Page 15 of Panther in the Shadows
Skin grey-blue like drowned flesh. Eyes filmed over white. Moving with jerky, wrong motions like puppets on invisible strings. The missing dock workers. Jamie Fraser. Others I don't recognize, pulled from graves the ocean claimed years ago.
The drowned are rising.
And then I see her.
Small. Child-sized. Dark hair floating in the current like kelp. She turns, and even through the corrupted vision, I recognize the face.
Elspeth.
My sister. Eight years old when she drowned. Still eight years old now, preserved by whatever magic binds her to these waters. Her eyes—my eyes—stare through me with terrible awareness.
"Moira." Her voice carries through water and vision both, childlike and horrible. "I've been waiting so long."
Pulling back does nothing. The vision holds me, drags me deeper. More images flash. The docks, but wrong. Symbols carved into pilings below the waterline, blood magic mixed with necromancy. Each death feeding power into those symbols. Each sacrifice pulling the drowned closer to the surface.
Pulling Elspeth closer. Everything shifts, reforms.
A woman with salt-white hair—her power glimmering like fever heat. "Your grandmother tried so hard." She circles me, moving in a slow spiral. "All those years protecting these waters. But she couldn't protect everyone, could she? Somethings slip through. Some things wait. And the drowned remember.”
The drowned. Ice floods my veins.
Her smile widens. "You still hear it, don't you?" Her voice softens, which somehow makes it worse. "That day. The waves. Her voice calling for you. And you didn't come."
"Stop." The word tears out of me.
"But I can bring her home." Something like kindness crosses her face. "Not as she is now. As she was. Eight years old, laughing, alive. Would you like that, Moira? Would you like your sister back?"
"She's dead. You can't bring back the dead."
"Can't I?" The woman gestures.
One more image sears itself into my mind. Elspeth rising from the water, walking onto the beach, looking exactly as she did the day she drowned. Whole. Alive. Smiling.
It's a lie. Has to be. But my chest aches with the wanting anyway. All the years, and some part of me would give anything to have her back.
"And if I refuse?"
The woman's expression goes cold. "Then I raise her anyway. But she won't be yours. She'll be mine. And the first thing I'll make her do is tear through everyone you've ever loved."
The vision shifts one final time. Elspeth with those dead, filmed-over eyes, moving through the inn. Through Stormhaven. Bodies in her wake. All wearing faces I know. Old Tom. Danny Morrison. Eliza. Declan.
"Choose wisely, sea witch. You don't have much time."
The vision breaks.
Back in the alley, gasping, my hands pressed against cold cobblestones. The shells are still there, but their power is fading. Used up. Whatever message they carried has been received.
My magic recoils, snapping back so fast the world spins. That wasn't just corrupted power. That was necromancy. Someone powerful enough to raise the drowned. Someone who knows about Elspeth, knows about that day, knows exactly where to twist the knife.
Gathering the shells with shaking hands. Carrying them inside. Dumping them into a bucket of salt water. Purification. Cleansing. But what was seen can't be washed away.
Elspeth. Someone wants to raise my dead sister. Either to give her back to me or turn her into a weapon. Either way, they're using her. Using my guilt. Using years of grief I've never let myself properly feel.
Stand at the window overlooking the harbor. The water is restless tonight. Choppy. Angry. The kind of sea that warns sailors to stay ashore.
The phone sits on the table. One call to Declan. Tell him about the blood, the shells, the vision. About Elspeth. Let the wolves handle it.
But this isn't wolf business. This is sea witch business. And it's about my sister. My failure. My guilt.
