Page 60 of Sore Throat, Slight Fever

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The sun begins to set on Thursday, and they stand in the kitchen, observing the cauldron.

Kane drops the adder stone he found a few days ago, and it clatters against the counter. It’s just a simple rock, smooth from the persistence of the water, but the hole in the middle of it is uniquely, perfectly round. He looks up at Rory and Calliope. “Well?” He clicks his beak. “What are you waiting for?”

Rory shares a look with Calliope. “You should do it,” he says, an encouraging hand on her back.

She nods, biting her lower lip. She steps forward and removes the cloth. The potion inside is almost translucent, though with an oily sheen to it, tiny rainbows reflecting off the surface.

She lays the stone down on a piece of white cotton and picks up a freshly cleaned paintbrush. Dipping the brush into the cauldron, she begins to coat the stone.It darkens with the liquid, but otherwise, there are no other indications that the potion is working.

When the stone is completely covered, she steps back. “I guess—I guess that’s it?”

“No way to know for sure, except to try it,” Rory says.

She grabs the stone and they all file outside into the gathering dusk. Rory follows behind her as she takes the steps down to the edge of the lake. Calliope considers the stone in her hand for a moment before bringing it up to her eye looking through the hole.

Rory watches her closely as she blinks, rotating her head to get a full view of the lake. She shakes her head. “I can’t see anything.”

“We can walk along the shore.”

Kane flies ahead as Rory helps Calliope down from the steps, his hands on her waist as she lowers herself onto the slip of mud between the stone wall of the house and the lake. She holds her skirt up with one hand, while looking through the stone. She takes a stumbling step forward, and Rory grips her waist tighter, guiding her as she awkwardly makes her way through the mud and uneven ground. They are on the northern shore of the lake when Calliope stops suddenly.

“There.” She points to a spot on the lake about twenty feet from the shore. “It’s there. Just under the water.”

She tucks the stone into the pocket of her skirt andbegins to remove her shoes.

“Are you sure?” Rory squints. The lake is murky, and the center is deep—deeper than he realizes, he’s sure—but the spot where Calliope pointed isn’t that far in. Surely if the kelpie has been living in the lake for a few weeks now, she would have found it as she circled the perimeter?

“Hey, Calliope—”

His words are lost with the sound of Calliope dipping below the water. He curses, slips off his boots, and wades into the lake. Before he dips below the surface, the sky darkens, the sun now firmly nestled behind the trees and an acrid green fog rises from the surface of the lake.

Shit. That can’t be good. He dips below the water.

The cold would steal his breath away, if he needed to breathe. The edges of the lake are in darkness, but Calliope is a wisp of pale skin and blue dress in front of him.

He can see the bridle, one of its gold fixtures glinting off a small, persistent tendril of light from above. But something’s not right—the bridle is wedged underneath a rock and Calliope’s delicate fingers grapple to pull the leather bridle free.

Rory kicks forward, but before he can reach her, he watches as Effie sidles up, mane floating in a black fog. Effie is changed, no longer putting forth the effort to maintain the sleek black bulk of a creature in need. She is something sharp and hungry, now.

He kicks again, but he was never a strong swimmer, and his weight is a detriment to his progress forward. He opens his mouth to call out, but his voice is distorted, wavering toward Calliope as nothing but indistinct shapes.

Effie is quickly losing control of her form, the edges of her slipping away like oil. The horse’s eyes glow green, putrid in the darkness, set back into a skeletal face.

Calliope’s focus is narrowed onto the bridle. She doesn’t notice. Rory kicks again, pushing himself forward as quickly as his bulk will allow.

She just manages to free the bridle, when the kelpie lunges forward and snaps its teeth around Calliope’s wrist, even as Rory grabs hold of her dress, her leg, anything he can get his hands on.

But the kelpie’s grip is strong, and it drags Calliope away in a swirl of mud and algae, the fish scattering, blocking Rory’s view. Still, he swims forward, arms grabbing at everything and nothing, hoping to feel his skin connect with Calliope’s warmth, desperate to wrap his arms around her and pull her back.

He swims, reaching and grabbing but finding nothing but murky water. He thinks he yells, calls her name, a curse—he’s not sure.

Water fills his mouth. Cold and stale, it slides down his throat, fills his lungs. He will have to vomit it up later, but he keeps swimming, keeps yelling, keeps calling.

It isn’t until he reaches the shore—when the ground rises to meet him and he stands—that he realizes that the kelpie is gone and so, too, is Calliope.

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