disembodied voice called her from beyond her awareness. She couldn’t distinguish where it was coming from. It might come from inside her own mind, or it might come from somewhere in the vast reaches of space. Holly.
Against her will, another dynamic surge rose out of her deepest being. It compelled her toward the water. She had to get inside it. She had to surround herself with it. She had to surrender herself to it or be destroyed in the process.
She took another step forward. Under Garret’s elbow, that water tempted her with an irresistible magnetic pull. It inhaled her toward it. That urge tugged her insides until it made so much sense to keep walking toward the river.
She heard someone yelling her name. The sound drifted into her brain from far away, too far away to consider. This nagging drive overwhelmed everything else. It ate away at her until she had to concede.
Another part of her realized she shouldn’t do this, but that crumb of awareness dwindled to a barely-perceptible speck too small to even notice. She had to enter the water. Nothing else mattered. That water waited for her. It offered the only safety from this mounting need.
Something cut off her view of the water. Something was trying to move her, to stop her from walking into it. She dodged to one side trying to see, but it kept getting in the way. She recognized it, but she didn’t bother to figure out what it was.
All at once, something hit her with a splintering crash. Stars exploded in her brain. The next thing she knew, powerful hands lifted her off the ground. She landed hard in the back of the truck. Wyatt hopped in next to her, and the metal bed vibrated when the engine fired up.
The steel bed bounced her all the long way home. Wyatt tried to pick her up, but she pushed him off. “You don’t have to carry me. I can walk on my own.”
He hovered in front of her bobbing back and forth. “Are you okay? What the fuck happened to you back there?”
She hauled herself into a sitting position. One side of her face throbbed. It felt thick and tender to the touch. “What did you do to me?”
Elise and Garret appeared on either side of her. “You tried to walk into the river,” Garret told her. “We had to stop you.”
“What did you do—punch me?”
“No,” he snapped.
“I did,” Elise cut in.
Holly glanced up at her. Then she wilted. “Thanks.”
Wyatt took her hand. “Come on. Let’s get you inside and get some ice on that cheek. It looks like you’re gonna have a shiner to show your in-laws.”
“It’s Dr. Thorne I’m worried about,” Holly groaned. “She already thinks you guys oppress me. If she sees me like this, she might try to stage an intervention.”
No one laughed. They helped her out of the truck and into the house. Fortunately, no leather-clad psychopaths awaited the friends this time.
Wyatt got a packet of frozen peas out of the freezer. He tried to press it to Holly’s face, but she took it away from him. “I’ll do it.”
Elise sat down opposite and watched Holly wince. Holly hated to think about what her cheek looked like. “I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”
“Of course you did,” Garret interjected. “You freaked out, and you flattened her. You knocked her out with one punch.”
“I’m glad you did it,” Wyatt added. “I was thinking of doing it myself, but I didn’t want to hurt her. I’m glad you did it instead.”
“It’s good you hit me as hard as you did,” Holly told Elise. “I would have gone in if you hadn’t.”
Elise leaned back in her seat, relieved. “Well, at least now we know where the Fair Dryad is. We just have to figure out a way to defeat her before she captures you again.”
“The Dryad didn’t do it. It was the baby.”
A tense silence enveloped the room. Garret hissed from the kitchen. “That’s impossible.”
“The baby wanted to go into the water. I didn’t. It—she—she pulled me toward the river. It was the same power that takes over when I’m out in the forest. I felt it. It came from…from her, from the baby.”
“The baby can’t want to go into the water,” Wyatt countered. “That’s nuts. The Dryad has been trying to capture the baby. Why would the baby want to go into the water?”
“Maybe it has something to do with the prophecy,” Elise replied. “Maybe some