Page 7 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

The only thing that grew was the burning sensation in my chest. And the tingling in my arm. I was too young to have a heart attack. Wasn’t I?

And you couldn’t get one from having a broken heart. Could you?

As if in response to my unvoiced question a sadness spread throughout my body—a sadness that was a hundred times worse than my grief over losing Liam, but somehow encompassed that grief. A sadness that had a theme song.

Who will we love?it went.Will we ever find someone to love?

Of course. They were teenage girls going to their first dance and they wanted to know if there would be boys there. According to Soheila, there wouldn’t be. And if the door to Faerieclosed forever these undines would be the last of their species. I was sending them to their extinction. And they knew it. I felt their minds probing mine, their frantic thoughts traveling up the fingertips of my outstretched hand.

Don’t make us go! Don’t make us go!

With their high-pitched screeching searing my brain, I tried to reason with them. “But you’ll die here. Your sisters will be waiting for you on the other side.”

I might as well have been shouting at a tornado. In fact, the air around mewasbeginning to spin. The watery maelstrom was spreading into the air. It tugged at my clothes and whipped my hair into my face.

“I think I’m just pissing them off,” I shouted into the wind. I started to pull back from the water, but before I could, a translucent hand broke the surface and clamped onto my hand. It was cold and gooey as jelly, but with a grip like a lobster claw. I opened my mouth to scream but got only a mouthful of water as it pulled me into the pool.

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