The Water's Edge: Monsters of the River's Edge

By Jerica Taylor

Del nearly died the day she met a gorgeous river monster, but she's been longing for the chance to see her again. Del's not sure what will happen if she accepts the invitation to a weekend at a vacation cottage by the river, but so far magic has not led her astray, and Saira has been worth the risks.

 

Saira is once again tangled up in the affairs of the human world. By all logic she should focus on her service to Her Eminence and her responsibilities to her people. She should return to her underwater home and leave Del far behind, before the connection that's formed between them irrevocably changes her.

 

Neither of them expect trouble in the form of a ghostly presence haunting a young woman next door, or the changes the arrival of a ghost hunter will set into motion. One weekend by the water can change everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jerica Taylor
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201274009

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Del's car engine shudders to a start, and she's so convinced it's not going to turn over that when it does, she has to shake off the contingency plans she’s been automatically putting in place: calculating the cost of a rental; should she wait until payday; is it worth begging a friend to jump it; whether she can send a message to say she's not coming.

Was she going to be expected in the first place?

Magic was an unopened door. Reaching for the handle required much more trust than Del was comfortable giving anyone or anything at this point in her life. Take this trip, for instance. It was reliant on her having an unshakable belief that some enchanted card had managed to find its way to her. An enchanted card inviting her to a vacation cottage, to see the woman who’d saved her life from a monster. A woman who was some kind of monster herself.

Could they share this, a weekend getaway? Something neither of them are suited for at all, a kind of meeting point in the middle of their disparate worlds.

She puts on the oldies station, then promptly turns it off when she recognizes the song - a hit only a few years ago, hardly an oldie at all - and then settles behind the wheel once more.

A half a tank of gas; it's more than enough to get her there.

Where a beautiful, dangerous woman might be waiting for her.

In under an hour, Del is following the GPS directions to turn down a narrow lane of houses with perfect gardens, daylilies blooming like a hundred hands waving as she drives past.

Her destination, a white salt box bookmarked by juniper bushes, is actually more quaint than the pictures online promised. There's a cardinal chipping as the car door echoes in the soft wooden sound of this retreat. She can see the sparkle of the river as she pulls into the gravel driveway, the sound nostalgic even as she can't place where she knows it from, when she's last heard it.

She doesn't belong here, in this affluent neighborhood, this transitory place of second homes and vacation getaways. She can rent this life for a weekend.

She hasn't packed more than a backpack, and it only occurs to her as she shuts the car door that she hasn't packed a swimsuit. She laughs nervously when she thinks that Saira wouldn't have to bring one at all.

Saira, more at home in the water than Del would ever be. Saira, who lived in some underwater world. How could she long so deeply for someone she had only briefly held, who belonged to fantastical dreams? Yet Del had touched her, tangled with her in bed. If only their fiery encounter had left scars, then Del could trace her fingers over them when she doubted that any of it had been real.

She strides toward the cottage before she can doubt herself.

Knocking on the inviting red door, she tries the handle, and finds it unlocked. Faith. Sets her bag down, walks around, calling out a quiet hello. It doesn't take her long to walk through the whole house, taking in the thick throw rugs over dark polished wood floors, freshly painted white walls decorated in cozy farmhouse style, light blues and warm reds, and all the shades wide open to the bright, clear day.

There's no one else here. She waits for the disappointment to come. She doesn't feel it. What she does feel is magic.

She can recognize it now, after taking more cases for the Uncanny Society, noticing the weird things and anomalies that her eyes would have skimmed over before. She has a sense of what shifts in the world around them now. What magic passes through the solid and the invisible as it bends around the world. Its afterglow draws her as the crow flies, swooping and soaring, down toward the shore.

She takes off her shoes, chasing the gleam to the surface of the river, the gentle rocking toward the bank and back to the deep. Dipping her toes into the cold water, a frog splashes in from the bank somewhere near her side. What was Saira’s world like? Was it even something Del would ever be able to comprehend?

If she waits, Saira might find her way to Del again. She will wait the whole weekend if she has to, just for a glance.

Insomnia finds her, even here, but somehow it doesn’t seem as barren and hopeless, looking out at the lights across the water. Once she wakes and can’t get back to sleep, she gets up and paces the pristine kitchen, pulling back the fashionable curtains, looking at her reflection. Recalling the blooming purple bruises on her neck. She presses her fingers to her skin, imagining a bite mark vividly enough to wince at the sting.

Del opens the sliding door to the deck as quietly as she can, shutting it behind her so no bugs get in, and she walks barefoot across the smooth wood, the all-weather rug which she feels more than sees. Down the steps and into the wet grass. The chill runs through her even though the night is warm.

She looks at the water and tries in vain to temper her expectations - her hopes - about Saira. She is counting on their connection manifesting as brightly and as sharply as that first time. That Saira will still allow Del to see her, to touch her. Del longs for Saira to mark her up again, scrapes and bites, swelling pink marks and the tiniest bit of blood which Saira studied as though she had