Heir of the Dog Black Dog - Hailey Edwards Page 0,64

it.”

“All right.” I handed it to him, feeling like a pallbearer passing over her charge.

Together the three of us faced the Watchers. Something told me we had a long night ahead of us.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Crossing into Summer was like stepping onto the back porch of my mother’s house in August. The sky was clear, the night clean. A fat moon hung overhead, and stars glittered as far as I could see. Frog song carried, accompanied by a bawdy cricket chorus and the bass hooting of something I felt safe assuming wasn’t an owl. Still, more than anywhere else in Faerie, this place reminded me of home.

“How much farther is it?” I wasn’t in any hurry to face down the consuls, I was just curious.

Distances seemed oddly fluid here. Almost as if by wanting to be somewhere, I got there faster. Considering how this sweat-sticky procession dragged, I began believing the opposite must also be true.

Diode butted his head against my thigh. “Not much longer now.”

I glanced at Rook, whose arm still hung around my waist and whose fingers rubbed my hip. His eyes were distant, the rest of his features arranged in such a way as to discourage conversation.

Since talking wasn’t an option, I settled for scratching Diode behind his ears. His rumbling purr thanked me. The sound was soothing. Odd, since I wasn’t a cat person.

While I mulled over the day’s events, our group strolled from a perfect summer night into a humid morning that promised midday would be a scorcher. The kind of day where, if there had been a sidewalk, you could have fried eggs on it then crisped yourself two strips of bacon.

“We have arrived,” the Watchers announced together.

I examined our surroundings. “Where are the Halls of Summer?”

They pointed toward a dark splotch in the landscape.

“What is that?” I squinted at it.

“The way in,” Rook answered.

After remaining quiet for so long, his voice startled me.

“The Halls of Summer are in a swimming hole.” I shook my head. “Of course they are.”

As our party approached the entrance, I could see it was, in fact, a natural pond. It reminded me of a case Shaw and I had worked together.

A farmer went to water his cows one day and found them standing in the middle of his field around a pond, measuring twelve feet in diameter, that hadn’t been there the night before. Sinkholes are common in Texas. Underground springs are too, so the farmer didn’t think much of it.

Word spread and local teens started sneaking onto his property to swim at Blue Hole, so named because the water was Caribbean blue and clear as the purest spring water. So clear you could have seen the bottom if there had been one, but the hole seemed to go on forever. Which became the topic of debate between the farmer, the geologists interested in studying the phenomenon, and the teens who figured the fastest way to figure out what was down there was to dive for it. And dive they did.

But they didn’t come back.

When the tally shot to five missing teens, the conclave caught wind of it and sent us to investigate. Turned out to be freshwater mermaids. They used the area’s underground river system as their own private hunting grounds and migratory system all rolled into one. Nasty things, mermaids.

Standing on the lip of this gateway into the Halls, I kept flashing back to those weeks spent at Blue Hole. How often had I swam there as bait, expecting a hand to grab my ankle and drag me to a watery grave, trusting Shaw’s reflexes were fast enough to save me if something tried?

I hoped we washed ashore after confronting what awaited us in the deep.

“It’s an illusion,” Rook said under his breath. “You have nothing to fear.”

The Watchers each stepped to one side of the hole and waited. I guess we were going first.

The soothing presence at my side had vanished. I sought out Diode. “Are you coming?”

“If I must.” He pressed against me and scowled at his reflection in the water. “Disgusting.”

“You’ll be fine.” I clutched his ruff. “If you’re not, you can take it out of Rook’s hide.”

“Pleased to be of service,” Rook said dryly.

I patted his chest. “I never doubted.”

“The consuls await,” the Watchers reminded us.

I tried meeting their eye—eyes?—and ended up crossing mine. “Can’t have that, can we?”

Rook cleared his throat. “Everything you say and do before them is seen by the consuls.”

“I figured.” I stood on the edge of the pool. “I