implacable as granite, the American girl at his side just as steady. Tony worked the bolt action on the shotgun, the threat of it echoing across the lake, telling Lorelei Vogt not to run. Your days of running are done.
Nina straightened, naked except for her slip, the waters of Selkie Lake lapping at her toes, and unfolded her razor. Reaching carefully inside her mouth, she nicked the inside of her cheek. Spat blood.
Voices from the dock, more camera flashes. The huntress half frozen, half poised to pounce. Don’t kill anyone yet, Nina thought to her enemy and her team both. Wait for me. She waded into the water, warmer by far than Lake Rusalka or the Old Man. The huntress’s scar was calling her, the rusalka’s kiss. You’re still mine.
A shot echoed into the perfect summer sky, and Nina was pierced by a bolt of pure, clawing, protective rage. Oh, you blue-eyed bitch, if you killed my husband—
And she dived into the arms of the lake.
Chapter 57
Ian
September 1950
Selkie Lake
The shot came from Tony. At the corner of Ian’s eye he saw his partner had aimed into the sky, a flat report making the blue-eyed woman flinch and whirl even as she was still flinching from the flash of Jordan’s camera. “Smile, Anna,” Jordan called out again. Click click click. She’d said there was nothing her stepmother disliked more than having her picture taken, and she was right—Ian could see the woman flinch with every flash.
He took a deep breath, speaking up in his deepest, crispest tones of authority. “Lorelei Vogt, stay where you are.”
She straightened at the sound of her name. He hoped she would lunge forward in a panic, let him get within arm’s length and wrench the pistol away. But she stepped back instead, to the very end of the dock, face emptying of shock with frightening speed. Ian had never seen anyone knocked so off-balance recover their poise so fast. The pistol hung loose at her side, but he and Jordan still froze halfway down the dock before she could raise it. There was an odd moment of stillness where the sound of the shot faded and they regarded each other. Ian met the eyes of his brother’s murderess for the first time, and every sound in the world—Ruth’s muffled sobbing from the car, Tony’s voice soothing her, the monotonous slap of the lake against the pilings—faded to nothing.
Here you are, Ian thought, staring into those blue eyes in wonder. Here you are. For more than half a decade he’d thought of her every day, and here she was. Ian drank her in. He found her lovely. He found her obscene. He found her. “Here you are,” he said aloud, and smiled.
“Who are you?” she asked, sounding genuinely puzzled, and it made Ian smile again. This woman had loomed over his life like a boulder, blotting out the sun, yet, of course, she had no idea who he was.
Ian didn’t answer. Instead, he spoke words he’d dreamed of speaking for years. “Lorelei Vogt, you are charged with war crimes.”
He expected excuses, the defensive shuffle, the whine that always seemed to begin It was so long ago or I was just following orders . . . Lorelei Vogt did none of those things. She merely shifted her gaze to Jordan at his side, steadily gazing through her camera lens. “How did you get here?” Genuinely curious. “Even if you got out of the darkroom at once, you couldn’t—”
“Magic,” Ian said. That was as good an explanation for Nina as any. Nina, where are you? Ian took a step closer, Jordan at his side.
Die Jägerin’s pistol came up. “No closer.”
Jordan clicked off another shot. Ian saw their target wince. “You really don’t like having your picture taken, do you?” he observed. “I wouldn’t like looking at myself either, if I’d done what you’ve done.” Click.
Another flinch. “Jordan, stop.”
“No.” Jordan adjusted something on her Leica. “You and I have said everything that we needed to say to each other, Anna. I’m just doing my job, now. Recording the moment.” Click. “The moment a murderess realizes she’s going to pay for what she’s done.”
The woman’s voice was calm. “You cannot arrest me.”
“Yes, we can,” Ian said. “For murdering Daniel McBride. You admitted as much to Jordan in the darkroom a few hours ago. We can perform a citizen’s arrest and bring you to the authorities. Murder is punishable by the electric chair in Massachusetts.” Ian waited for the flicker of her