The man who prepared me to drown takes his coffee black, no sugar.

  Three days I watch him. Three days of cafés and gardens and the careful ritual of his routine.

  Mercer takes his coffee at nine. Walks the Luxembourg at three. Attends mass on Sunday, confession on Wednesday, and every other Thursday evening he hosts what Mei's file calls "folkloric salons—gatherings of academics and enthusiasts who discuss mythology and ancient customs in his comfortable Marais apartment.

  The next salon is tomorrow night.

  "Not ready." Mei sits on the windowsill, flat eyes assessing. "Webb, Garrett—ambush kills. Quick and clean." A pause. "This is different."

  I nod.

  "Do you? Getting close to a target means becoming someone else. Maintaining a fiction for hours while your body screams at you to act. One wrong word, one moment where the mask slips—"

  "I know." I meet her gaze. "But I need to understand him. I need to know how he justifies it to himself. What he tells himself about the children he's prepared."

  "Why does that matter?"

  "Because Thomas Garrett died confused. He genuinely didn't understand what he'd done wrong." The memory surfaces—his eyes going blank, that look of pure bewilderment as the light left them. "I want Mercer to understand. I want him to know exactly why he's dying, and I can't give him that if I don't understand how he thinks."

  Mei is quiet for a long moment. Rain has started again, streaking the window behind her, and in the gray light she looks almost translucent—a ghost of vengeance, ageless and patient.

  "You could just kill him," she says. "It's faster. Less complicated. Generally less likely to end with you dead in a cultist's sitting room."

  "That's rather comforting."

  "I'm not here to comfort you. I'm here to keep you alive long enough to be useful."

  I almost smile, surprising myself. Mei's particular brand of brutal honesty has become oddly reassuring over the months we've worked together. At least with her, I always know where I stand.

  "There's a scholar." She paused. "A real one. English girl studying folklore at the Sorbonne. She's been trying to get an invitation to Mercer's salon for months."

  "And?"

  "And she sailed home last week. Family emergency. She won't be back until spring." A thin smile crosses Mei's face. "Her letter of introduction arrived three days ago. It's been sitting in Mercer's post box, waiting for a young scholar who will never come to claim it."

  "You want me to become her."

  "I want you to borrow her credentials. Miss Catherine Wells. Twenty years old, specializing in maritime folklore of the British Isles. Her professors speak highly of her curiosity, her diligence, her particular interest in the intersection of myth and historical maritime disasters."

  I imagine it. Walking into a room full of people who worship the thing that lives in the deep, wearing a dead girl's name like a mask. Sitting across from Mercer, drinking his tea, listening to him lecture about ancient rituals while the marks burn beneath my ribs.

  "Do it," I say.

  The salon is held in Mercer's apartment above the pharmacy—a warm, cluttered space full of books and artifacts and the comfortable disorder of a man who lives alone with his obsessions. Oil lamps cast golden shadows across walls lined with shelves, and the smell of pipe tobacco mingles with something else, something almost imperceptible beneath the domestic warmth.

  Salt. I smell salt.

  The marks stir inside my torso as I step through the door. They know this place. Know what happens here, or what's connected to what happens here. The congregation's fingerprints are everywhere if you know how to look—in the carved symbols on certain book spines, in the subtle wrongness of the bronze figures displayed on the mantelpiece, in the way the other guests glance at each other with the easy familiarity of shared secrets.

  There are eight of us, including Mercer. I recognize none of them from Mei's files on the congregation's Paris operation, which means they're either civilian enthusiasts or members careful enough to avoid documentation. Either way, I keep my smile pleasant and my observations sharp.

  "Miss Wells!" Mercer crosses the room with both hands extended, his face creasing into that familiar gentle smile. "I was so delighted to receive your professor's letter. Maritime folklore is a particular passion of mine—the British Isles have such rich traditions."

  His hands are warm and dry. The hands that held the cup. The hands that guided children toward the water.

  "The pleasure is mine, Professor Mercer." I make my voice light, eager—the voice of a young scholar meeting an admired figure. "I've read your monograph on selkie legends. Your analysis of the Orkney variants was fascinating."

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "You have good taste." He guides me toward a chair near the fire, his hand light on my elbow. The marks scream. I smile. "Though I confess the monograph only scratched the surface. There are deeper patterns in those tales—connections to much older traditions that most scholars miss entirely."

  "What kind of connections?"

  His eyes gleam. "The kind that require patience to discuss. But we have all evening, Miss Wells. All evening, and tea, and the company of fellow seekers after ancient truth."

  Discussion ranges across mythology and maritime disaster for two hours. Mercer is charming—there's no other word for it. He listens intently, asks probing questions, makes even the youngest participants feel their contributions matter. He tells stories about his research expeditions with self-deprecating humor, painting himself as a bumbling academic stumbling across treasures by accident.

  I watch the other guests fall under his spell. A young professor from the Sorbonne, arguing passionately about Celtic influences on Norman folklore. A widow who collects sailor's charms and ghost stories. An elderly priest with ink-stained fingers and a surprisingly filthy laugh. They orbit Mercer like planets around a sun, drawn by his warmth, his intelligence, his gift for making everyone feel seen.

  And all the while, the ritual scars burn. All the while, I think about the children he's smiled at just like this. The cups of water he's pressed into their hands with this same gentle manner.

  Drink this, child. It will help you sleep.

  "You've gone quiet, Miss Wells."

  I look up. Mercer is watching me, head tilted, that grandfatherly concern creasing his brow. The others have broken into smaller conversations, leaving us in an island of relative privacy near the fire.

  "Forgive me." I force a rueful smile. "I was thinking about your comments on the selkie tales. The transformation motif—humans becoming something else, something that belongs to the sea. You suggested it reflects anxiety about the boundary between civilization and nature, but I wonder..."

  "Yes?"

  "I wonder if it's simpler than that. If the stories are really about loss. About people who go into the water and don't come back, and the desperate hope that they've become something else rather than simply... gone."

  Mercer goes very still. For a moment—just a moment—something flickers behind his kind eyes. Recognition, perhaps, or memory, or the first faint stirring of suspicion.

  Then it's gone, smoothed away by years of practice, and he's smiling again.

  "That's a remarkably mature analysis for someone so young." He rises, moving to the sideboard where a tea service waits. "You have a scholar's mind, Miss Wells. The ability to look past the surface and see the deeper patterns."

  "You're too kind."

  "Not at all. It's simply the truth." He lifts the teapot—porcelain, painted with blue waves, almost certainly significant in ways I don't want to think about. "May I offer you tea? The others are having brandy, but I find tea suits serious conversation better."

  The cup he offers is delicate, steam rising from amber liquid that smells of bergamot and something else. Something almost imperceptible beneath the familiar scent.

  Salt. Again, salt.

  I reflect on the cup he pressed into my hands seven months ago. The warmth of his voice as he told me to drink. The way the water tasted of copper and the sea.

  I take the tea. My hands don't shake. The marks scream so loud I can barely hear my own voice.

  "Thank you."

  Liquid is warm on my tongue. I force myself to swallow, to show nothing on my face but grateful acceptance. The symbols send their warning—danger, danger, danger, but I've grown skilled at ignoring them.

  Mercer watches me drink with an expression I can't quite read. Satisfaction, perhaps. Or the practiced attention of a man who has spent decades studying people like texts.

  "The blend is from a merchant in Le Havre," he offers. "They import directly from Ceylon. I find the salt air improves the flavor."

  Salt. Always salt.

  "It's lovely."

  "My pleasure." He settles back into his chair, cradling his own cup. The firelight softens his features, making him look even more like the kindly grandfather he pretends to be. "Now, Miss Wells—tell me about your particular interests. What aspect of maritime folklore captures your imagination? The ghost ships? The sea monsters? Or something older?"

  I set my cup down carefully. Think about how a real scholar would respond—curious, eager, perhaps slightly nervous.

  "Something older," I say, and sip the tea.

  It tastes like betrayal. Like playing the game of a man who plays it better. Like wearing the mask so well that even the monster believes you're harmless.

  The symbols burn under my ribs, and I smile, and My thoughts turn to what his face will look like when he finally understands what he's invited into his home.

  The salon ends near midnight. Mercer walks me to the door himself, his hand light on my shoulder, that kindly smile never wavering.

  "You must come again, Miss Wells. We meet twice monthly—the next gathering is in two weeks."

  "I wouldn't miss it."

  "Excellent. And if you're interested in the older traditions—the ones most scholars dismiss as too dark, too strange—I have some materials I could share. Primary sources—very rare."

  "I would be honored."

  His eyes search my face—looking for what? Sincerity? Suspicion? A crack in the mask?

  "You remind me of someone." His eyes grow distant. "A student I met once, years ago. She had the same hunger for knowledge, the same willingness to look into the shadows."

  The scars ignite. My heart stops.

  "What happened to her?"

  A pause. Something moves behind his eyes—not guilt, exactly. Something colder. Something that has long since made its peace with what it is.

  "She learned too much," he says. "Some knowledge has a price, Miss Wells. The old stories are quite clear on that point."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  He releases my shoulder. Steps back. That kindly smile returns, and whatever I glimpsed beneath it vanishes like a stone sinking into dark water.

  "Goodnight, Miss Wells. Do take care walking home—the streets are dark, and Paris has its own monsters."

  I walk home through rain-slicked streets with the taste of his tea on my tongue and his words echoing in my head.

  She learned too much. Some knowledge has a price.

  He's right about that, at least—but he has no idea what price I'm planning to make him pay.

  Rain has stopped. The streets gleam like dark mirrors, reflecting gas lamps and the distant glow of windows where ordinary people sleep ordinary dreams. I pass a young couple walking arm in arm, their laughter bright in the quiet street. A life I might have had, once. A future that drowned in black water along with everything else soft in me.

  The marks pulse against my ribs. Somewhere in the dark, the Deep One stirs in dreams that have lasted since before humans crawled from the sea.

  Two weeks until the next salon. Two weeks to perfect my mask.

  And somewhere in that warm, book-lined apartment, Victor Mercer is pouring himself a nightcap and congratulating himself on another successful evening of cultivating young minds.

  He has no idea what's growing in the dark.

  But someone else does. In a telegram office across the city, a message clicks through the wires—destination: Lyon. Their hunters are mobilizing. They know someone is targeting their people in Paris.

  They just don't know who—not yet. The hunt is about to become a race, and the hunters are coming.