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to protect her child and her home. And now Elise didn’t know if she could continue to be a homicide detective if it meant putting Audrey in danger.
    But she was a cop. That was her identity. Who would she be if that were taken away? And what would she do? She had no other skills. God knew her body was too ravaged to be a hooker. That was a little joke she liked to tell her coworkers. And then someone would finish by saying that wasn’t at all true. “Have you seen the women we arrested last night?” And everybody would laugh.
    But even if looks didn’t matter, Elise would have made a crummy whore. You expect me to do what?
    So there she went. The bad whore, bad cop, bad victim . . .
    Still dizzy, she made her way down the hall. It was hard enough to maneuver with the cast when she wasn’t under the influence. Put a gun in her hand and she turned into a ballet dancer, but otherwise she was just your average klutz with an array of bruises to prove it.
    With the crutches under her arms, Elise moved down the hall faster than was wise, but she was mad. So much for her vacation. So much for her sabbatical and her days of self-discovery. Nobody else knew that this was supposed to be a time for serious reflection and soul searching, but still . . . Deep down, she knew she’d never discover herself at the plantation. The real Elise was back in Savannah. At her job. With her daughter. And David. Her mind always went back to David.
    Maybe this was an escape. She’d seen something in his eyes that had her running. Or hobbling. She would run later. She would run like hell once she quit wearing the cast.
    Or not.
    Oh, my God.
    Was it more enticing to think about how things could be between them? Could anything live up to her expectations? Round and round she went. And the next time David called she would talk to him in her all-business voice, or mildly friendly voice, and maybe he would never know that she thought about him, thought about them, all the damn time.
    No wonder she’d come here.
    She hadn’t come to find herself. She was running from David. She was running away from herself. Not toward herself. Oh, how people were full of self-trickery. Some of the worst criminals she’d ever encountered thought they were doing something noble. One thing she would work on while she was here—stop lying to herself. Or at the very least, stop believing the lies.
    The momentum, the forward thrust of her body dangling over crutches acted as weight and hurtled her forward. It was kind of like riding a bike down a steep hill, but instead of running into a tree at the bottom, she smacked into the pool-room door with its steamed glass. She paused, then opened the door and inched her way inside.
    There she was. In the pool. Swimming in her rubber cap, turning her face to the left to take a breath with each lift of her elbow. The front crawl. What precision. Elise admired it beneath her annoyance.
    The tile under her one bare foot was wet and cold, and she suddenly wondered what she was doing there. David was right. She should just go home. This had been a silly idea.
    Melinda must have spotted her, because she broke her rhythmic crawl and switched to a breaststroke, making her way to the edge of the pool to surface at Elise’s feet. Just like the previous night.
    “Hello, Elise.”
    Elise’s mind recoiled.
    Same eyes. Same lips. But this time they were surrounded by wrinkles.
    Elise thought about the blue paint around the doors and the blue paint around the windows. Was this a slip-skin hag? She’d heard of them. Spirits that could slip themselves over people. Even dead bodies. And what if the evil spirit was inside the house? What happened then?
    This is where root magic and Elise had parted ways long ago. Elise had never believed in this kind of thing. Of people being brought back to life, and spells being cast. She believed in herbs for health and healing. But then why were the doors painted blue if not to contain or