Chapter 17

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the patch of grass where the pool had vanished.

One moment it was churning, alive, dragging that nightmare creature down into its depths.

Now there was only wet soil, shining dark in the moonlight, as if nothing had happened.

Kelly shivered in my arms. Her wet hair clung to her face, and her eyes were dazed but awake.

“Did I…dream that?” she whispered.

“No,” I said softly. My own voice didn’t sound like me.

“You’re okay. We’ve got you.”

But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure it was true.

Samantha sat back on her heels, staring at her trembling hands as though they were strangers.

The glow that had flared in her eyes was gone, but the fear stayed.

“I didn’t mean to— I just wanted to stop it. Then the tap—”

Her words stumbled, her usual sharp wit swallowed by disbelief.

Nick knelt beside her, trying for a calm he didn’t feel.

“You saved all of us, Sam. Don’t question it.”

“I blasted a monster into a magic puddle,” she shot back, her voice shaky but gaining volume.

“That’s not in the Girl-Scout survival handbook, Nick.”

Brandon stepped closer, his shadow cutting across the damp ground.

His expression was unreadable, but his tone was certain.

“It wasn’t you alone. Something old answered you. Something that’s been waiting in the water.”

Samantha blinked up at him. “You’re saying I’ve got… what, a guardian mermaid?”

“No,” he said simply. “Not a mermaid. A water-spirit. They don’t usually help unless called. Somehow, you called.”

Lisa hugged her arms to herself, still pale from the fight.

“I felt it,” she murmured. “A presence. Cold but…protective. Like it hated that thing as much as we did.”

A gust of night air stirred the wet grass, and I shivered despite the summer warmth.

The memory of the Leprechaun’s red eyes still clung to me, but what unsettled me more was Sam’s power—and the strange familiarity in the water’s glow.

Kelly tried to sit up, grimacing at the mud on her clothes.

“I don’t understand. Why me? Why would that…thing come after me?”

“Cursed object,” Brandon replied, glancing at the crystal Leprechaun still trapped in the salt circle on the porch.

“Someone placed it near you to lure it here. The question is who—and why now.”

Nick helped Kelly to her feet.

“She needs a hospital. We can figure out the who and why after she’s checked .”

Sam stood, brushing mud off her jeans.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of horror-movie backyard before something else decides to crash the party.”

As we guided Kelly toward the street where Brandon’s car waited, I kept glancing back at the dark patch of lawn.

I swore the wet grass rippled once, like a breath moving beneath the earth.

The ride back to my house was quiet, except for the hum of the engine and Kelly’s soft breathing in the back seat.

Sam sat by the window, her reflection pale and thoughtful in the glass.

Nick drove with one hand on the wheel, the other gripping the steering wheel tighter than he probably realized.

Brandon’s gaze stayed fixed on the road ahead, as if expecting something else to rise out of the night.

When we reached my driveway, the porch light cast a warm halo over us, but it didn’t chase away the chill that clung to my skin.

Inside, Lisa fetched blankets for Kelly while Sam paced the living room like a caged cat.

“I can’t stop thinking about the way that thing looked at me before the water hit it,” she said suddenly.

“It was like it knew me. Like it recognized me.”

Nick handed her a mug of tea, trying to steady her nerves.

“It was a monster, Sam. Don’t give it more power by thinking it was personal.”

But I understood what she meant. I felt it too—the sense that none of tonight’s events were random.

Kelly lay curled on the couch, wrapped in blankets.

Her voice was thin but steady. “I saw something in the water before I blacked out. A face… with blue eyes. It smiled at me.”

Sam froze. “Great. So my ‘guardian water-thing’ smiles at drowning girls. That’s comforting.”

Lisa, still sitting near the couch, tilted her head as if listening to something distant.

“It wasn’t smiling at you. It was… testing. Deciding if you were worth saving.”

That earned her a round of uneasy stares.

Brandon finally spoke, leaning against the wall with arms crossed.

“Water spirits don’t do anything for free. Tonight it chose to help—maybe because Sam channeled it.

But choices like that have a price.”

Sam let out a dry laugh that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Fantastic. I’m already broke. I can’t afford a supernatural water bill.”

Nick shot her a look, but I caught the tightness in his jaw.

He was as worried as the rest of us, just better at hiding it.

Later, when the others drifted into uneasy sleep—Kelly on the couch, Sam curled in a chair, Nick half-dozing at the table—I found myself standing at the kitchen sink, staring at the silver thread of water running from the tap.

The moonlight caught it, turning it the same cold blue I’d seen in the yard.

A ripple moved across the surface as if answering my thoughts.

“You were watching us,” I whispered, not sure why I spoke aloud.

No reply came, but the trickle of water trembled once before falling still.

A soft step behind me made me jump.

Brandon stood in the doorway, arms folded.

“You feel it too,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question.

I nodded, gripping the edge of the sink.

“It’s like it’s still here. Like it hasn’t left.”

His gaze shifted to the stream of water. “It hasn’t. And that’s what worries me.”

I turned to face him, uneasy. “Why?”

“Spirits don’t linger without reason. If it stayed, it wants something—from Sam… or from you.”

That sent a chill straight through me.

Before I could ask what he meant, Kelly stirred in the living room and moaned softly in her sleep.

Brandon’s eyes darkened. “Get some rest, Aili."

I lay awake long after the house fell quiet, listening to the distant sound of water running somewhere in the pipes.

Every creak and whisper of the night sounded like a warning.

In my dreams—if they were dreams at all—I stood at the edge of that vanished pool.

The blue-eyed face rose again from the depths, lips moving soundlessly.

When I leaned closer, I heard it at last, a voice like rushing rivers whispering only two words:

“Debt owed.”

I woke with a start, the taste of cold water on my lips, and the moonlight spilling across my blanket like liquid silver.