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Joints ripped like torn seams, revealing orange flesh with black veins. The creature gurgled once more then fell silent except for the hissing of seared meat. Thierry wobbled where she stood, but Shaw was there to catch her when she collapsed.
    I had to move my tongue around to find enough moisture to swallow. I stared at my hand, flexed my fingers and wondered what the hell I had been thinking borrowing an unknown source of magic from a legacy. Thierry had peeled that creature like the skin off a grape. It was a miracle acting as her conduit, even for those few seconds, hadn’t fried me.
    Whistling brought my attention back to Rodriguez. His shirt was fisted in his hand, and he walked away, cleaning his blade with the damp fabric while baby-talking to his sword. Flipper remained motionless on the ground. Another fae—a medic I hoped—leaned over her. She had thumbed Flipper’s eyes open and pressed a palm to the girl’s frail chest. Out of energy, I dragged one foot after the other until I reached her side and collapsed to my knees. Her arm extended toward me, fingers lax. My hand hovered an inch above hers, so close I felt the damp coolness of her skin, but I recoiled.
    Comforting or not, Flipper wouldn’t thank me if she woke and discovered that I had touched her and learned her secrets.
    “Is she breathing?” I asked the medic, who nodded in the affirmative. “Okay, Flipper, so you’re not dead. That’s good. Not dead we can work with.” Giddy, I sank back on my heels. This was why I had become a marshal, why I had accepted the Earthen Conclave commission. I wanted to prevent grim-faced marshals from knocking on doors in the wee hours of the morning carrying a burden that would crush the recipient of their news. So often, as with Charybdis, I failed. But not today. Today I had made a difference. “Can you open your eyes? Something?”
    “Harlow.”
    I frowned. “What?”
    “My name—” her words slurred, “—is not Flipper.”
    I wiped a trickle of warm crimson from under my nose. I tasted copper sliding down the back of my throat as I rubbed my face clean on the tail of my shirt. Staggering to my feet, I held still until the ground stopped bucking and jumping underfoot, then scowled at the kraken. It was still dead. I had just expended too much energy then stood too quickly.
    “Be right back,” I promised.
    Finding the young boy’s body again was tough. Mostly because not much was left of the victim after the kraken finished pulverizing the area. It didn’t take a lot for me to read magic on remains. I touched a shattered elbow and felt…nothing. No residual magic from Charybdis. No inborn magic from the boy. He was a blank slate.
    This victim had been human, his only crime stumbling into an area populated by lethal fae that few mortals knew existed in order to avoid them. His parents would never know the truth of how his brief life ended. I sank to the ground and sat there beside him so he wouldn’t be alone. Even though he was past caring about such things, I wasn’t, and I hoped I never would be.

Chapter 4
    I crashed hard after the incident at the Wink Sinks. That much I remembered. The conclave comped my room in a budget motel on the fringes of town so I could recuperate. I remembered that too. But I woke stiff from my earlier exertions and with the nagging sense of having forgotten something. Expending as much magic as I had without warming up first came at a cost, and I got the feeling from the dried crust around my mouth that I had just paid the bill.
    A dark outline leaned over me, and I jerked upright so fast I almost cracked my forehead against Harlow’s before she leapt backward. After a moment’s heart-stopping pause, I swallowed my panic and slumped back against my pillow. “What the hell?”
    “I was worried about you.” She scraped polish off her fingernails. “You’ve been drooling on that pillow for thirty-six hours. It’s almost midnight.”
    “What?” I blinked my