Deep Betrayal

you bringing me with you?”
    “I need someone to report back if things … don’t go well.”
    “Hold up. For one second, just stop, will you? What’s this really about?”
    He kept his eyes on the road and tightened his grip on the wheel. “It’s about stopping the killings. What else would it be about?”
    “It’s not that you’re …”
    “What?”
    “Never mind,” I said. If Calder was still feeling bad about not having rescued me before, if he was now trying to prove something to himself, or to me, or to my family, well … I wasn’t going to stand in the way of him giving it his absolute, most testosterone-fueled best effort. If this Maighdean Mara was real, if Daniel was right and we were heading off to face a killer, I sure didn’t want Calder to hold anything back.
    He drove west, speeding as much as he dared in between the towns, then dropping the speedometer down to a crawl through each one. He stared at the road in front of us. He didn’t have much more to say to me, which gave me plenty of time to think.
    One thing that had been bothering me was something Maris had said. Actually … lots of things Maris had said, but one thing in particular, so I broke the silence and asked him.
    “So are you going to tell me what Maris meant by ‘three green stones’?”
    Calder pressed his lips together and downshifted as we entered the next town.
    “It’s just another story, something our mother used to tell us when she put us to bed. I told you that Maighdean Mara had three daughters. Well, she became paranoid that others of her kind would move west to take over her domain. You know, interfere with her hunting rights. So she decided to give each of her daughters a gift that—should they ever get separated from her—they could show her when they returned, and she would recognize them as her own.
    “She gave Odahingum an iron chariot to travel the lake and survey the boundaries of their kingdom. She gave Namid a necklace that she wore above her heart to collect and store the histories of our people, and to her youngest, Sheshebens, she gave a small, copper-handled dagger with the words Safe Passage Home written on it.”
    “Okaaay,” I said. “What about the stones?”
    Calder looked at me sideways and rolled his eyes at my impatience. “Then, one November, the lake was threatened by a sea monster.”
    “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
    “It had already wiped out every living thing east of the Pictured Rocks, down to the smallest fish. To keep it from crossing into their territory, the three sisters stirred up a terrible storm.
    “They shook and split the trees. They made waves leap thirty feet into the sky. The great monster was thwarted, but Sheshebens was also lost. Her sisters found her dagger settled in the sand beneath the battle waves.
    “They held out hope that she’d return someday, so the two remaining sisters buried her dagger under three green stones on the bank below the falls.”
    “And Maris thinks that dagger is still there?” I asked.
    “She thinks if I can find it, it’s all the proof we need that the legend is real. And if Maighdean Mara is real, I’ll need the dagger if she’s going to recognize me as one of her own. It’s my ticket to getting close to her without getting killed in the process.”
    Less than two hours later, we pulled off Highway 61 and into a wayside rest stop. The area was dense with white and Norway pine. The smell of tree sap drifted through my open window. I got out and slammed the door behind me. Bees buzzed in the lilac and honeysuckle planted alongside the parking lot, but the air was full of a much bigger sound. In fact, it reverberated as if a freight train were rushing by, or a low-flying airplane. In my mind’s eye, I could picture the black river churning on the rocks, recklessly rushing for the precipice before becoming Copper Falls. If Maighdean Mara didn’t kill us, it would only be because we were already cut to ribbons.
    I looked up at Calder, questioning.
    “We’re not going to swim over the falls, Lily. Unless, of course, you have a death wish.” He looked down at me. “Don’t answer that.”
    “I guess I assumed that was the only way down.”
    “If Maighdean Mara exists, all the stories say she lives behind the falls. Not at the top and not in the falling. Besides, check out all the cars. Tourists aren’t really big on witnessing double suicides.”
    “Just the sadistic ones,” I said.
    “I’m going