Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
It all happened fast. My mouth was open when I hit the water and I gagged on a bitter mouthful. Thrashing was useless. Utterly, unequivocally useless. I made my body go still. The weighted ropes drew my legs straight. I lifted my chin to where up might be and released some of the building pressure in my lungs.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
I had to focus on me. And while I was focusing on me, the threads lining my torso streamed over my breasts and up my throat, around my ears, over my mouth and nose, frantic and searching. Someone—or something—jerked hard on the ankle ropes. A body slid up the front of mine, forced my mouth open with their fingers and inserted a tube. I clamped down and accepted the oxygen mask even as I was pulled farther from the surface. I twisted, worried for my sister, as I was shoved through a short tunnel and lifted out of the water.
“I got you. I got you. You’re going to be okay.” Laszlo pulled the mask away, rolled me onto my side, and sawed at the rope at my wrists. I retched, tried to breathe, and ended up coughing and hiccupping. As soon as he freed my legs, Laz tossed the ropes aside and cradled me in his lap. I kept coughing, twisting away from his chest, desperate to locate the spot where we’d emerged, where Rosey would emerge, and everything would be okay.
“Go help her.” I slapped at his arms and chest. “Please, find my sister, she’s claustrophobic and she’s probably completely freaking out and—”
Alderose’s crumpled body rose from the water, held aloft by two arms. Laszlo set me aside, reached for her, and set her next to me. I made sure she was on her side, set her head on my leg, and watched dumbfounded as Rémy felt for purchase on the rocks before pulling himself up and out of the water.
His body-clinging wetsuit had Moira Brodeur and her spelled threads stitched all over it. He shrugged off a sleek backpack, nodded to Laszlo, and went to work on my sister. Alderose was in worse shape than me. I stayed quiet, feeling nauseous, used, untrusting, and totally confused.
“What is he doing here?” I asked.
“We don’t have time for expla—”
“Laszlo, tell her.”
“For decades, Gosia has worked for an underground organization that rescues missing Magicals. Some of the Magicals she has helped are those who requested a formal Unbinding, then disappeared before Serena or Moira could help them.”
Laszlo pulled me tight against him and nuzzled my cheek. “Some of the Magicals Gosia has tried to locate and rescue are the young ones, Clementine. When Rémy hired your mother to find his beloved, it was out of concern for Gosia and her work. He wasn’t asking your mother to match him up—he and Gosia were already bound. But she was pursuing an Unseelie Fae, a man of extreme wealth and power who lives in France and who was rumored to be collecting the rarest of Magicals in the realms. Gosia had to go deep undercover, which meant cutting off all communication with Rémy because she is one of the beings the fae have been collecting.”
“One of what kind of beings?” I asked, wanting to believe every word of Rémy’s story, wanting to believe he would not lie if the stakes were truly this high.
“Gosia is one of the mythical Melusine.”
I had never heard of the Melusine. My sister groaned and opened her eyes, only to close them before vomiting up quarry water. I knew she’d be okay.
I hoped she’d be okay.
She had to be okay. We had a lot to talk about.
“Do you have an extra knife I can use?” I asked Laszlo. “I want to get this stuff off me and Alderose.” I picked at the soaked patches of threads clinging to my clothing, hair, and skin. These were not the threads my mom had created for Gosia’s use. These were some kind of magical knockoff.
One dull, black patch in particular bothered me. I poked at it. The surface of the threads had lost its luster the way a fish’s scales did as they died—the way Gosia’s eyes had dulled to a nonresponsive hue before she marched me to the edge of the quarry and pushed me over the edge.
“Rémy, could Gosia be under a spell?” I asked. “Because something in her changed between the first time I met her and Jadzia, and—”
Rémy froze. “Did you say Jadzia?”
I nodded.
“Jadzia with orange hair and the”—he waved his fingers in the general area of his mouth—“spots on her skin?”
I nodded again.
“Jadzia is an agent of the fae who is behind the disappearing Magicals.”
16
Maritza was right in thinking the U in my mother’s shorthand meant Unseelie, not underland. I filed that away to share later. Rémy had more to say, once he made sure that Alderose was breathing on her own and as comfortable as we could make her.
I was worried the trauma of our cold-water plunge had put her out of commission. I asked Rémy and Laszlo to move my sister next to me for warmth. Rémy had to be convinced to continue his story and not rush back into the waters in search of Gosia.
“The Melusine are always born female. They are similar to mermaids.” He leaned against the rock. The outlines of multiple necklaces crowded underneath the top half of the wetsuit. He ran his forefinger under the flat collar and freed a few gold and silver chains, palming a cluster of vials and appraising their contents with a sad smile.
“Each of these contains water from sources where the Melusine were known to have bathed. These rivers and lakes contain multitudes of creatures. None of these bodies of water are home to women who grow fishlike tails once a month and who must care for their tails unobserved by human eyes.
“The fae were rumored to have harvested
