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“Running on empty,” he snaps. He’s still where we started, a sprawl of random items around him. I told him he didn’t need to bring George’s ukulele!

I’m quickly joined by Kel and Ezryn, who appear freshly armed. Kel’s holding a heavy wooden rolling pin, while Ez’s got an umbrella, which, to be fair, has a pretty pointy tip.

“You princes can go back to lounging,” Wrenley snarls, yanking on the head of a goblin and driving three of her box cutters into its throat. “We’re covered here.”

She’s right. The ten assailants are lying as still as the fish around us.

“Didn’t want to use this anyway,” Ezryn growls as he throws his umbrella to the ground in a way that makes me think he did want to use it.

“Is that it?” Rosalina asks. She, Cas, and Farron approach. Farron’s arms are full of all his crap he hasn’t put back in his bag yet. He tosses Ez a couple tea towels, and immediately, Ezryn begins to bind the hole in Kel’s shoulder.

“Yep. Nothing to it—” I begin when I’m cut off by a horrible, gurgling screech.

Wrenley cries out as something snags her ankle. It’s the river sludge, moving and undulating as if alive⁠—

No, it is alive.

“Hags!” I roar, then lunge forward, snatch Wrenley by the waist, and rip her out of the claws of the fucking nightmarish river monster.

“Oh, I’m ready,” Ezryn says under his breath and picks up his umbrella.

The River Gami appears to be separating, torrents of sludge detaching from the main waterway and pouring out over the bank. But my vision focuses, and I make out the forms beneath the sludge. I’ve seen them before; there’s different types, but a lot of them haunt the river system that runs all the way between Summer and Castletree. Fucking hags. Nasty creatures that take the form of women with seagrass for hair and bulging eyes like a dead fish. Caspian once told me they were Sira’s attempt at making her own sirens. But these things are as close to sirens as eels are to dogs.

The hags farthest up the shore begin to stand on spindly legs covered in scales. One locks eyes with me and smiles with a mouth of razor-sharp teeth. “Nice-looking yummers. All the fish are dead. We hunger.”

I raise my cast-iron skillet. “I’ll cook something right up.”

Another hag wriggles up beside the other one. “Our sisters hunger too.”

“Sisters?” I ask.

The hag looks up and gives an earsplitting screech. It’s answered from far over the ridge.

“Oh fuck,” Ez says.

A cloud of harpies bursts through the sky.

“Form a circle!” Kel roars, and we have only a few seconds to move before the flock dives on us.

I snatch Rosalina’s wrist and drag her beside me.

“I can look after myself,” she says.

“Usually you can, Blossom, but without your bow or your briars, you’re defenseless.”

“I’m not defenseless,” she snaps and holds up a plastic spray bottle filled with blue liquid.

“What is that?” I cry just as the first harpy descends, claws bared.

Rosalina thrusts her arm out, squirting the liquid all over the harpy’s face. It screeches, blinking its eyes, and pulls up.

Rosie gives a satisfied huff and shakes the bottle in front of me. “It’s Windex.”

“I don’t know what that is but keep going!” I yell and smash my skillet into the body of a birdwoman. The harpy crumples midair with a shriek, slamming into the ground like a very ugly, very angry chicken. “I think I broke its wing,” I mutter.

“I think you broke its spine,” Wrenley says grimly, box cutters slick and gleaming.

Another harpy swoops low, claws extended, but Ezryn flicks his umbrella open with a snap and jabs upward. It skewers the creature straight through the gut. He yanks the umbrella back with a twist and flings blood across the ground in a surprisingly fashionable gesture.