A slow smile curved Laila’s lips. “Then I’m lucky you’re my engineer.”

“Luck is—”

“Zofia,” said Laila, leaning forward. “I am glad you’re my friend.”

Warmth zipped through Zofia, and she was quiet until she remembered that when someone says something kind, it is expected to be returned, even if she considered the information repetitive or obvious. A sharp whistling sound interrupted her train of thought.

Zofia and Laila turned to see Séverin waving his torch roughly fifteen meters away from them. They got up, making their way to him. Séverin stood above where Enrique had pulled the Forgive me marble plaque out of the dirt. When they arrived, he shone his light on the damp ground.

“See this?”

Hypnos arched an eyebrow. “Dirt mixed with … dirt?”

“Drag marks,” said Séverin.

The longer Zofia stared at the ground, the more she saw it—disturbed earth forming neat tracks, the narrow distance between the thin trenches reminiscent of—

“THOSE LOOK LIKE CLAW MARKS,” said Enrique loudly.

“We heard you,” said Séverin, frowning. “Take out the beeswax!”

“WHAT?”

“Are you telling me that this skeleton thing just up and clawed through the water?” asked Hypnos.

“Something might have dragged it from inside the lake,” said Séverin, but he did not look convinced. “How deep is the water, Zofia?”

“I measured at least twenty-five meters deep. I also picked up signs of an obstruction that stretches through the middle of the lake, perhaps a makeshift bridge?”

“CLAW MARKS!” said Enrique again. “It’s a skeleton. They’re not supposed to move!”

“Maybe there’s something Laila can read in the stones?” suggested Hypnos. “Laila?”

Zofia turned, expecting to see her friend behind her, but Laila was still by the water’s edge, one hand on the boulder with the sound amplifiers.

“I will get her,” said Zofia. “We found something too. Sound amplifiers, I think.”

“Amplifiers?” asked Séverin.

“DID SHE SAY AMPLIFIERS?” asked Enrique loudly.

Zofia winced. He was standing very close. Zofia pointed at the conical protrusions on the boulder, tapped her ear, and then gestured widely with her hands. Séverin glanced at the amplifiers, then back at the dark lake. His eyes narrowed.

“If possible, bring one back,” said Séverin. “Cut it off as carefully as you can. If there’s amplifiers hidden around the lake, then perhaps there’s a trigger we don’t know yet, some sort of mechanism that’s key to accessing the far wall.”

Zofia nodded, then headed toward Laila. Her boots splashed in the puddles dotting the shoreline. As she walked, a tendril of cold touched her toe. A shiver ran up her leg. For a moment, she imagined that a freezing finger stroked the inside of her skull.

Zofia paused, looking down. The hole in her boot was larger than she thought, and a fine grit of mud squished under her toes. She did not like the texture of this sensation. In her rucksack, she had packed extra chardonnet silk. Perhaps she could pack the shoe and stop it from dampening her socks or—

“Zosia…”

The hair on the back of Zofia’s neck stood up. Someone was calling to her. And the voice did not belong to Laila.

When Zofia looked up from her boots, she saw something that should not have been possible, and yet every one of her senses confirmed that it was true. A figure stepped out of the lake, and Zofia recognized her sister immediately.

Hela stood before her, her pale hand stretched out. She wore the same thin shift she’d worn on her sick bed. Water dripped off her sleeves. Her gray eyes looked bruised with sleeplessness, and her hair looked sweat-dampened, clinging to her neck.

“I called to you for help, but you didn’t come. Do you not love me? Did you not get my letter?”

Guilt closed around Zofia’s throat like a cold hand.

“I lost it,” she found herself saying.

“How could you?” sobbed Hela.

No. Wrong. This is wrong, whispered something in Zofia’s mind. She forced herself to look up, prepared to count the stalactites on the cave ceiling. Instead, she saw the white paint of her uncle’s townhome in Glowno, the fracture left in the corner by the window from heavy rain that summer. Zofia spun around, expecting to see her friends and the shore, but they were gone, and all she saw was the wall with framed portraits and pictures of her uncle’s family.

“Zosia?” called Hela. “I will forgive you if you hug me.”

Zofia turned back around.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

She looked down at her feet, part of her mind expecting to see dark water lapping at her boots. But she saw only the frayed carpet that once led to Hela’s sick bed, and when she looked up, she saw her sister coughing softly into her handkerchief, her pale hand outstretched.

She must go to her.

Zofia took one step forward, then flinched from a sudden cold.

Had she left one of the windows open in Hela’s room? Hela did not like the cold. The window, however, was closed tightly, and yet for some reason Zofia imagined she could hear Laila’s voice carried to her on an invisible wind, her voice raw as if she were screaming, and yet Zofia only felt it as a whisper:

“There’s something in the water.”

PART IV

26

ENRIQUE

One moment Enrique was crouched on the ground, tracing the drag marks. How was it possible? Even if natural changes in the ecosystem had shifted the skeleton, it should not have left marks like this. As he bent down to study it, a fine spray of water soaked his jacket, hitting his neck.

Enrique shivered, annoyed. Séverin needed to move more carefully in the lake shallows. He turned once more to the ground when he saw something strange … bits of gravel bounced on the silt. A low vibration sang through the bottoms of his shoes. It was as if the earth were bristling.

Séverin grabbed his shoulders, hauling him to his feet. The Forged beeswax blocked out sound in Enrique’s left ear, while the right was so heavily bandaged that even a scream registered as a low muffle.

Séverin’s scream was no different.

Enrique strained to hear through the bandage, but the words slipped past him. He held up his torch, the better to read Séverin’s lips.

A mistake.

Beyond Séverin, the black water of the lake writhed and boiled. Stalactites trembled on the ceiling like loose teeth, crashing into the surface. The moment they hit the water, rings of light bloomed across the inky water.

A second later, the lake ripped in half, rising up into watery sheets that stretched toward the ceiling. An unearthly, green glow pulsed in the depths as skeletal hands broke through the sheets of water and grinning skulls shoved their heads through the waves, sightless eyes snapping toward the shore. Tatters of silk and broken strands of jewels circled their wrist bones and snapped necks as they walked disjointedly toward them.

Around him, Enrique felt the vibrating thrum of music the way one can perceive light behind closed eyes. He was right. The siren had been a warning.