I dropped lower yet to get a better look with a grimace and the pulling of muscles that had only recently been activated after years of dormancy. A compass was set into the stone, its moveable parts made of bright, shining silver. I bent and pushed the little arrow and it swung around and around, finally pointing north. “What do you think, Robert?”

According to the compass, I’d come in from the east, so I could go north, south, or east.

His skeletal finger traced the compass and tapped the E.

“East it is.” I stood and took a step, but Robert didn’t come with me. I looked back at him. “Can’t come any farther?”

He sat there, crouched over the compass, swaying faster and faster. Agitated, if I were to guess. “Dead.”

“Yeah, you said that. Look, thanks. I’ll try to bring you another chocolate bar, okay?” I tipped my head to one side. His skeletal fingers tapped over the compass again, sliding over to the S.

“Friend. Safe,” he whispered and tapped the S again.

I smiled. “Friend. Thanks, Robert. You did good.” I had a suspicion that my offer of a second candy bar had made him give me the better route. The safer path.

A quick turn on the heel, and I was walking down the path that would take me south. I made myself pat Robert on the head as I went by him.

Felt the scraggly hair.

The bone under it.

The lack of flesh.

I could see the words in Gran’s old leather-bound book inside my head, as if I were actually looking at the page, the memory coming unbidden but still helpful.

Skeletons still guard the graves of those who are forgotten.

Robert reached up and took my hand in his skeletal one. “Friend.”

Okay, the shakes I got then were nothing short of an earthquake. Because I wasn’t . . . he wasn’t . . . crap on toast, Robert really wasn’t alive, and I just didn’t know what to do with that. I’d been hanging out with him for the last hour. Talking to him. Asking him questions that he’d been reluctant to answer.

So, I said the only thing that came to mind.

“Well, I suppose I’ve been on worse dates with Himself than with someone who’s legitimately dead.”

4

I made myself give Robert’s skeletal hand a squeeze even though my head felt like a balloon that would float off my shoulders. I found myself swaying a little, in time with him, wondering just how real he and this experience in the graveyard were. Yes I knew it was real, but that little part of me that had lived in Seattle for so long was struggling to keep up. “Gran, I had no idea just how much of what you’d taught me was really real.”

Despite the indisputable fact that I was standing in the middle of a forgotten Savannah graveyard in the dark, holding hands with a skeleton, I couldn’t get past the thought that none of this should be possible.

Which had to be part of the test.

They wanted to see how I’d deal with all the crazy of the shadow world. I hadn’t told Eammon who my gran was, or that I’d been trained by her and her friends. And Corb likely didn’t know much about me, black sheep that he was. He’d come to the wedding between Himself and me when he’d been a teenager, and I’d only seen him once or twice since then.

I let go of Robert’s very real skeletal fingers and walked away down the south-leading path. “See ya ’round, Robert.”

“Later.”

I laughed. “Robert, be careful, I’ll think you’re flirting with me.”

I twisted around, but he was gone, and I could barely see the intersection I’d just left. I paused and took a few steps back, and then a few more. The path didn’t lead to any kind of crossroads.

“That’s not possible.” I shook my head. I counted the steps I took and covered easily twice the distance to where the crossroads should be.

A game, I had to remind myself this was a game, one that Corb thought I was going to fail. Himself would have bet against me too. Once more, my back straightened—if with a bit more difficulty, and a little groan when the muscles protested.

I had to keep going, that was all there was to it. The air cooled further as I walked, the path dipping closer toward the ocean, away from the graveyard, which was fine by me. The hard dirt and occasional cobblestone gradually shifted into sand that pulled at my shoes, filling them. I kicked them off, carrying them in one hand.

The sound of the surf tugged me farther south, and I let it carry me along, thinking a swim in the water would be refreshing, maybe just what I needed. Another sound wrapped around me, a lovely sort of singing. Yes, a night swim—I could go in, no one would know. I reached for my shirt to pull it off, and my fingers brushed against the pendant hanging off the chain around my neck that had been Gran's. She’d sent it to me in the mail right before she passed. My hand grew cold and my feet stilled. Night swimming? I hadn’t done that since my twenties. What the heck was wrong with me? I smacked the side of my head as if I could knock the sound of the singing out of it. Singing? Why was there singing in an interview?

Confusion rippled through me, not unlike the waves that washed up over the beach, smoothing away the lines in the sand. Convincing me it would be fine, I should just . . . Get. In. The. Water.

“Yeah, no,” I spat the words and shook my head again. Was this even part of the interview?

I frowned and looked down at my feet. Without realizing it, I’d strayed off the path that went through the old graveyard. I slipped my shoes back on, turned, and climbed up to the main path. From the top, I could barely hear the water, never mind any singing.

“Gran, what have I gotten into?”

The water didn’t call to me anymore, and there was no singing, but I did see something in the waves, just a quick flash of silver, like the scales of a fish, but the shape was wrong. It almost looked like a person diving below the waves.

A person with scales.

Holy crap. I’d almost gone into the water with a nymph.

That was no sweet little mermaid waiting in the night waters. I’d read about nymphs in my grandmother’s book. They were known to pull the unwary under the waves, drown them, and then take little bites out of the tenderest parts. The more tender the better.

I swallowed hard and, steeling myself, I started forward again. This was an interview. One I was going to get through intact with all of my tender parts, thank you very much.

The path underfoot grew rocky and started climbing upward. I wasn’t even sure how that was possible. When I looked over my shoulder, the path behind me appeared flat. It was steep in front of me, and the more I looked at it, the steeper it seemed to become, until it was almost vertical. A mountain in the middle of the graveyard.

Not possible, but I would have said that about most of what I’d encountered in here.

“Great, this is a fitness test now,” I muttered under my breath. I adjusted the waistband of my capris and started up the narrow track. There was open air to my right, and the mountain rock to my left. Which doesn’t sound so bad, except that the farther up I went, the narrower the path got until I had to put my back against the wall of rock while the tips of my toes were hanging over the edge. I knew—logically—this outcropping was not possible. There were no rock mountains in Savannah. It was lowland, marshy and flat. Especially this area. Which meant this rock formation had to be man-made.

Or made with magic.

The flop sweat from earlier was nothing compared to the sweat that flowed from me now at the thought that this outcropping I stood on, high above the solid ground, could be made of magic. Magic could disappear, just like Robert had, and that would leave me in mid-air with nothing to catch me.

But that wasn’t my biggest problem.

A howl cut through the air below me. I didn’t bother to look down the path. I didn’t need to check to know that my now one-eared friend was back.

“Crap, crap, crap!” I scrambled as fast as I could, sideways, up the rock path, my feet barely staying where I wanted them, my thin running shoes making it so I could feel every little pebble as I tried to hurry without falling. A fall now would mean bad things. Broken limbs. Lying helpless on the ground where the big wolf would no doubt gobble me up.

“Like little Red,” I said and started to laugh because it was ridiculous. Why, oh why hadn’t I listened to Gran? She’d told me that Little Red Riding Hood was based on a real story to keep children safe from, not wolves, but shifters. To keep children from becoming shifters.

Up and up I went as fast as I could, the howling and snarling of the wolf below sending my heart into overdrive. There was no Robert to help me this time, no bag to catch the wolf’s mouth and hold it shut.

Sweat flowed down my body like dozens of little rivers, but I didn’t slow. I was getting near the top, I was sure of it. It was less clear what I’d do once I got there.

As sudden as the thought hit me, I was there at the top, and my back no longer had anything to lean against. I fell backward with a screech that I couldn’t catch. I hit the ground, knocked the wind out of myself, rolled, and ended up on my hands and knees, staring at four pairs of feet as I gasped and heaved for air.

Just a note, panting was not a good look on anyone, but especially not when you were on your hands and knees staring at a bunch of strangers’ feet. Except they weren’t all strangers.

One pair of shoes I recognized, and I glared at the well-worn cowboy boots that belonged to Corb. I reached out and rapped a knuckle on one, unable to help myself as I caught my breath. “One vote against.”

A low laugh brought my head up, hair sticking to my sweat-slicked face. Eammon was on my left.

“Ah, lass, you made it. Quite the show you did put on for us.” His dark hair was braided back from his head, just like the first time I’d met him only the day before. His beard was trimmed close to his round face, and a healthy dose of good humor filled the bright green eyes that watched me.

Eammon’s clothing was all done in a deep green worked with silver trim, a suit that reminded me of something from a bygone era, but with a modern touch. Like he was being proper but still holding to his roots. I liked it.