And then she understood.
Marlowe hadn’t agreed to bring Heather to Pike. She had only bargained with a body, and she’d brought a body. Pike was only here to collect what Marlowe had promised so their agreement could be complete.
Even if it was too soon.
Marlowe scrambled to her feet, hands clenched at her sides. If she didn’t look, it wasn’t true. She took one shaky step closer to Pike.
Pike slid back toward the water, an uncertain listlessness to the movement of her tail.
“I brought you a body,” Marlowe said, mouth silt-sticky and voice raw.
Pike’s features grew sullen. A short trill clipped from her.
Yes.
Trembling, Marlowe turned her hand over.
Her palm was smooth.
The skin, unbitten.
Any sign of the supernatural bond tethering her to this lake, to Pike itself, had been washed clean.
“Not yet,” Marlowe rasped. “He’s not the one, there’s another—”
But Pike splashed into the lake. Ripples trailed her as she took the body she was promised.
Marlowe wanted to beg. Wanted to plead, like she was again banging on a locked door and shouting until her voice cracked. But a stubborn, aching silence fell over her. Nothing bound Marlowe to this lake now except a grudge she had to reconcile tonight. She curled her hand into a fist, making crescent-moon marks in a palm which no longer carried evidence of a truce.
The frogs resumed their steady, incessant chirping in the bulrushes. Pike did not resurface.
Marlowe was glad.
Lies.
Marlowe never wanted to see her again.
Another lie.
Marlowe could take care of Heather by herself.
Couldn’t be a lie.
Marlowe sat on the shoreline of Pike’s Lake, alone. Washed up in the bulrushes was the wreckage of the rowboat from the night everything started, and she knewshe needed to move, needed to scrape together another plan.
Loneliness had been a steady fixture in Marlowe’s life. Abandoned when she dared to let another girl kiss her, when her fears weren’t deemed as important, when she had nothing left to give. This was just another Wednesday. But it wasn’t, because this was her own fault. Marlowe had bargained a body in exchange for freedom and Pike had been more honest with her than Marlowe had ever been with herself.
She hated Heather. She wanted her dead. And she wanted Pike to do it, not only because she was a coward, but because there was something there, deeper than just a mark, and she had tried desperately to ignore it. But now Pike was gone.
Marlowe set her jaw, moving leaden legs. Pike wasn’t coming back, and she needed a plan. If she had to—
Something crackedinto the side of her face and Marlowe slammed to the ground, tasting sand and blood.
Into The Roots
Frogs screamed in a blurred pitch. Marlowe rolled heavily to her stomach and spat out blood and teeth. Anchoring her hands in the mud, she tried to get her feet under her.
Striking pain flashed between her shoulders and she hit the ground again, panting out a groan. Prying her eyes open, she caught a glimpse of Heather’s outline. She brandished an oar above her, ready for a third blow. A small ring Marlowe had never seen glinted on her left hand. “Where is he?”
