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creatures’ grip on the undines and then sent a message to the undine whose hand I held to grab one of her sisters. Their hive mind still worked, even half-encased in shell goo. By the time we reached the surface, I was trailing two dozen undines behind me. They wriggled out of the water, shucking the last shell fragments off like last year’s dowdy hand-me-downs—and shucking their tails as well. Somehow in the journey their tailshad split into two legs. They jumped up and ran along the grassy bank showing off their slim calves and long, trim thighs with nary a thought for the poor undine who had died in the Borderlands.
Thoughtless
.
    Thought-less?
I heard one of them think as she turned around to look at me over her shoulder. She had red tangled hair and I recognized her as the one who had shared her breath with me in a kiss.
But she is always in our thoughts. She is part of us forever
. Then she turned back to her sisters and joined them as they ran over a grassy hill, leaving me gasping on the bank, beneath a weeping willow tree, feeling all the more alone for the absence of their buzzing hive mind.
    Alone except for the dark creature who had saved me.
    It was still in the water—a swirl of oily black on the surface. I struggled to my knees and leaned over for a closer look … and the black swirl coalesced into a face.
    His
face.
    Liam.
    But not Liam.
    In the months he’d spent as a bodiless entity in the Borderlands he’d lost some of the features of Liam Doyle, the shape he’d assumed to seduce me so I’d fall in love with him …
    You almost did
.
    I heard his voice in my head. His lips were parted in a rueful smile, an expression I recalled so well that I automatically reached my hand out to the surface of the water where the image of his lips appeared … and touched flesh.
    “You haven’t forgotten me,” he said, this time moving his lips as his head cleared the water. As I watched, he took shape.
    “Your desire for me is giving me form,” he said, his chest—his bare, nicely muscled chest—rising from the water.
    I laughed … or tried to. The sound came out hoarse andraspy. I must have swallowed some water. “I don’t recall you being quite so … buff, Liam … or should I call you that? You’re not exactly him anymore, are you?”
    “I can be him,” he said with the Irish lilt and cocky tilt of his chin I recognized as Liam’s. “I can be anything and anyone you want, lass.” The Irish lilt had roughened to a Scottish brogue (he’d called me lass before, I recalled), but the glint in his dark eyes was pure incubus. He stood hip deep in the pool now, the water lapping teasingly at his groin. I tried to keep my eyes above the waterline … but didn’t quite succeed.
    “Um … I didn’t order
that
,” I said, blushing.
    He laughed and took a step toward the bank, and I sat back on my heels, poised to stand and … what? Run? What was I afraid of? He wouldn’t hurt me. Was I afraid that if he touched me I would give in to my desire for him?
    I didn’t get to find out. Something tugged him back into the water. He fell to one knee, those sweet lips twisting in pain. Instantly I forgot my fear and moved toward him. His right arm was twisted painfully back behind his shoulder, his wrist dragging in the water. Leaning over the bank, I reached under the water for his hand … and touched cold iron.
    It was the iron bracelet I had clamped onto his wrist four months ago to banish him. Once the bracelet was on his wrist all I had had to do was turn the key to the right to send him into the Borderlands, but at the last minute I hadn’t been able to do it. Touching that cold iron now I remembered how I’d chosen to dissolve into the shadows with him rather than lose him. I had begun to merge with him—a piece of me
had
merged with the shadows—a piece that still felt like it was a part of his dark matter. I looked up into his face and saw that his eyes were on my