I got home hours before Sam did. While I waited up for him, I settled in with the lantern and one of my paperbacks. I was rereading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which was really quite accurate to New England in the 1680's and filled me with sympathetic triumph and horror. I knew a lot of people like Goodwife Cruff and Matthew Wood, and I enjoyed seeing them get their comeuppance.

Once I'd turned the last page of the book and Sam still wasn't home, I gave up, flicked off the lantern, and fell asleep. Not until almost morning did I awaken to a small commotion: Sam's footsteps sudden against the ground, then a loud clang as he stumbled against the discarded hubcap that lay near the stairs. My brow creasing with worry, I stirred and walked toward the staircase. Sam never tripped over anything. He could see in pitch darkness, and navigate obstacles at, almost literally, the speed of light. As he gripped the slim iron banister and started up the steps, I saw that his pace was arduous and his back bent as if under a heavy weight. My heart fluttered, and I hurried to his side.

"My God, Sam," I breathed. "What happened to you?"

He indicated the second story with a jerk of his chin, and I understood that he wanted to get to our little nest first. I wrapped my arm around his back and helped him walk, feeling around as inconspicuously as possible for bullet holes. But he couldn't have been shot, not like Alexander. When an incubus finds himself on the wrong end of a gun, nearly always wielded by an angry boyfriend or husband, he is instantly immolated; the force and combustion of the bullet destroy him the same way a backburn will destroy a wildfire. Usually his human female partner is killed by the same bullet, with no evidence left behind that another man had been in the room at all. There is no such thing as an incubus with a gunshot wound. He is healthy one moment, nonexistent the next.

Sam lowered himself to the blankets and curled up his side. I pulled a spare coverlet over him in a nervous protective gesture, and he seemed to welcome it. "Light a candle," he said. His voice was hoarse.

I grabbed the nearest pillar candle from a corner and held it toward him. He touched the wick between two fingers and it sparked to life. Its small glow seemed to soothe him, and he let out a shaky sigh. I held it up where he could see it and brushed his hair back from his eyes. The soft light flickered over his face, casting his skin in the warmest tones.

"I went to the same woman's," he began. "Like I said I would. I started in the woods and came in through the back like I did last time. I had my way with her. She seemed happy to see me again. Loud. And wild. She scratched up my back. Then I went to leave." His breath shuddered, and the candle flame leaped in response. "I left through the open window. As a spark, you know. But the wind gusts were poor, so at the edge of the woods behind the house I hit the ground and decided I'd walk for a while. I turned and looked back at the house, and that's when I saw something floating in the pool. I knew it was wrong. I knew right away that something was wrong."

I rubbed his shoulder, and he rocked his body a bit against the floor. "What was it?"

"I ran over and saw it was just what I feared. The girl, the little one. Cameron's. Floating facedown in her nightie. Everything was dark- of course I could see, but nobody else would have. It was terrifying, Tabby. The most horrible thing I've seen since-" He shook his head. "The most horrible thing. Worse than the fire. I'm sure she hadn't been there on my way in or I would have noticed. The thought that I woke her up with what I was doing to her mother and set her wandering around-" His voice had climbed to a nearly hysterical register. "What an absolute nightmare."

Dread rested like a stone against my heart. "Well, what did you do?"

"I ran over and climbed the fence, then lay on my stomach beside the pool and reached for her as far as I could. I looked around for the skimmer her mother was using last time, but I couldn't see it. I didn't know what to do-"

"And you couldn't go in," I added. All of my chest felt cold, as if the magic of it was fading and turning me instead to ice. Sam and I had outlived so many of our children; we had seen our cambions grow old and frail, or die young and tragically, ever so many times. But such a scene had never unfolded before either of us; we only knew of it after the fact. Looking at his distant, traumatized gaze, I could hardly imagine how he must have felt to see one of his own dying in a pool of water just outside his grasp, knowing that to go into the water would mean death for him as well. He couldn't rescue her because he couldn't survive it himself.

"But I did," he said.

The sentence made no sense. I cocked my head in dismay. "What?"

"I can't get the water inside my body, that's all. And I don't like water, you know- no more than I would have walked across a bed of coals when I was human. But she was drowning, and so- I hardly even gave it a thought- I slid into the pool and walked through the water to where she was floating, and I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder. I was drenched. The water came up to here on my chest." With a hand he indicated a line not far below his neck. "I lay her on the concrete and pulled myself out of the pool. My clothes were so heavy, and the feeling was like- well, like being on fire. Every alarm in my mind was going off to warn me how much danger I was in. I turned the girl onto her side and clapped her on the back, and water flowed out of her mouth. I tried to tell by her temperature whether she was alive or dead, but I couldn't. She felt like- the same temperature as you. I don't know what that means, because I'm so warm. I've never touched a child so I don't know how they should feel."

I shook my head. "It probably doesn't mean anything good."

He drew his knees closer to his chest. "Well, I rolled her to her back and pinched her nose shut and breathed into her mouth. I don't even know if I exhale any oxygen, Tabby. For all I know I consume all of it. But it was all I could think of to do. And after I did that a few times she choked up all this water that went straight into my mouth-"

"Oh, no," I gasped.

"And I spat it out and screamed. I really did. It was all so horrifying and I couldn't help it. This little girl, my cambion, dying in front of me, and the water on my skin, and the feeling of drowning, myself- I've never been so frightened. Then the patio lights flicked on, and the girl coughed and coughed, and so I breathed into her mouth a few more times. I heard a noise, and when I looked up the woman was running toward me. The mother. She was awake, and she looked me straight in the eye."

"And what did she do?"

"She started screaming. I realized then that I had just violated the rule- in fifty different ways, most likely- and so you and I both were probably both in a ton of trouble. I tried to spark away, but I couldn't because my fucking clothes- excuse me, Tabby- were too wet. So I ran into the woods, and then I walked back, all the way from the other side of town. I heard sirens almost the entire way."

I reached beneath the blanket and felt his jeans. "Well, never mind about the rule. I'll bet you saved her life. And you feel dry now."

"Yes, I stopped under a bridge and took everything off and essentially torched it all dry with a pine bough. But I must still be too wet, because I'm not working right. My skin feels wrong, and my throat burns."

"Maybe you need to dry it out. Have a cigarette."

"My pack got ruined in the pool."

I left him on the blankets and retrieved the last of the bottle of wine I had opened with Meridiana. I poured him a glass, but when I returned with it he shook his head and held up a refusing hand. "I can't, sorry. The thought of any kind of liquid in my throat- ugh."

I set the glass on the window ledge and looked down at him shivering beneath the blanket. Damn it all, I thought, cursing in my mind the very nature of being what we were, where there was no handbook or counselor or any sort of guidance to help us share wisdom amongst ourselves or navigate our experience. We had only chance encounters with others of our kind, and tenuous friendships, and the occasional meeting with leaders more interested in enforcing a few ancient rules than in helping us get through our day-to-day lives.

"I'm going to try to find Meridiana," I told him. "I want to ask her what to do. Didn't you say her new partner lives in the abandoned school?"

"Yeah."

"Will you be all right if I leave you for a little while?"

He hesitated, but then nodded.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," I told him, and hurried out into the night.