Page 99 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

Anything else would betray her.

Sylvia’s scar dimpled as though she were trying to conceal her smile. “Fine, fine. I suppose we should get moving.”

“Oh?” Lorelei raised her eyebrows. “You know where it is, then?”

“Not really,” Sylvia said brightly. “But the wildeleute have never steered me wrong before.”

Lorelei looked at her incredulously. “And that went so well before.”

“Well, we are alive, are we not? I would say that’s a small victory.”

“Hardly. But I suppose we have to take them where we can.” Lorelei sighed. “Lead the way, then.”

Twenty-Four

BY LATE AFTERNOON, THErain had slowed. Fat pearls of water dangled from leaves and glittered on the fine threads of spiders’ webs. All around them echoed the silvery sound of dripping water. The humidity made a pall of the air, a smothering weight that settled heavily over the island.

What little of the sky she could see was the livid purple of a bruise. It reminded Lorelei of the summit of Himmelstechen. Wherever they were, it was no longer the Little Sea.

One problem at a time, she told herself.

As sly evening drew itself across the horizon like a blade across the island’s throat, an orb of light winked out of the darkness, then another. They hung suspended between the slender trees, bobbing tantalizingly as if borne on the current of a river. The longer she stared at them, the hotter the chain around her neck burned.

“I’ve found some wildeleute for you to chase.”

“Oh?” The excitement in Sylvia’s voice had no right being so endearing.

She stopped and squinted into the underbrush. A dozen ghostly lights pirouetted through the air, merrily circling around one another. Upon closer inspection, Lorelei could make out the faintest shape of a pixie-like figure within each golden aura: limbs, delicate and slender as twigs, and hair like tongues of fire.

“Oh, no,” Sylvia said dismissively. “Those are irrlicht. They will lead you astray for the fun of it.”

“Ah, of course. Unlike any of the others.”

Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the drone of nixie-song.

“We’re getting closer,” Sylvia offered.

“Fantastic,” she said wanly.

The sound of nixies tormented her. Lorelei couldn’t banish the image of blood slicked on the surface of the water. She swore she saw Johann in the woods, the looming shape of him traced by the eerie glow of the irrlicht. Another one of the dead had joined her legion. He stood there with a trail of blood blooming from his throat like poppies and his lips bruised. His eyes held an accusation within them.

You killed me.

It was nothing he wouldn’t have done to them in turn. She wanted to tell him as much, but it wouldn’t do her muchgood—norwould it be terribly reassuring for Sylvia. If Lorelei were her, she wouldn’t want to throw in her lot with someone clearly teetering on the edge ofsanity—or,at best, a magnet for wiedergänger, creatures that wore the faces of the dead like masks.

“Lorelei?” Sylvia looked at her with singular concern. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” she said dismissively. Not a wiedergänger, then. How disappointing. “I don’t do well with death.”

“You once told me it haunts you,” Sylvia said hesitantly. “What did you mean by that?”

She considered replying tartly, if only to retreat to the safety behind her wall of thorns. But the steadiness of Sylvia’s gaze and the compassion in her voice pinned Lorelei in place.Ugh. She had wanted to earn her forgiveness. She supposed letting herin—andgiving her thetruth—wasa good enough place to start.

“I see ghosts sometimes,” she said begrudgingly.

“Truly?” Sylvia craned her neck to peer into the woods, as though she might catch a glimpse of them as well. “Is it Ziegler?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “There are others.”