Deep Betrayal

said.
    “What are you looking for?”
    “Your soggy cigarettes are the only offering here. There’s nothing else. No new copper, no tobacco, no wild rice …”
    “I don’t know about the copper, but wouldn’t tobacco and rice have rotted over time? You don’t really expect that to still be here?”
    “That’s my point. It’s been a long time since anyone has made any offering. Anything dropped over the falls would have been sucked inside like we were. There’s nothing here.”
    “So what does that mean?”
    “Maris was right. We’re not the only ones who forgot about Maighdean Mara. Her human followers have forgottenher, too. She’s been neglected for a very long time. No wonder she’s gone off to fend for herself.”
    “If she’s not here, how do we find her?” I asked.
    “We’re going to need more help.”
    Later that night, after Calder had left to look for Dad, I sat on the porch roof, utterly defeated. In all of Calder’s years in the lake, he’d never seen sign of Maighdean Mara. In all the searching Calder and Dad had done for Maris and Pavati, they’d never seen any evidence of her. In all my experimentation, I’d never once heard the voice of a monster in the channel. What chance did we really have of finding her? And if we did find her, what chance did we have of stopping her?
    Doubt weighed heavily on my thoughts. We stood a much better chance of stopping the killings if Dad was behind them. But I couldn’t go there. Try as I might, it was impossible to imagine him that way—snatching Scotty so quickly no one else noticed. Bringing him down so deep, the surface was undisturbed.
    I forced my thoughts back to Maighdean Mara. The dagger was real after all. And so was the cave. But other than the wind-chime carving, I had no clear image of what Maighdean Mara even looked like. Every time I tried to picture her as a killer, it wasn’t a monster I saw. Instead, I imagined a staggeringly beautiful face, with dark spiraling hair and violet eyes that evoked the sky after the rain. Pavati.
    Outside my open window, there was no wind, no birds, no June bugs bouncing against the screen. It was easy to hear the water lapping at the shore, and with it anunfamiliar humming. When the humming turned to soft laughter, I moved to the window. The outdoor lights were off, but the moon beat a path of light across the water to our dock. I thought I could pick out some dark shapes near the shore. Dad?
    I snuck outside, being careful not to let the front door slam, and picked my way across the yard. As I got closer, I heard bits of conversation, an “I can’t” and “It’s too hard.”
    It wasn’t Dad. It was Sophie. She sat cross-legged in the dark at the end of the dock, centered in the beam of moonlight, talking to herself. I’d never known her to sleepwalk.
    “Sophie?” I whispered through the night air. She didn’t respond.
    I crept closer. More indistinct murmurs. I thought someone said “sunglasses” (or “fun classes” or maybe “my guess is”). And then another voice, raspy in the night. “You have to set it up. Two days should give me enough time to prepare. Tuesday at dusk. Can you do it?”
    Sophie said, “How am I supposed to—”
    “Tell him to go to the flat rocks—south of town—he’ll know the place. You must get him there.”
    “And if I do, you think you’ll be able to convince him?” Sophie asked.
    “Sophie,” I called again.
    This time Sophie startled and whipped around, half crouched, half ready to bolt. There was a small splash from the water, but when I got close enough to see, there was nothing there.
    “Who were you talking to?” I asked.
    “No one.”
    “Don’t lie to me. Was it Dad?”
    “It wasn’t Dad,” she said.
    “Someone else then?”
    There was a small pip of a sound, and Sophie turned toward the lake. I was not entirely surprised to see Pavati’s face emerge from the inky blackness—I had been imagining her so clearly just moments before. She folded her arms across her withered chest and tapped her fingers against her arms, making it clear that my presence was unwanted. Her face, yellow as the moon above her, squinted at me from the darkness, her eyes sunken in the sockets, her cheekbones protruding.
    “I’ve always liked your sister better,” she said. “You’ve been problematic since the beginning.” She rose a few inches higher in the water, and her dark hair lay flat against her razor-sharp jaw and over her pointed