The voice came from the water again, and it spoke Lucien's name in the way only his dead love had. He stood at the edge of the bayou with a lantern and no plan for grief. Six months he had lived in the stone tomb he built for her, sleeping beside her silver coffin. His skin had gone gray. His orange eyes ached from watching for her. Now something in the black water called him, and he wanted to believe. "Lucien." The word slid across the reeds. "Come to me." He took one step into the mud. Cold slime closed over his boot. He wanted to keep walking until the water swallowed him. But he had learned, in these long nights, that the dead do not always tell the truth. So he had brought a test. In his fist he held a braid of red hair, capped in silver. She had given it to him before the sickness took her. Only she knew the small song they had woven while making it. A trick in the water could steal her voice. It could not steal that. "Sing the braiding song," Lucien called. His breath shook. "Sing it, and I will come." The bayou went quiet. Frogs stopped. Then the voice answered, sweet and eager. "Come first, my love. Come, come, come." It did not sing. It only pulled. The water near his knees bulged. A shape rose, and it was not a woman. A hound broke the surface, black-bodied, its head a red maw of teeth like a snapping flower. It had worn her voice as a lure. It lunged for his throat. Lucien fell back into the reeds. The jaws snapped shut on empty air. He scrambled up the bank, heart slamming, and swung the lantern. Glass shattered against the beast's flower-head. Oil caught. Fire ran across its skull, and the thing shrieked in a voice that was almost hers. That sound nearly broke him. He forced himself to turn and run. He did not stop until he reached the mausoleum. He slammed the iron door and pressed his back to it, gasping. On the peak above him the stone gargoyle kept its watch. Inside, her carved face slept on the silver lid, one side of the stone hollow where a braid should curl. Lucien slid to the floor and opened his fist. The red braid was still whole. He held the proof of what he had almost lost. The thing in the water had not been her. She was not calling him to drown. She was still gone, truly gone, and no easy voice would bring her back. He pressed the braid to the hollow in the stone. It fit. And in fitting, it showed him the way forward. If a lie could rise from the water wearing her voice, then something real of her still lingered here. He would not chase phantoms again. He would find where she truly waited.

The morning after the water tried to drown him, Lucien stayed inside the tomb. He sat beside the silver coffin and watched the red braid rest in its stone hollow. He would not chase phantoms again. But he did not know where to begin. Somewhere she truly waited, and he had no map to her. Then a light moved at the door. A woman stood just past the iron threshold. He could see the crow on the stone above her through her body. She glowed white, like fog with a shape. Two braids fell over her shoulders. She had no face, only a pale blank where a face should be. She lifted one thin hand toward him. Lucien did not move. He had learned what these lures cost. "Speak," he said. "Tell me your name." "Jarnissa," the shape said. The voice was soft and even. It was not his love's voice. That alone made him listen. "I know where she rests. Not here. Follow me." His chest ached to believe her. He gripped the coffin's edge. "The last thing that called me had teeth. Why should I trust you?" "You shouldn't," Jarnissa said. "But you will follow, because you have nothing else." That answer stopped him. A monster would have promised. It would have sung sweet and begged him close. This spirit only stated the plain, ugly truth. He rose to his feet. A grey cat slipped past the door and crossed the floor. It had no fur, only wrinkled skin the color of ash. Its blue eyes fixed on Jarnissa. It did not hiss. It did not run. It sat between Lucien and the spirit and stared, calm and watchful. Lucien remembered the frogs falling silent before the hound rose. Animals knew a false thing when it came. This cat only waited. "Test me," Jarnissa said. "Ask the water to sing. It cannot. Ask me anything." "Where does she rest?" he said. "Past the cypress and the pale mushrooms, where the pines grow thick and the water turns clear. There is another stone there, smaller than this one. You never knew it was hers." Lucien's hands went cold. The braid he had sealed here proved something of her lingered. But he had built this tomb himself. He had never questioned it held her. If another stone waited in the deep bayou, then he had guarded the wrong grave for six months. He looked at the cat. It stood, turned, and walked toward the door, tail low. It followed the spirit. It did not fear her. "I will come," Lucien said. "But I bring the braid." "Bring it," Jarnissa said. "You will need it where we go." He lifted the red braid from the hollow. The stone face looked emptier without it. He stepped out of the tomb into the wet green light, following a dead woman toward a grave he had never known existed.