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The woman he’s with curls a finger, beckoning to him. “She’s nosey. Let’s go somewhere more private.”

“No, don’t go with her.” Darcy’s hand moves to the knife on her belt, and I look toward the scene that’s caught her eye.

Seth is leaning on his partner, his body heavy in her arms. She lifts her face from his neck, and blood trickles from her lush red lips.

With a hiss, she tosses him aside and sets her sights on us, flashing her blood-stained fangs.

“Baobhan-sìth,” Darcy says, brandishing her knife as she calls out, “Don’t let them scratch you. Grab anything iron and swing like the devil.”

I’ve heard tales of the vampiric fae creatures who slash their victims’ necks and drink their blood to sustain their life force. I can understand why Darcy’s announcement sends everyone into a panic.

Chairs slide across the floor, and stools fall over. A glass breaks, and a man races for the exit, only to be intercepted by a woman wrapping her pale hands around his neck. She splits his flesh with her sharp claws and drags him to her mouth with inhuman strength, blood pouring past the seal of her lips.

“Let’s go.” Darcy grabs me and pulls me close to her body, holding her knife out in front of us as a baobh-shìth skitters toward me, deer hooves clicking on the floor beneath her skirt instead of feet.

Her mesmerizing eyes shift to her right, and she changes her trajectory, moving at an unnatural speed to grab the person rushing up beside me.

Zephyr.

They wrap one hand around my wrist and hold their unsheathed sword in the other, but there’s no time to swing it. The baobh-shìth pushes them back and slashes a claw across their neck.

“No,” I screech as she pierces their flesh.

I grab my own wrist, realizing they dropped their aether to touch my skin. They ran for me and left themself unguarded.

“You have to help them,” I tell Darcy. “Please.”

“No. The professor is as good as dead. Do not go near them unless you want to be like them. She spins away from me, slicing at another baobh-shìth. “Run past the dunes until you get to the stream. They won’t be able to follow you past it.”

“I can’t–”

“Go, I need to make sure that your sailor lives through this,” Zephyr says, their words so quiet they’re practically in my head. “Get to the stream, and I’ll find you again.”

It’s a lie, a desperate promise. “No.”

“I’ll fend them off while you get out of here,” Darcy yells. “Now, go!”

There’s a straight shot to the door. I race for it, boots slipping through slick puddles of blood.

Somehow I’m able to make it out to the boardwalk leading away from the inn. Behind me, skiffs knock about beside the docks, but I can’t reach a boat without tracing back past the tavern.

I veer off of the soggy planks, my feet pounding with every step over the hill of compact sand as I follow Darcy’s instructions.

Prickly weeds and twigs snag on my dress, but I keep hurtling toward the sparse woods ahead, trying to outrun the tears streaming down my face. Zephyr’s neck has been slashed.

By the end of the night, they’ll either be drained to a husk or transformed into one of those creatures. They’ll never see the light of day again.

Darcy is still in there too. So is the rest of the crew.

I push through a hedge of stringy shrubs and try to lose myself in a maze of pinewood trees, moving north toward the sound of trickling water.

The moon is returning overhead. I catch a glimpse of half her face shining through the dead leaves.

At least she’s still with me.

I grunt and grit my teeth, gnashing back at the pain shooting up my calves. The stream is just up ahead.

I can see the moonlight glimmering on its calm surface. A pale hand reaches out from behind a thin tree trunk, snatching my arm as I’m springing off the ground to leap onto a moss-covered rock.