price in exchange for her help. She used her power to make the maiden choose him as King. After that, the Fair Dryad called for her payment. She ordered our pal to give her the child, to throw it into her pool.”
Holly blinked at him in shock. “You mean like Rumpelstiltskin? It sounds familiar.”
“Except that it didn’t end well with the gnome falling through a crack in the Earth and everyone else living happily ever after,” Johnny went on. “The distraught father, seeing that the child was destined to bring peace to the shifter clans, decided to sacrifice himself to save the maiden and the child. He returned to the Dryad’s pool and threw himself into the water. He drowned himself and broke the Dryad’s hold on him.”
Holly’s eyes popped, staring first at him and then at the chair. “Are you seriously trying to tell me that Loch…”
Keller threw up both hands. “Can we all just use our brains here for a second? The Fair Dryad is not real! It’s a story.”
“Considering what’s happened,” Susanna chimed in, “and that Loch showed Garret the mark and then disappeared, I would say it might not be just a story after all. Loch certainly seemed to think it was real enough.”
“He certainly did,” Garret grumbled.
“But we have no idea where he went,” Holly went on. “We don’t know where this Dryad is or where her pool is or… or anything.”
“If, for some reason…” Trevor held up his hand and closed his eyes. “I’m just thinking out loud here, but if, in the worst-case scenario, Loch did throw himself into the pool to break the Dryad’s spell, then the problem should be solved. That should be the end of it.”
“Except that he wasn’t the only father,” Johnny returned. “There are five more of us with as much stake in the child’s fate as he had.”
“Has,” Garret corrected. “He could be alive somewhere.”
“But we don’t owe the Dryad anything,” Wyatt pointed out. “She never gave us anything. Her claim ended with the first father’s death.”
“You’re thinking like a rational man,” Edwina told him. “The Fair Dryad is not human, nor is she a shifter. She’s a magical creature who belongs to a world of natural forces. To her, she has an outstanding claim on the maiden’s child that still has not been paid. To her, this child is the only child that can fulfill that debt.”
“The fucking hell it will!” Keller snapped. “I don’t give a flying shit who it is. No one is getting their grubby little mitts on this child. She’ll have to kill me first.”
“If Loch’s disappearance tells us anything,” Hattie countered, “the Dryad may end up doing exactly that. She could go through each of you one after another until she overpowers one of you into relinquishing the child.”
Holly’s hand flew instinctively to her stomach. As if on cue, the muscles of her belly contracted, and the child squirmed. It sent a fluttery, watery feeling through Holly’s body.
She shoved away from the idea of water. Like Keller, she would do anything to prevent anyone from taking this child away from her. She pulled herself together and rounded on Edwina again. “What can we do? Can we track her down? Can we defeat her somehow?”
“I don’t see how,” Hattie replied. “As you say, we don’t know where she is or how she made contact with Loch. We don’t know anything except what’s in the story.”
“The pool has to be nearby,” Garret pointed out. “He was never out of our site for more than a day. He couldn’t have gone far.”
“He’s a bear shifter,” Wyatt argued. “He could have traveled a couple hundred miles and come back in less than twenty-four hours without any of us noticing anything out of the ordinary.”
Trevor frowned and rubbed his chin. “He has been acting kinda cagey these last few days. He stays outside a lot. He hardly ever comes inside.”
“He always did that,” Keller fired back. “He’s been doing that since he was eleven years old. He has never spent much time indoors.”
Holly willed herself to focus on Edwina. She had to hold onto these witches at all costs. “And you can’t detect her? Is she completely hidden from you?”
Edwina faced her and shrugged. Her brilliant green eyes shone with unnatural light. “You have to remember that the Dryad is a feature of the landscape. She’s been here a lot longer than we have. She’s immortal and immutable. She’s water and willow and land. She’s fish