mass into the Sphinx’s body. The house was a wreck, and Helen winced at the sharp tang of blood in the air.

  She cursed herself for feeling relieved when she discovered the corpses of one of the dryad sisters and a fire salamander but not the Sphinx.

  “What the fuck happened?” Ligeia whispered.

  Helen couldn’t let herself begin to grieve, not yet. “Come on.”

  She found Pegasus just off the trail that led to the rest of the houses and enclosures. A sob came tearing out of her when she saw his white coat and wings nearly glowing in the grass. He was alive, thank the gods, but one of his wings was bloody, and his mane was matted to the side of his face by a sticky scarlet stain.

  She and Ligeia felt over him, but the bleeding appeared to have stopped. “We can’t leave him here alone,” Ligeia said.

  “You stay. I’ll come back.” How many of the others would be like this, barely alive? How many more would be like the poor dryad and the salamander?

  “Helen?” Maurice’s voice.

  She ran toward it. “Here.”

  The sound of his wings zipped closer. “The survivors are gathered at the lagoon.”

  “Survivors,” she whispered. “How many?”

  “Dunno yet. The Sphinx said some humans with special weapons came to the island and tore through everyone like the Reaper.”

  The Sphinx was alive. Helen let out a shuddering breath. “Show me.” She followed the sound of his voice into the trees. Rage began to take hold of her, filling her like coal in a furnace.

  “Sphinx said a few of the others were kidnapped. One of the Pleiades, Dani the hippogriff, the wyvern, and the Lamia, maybe a few more they can’t find.”

  The Lamia again. “Did she say how they were taken?”

  “I only caught a few bits. That ain’t the worst part.”

  “Right, the dead—”

  “No.” His voice sounded shallow, scared. “Come on.”

  With her heart clenching, she followed him into the copse around the lagoon. The wounded and scared looked at her from every angle, some weeping, others with hopeful faces, sure she would save them. She touched them as she passed, but her eyes kept going toward the large form of the Sphinx between two pale pillars.

  “Can you collect a few people to bring Pegasus here?” she asked Maurice quietly. “Or get Maera if you need her.”

  “Right.”

  The Sphinx had bandages around both paws, each with blood seeping through. Another wad of bloody cloth dabbed at a long cut down the side of her face, an invisible fairy tending to her wounds. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and she had matted blood on the fur of her chest and haunches. Her head was down, eyes closed, but she opened them when Helen rested a hand on her nose.

  “Sphinx,” Helen said, her gaze wavering with tears. “Oh gods.”

  “Don’t cry for me,” the Sphinx said, her voice exhausted. She lifted her head slightly and offered a small smile. “My claws are bloody. I held my own.”

  “Of course.” Helen tried to swallow her feelings, but her jaw was so tight, she had to speak through teeth and tears. “Who?”

  “Humans. Beyond that, I don’t know.” She blinked tiredly. “Maurice told you who they took?”

  “One of the Pleiades, Dani the hippogriff, the wyvern, and the Lamia.” She’d never forget that list. Ever.

  “That’s not all.” Her tone was like Maurice’s, heralding worse to come.

  But what could be worse than the Lamia out in the world? If she wasn’t working with them, Helen hoped she’d get to sink her teeth into those who’d taken her.

  “I couldn’t stop them, Hel,” the Sphinx said through a sob. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Shh, it’s not your fault. We’ll get them back.”

  “They found Charybdis’s cell.”

  Time seemed to stop. Only the oldest inhabitants of the sanctuary knew Charybdis was even here. Her cell was carefully hidden, just as Charybdis herself was kept asleep. “How?”

  “I don’t know, but they were so prepared. Hel, what if they know how to wake her?”

  Helen shook her head. Charybdis was so much more than the whirlpool-creating monster described in The Odyssey. She was a titan, a true force of nature, her hatred of humans so fierce, she would destroy the world to be rid of them.

  And a group of humans had freed her? Gods help them.

  Gods help us all.

  Humans. Why had she ever gotten close to them again? This was what they did, what they always did. And she’d been off kissing one when she should have been here, protecting her people, keeping everyone safe, keeping the rest of the world safe if they did but know it.

  Gods, what if Chloe had simply been keeping her busy while—

  But everything in her rebelled at that idea. Unless the genuine parts of Chloe were an act, some subtle magic designed to beguile and confuse her. And Helen had mentioned the sanctuary, oh gods, gods!

  She made herself breathe. If she’d been fooled once, she wouldn’t be again. She calmed herself, but tremors still passed through her like the heralds of an earthquake. But it would be humanity who reaped that destruction this time instead of her own kind.

  “Tell me from the beginning.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chloe was startled awake by the howling of every dog in hell. She flailed in the dark, and it wasn’t until she fell that she remembered she wasn’t in her own bed or a hotel or in the back seat of her car. She was in a hammock. On a boat.

  Or she had been.

  Now, the floor had her full attention as she smacked into it.

  She cradled her shoulder, moaned in pain, and rolled over. The dogs of hell became an alarm to her now-awake brain, and she joined everyone else in asking what was going on.

  The alarm cut off abruptly with a sad blart. Ali yelled down the stairs, “There’s something in the water.”

  Chloe pulled on pants and staggered up with the others. Ramses stood behind a sleepy-looking Fatma in the bow.

  Ali held up a glowing silver decanter. “This set off the alarm. It detects the presence of oceanids.”

  “Like nereids?” Chloe’s mom peered at the blackness of the water.

  “How close?” Jillian asked just as David muttered, “I don’t suppose it could be a coincidence.”

  After the day they’d had?

  “All I can tell is that it’s nearby,” Ali said.

  Fatma went inside the flybridge, and the underside of the ship lit up like Christmas, turning the water pea-green for about forty feet in all directions.

  “There,” Ramses said, but when Chloe looked, she saw nothing. He walked through the boat’s side and started in that direction, hovering just above the water.

  “Ramses is going to look,” Chloe said. Her mother turned with worried eyes, but Chloe shook her head. “There’s nothing to etch sigils into out here.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Chloe frowned, irritated and exhausted. “You try calling him back.”

  Her mother sighed. She knew damn well that he was always going to rush in no matter what anyone said.

  “She’s swimming under the boat,” Ramses called. “She’s carrying something that feels magical, but I can’t tell what it is.” And he really hated floating into the water, saying he could never see and quickly lost track of directions without gravity to guide him.

  Chloe relayed this. Jillian bit her lip. “I’ve got a net that might—”

  Ali rounded on them. “Let’s try talking first, hmm?” Ironic coming from the master of angry silences. He blew across the top of the decanter, making a deep, hollow sound. Through the hum, he said, “Hello, we are Ali and Fatma Kareem. We mean you no harm.” He gave the rest of them a dark look, daring them to argue. “We’re ready to help if you need us.”

  All was still for a moment. Ramses rejoined them, peering over the side. He pointed as if to say the oceanid was still down there. Maybe she was just curious?

  “Are you the humans from earlier?” a voice called from the water.

  Chloe strained to see, but the slope of the ship hid them from view. Ramses floated closer. “She’s here. She looks a bit like one of the creatures who were with Helen earlier. And she seems worried. The magical feeling is coming from a large conch shell.”

  “We met Helen earlier, yes,” Chloe said. “On an island not far from here.”

  “And you helped her?”

  “We did.” Everyone clustered behind Chloe, and she tried to wave them back a bit. “Does she need us? Do you?”

  “You have medical supplies?”

  Chloe’s heart seized. “What happened? Is Helen all right?”

  “We have medicine,” Fatma called. “And first aid kits.”

  “Will you follow me? Please?” Her voice grew thicker, the words slow with fatigue.

  Chloe’s mom and her friends looked doubtful. Damian just shrugged, but Fatma and Ali nodded. And it was their boat. “Yes, lead on.”

  With Ramses back onboard, they sailed into the night, the fleece letting them keep up with the oceanid’s blip on the radar. She swam faster than anything Chloe had ever seen, and a good thing, too, because Chloe didn’t think her heart could take the journey any slower.

  They headed toward a brightly lit island that wasn’t on the Kareems’ sea charts, and the wind carried the heavy smell of smoke, too much for a bonfire or a friendly campout on the beach. Someone had attacked Helen’s sanctuary.

  Chloe went below and collected her bag and shoes. Fatma had already gathered all the medical supplies and loaded them into the Zodiac that nestled against the boat’s side. Chloe tried to think of what else she could bring, but her mind was whirling too fast to focus. If someone had hurt Helen…

  No, she wouldn’t think about that.

  But she would seriously fuck them up.

  After just one kiss?

  It was more than a kiss, always had been more than that. They’d been drawn to each other since they’d first met. She’d seen way too much magic to not believe such things were possible. And their future was still electric with possibilities, and she wasn’t about to let anyone snuff those out.

  She was going to be in so much trouble with her mom.

  Chloe pushed that thought away too and climbed into the Zodiac once the yacht had stopped. When everyone tried to pile in with her, the oceanid called, “Only the human with the blood of Isis and her guardian spirit.”

  Ramses snorted and mumbled, “Guardian spirit,” just as Chloe’s mom yelled, “No way in hell.”

  “Mom,” Chloe said sharply, “cut it out.” She called to the oceanid, “It’s okay,” hoping her mom hadn’t just messed everything up.

  “It is not okay!”

  “The demon may come also,” the oceanid said.

  With a smug smile, Damian hopped aboard.

  Jillian crossed her arms. “Since when is a demon the most trustworthy one here?”

  “Anyone else and we’ll sink you.”

  “There are more of them now,” Ramses said as he leaned over the Zodiac’s side. The decanter in Ali’s hands shone like the Fourth of July.

  “Fine, then we’ll leave,” Chloe’s mom shouted. “Good luck on your own.”

  Chloe glared at her, but the only thing to do was act before her mom could stop her. She waved to Fatma in the flybridge, and the Zodiac began to lower toward the water.

  “No, Chloe.” Her mom lunged, and David had to grab her to keep her from falling over the side. “Chloe Annabelle, you get back here this instant.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find.” She tried to tune her mother out as the Zodiac settled on the water but realized she had no idea how to drive it.

  “Here.” Fatma tossed something to her, and she hoped it was the driver’s manual, but it was only a walkie-talkie. “Channel two. I can talk you through the controls.”

  “We will carry you in,” the oceanid said over the side, and Chloe caught a glimpse of skin that shone like a pearl. “Hang on.”

  Chloe grabbed hold of the seat as a wave carried the Zodiac toward a fire-blasted beach.

  * * *

  Helen felt a shift in the wind, then realized it was more of a hush descending on the lagoon. She turned and spied Psamathe at the edge of the trees. Her old betrayer. Helen felt required to throw a fit, but with a sigh, she sagged, lacking the energy to really care.

  Psamathe wasn’t even looking at her. She had a few boxes in her arms, one that looked like a first aid kit, and she began to pass those out to the wounded.

  Good, Helen could ignore her if she was helping. But the hush persisted, and Helen turned again. She’d missed something. Or someone.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The Sphinx grunted as if she might push to her feet.

  “Lie back,” Helen said, trying to be gentle but hoping the Sphinx read the threat in her words. If she had to, she’d—

  Chloe stood at the edge of the copse, her demon beside her.

  A human. In this place of sanctuary.

  Another human. After they’d already committed such monstrous crimes here.

  Chloe held a first aid box, the cross displayed like a shield. Her eyes were wide, horrified, and that was probably the only thing that saved her.

  Grumbles now spread through the crowd like blowing embers soon to become a wildfire. Helen had a brief thought to let them catch. Everyone needed an outlet for their rage and pain. If the other humans had been standing with Chloe, she might have let it happen. Chloe alone? Trusting that Helen would protect her?