He’d been studying me and didn’t do a thing to hide it. I raised an eyebrow, not caring what was putting that appreciative look in his eyes.

  “For the bodies,” he agreed.

  I buckled and adjusted the belt at my hips. “Or I could just stop letting people into the place who I’d have to kill.”

  He inclined his head. “But where’s the fun in that?”

  “The fun is that there is no mess. I like things orderly. I like them in their place. I like things...”

  “Boring?”

  “Comfortable, you ass. Out.” I shooed him toward the door. “Stop,” I ordered just as he reached the doorway. “Did you steal anything from this room?”

  “What? No.” He grinned. “I like that you think I might have. Can you imagine the nerve I’d have to have to show up here, beg you to save my life, get you tangled up in a deal with a god, and then steal something out from under your nose?”

  I squinted at him. “Card.”

  “I mean, there’s stupid and then there’s... What’s another word for monumentally stupid?”

  “Cardamom Oak.”

  “That guy? Naw, he’s not stupid. He’s just a coward. Ricky, I’ve wanted to tell you how sorry I am that—”

  “Don’t.” It came out hard. “We’re not friends. I don’t like you.”

  Very much.

  “The only reason I’m digging you out of this crap circus is because I am fond of your tree. No, don’t smile at me like I just said we were friends. It’s just that your tree began here. Crossroads remembers it. I’m doing this for Crossroads and your tree, not for you and me.”

  “Got it.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “You’re risking your life for your house and my tree.”

  “Card.”

  “Okay, for my tree. Because your house likes it.”

  “Don’t make me rethink my decision.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. For the house’s tree buddy, tree friend, tree crush. Also, how do you want to get there?”

  “Silently,” I said. “We’re going to go without any more talking.”

  “That’s gonna make it difficult to tell you where the swamp siren is.”

  “Honey Island?”

  He smiled. “You cheat.”

  “Having knowledge at my fingertips isn’t cheating, it’s efficient. The fastest way to travel is magic. You should Walk us there.”

  He hesitated a moment, his smile fading.

  “Is that a problem?” I asked, somehow knowing it was.

  “No,” he said. “There was. A problem. But since I already used it, using it again won’t matter.”

  “Famous last words,” I noted. “Going to tell me the problem?”

  “Nothing that you need to worry about. It’s a me thing, not a you thing.”

  He held out his hand. When I didn’t take it right away, he tipped it slightly. “It’s been awhile. I don’t want you to get lost.”

  “I’m not going to get lost.” I patted the pebbles in my pocket. The stones had been a part of the Crossroads since it began. The pebbles would let the Crossroads draw me across the world like metal fillings to a magnet.

  “I promise I won’t let go,” he said.

  I dropped my hand into his without a comment.

  I had forgotten how warm his hand was, how wide. I had forgotten that it was permanently calloused, whorled softly, like the ridges of tree rings had been imprinted into his flesh. I had forgotten the muscles beneath his palm, the careful grip of his fingers.

  Fingers that had untangled the pain of my life and helped me weave it into something good. Something beautiful.

  I had forgotten that before my anger at him leaving, I’d been sad. I hadn’t wanted to lose him, even though I knew no one but a tree could hold a dryad’s heart.

  “Ready, now?” he asked gently.

  I nodded, because there was no turning back. There hadn’t been from the moment he’d showed up today. Or really, from the moment I’d met him.

  “I’ll count down from three,” he said. “One...”

  —magic crashed like water breaking a dam. The world blurred, becoming a river of color, a shout of voices, songs and shattered whispers skipping across my brain like technicolored barbed wire tumbleweed —

  —I gasped, my heart stuttering as my knees went weak—

  —and got hit in the face with air so hot and thick, I groaned.

  “What happened to two and three?” I wheezed.

  “It’s easier when you don’t tense up. Need water?”

  What I needed was for the world to stop riding a seesaw.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  He squeezed my hand once, and I realized I was still holding on to him.

  I pulled away and stuck my hand in my pocket, folding the stones against my palm.I studied the watercolor landscape and waited for the nausea to pass.

  He’d taken us to a soggy bank covered in tall grass. Moss curtained the branches of cypress trees growing so close together, they blocked out the sky. The brown and green water that flowed between the trees was brushed with ripples of soft silver light.

  It smelled of wet wood, moss, and an earthy, almost sulfur scent.

  “Where’s the siren?” I asked, slapping at a bug biting my neck.

  “This way.” He nodded to where the land met water and started toward it. I followed his lead and couldn’t help but watch him.

  No, I couldn’t help but appreciate him.

  There was strength in his body. In the ease with which he moved through the world. Card was built like his oak tree: solid, strong, steady. Patient and protective of those who rested in the shelter he offered.

  Maybe I should just ask him why he left. He’d promised to tell me the truth. But the past should stay in the past. Even Fate had told me not to look backward.

  Wounds healed. People grew and changed. I’d changed, finding my footing on my own, holding strong against the storms that had washed against my shores. I’d built a life for myself I loved.

  Maybe he had too.

  “Awful quiet back there, Ricks,” Card said. “Contemplating my demise?”

  I slapped at a mosquito on my arm.

  “No.” The tall grass pricked my fingertips like serpent tongue needles before bending away in hushing shuffles. “That’s already penciled in on the calendar.”

  “Oh?” he asked without turning back. “Want to share the date, so I can made sure I don’t double book the day?”

  I shook my head. “You’re a smartass, Cardamom.”

  “And you’re just smart. Which is why I am curious about why you said yes to all this: saving me, saving my tree, speaking for me against Fate.”

  “Told you already. Your tree needs help. Someone responsible needs to look after it.”

  “Ouch again. Aim for the heart next time, why don’t you?”

  “How did Fate find it, anyway?” I asked.

  He ducked a low-hanging branch, pushing moss out of the way as he passed, and holding it for me to walk through.

  “She’s a god, so I’d say she knows how I began and which threads connect me to what and who.” He gave me a half smile. “You have,” he brushed fingers over his hair, “in your hair.”

  I lifted my hand and brushed away moss and little bits of bark. “Did I get it?”

  “Enough.”

  I shook my head like a dog, and ran fingers through the short, choppy layers one more time. “Better?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Real good. Look, Ricky. In case anything else happens, in case... Well, in case. I want you to know that I know I screwed up. You are an amazing person. You didn’t deserve me leaving like that, without a word.”

  It was heartfelt. It was kind. It was more than I’d hoped to hear out of him.

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t. I can’t forgive you for it, Card. I’m not built that way.”

  “I know. Thank you for this generosity. The time you’re giving me now. I owe you, and I promise if you ever need my help, or need something I have or can find...or can steal,” he added, “it’s yours.”

  “Thanks so much for offering to add even more chaos into my life.”

  “Who said I’d bring you chaos?” At my look, he said, “Well, not just chaos. Isn’t it nice to spice things up with a little of the unexpected? No. I see your face. Right. It is not nice to spice things up.”

  “You know what? All right,” I said, taking him up on his offer. “Let’s do this. I want you to answer some questions. Non-spicy answers. Nothing but the truth. Can you do that?”

  “Here,” he said.

  “Yes, here.”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, not no. Yes. But also no. She’s here.”

  “What the hell do you mean...?” The water boiled, sending a thick, muddy stink into the air.

  A voice crackled across the limp breeze.

  “You come back to my home?” The voice was female and sweet as slow water. The moss shivered, though the air had gone flat. Then the voice was hard, angry. “You come to cheat me again, little leaf?”

  Chapter Seven

  There was nothing in the shadows and then, suddenly, she became.

  Green was my first thought, then: water, deep and brown. And old, gorgeous, powerful.

  The swamp siren rose to stand in the slow moving water. Lilt Keyva was tall, clothed in mosses and flowers upon which bees, dragonflies, and butterflies perched. Her hair was heavy and black, twisted in a thousand braids that fell around her shoulders. Her face was not human, but more beautiful, as if she were a dream.

  “I come to trade,” Card said in a low, confident voice. “I will give to you one deed, a work you need performed, an item you need found, a killing you need completed, for the coin.”

  “Fate has found you then, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fate wants her coin.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it is mine now, your palm to mine. Payment for words you wanted to hear.”

  “Payment for the truth,” he said tightly.

  “That too. Your work means nothing to me. Your deeds are no value. You are no value to me.”

  Card’s eyes tightened. Even I could feel the roll of magic available to him. Dryad, yes, and a wizard. Trained by Stel, one of the most powerful wizards in the Halls.

  “Then name a price,” Card said, not nearly as smoothly. Not nearly as easy as he had been.

  The swamp siren laughed. Wings took flight to flutter and flash around her like a cloud of tossed glitter.

  “If I wanted your soul, I could drink it. If I wanted your life, I could drown it. If I wanted your flesh, I could fillet it off of your bones and chew it with my sharp teeth. No, half-tree. There is nothing of you worth wanting.”

  I sighed, because I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. “What about me?”

  She turned her head at such an odd angle, her joints must be more of an afterthought than a plan.

  “You, Crossroads of Ink?”

  Huh. I didn’t know people still called me that. I slapped a family of mosquitos off my thigh.

  “Yep. Me. I’ll bargain for Fate’s coin.”

  Her lips pulled back in a smile, but all of her teeth were a little too sharp. I supposed, if she wanted, she could chew my flesh from the bone, too.

  “A Crossroads’ promise,” she mused. “What will you give me?”

  “Show me the coin,” I replied.

  The command startled the insects in the trees around her, sending them swirling upward and outward in a geometric curve of shimmering, stained-glass wings.

  “So you can steal it from me?” she asked.

  “No, Lilt Keyva, so I can believe you still have it.”

  She stilled, and her eyes, the silver of ripples, narrowed. “You don’t trust my word?”

  “Your day job is using your voice to lure sailors to their deaths. No. I don’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth.”

  I tensed, ready to pull my axe, ready to hack my way through her if it meant staying alive.

  She tipped her head back—

  —and laughed.

  My hand had slipped to my short sword. Even though she looked like she was having a great old time, I didn’t let go. Sirens were deceptive, and I’d be damned if my obituary said I got snookered by the swamp siren.

  Card shifted, slightly crouched, one hand half-crooked, ready to cast magic.

  The siren lifted her knee from the water, disturbing the green duckweed on the water’s surface. Then she lifted the other foot and stepped that much closer to us, onto more solid land.

  “I like you,” she said. “Why do I like you?” She pressed her braids back over one shoulder and water trickled down her skin. “I hate Crossroads. I hated your father, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, there’s something we can agree on,” I said. “My father’s an ass.”

  “And this man?” She pointed a mother-of-pearl fingernail toward Card.

  “He’s a work in progress.”

  Again she laughed, the sound of it dampened by moss and wood.

  “I see, I see. Then from you I will take a deed. There is a tree here. I want it gone.”

  I frowned. “You want me to cut down a tree for the coin?”

  “For the coin, I want the tree gone.”

  I knew better than to agree before seeing the coin and the tree, but Card stepped forward, and I wasn’t fast enough to slap my hand over his mouth this time.

  “Done,” he said. “We will move the tree for the coin.”

  “No, it is not done,” I said, glaring at him. “Not until we see the coin and the tree.”

  The swamp siren shook her head at Card. “You should plant some common sense in your garden next spring. That’s twice now you’ve agreed to a deal blind.”

  He curled his hands into fists and scowled. Even though it seemed like he was spoiling for a fight, he mostly just looked tired.

  “I know how to strike deals. I also know trees. If a tree needs to be moved, I can move it.”

  “And yet, this is not your deal to be struck, Cardamom Oak. I am negotiating with the Crossroads.”

  “Why her? Why not me?”

  The siren smiled, and I saw how she could knock someone clean off their feet with it. “You are erratic in your magic. She is deep rooted.”

  Card sucked in a breath. I thought he might yell, but instead he just shook his head. “I can not believe this. I have roots. Deep roots. You don’t have any idea the size of my roots, lady.”

  “If we’re negotiating,” I said with a warning look at Card, “show me the coin.”

  “Do you agree to move the tree?” she asked.

  “Let’s see the coin. Let’s see the tree. Then you’ll have my answer.”

  She stepped deeper back into the water. “Follow me, then.”

  Doing what a siren said to do might be a bad decision, but I wasn’t convinced it was my worst decision of the day.

  “All right,” I said, scratching at the itchy welts on my shoulder. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  The tree was huge.

  “Huh,” Card said. “That’s bigger than I expected.”

  “It is my price,” Lilt Keyva said.

  “Why do you want it moved?” I asked. She had looked more and more annoyed the closer we’d come to the tree.

  “It offends me.”

  “There are a lot of trees that size around here,” I pressed. “If we take this thing down, we’re going to need chainsaws, climbing gear, and a couple days. What’s so offensive about this particular tree?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Everything.”

  Card was mucking through water up to his thighs, slowly picking his way around the roots of the tree.

  “It’d be faster if you just lured yourself a lumberjack to cut it down,” I said.

  She chuckled and stared at her fingernails. “I ate the last one. So sad.”

  She did not sound sad.

  Card clambered up on the knotted roots and pressed his hands against the trunk, slowly leaning forward until his forehead touched bark. I rubbed a finger over bites under my denim.

  “Not much of a dryad, is he?” the siren asked.

  And dammit, that bothered me.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “If he’s willing to cut down an old spirit just to get back a coin he foolishly spent, he’s not fit to be on the same land as his heart tree.”

  “You’re the one who wants us to cut it down.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not a dryad. I don’t care if this one tree dies. But dryads care about all the trees. Or at least dryads who haven’t lost their roots looking for their dead sister do.”

  “Harsh.” I didn’t think she was right about him being disconnected from his tree. He wouldn’t have come for my help if he didn’t care about his tree. Still, it was an opening to get information.

  “Is that what he asked you? If his sister was alive?”

  “No. He asked me if she was dead.”

  That seemed to be a very slight difference. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him she was not alive.”

  “What is it about you supernatural people that makes you always talk in riddles?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, then chuckled. “I just... It’s how I talk. What is it about you Crossroads that makes you always force things into a plan, a clear direction? As if the world is ever going to be tidy and organized? Little boxes in little rooms.”

  “I don’t have to have everything tidy. You should see my basement.”

  “Not your things. Your people. You only let the ones who are settled, calm, and contained close to you.”

  “I am suddenly very curious how many Crossroads you’ve met. We are not sticklers for routine.”

  “I’ve met you,” she said.

  “You don’t know me.” I scratched my arm.

  A small smile tugged her lips. “Solid though. Certain. That’s one thing I like about Crossroads. Both feet very much in the earth.”

  “All right, now how about answering my question?”

  “What was your question?”

  “Is Card’s sister alive?”

  “Ah. That question.”

  “That’s not an answer.”