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The water got deeper and deeper, and soon we were swimming. There again, Quinn swam with a large grace that was kind of daunting to me. I was trying with all my might just to be quiet and stealthy. For a second, I was so cold and so frightened I began to think that . . . no, it wouldn’t be better to still be in the van . . . but it was a near thing, just for a second.

I was so tired. My muscles were shaking with the aftermath of the adrenalin surge of our escape, and then I’d dashed through the woods, and before that there’d been the fight in the apartment, and before that . . . oh my God, I’d had sex with Quinn. Sort of. Yes, definitely sex. More or less.

We hadn’t spoken since we’d gotten out of the van, and suddenly I remembered I’d seen his arm bleeding when we’d burst out of the van. I’d stabbed him with the Phillips head, at least once, while I was freeing him.

And here I was, whining. “Quinn,” I said. “Let me help you.”

“Help me?” he asked. I couldn’t read his tone, and since he was forging through the dark water ahead of me, I couldn’t read his face. But his mind, ah, that was full of snarled confusion and anger that he couldn’t find a place to stuff. “Did I help you? Did I free you? Did I protect you from the fucking Weres? No, I let that son of a bitch stick his finger up you, and I watched, I couldn’t do anything.”

Oh. Male pride. “You got my hands free,” I pointed out. “And you can help me now.”

“How?” he turned to me, and he was deeply upset. I realized that he was a guy who took his protecting very seriously. It was one of God’s mysterious imbalances, that men are stronger than women. My grandmother told me it was his way of balancing the scales, since women are tougher and more resilient. I’m not sure that’s true, but I knew that Quinn, perhaps because he was a big, formidable guy and, perhaps because he was a weretiger who could turn into this fabulously beautiful and lethal beast, was in a funk because he hadn’t killed all our attackers and saved me from being sullied by their touch.

I myself would have preferred that scenario a lot, especially considering our present predicament. But events hadn’t fallen out that way. “Quinn,” I said, and my voice was just as weary as the rest of me, “they have to have been heading somewhere around here. Somewhere in this swamp.”

“That’s why we turned off,” he said in agreement. I saw a snake twined around a tree branch overhanging the water right behind him, and my face must have looked as shocked as I felt, because Quinn whipped around faster than I could think and had that snake in his hand and snapped it once, twice, and then the snake was dead and floating away in the sluggish water. He seemed to feel a lot better after that. “We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re sure it’s away from them. Right?” he asked.

“There aren’t any other brains up and running in my range,” I said, after a moment’s checking. “But I’ve never defined how big my range is. That’s all I can tell you. Let’s try to get out of the water for a minute while we think, okay?” I was shivering all over.

Quinn slogged through the water and gathered me up. “Link your arms around my neck,” he said.

Sure, if he wanted to do the man thing, that was fine. I put my arms around his neck and he began moving through the water.

“Would this be better if you turned into a tiger?” I asked.

“I might need that later, and I’ve already partially changed twice today. I better save my strength.”

“What kind are you?”

“Bengal,” he said, and just then the pattering of the rain on the water stopped.

We heard voices calling then, and we came to a stop in the water, both of our faces turned to the source of the sound. As we were standing there stock-still, I heard something large slide into the water to our right. I swung my eyes in that direction, terrified of what I’d see—but the water was almost still, as if something had just passed. I knew there were tours of the bayous south of New Orleans, and I knew locals made a good living out of taking people out on the dark water and