Dane Korvit had found the thing that killed Kylie, but his machete barely cut it. Blood slicked his hand and dotted his face. He backed toward a tiny cottage woven from wood and leaves as the creature crawled from the dark brush on too many jointed legs. The cottage door flew open. A small fairy hovered in the doorway, wand raised. Black mist curled around Lanalee Thornwillow’s green dress. Dane hated needing help, yet the monster had already proved steel meant nothing. “Get inside,” Lanalee said. “Unless you brought a better weapon.” “I brought the weapon that will kill it.” Dane lifted the machete. The creature rushed him. Dane swung for its neck. The blade struck with a dull crack and bounced away. A claw caught his jacket and tore the lower edge wider. He stumbled through the open door. Lanalee slammed the door with a flick of her wand. Roots burst from the floor and wrapped the frame. The cottage shook under the creature’s weight. Small round garden creatures scattered beneath the windows. Dane looked through the room. A leafy couch filled one wall. A warm hearth glowed beside a cramped kitchen. “Can your roots hold it?” “For seconds.” Lanalee pointed her wand at the fireplace. “Fire hurts what your blade cannot. Heat the steel, then strike its wound.” Dane shoved the machete into the hearth. The blood hissed away. Outside, claws punched through the door. A black tip hooked the wood and pulled. Lanalee’s face tightened. Her dark aura thickened around her shoulders. “You knew it would come here,” Dane said. “I knew it follows blood.” The door split. Dane pulled the machete from the coals. The edge glowed orange. He stepped into the gap before Lanalee could stop him. The creature drove a claw at his chest. Dane caught its arm on the blade. Flesh smoked. The creature shrieked and jerked back. He used the opening, seized the broken door, and rammed it against the creature’s head. Then he cut into the old wound beneath its jaw. The hot blade sank deep. Acid-green fluid poured over his hand. The creature thrashed once, then collapsed across the garden stones. Dane stared at the body, waiting for it to rise. It did not. He had killed Kylie's murderer. Lanalee landed beside the corpse and touched its wound with her wand. Her black mist drew into the dead flesh. A thin green trail appeared on the ground, leading away from the cottage. “One of its kind made this,” Lanalee said. “The trail leads to the one that sent it.” Dane wiped the machete on the ruined door. The weapon now held its edge against the creature’s burned hide. He followed the glowing trail as it left the garden.

The green trail led away from Lanalee's cottage into wet ground. Dane followed it three steps before it forked and thinned. He crouched, unsure which line was true. One wrong step would kill the trail. He needed the fairy, and he hated that he needed anyone again. "Lanalee." He waved her over. "I can't read it alone." She flew from the doorway and hovered above the fork. Her black aura swelled. "You'd have lost it. Watch my wand, not the ground." The willow-topped wand tugged east. Lanalee frowned. "It pulls the same way as my thief. Someone took my seeds three days ago. Maybe the same hand." They moved together. Dane cut brush while she held the trail steady. A striped creature darted past his face, green and teal, with dragonfly wings and too many small legs. It hung in the air, watching them. "A spy," Lanalee said. "Someone sent it." She snapped her wand. The little creature dropped into the mud and lay still. Where it fell, Dane found a worn leather bag half-sunk in the muck. He pulled it free. The strap was patched a dozen times. Inside sat a cloth pouch of seeds. "My seeds." Lanalee's voice went flat. "Someone dropped them here." "Dropped them, or lost them running." Dane stood. The trail and the bag pointed the same direction. A woman stepped out of the reeds ahead. Pink and black hair. A torn green top she wore like it meant something. She looked at the bag in Dane's hand and did not flinch. "That's mine now," she said. "I took it off a man who deserved worse." "The seeds inside are hers." Dane nodded at Lanalee. The woman studied them both. "Seraphina Nightshade. I con rich men and take what I want. I didn't know what the man was carrying." She looked past them, east, where the trail went. "He wasn't rich. He worked for something in the swamp. That's why I dumped his motes and ran." Dane felt his pulse pick up. "What's in the swamp?" "A witch." Seraphina's face stayed calm. "Two heads on one body. The men I follow all crawl back to her." Lanalee took her seeds and pointed her wand east. It pulled hard. "The trail leads there. To her." Dane looked at Seraphina. Something in her steady eyes held him longer than it should have. "You know the way in." "I know the way that gets you killed." She almost smiled. "You want the witch. I want what she owes me. We walk the same road." Dane sheathed his machete. He had a trail, a fairy who could read it, and now a woman who knew where it ended. The bag had cost him the trail's confusion and bought him a destination. "Then we walk it," he said. He turned east, toward the smoke and the witch who had sent Kylie's killer. Seraphina looked over at Dane and gave him an admiring look. Dane looked over at her and wondered if there might be something between them.

The swamp swallowed the light by midday. Dane walked behind Seraphina, boots sucking in the mud. She knew the way, or claimed she did. He watched her back and counted the reasons not to trust her. She conned rich men for a living. She'd told him so herself. Now she led him toward a witch he'd never seen, and he had no way to know if the path ended in a trap. "You slow down at every fork," he said. "Like you're choosing." Seraphina didn't turn. "I choose the way that doesn't kill us." "Or the way that kills me." She stopped. Lanalee hovered near Dane's shoulder, her black aura tight and small. The fairy said nothing, but her wand pulled east, steady, past Seraphina's path. "Your fairy reads the trail," Seraphina said. "Follow her, then. I don't need your knife at my back." Dane didn't move. "Prove it. Take us straight. No more slow feet." Seraphina's face stayed flat. She pointed to a hump of dry ground between two black pools. "Straight runs through the sink there. You want honest? Honest is I've been steering you around a grave." She crouched and pried a boot from the mud. Under it lay a man. Rich clothes, ruined now. His chest was torn open, his face gray. Blood had dried black across his suit. Dane knew the work of claws when he saw it. "Cornelius Ashford," Seraphina said. "The man I robbed. I dumped him here." She looked at the body without flinching. "He stole seeds before I stole them off him. Not garden seeds. The kind that drop a city." Dane crouched by the corpse. He leaned close and smelled it. Rot, and under the rot, something electric. The same smell that had stuck to his clothes for days after Kylie. His hand went cold on his knee. "This is the smell," he said. "The thing that killed Kylie left this." Seraphina met his eyes. "Then the witch didn't just send one. She keeps them." Lanalee's wand jerked hard toward a shape in the mist ahead. Through the black smoke a house loomed on twisted roots, crooked and huge, smoke drifting off its roof in dark ropes. The witch's lair. Right where Seraphina had been leading them. Dane stood. She had told the truth. The slow feet, the forks, the body she showed him plain. She'd walked him around the death traps, not into one. He'd doubted her the whole way, and she'd kept him alive. "You could've left me in the sink," he said. "I could have." Seraphina wiped her hands on her pants. "I didn't." Dane looked at the smoking house. He trusted her now, and that trust cost him his last excuse to turn back. The witch was real. The killer's smell was on her dead man. Kylie's murderer had come from that door. He drew his machete. "Then take me the rest of the way."