During the boat ride back to the motel, the faint scowl never left Brodie’s face. As we approached the dock, he cut the motor, and I waited a whole five seconds to see if he’d say something.

Then I got impatient.

“You didn’t tell Ayla about the lurkers,” I noted. “I think you were about to mention them, but then you stopped yourself.”

Brodie’s head dipped as he looked down and away.

“Do you want to tell me why?” I said.

He hesitated. It twitched through his features, causing his scowl to deepen.

Poor guy. He had no idea that I was a veteran inquisitor trained by none other than Count Darius Vasil, FBI agent. I clamped my mouth shut, stared at Brodie, and let the silence do all the work.

Kappa was hopping around my feet, drumming on various parts of the boat to hear the different noises it made. That couldn’t be good for the charged atmosphere I was trying to create, but Conrad was sitting beside me with his arms crossed, also staring at Brodie. I figured that made up for it.

Brodie only managed one glance our direction before he caved.

He cleared his throat and looked out at the swamp when he spoke.

“Conrad.”

My eyebrows shot up. That was not how I would’ve expected his answer to start.

“Yeah?” Conrad said.

“You know how you asked me earlier if I was more of a swamp person or a Torr person?”

“Yeah.”

“Ayla isn’t a swamp person.” Brodie frowned. “I-I know that she’s studying the lurkers…but I think she cares more about her ideas than about them.”

I thought Brodie had a point. Ayla Davids was willing to live for years in a swamp, gathering data to prove her theory, but she didn’t pay any attention to Kappa once she knew she couldn’t use him as a specimen.

“Does that make her a Torr person?” Conrad asked.

Brodie scoffed. “Not as far as I can tell.”

“Brodie,” I said, “Please don’t tell Ayla about the cabin.”

“Why not?”

I decided to be upfront with him. Maybe he could learn from my example and pass it on to Ayla.

“Because she’s not a swamp person,” I said, “and she’s not a Torr person, and that means I don’t know who she’s for or what she wants, and I don’t know if I can trust her.”

“I didn’t mean to make it sound like she’s a bad person!” Brodie said. “She’s not! She’s just…”

I waited. When he still couldn’t come up with something, I tried to prod him along. After all, I was hungry.

“A bit thoughtless?”

He glared at me. “Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

“We’re all thoughtless and selfish sometimes.”

I pointed at him. “That is true. So think of it as a selfish request. Please don’t mention the cabin.”

Conrad got out of the boat first, then he helped me out. When I turned around, Brodie was calling out to Kappa, who was lost to the joys of percussion.

“Kappa,” Brodie said. “Kappa.”

Kappa looked around when he heard his name.

“We’re here,” Brodie told him. He beckoned with his hands. “Come on.”

Kappa didn’t move, but he allowed Brodie to pick him up under his arms.

“Oof.” Brodie smiled at him. “You’re heavier than I thought you’d be.”

He shuffled closer to the dock and passed Kappa to Conrad. The wolfman took Kappa with one hand and swung him onto his shoulders.

“Emerra,” Conrad said, “can you get out your sketchbook?”

As I pulled it out, Brodie shook his head and said, “I’ve never seen that lamp.”

“I’m going to give you my number,” Conrad said. “If you learn anything, or decide you want to tell us anything, you can call. If I don’t answer, leave a message. We’ll get back to you.”

Brodie was scowling again, but he nodded.

I wrote down Conrad’s number, tore it off, and passed it to Brodie. He shoved it in his pocket without looking at it and waved goodbye without meeting our eyes.

The three of us watched him push away from the dock, start up the motor, and pilot away.

When he was almost out of sight, Conrad said, “He’s hiding something.”

I whipped up an extra-large helping of sarcastic surprise. “What? Him too?”

“Something’s bothering him. I could smell it. Not in the boat, but back at the yurt.” Conrad turned to me. “Did you see anything?”

“Yes. Ayla’s hiding something.”

Conrad let out a sigh mixed with a growl, then turned to the steep bank behind us. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”

As we hiked up to the motel, I said, “Conrad, what do wolfmen do when they want to hide something from each other?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I suspected that he was, once again, reminding me that “wolfmen” wasn’t a real term.

“I meant lycanthropes,” I said. “You’d be able to smell if the other person was lying, right?”

“Not always. Some people are good liars. But most of us don’t bother with it. We just tell the other person to piss off.”

I laughed. “And that works?”

Conrad shrugged. “It beats lying. And there’s no point in trying to hide something if you know you can’t.”

I wagged my finger at him. “I’m beginning to appreciate why you’re so blunt.”

When we reached the top of the hill, we found Benjamin Gladwyn and Olene Durand standing outside our suite with the door open. They had probably heard the motor and turned toward the sound; they were both looking our direction.

“You’re here,” Gladwyn said.

He didn’t sound happy or relieved. There was a flat tone to his statement, but I was too hungry to waste energy trying to figure out what it could mean.

Ms. Durand took one look at Conrad, muttered something to Gladwyn, then excused herself and walked back to the lobby.

Gladwyn said as we approached, “Ms. Durand called Mrs. Carver this morning. She said that you two had gone into the swamp and hadn’t come home last night.”

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What an attentive motel manager.

Conrad swung Kappa to the ground and let him run ahead. Gladwyn stepped back when Conrad and I got closer. That was a wise idea. He was standing between us and breakfast.

Conrad walked past Gladwyn and into the suite with barely a glance in the mayor’s direction. It looked like I’d have to pretend to be the civilized one in our party.

I stopped beside Gladwyn long enough to say, “We were investigating,” then I walked into the motel room and dumped my bag on the floor near the door.

Gladwyn followed us inside. “Investigating?”

“Yeah.” I stripped off my waders and kicked them into a corner. “I like that word. It sounds all official like. In-vest-igating.”

Kappa opened the cupboard beneath the TV and started raiding the food supplies. Conrad was right behind him.

“Inna-vest-a-gator!” Kappa echoed. He gnashed his teeth to imitate an alligator while sending a few cans crashing to the floor in pursuit of his tuna.

“Conrad!” I said.

“Food first,” Conrad said. “I’ll clean it up later.”

“Promise?”

He held up a box of Keebler cookies. “I swear on the fudge stripe.”

Oh. Well. On the fudge stripe. Surely there could be no higher oath. I saluted him.

He wandered toward the couch.

“You better save half of those for me,” I warned.

I crashed onto my bed, which protested with a bunch of loud creaks, and tore off my socks. They joined the waders.

“What were you investigating?” Gladwyn asked.

My brow furrowed. “Um, the matter you asked us to look into.” I stood up, went over to Kappa, bent down, and took the can of tuna out of his hands. He’d been gnashing on it with a series of desperate clink, clink, clinks. “Kappa, that’ll ruin those beautiful fangs of yours. Then how will you eat all those snakes?”

As I straightened up, Gladwyn said, “You managed to talk to the lurkers.”

I paused in the act of reaching for the can opener.

The way he’d said that had caught my attention. Like the flat tone he’d used to greet us, there was some emotion behind it.

I finished grabbing the can opener and started winding away while trying to figure out what emotion it could be.

“Yes,” I said to Gladwyn. When Kappa jumped onto the TV stand, I put my finger on his nose and pushed him away. “You will wait for the bowl!”

He made a noise at me.

“You will! Remember that time you cut your tongue? Uh-huh. I thought so.”

Kappa sat on his butt and padded his hands on the wood beneath him.

“Did you learn anything?” Gladwyn asked.

I looked around for Kappa’s bowl. Where had I left it? I touched everything on the TV stand—including Kappa—then searched inside it. I even checked the mini-fridge.

“Conrad?” I said.

He swallowed his mouthful of cookies. “Next to the sink in the bathroom.”

My head dropped back. “Of course.”

Gladwyn said, “Miss Cole—”

Since I was already on my way to the bathroom, I had to turn around and walk backwards so he’d see my raised index finger. “One second.”

I returned with the bowl and slopped the tuna into it.

Gladwyn raised his voice: “This is a serious matter.”

“So’s eating when you’ve missed two meals,” Conrad said.

Kappa hopped around my feet as I walked the bowl over to the coffee table near the couch and put it down. Then I turned back to Gladwyn with a loud sigh.

“Thank you for waiting,” I said over the sounds of Kappa demolishing the tuna. “Now, where were we?”

I walked back to the front of the room. Proximity to the TV stand reminded me of my own empty belly. Fortunately, I’d left the mini-fridge open, so it was easy to grab a yogurt.

Gladwyn said, “I asked you if you’d…learned anything.”

The pause was because he’d watched me rip the top off the yogurt and start drinking it straight from the tub—sans any spoon.

I swallowed and put the yogurt down. “We have.”

As I walked over to my backpack, Gladwyn turned to face me.

“Miss Cole, I did not intend for you to spend the night in the swamp, and I don’t feel comfortable with the fact that you did.”

“It’s all right,” I assured him. “Aside from being hungry, we’re fine.”

“That’s not my point. I didn’t ask you—”

He stopped when he heard my laugh.

“No one asked us to.” I squatted down and pulled out my sketchbook. “It was an accident. We got lost.”

“That’s what we were worried about! Miss Cole, we can’t organize a search party if you disappear in the preserve! By the time the Torr got around to doing something, it’d be too late. The only way someone would find your bodies is if they stumbled across them by accident.”

That made me pause.

Not the threat about getting lost and dying in the swamp—I had a more optimistic view of the Torr than he did—but I hadn’t thought about what the town would do if someone got lost in the swamp—or, what they couldn’t do.

The lurkers were the best rescue workers the swamp had, but Fort Rive didn’t know about them. The preserve must have felt as threatening as a dark cave or a black hole.

“You don’t have to worry.” I rose to my feet. “We have a guide service now.”

Gladwyn’s blocky features morphed into a skeptical frown. “A guide service?”

I stepped back and motioned to Kappa. Kappa sat on his haunches and belched.

Gladwyn’s eyes returned to me. He looked more skeptical than before.

“You wanted to know what we learned?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, but I needed more than half a yogurt for breakfast, even when I wasn’t starving. I decided to move the conversation along. He could participate if he wanted to.

“The lurkers are going into Fort Rive because something was taken from them. They’re searching for it.” I started flipping through my sketchbook. “It’s—”

“That’s not possible,” Gladwyn insisted.

I stopped flipping. “Excuse me?”

“That’s not possible. What could the lurkers possibly have? Are you telling me that one of them has been kidnapped?”

“No.” I looked at Conrad to see if he was as confused as I was. He was watching us, his yellow eyes slightly narrowed. I turned back to Gladwyn. “They have possessions, Mr. Gladwyn—”

“And who would take them? No one goes into the swamp!”

“Well, that’s not true.”

“If you’re going to accuse Ayla or Kohler of something, don’t you think we should have them here? As I understand it, breach of a Torr contract is a hell of a serious crime. ”

My hands tightened around my sketchbook. “Mr. Gladwyn, would you like a cookie?”

His head jerked back in surprise.

I went on, “You seem slightly grumpy, and, god knows, when I haven’t eaten, I get grumpy, and if you had to come out here before breakfast, I thought, maybe—”

Gladwyn held up his hand to stop me. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Miss Cole. You’re right. I am a bit…grumpy. I apologize.”

“And the cookie?”

He forced a smile. It wasn’t real, but I found it encouraging that he would try.

“No,” he said, “but thank you. When you get to be my age, you have to be more careful about what you eat.”

“Okay.” I took my own deep breath and started again. “We aren’t accusing anyone of anything. All I’m telling you is what we learned. The lurkers are searching for a magical artifact—a bowl-shaped lamp. It’s very old, and it’s very important to them.”

“And what if they can’t find it? Are they going to keep coming into Fort Rive?”

The hard look in Gladwyn’s eyes made me hesitate. I didn’t want to tell him that Old Man had already said they had no intention of stopping and no interest in accepting help. I leaned into my extreme optimism.

“We’re working on that.”

Gladwyn put his hands on his hips, turned his head, and scowled at the preserve through the open door.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I said.

He crossed his arms. “Go ahead.”

“Has the Torr ever mentioned that there was a magical artifact in the preserve?”

“No. They told me about the lurkers and that it was private, protected property. That’s about it.”

“Aside from Brodie, Ayla, and Vance, is there anyone else that goes into the swamp regularly?”

“No,” he said.

“What about Mrs. Carver? Isn’t she on the committee that oversees the preserve?”

“Mrs. Carver comes out here to see what Mr. Vance needs to do his job, but she doesn’t stick around.”

“Have you ever seen the artifact?”

“I don’t go into the swamp. Why would I have seen it?”

My brain glitched. After a bit of processing, I was able to spit out, “I thought you were on the committee!”

“I am.”

“But you don’t go into the swamp?”

He held up his hand, palm toward him, his pinky and ring finger raised. “Twice. I’ve taken a tour of the periphery, twice. We were trying to figure out if there was any reasonable way to fence it all off. That’s the sum total of my on-site experience with the Sauvage Preserve. To do that much, Carver and I had to sign a mountain of paperwork, each time, to borrow those damn little necklaces we had to wear for protection.”

The cogs in my head jerked through another rotation. “So, you don’t, ever—”

“I do my job, Miss Cole, but I don’t care for the swamp.”

I remembered Brodie shaking his head after I had asked him if Gladwyn was drawn to the swamp. His lips had thinned, as if he was biting back his disappointment or some negative comment. Gladwyn didn’t care for the swamp, and everyone knew it.

What did he care about?

I shook my head to clear it. “Could you look at the sketch? Just in case?”

“I don’t think any sketch they’d give you would do much good,” Gladwyn said. “How do we even know this thing is real and not some kind of an excuse they’ve trumped up?”

I stared at the man, wondering if he’d find a way to object to the paper my sketchbook was made of. Or maybe he’d tell me that I’d used the wrong kind of pencil to draw it.

“Please?” I said.

Gladwyn frowned, but he also motioned for me to hand him the sketchbook. I flipped to the correct page and passed it to him.

His eyes locked on the drawing and stayed there, taking it in, for a long time.

Conrad stood up and came closer.

Gladwyn didn’t move.

“The lurkers didn’t draw this,” he said.

“I drew it,” I said.

“How?”

At least I’d practiced this lie. “They described it to me. It’s what they’re—what they claim they’re looking for.”

“This is a lamp?”

I bent my head around to see the sketch and tapped on the flame I’d drawn above the stem.

Gladwyn turned the sketchbook around and handed it to me. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

My heart leapt. Someone had answered the question with something less than a complete denial! Break out the confetti!

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I didn’t say I was sure, but I don’t think I have.” Gladwyn turned to the door. “I have to go. There are some things I need to look into. You have my number if you learn anything.”

“Yes, but—”

He left, closing the door behind him with a thump. Conrad finished walking around the bed and stood beside me. We both stared at the door.

“Was it just me,” I said, “or did he seem irritated that we were helping?”

“Not just you,” Conrad said.

“What do you think?”

A quiet growl rolled out from Conrad’s throat. Then he said, “I would’ve sworn that he was being upfront for most of the conversation. But at the end…”

“You think he was hiding something?”

“Yup.”

“That’s three for three.” I flung my hand out, motioning to the closed door, even though its only crime was being part of a hideous room. “Why would he go through all the trouble of bringing us here, then lie to us?”

“I don’t know. Why would he get mad that we’re trying to help?”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. Conrad held out a consolation cookie. I took it and started munching.