Page 25 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

There was no shortage of stones. Piled on every surface were smooth, rounded river stones, along with pieces of polished driftwood and other flotsam and jetsam that I imaginedthe old woman had salvaged from the river: shards of broken glass that had been worn milky by their tumble over the rocks, bits of rusted metal twisted by the currents, and enough broken china to make a tea service for twelve. But no Aelvestone.

“I have her safe, or safe as can be. The Aelvesgold works its way with folks—different ways with different folks—but never for good. Most regular folk don’t see it.” She leaned forward in her rocker and squinted at me. Her facedidlook younger than it had before. “But you ain’t regular folk, are you?”

“I have a feeling neither are you,” I replied, wincing at the sharp pain in my head as I tried to sit up straighter. “My name’s Cailleach McFay. I work at the college. And you are …?”

“You mean you don’t know?” She laughed, which turned into a hacking cough. She spat into a cloudy-looking mason jar and wiped her mouth on the cuff of her flannel shirt. “You must be new to the town not to have heard the story of Lura Trask.”

“Trask?” The name was familiar. I searched my brain until I recalled the story Soheila had told me in the woods about the fisherman who had fallen in love with an undine. “Are you Sullivan Trask’s daughter?”

She made a hoarse noise of agreement and spit into the jar again.

“Then your mother…” Lura gave me a sharp warning look, but I persevered. “Your mother was an undine.”

Lura scowled. “And what if she was? What’s it to you?”

“Nothing—it’s just that I didn’t know that undines could have…humanchildren.”

“How do you know I’m human?” she asked with a wicked grin. Then when I didn’t answer, she slapped her knee andguffawed. “I reckon I’m half human, but say…” She looked at me suspiciously. “How doyouknow about the undines in the first place?”

“I helped the other undines find the way into Faerie yesterday.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked out the only window that wasn’t covered with plastic. It gave a glimpse of the river flowing fast and glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. I must have been unconscious for some time.

“I heard them going,” she said, staring into the fire. “I knew it was the day…and that they had to go…”

“They were your sisters,” I said, putting together the bloodlines and realizing that if Lura really was the daughter of the undine who had seduced Sullivan Trask then she must be close to a hundred years old. “Of course you’d miss them.”

She made a harsh noise. “Miss them? Hardly. They kept me up half the nights with their singing. They’d swim down here and tangle my fishing lines and steal my bait. Silly, mindless creatures. Good riddance, I say.”

She got up and grabbed an iron poker. For a moment I was afraid she was going to hit me with it, but she shoved it in the woodstove instead, stirring up a flurry of sparks that flew into the air and singed the drooping wallpaper. It was a wonder that she hadn’t already burned down the place.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know then that there might not be any more undines coming here. The Grove wants to close the door…”

Lura turned on me, the poker raised menacingly. “They can’t do that! The undines must return to this river to spawn or they’ll die out.”

“I thought they were silly, mindless creatures,” I pointed out, “and that you were glad to see them gone. Why do you care if there aren’t any more, especially…”

“Especially as I’m not going to be around much longer?” She lowered the poker and gave the fire one more angry stab. Sitting back down, she looked into the flames and grew silent. The reflection of the firelight gave her skin the momentary flush of youth and I saw that she’d once been pretty. “I’m not afraid to die,” she said after a while, “but to think I’m the last of my kind…Well, that’s not the way I want to leave this world, even if it hasn’t always been a world that’s been kind to me.”

I wondered what the world had done to her that she’d chosen to live alone in this decaying house with only her half-human sisters for company. Looking at her, small and worn down as one of the river stones she collected, I felt the weight of all the years she had spent here alone. This house seemed infected with sadness, as if the wallpaper and plaster were peeling under its burden. A small, mean voice inside me sang,This is what happens to you when you don’t love anyone.

“Well, I’m going to try to stop them along with a circle of…friends.”

“Ha! A circle, eh? You must mean them witches and fairies? They don’t know what they’re doing most days. They come to me sometimes pretending they want my advice when all they really want is my Aelvesgold.”

“You mean you have more Aelvesgold than that stone?”

“Why would I tell you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands. “I just learned about the stuff. My friends said the only reliable supply of it came from Faerie.”

Lura snorted and spat in the mason jar. “Your friends are ignorant. When an undine lays her eggs, she lays an Aelvestone with ’em to keep ’em safe till they hatch. The one you found must’ve been with the undines you brought over to Faerie, so it belonged to my sisters. Why should I share it?”

“Because we need the Aelvesgold to give us the power to keep the door open,” I said.

Lura screwed up her face, taking away any remnant of the beauty I’d just glimpsed. She reached her hand into her cardigan pocket and pulled out the Aelvestone. I caught my breath at the sight of it and had to restrain myself from leaping up and grabbing it. She leaned forward and held it up between her thumb and forefinger, as if teasing me with it.

“If I give you this, how do I know that you’d use it to keep the door open? How do I know you won’t use it to close the door?”

“Because I’m a doorkeeper,” I said without thinking. “It’s my job to open the door. If the Grove closes it forever…” I thought of Soheila and Diana being forced to chose between this world and Faerie. I thought of Liz growing old and dying without the benefit of Aelvesgold. I thought of never seeing Liam again…which shouldn’t matter because I’d already made my peace with not seeing him again. So why did my whole body feel as if it had been hollowed out? I think it was that hollowness that Lura saw in my eyes, perhaps because it was the same emptiness I’d seen in hers.

She nodded, spat again, tossed the stone up in the air, and caught it. My eyes followed its progress like a dog watching a bone. She tossed the stone to me. I wasn’t the best catch in the world (Annie used to call me Butterfingers when we played softball together), but I snatched the stone out of the air as if I were Roger Maris catching a fly ball. As if I had known it was coming. As if it belonged to me.

“See if that don’t give you enough power to hold the door open,” she said. “See if it don’t open up a whole passel of doors for you. Some of those,” she added with a wicked grin, “you just might want closed again.”

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