Wang, the luduan, who was our guide, sat beside me as I struggled to calm down after the discovery of the bodies of the missing women. Lily was on her second phone call when someone cleared their throat with a sound like the croak of a frog. The luduan and I turned to look behind us. Sitting cross-legged by the stream was a bearded man with green skin. His beard was long, gray, wet, and tangled. On his head was a battered-looking stove pipe hat. To match the stove pipe hat. He wore an old-style jacket with long tails that were spread out on either side of him like a giant lily pad. One tail dangled into the water. In his green webbed fingers, he held a delicate china teacup and saucer. It was too dark to make out the pattern on the cup. He smelled ever so faintly of fish.

“Greetings, Water Spirit. Vodyanoy or vodnik?” Wang asked, and the cautious tone of his voice put me on alert.

“Vodnik, obviously. Do I look like a frog?” the man croaked out.

“No, I suppose not. But one can’t be too careful of water spirits. Least of all ones that hang around in the dark near dead bodies,” Wang said.

“Pfff. I had nothing to do with that,” he said.

“Perhaps not. But you’re far from harmless. Or is that teacup full of tea?” Wang asked.

The vodnik smiled in a not very nice way and didn’t reply.

I found my nerve and asked, “Did you see anything, Sir?” I tried to make the request sound as polite as possible. Wang was right. Most water spirits were nasty things that enjoyed drowning people. I wondered what was in the teacup if it wasn’t tea.

“Where did you get the dust?” the vodnik asked me.

“I’m a healer. I healed a fairy, and he gave it to the other guardian and me as a gift,” I explained.

“You’re a guardian? That explains what you’re doing here, then,” the vodnik said. “You’ve confirmed her tale about the dust?” he said, addressing his question to Wang.

“Yes, I have. She and the other one both bear the mark of the fairy. Although who knows what one did to get themselves so broken down they needed a healer,” Wang told the vodnik.

The vodnik asked, “Hmm. Did you ask them if they were the ones that harmed the fairy in the first place?”

Wang’s long tongue flicked out and touched his nose. “No, of course not. They’re the guardians. They wouldn’t harm the fairy.”

“Unusual? Yes. Unheard of? No. Sometimes the whole system goes down, you know.” The vodnik ran his finger around the rim of his cup, and it made a strange ringing noise. Not unlike the noise of a singing bowl or the rim of a wine glass. It was a familiar enough noise that Lily glanced over at the vodnik and frowned. She still had her phone pressed to her ear.

“I’ve lived through a few dark times. Perhaps more so than you,” said Wang.

The vodnik said, “Mmm. Perhaps one day we will have to compare tales of communism and the joy of dictators, of empires built and empires destroyed.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere. I didn’t hurt the fairy. I haven’t gone bad, and neither has Lily. I’m just out here to investigate the whereabouts of the women over there,” I said. The vodnik raised one damp black eyebrow at Wang, and Wang nodded.

“Good news, if you’re looking for the young women, they’re over there. You can count this one off as a success,” said the vodnik. His long, tangled gray beard continued to drip as if he had just emerged from the stream.

“I’m trying to do a little more than just find them. I’d like to know what happened to them, too,” I said. Now that I wasn’t looking directly at the dead bodies, my bravado returned. I could still smell them.

“They died,” the vodnik said with a half-shrug that clearly suggested that he didn’t much care one way or another.

“Well, thank you. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. If that’s all you know, we’ll just be getting on again,” I said and half turned from him dismissively.

“That’s not all I know. But perhaps that’s all I’m willing to tell you—for free,” the vodnik said.

“Nope, not interested, sorry. I can’t, anyway. As a guardian, I can’t be in debt to people or have them be in my debt. It’s not how this all works. I have to be a neutral party, or it mucks up the whole system,” I said honestly. I wanted to know what had happened here. Something horrible, obviously. But was it still happening? Was it part of something bigger? I was afraid and sad. Perhaps at some point, I’d get mad. But not today.

Wang said, “Come now, sir, this bartering is beneath you. You are not some fae of old, here to trap two trusting humans. If you’re here at all, you must know something, and more importantly, you must want us to know it, too. So, come on, spit it out.”

The vodnik welded, “Would you deprive me a bit of haggling? I’ve got nothing but time. And I have so little to amuse me these days. Why not let an old man have his pleasure?”

“You may have time, but she does not. The sooner we find out what happened here, the better. This is a nasty business. You know that,” Wang told him and sat back on his scaly dog-shaped haunches, his rotund belly bulging between his paws.

“Alright. I didn’t pay much attention when he brought the first one. It wasn’t until he brought the vamp that I started to watch him. He lugged her stinking corpse through the woods in the dead of night and laid it beside the other ones. Then he came back.” The vodnik stopped talking and peered into his tea cup.

When it became clear that he wasn’t going to start talking without prompting, I asked, “He came back with another body?”

“Not at first, no. He would just come back and sit. And watch.” The vodnik waited and watched our reactions. I kept my face still. The luduan turned his head to the side thoughtfully.

“Was he waiting for her to rise again? The vamp, I mean? Or was he drawing magic from the corpses?” I was scrambling to think of all the reasons that he could have been coming back to stop and watch. “Was he eating them? Or praying to them?”

“No. He was just watching. I asked around. Not all of the creatures will talk to me. But to those that do, I asked. He’d been coming back to visit the bodies since he left the first one,” the vodnik replied.

“So, no one could tell what he was doing to them?” I frowned. “What did you say he was, again?”

“That’s because I didn’t say,” replied the vodnik, smiling. He clearly wanted me to ask him directly. I waited and stared at him pointedly. He kept smiling blandly back. There wasn’t much I could do. In the end, he held the trump card. Knowing what kind of creature the killer was could seriously narrow down the hunt. Even the most populous magical humanoids had a finite number of members. If he was something like a demon, it wouldn’t help that much since they weren’t that easy to track down, but it would still let us know who it wasn’t.

“Well, what is he, then?” I caved first.

The vodnik smiled in a not very nice way and said, “Human.”

Whatever answers I had considered and whatever explanation for the crimes I had been expecting, a human murderer hadn’t been anywhere on the list. Even Wang was surprised. He stood up and licked the air a whole bunch. “He’s telling the truth, Harper.”

“Of course, I am. I wouldn’t bother to lie when the truth is so delightfully chaotic. A human. Hunting us. The mind boggles.” The vodnik looked delighted. I couldn’t figure out quite why. Was it the violence he enjoyed? The dark irony? For some reason, this delighted him.

“You couldn’t lie with me around anyway, old frog,” Wang said. He clearly was not pleased that the murderer was human.

“Do you think he was like a scientist or the government? Was he working alone? How big does this go? Have we been compromised?” I asked. “Is this the first stage of exposure? Some sort of purge?”

“He was working alone. At least no one around here ever saw him with anyone else. And I don’t think he was working for any organization or the state. I think he was just a lone man who liked hunting. Maybe liked a little killing. They aren’t unheard of. Maybe they aren’t even rare,” he said.

I didn’t have much more to say to the vodnik. I asked him if there was anyone else around that I could talk to, but he claimed they were all asleep for the night, which seemed likely, but maybe he just didn’t want us to talk to anyone else. I wasn’t sure what to believe.

Finally, Lily hung up her phone and came over. The vodnik gasped as if he were punched, and his beard started to dry up. “What manner of foul beast are you?”

“This is Lily. She’s the other guardian with me.”

“If someone has made that abomination a guardian, then we are living in very dark times indeed.” He lifted his top hat, placed his teacup on his head, replaced the hat, and slipped into the water.

“How rude,” the luduan growled. Lily smiled at him.

“How’s Jen?” I asked. “How did she take the news?”

Lily shrugged. “She sounded . . . okay. But I’m sure that she’s very, very not okay. She’s going to call the rest of her pack, tell them we found Alice, and they will head out here. I also talked to Chris. I left a message for the Safe that we had found the dryad. Any leads on the fourth body?”

“No. But he, the vodnik, saw the murderer. He claims it’s a human man,” I told Lily.

“What? Are you serious?” Lily asked.

“I know. But that’s what he said. And I guess he can’t lie in front of Wang.” I looked at the little creature, and he nodded to confirm my statement.

“Wow. Is he government or private sector?” Lily asked.

“I don’t think either. But obviously, the vodnik is a terrible judge of character,” I said. “When do you think everyone is going to get here?” I suddenly felt an odd mix of tired and sad. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be here when Jen came to collect her sister’s body. Maybe her dad would do it alone. Not that it was fair that the man would have to collect his decaying child’s body. How would they even get it home? I had a dreadful mental image of Jen’s giant of a father crying, picking up his daughter’s bones, and putting them into a plastic bag.

“Shouldn’t be more than an hour. The cleaners may arrive first,” Lily said.

“You called Jo?” I asked.

“Yeah. You didn’t think we were just going to leave them here,” Lily said.

“I thought the families would take them home or something. I hadn’t given it too much thought,” I told her. We waited in silence. The woods around swayed in the wind, which at least carried the smell away from us. I would have liked to go back to the car and wait for the others there, but that seemed horribly rude somehow. We were supposed to sit this last vigil and watch over the women. I wondered if the vodnik was lurking in his stream, watching us. I could hear the water running over the rocks and the occasional odd splash. Maybe it was him watching us from outside the glow of Wang’s light.

I found my mind wandering back to the issue of the murders themselves. That the murderer had been human was a complete shock to me. I had expected a lot of things, but that wasn’t it. Why had he come back to look at the bodies? Was he looking at us now? Was this a trap? The paranoia surged over me. The feeling of being watched intensified. Was it the vodnik or the murder?

“Hey, girls! Why are you making more work for me?” Jo’s voice broke up my dark thoughts. She bounded over the bridge in a white jumpsuit with the hood pulled back, her face mask down around her chin. Behind her were several other cleaners, fully suited up and silent. Jo said they found her a bit of a disappointment. Disapproval radiated off of them as they brushed past her and us and began to set up.

“Be kind. That’s Jen’s sister,” Lily told her.

“Girlfriend, it’s always someone’s sister. Or mother. Or father. You know I treat ‘em right. I’m never going to get that transfer to L.A. if I don’t.”

Jo hugged Lily and me. Before she let me go, she whispered in my ear, “I’ll take care of your friend.”

She pulled up her hood and joined the swarm of cleaners massing over the site. I didn’t see them do anything magical, but Lily went still, so they must have been doing something. They moved in perfect synchronization, and they were done before I could figure out how or even what they were doing.

As quickly as they had arrived, they swarmed out. Jo waved but didn’t speak. Where the bodies and dead grass had been, there were now three black body bags. I could barely make them out in the dark. I had to walk over and count them with my cell phone light.

I asked, “Who do you think they took?”

“No one," said Wang from his seat beside us, "They just made the dryad return to the earth a little faster, is all. They can encourage that kind of magic.”

“What are they?” I asked Lily.

“The cleaners? I don’t know. I guess they are our counterparts, in a way. When we fail, they clean up. I’ve never had to call them before. I had to text Jo for the main number,” Lily said. “You can ask Jo to explain. But it would be like trying to explain being a guardian. It’s everything, and nothing and whatever needs doing at the time.”

“How much longer do we have to wait out here?” I asked.

“I have no idea? Why?” Lily said.

“Because I’m starting to get sleepy,” I told her.

“Don’t worry. I’ll drive home,” Lily told me. I moved over to sit beside her and put my head on her shoulder. I started nodding off when Lily’s boyfriend, Chris, arrived. Lily stood up so fast I fell over and woke up with a jolt. I lay there, groggy for a second. I listened to them fawn over each other and rolled my eyes. I picked myself up and brushed myself off. Chris and Lily pulled apart. Chris shook himself, adjusting to what I assumed being a breather again. He was a handsome man with a compelling air. Lily adored him. I should have liked him just because he was kind to Lily. But there was something about him that I found unpleasant. Even if I didn’t like Chris very much, I was still glad for his company in the dark woods with a murderer on the loose.