“Who’s Ridley?” Konstantin asked. “Wait. Wasn’t he like the Rektor or something?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I brushed him off, since talking about Ridley still felt far too painful, and I buried the phone back in the bag. “But this looks like a standard bag for new trackers, which means that they pack it with a few emergency essentials, including a handbook . . .”

Finally, I unzipped a pocket hidden at the bottom of the bag and found the handbook. Since this bag was going out into the human world, we tried to keep the handbook as hidden as possible, in case the bag fell into the wrong hands. But it was a nice asset for trackers out on their first few jobs because it had tips and tricks, along with important information for them to remember.

It also had rundowns on all the other tribes in case you ran into them (which wasn’t completely unheard-of, especially when tracking changelings in popular destinations like New York City or Chicago).

“Aha!” I held up the book to show Konstantin, but he seemed less than impressed.

“Does that have an address in it?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Let me find out.” I tossed my bag into the backseat, and then I got comfortable, sinking lower so I could prop my bare feet up on the dashboard with the handbook spread open on my legs.

The first few sections were all things to help trackers do their jobs better, and I flipped through them quickly until I got to the parts about the tribes. When I saw that there were only a couple pages on each tribe, my heart sank.

It didn’t help that the top quarter of one of the pages on the Omte was a detailed sketch of their emblem—a brown-bearded vulture, staring at me with small black eyes. There were a few basic facts about the Omte, and finally, at the bottom, I found a sentence that seemed remotely helpful.

“The Omte capital of Fulaträsk is located in the wetlands in the human state of Louisiana,” I read aloud. “Fulaträsk has an estimated population of six thousand, making it the second most populated capital of the five tribes. They live under the rule of their King and Queen, Thor and Bodil Elak, who reside in the palace there.”

“That must be an older printing,” Konstantin commented when I’d finished reading.

I turned back to the cover, and it looked new enough to me. “What makes you say that?”

“Because Thor died, like, three years ago,” he said. “Bodil is still allowed to rule, though, because she and Thor have a little kid.”

“How do you know this stuff?” I asked. “I don’t even know this.”

“I traveled with Bent for a while, remember? And he loved talking about all the stupid crap the Omte would get themselves into.”

“What happened to the King?”

“There’s a tavern in Fulaträsk called the Ugly Vulture.” He shook his head, like he thought it was a dumb name. “According to Bent, it’s a real roughneck place, although, also according to him, all the bars in Fulaträsk are really rowdy places. But the Ugly Vulture is apparently the worst.”

The road had become narrow, so the swamp came right up to the edges of it, and Konstantin slowed down. As the sun continued to set, everything around us seemed to glow an eerie red.

“Thor really loved the Ugly Vulture,” Konstantin went on. “That is one nice thing that Bent said about the Omte—their royals have no problem getting down and dirty with the commoners.”

“How progressive of them,” I said dryly.

“So anyway, I guess Thor got really drunk on eldvatten—”

“Eldvatten?” I interrupted him.

“It’s this really, really strong alcohol that the Omte make. It’s like a cross between wine and moonshine, but I have no idea what’s in it,” Konstantin explained.

“So the King is totally wasted at this point, and Bent didn’t know the full details of it, but another patron starts getting mouthy with Thor,” he continued. “So the King starts hitting this guy, and the guy gets pissed, so he rips out Thor’s throat with his bare hands.”

I gaped at him. “This is who we’re going to for help? Their King died in a bar fight!”

“We don’t have a lot of other options,” he countered. “And besides, the King was drunk. He was probably less of a dick when he was sober.”

I leaned my head back against the seat. “We are so screwed.”

The car started to slow down, and I looked out the window, hoping to see a palace or some sign that we were getting closer. But it was only cypress trees and dark water.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“We’ve run out of road.” Konstantin put the car in park and turned it off. “Now we get to finish the journey on foot.”

EIGHT

everglades

The heat was oppressive. It’s hard to explain exactly what it felt like to come from twenty-degree temperatures and snowstorms to more than eighty degrees and humid. The air seemed to condense on my skin, and bugs buzzed wildly around me.

As we waded through the bayou, with the murky water coming up to our knees, I hoped against hope that Konstantin knew where we were going.

“Watch for alligators¸” Konstantin warned.

I looked around the water, which was getting harder to see in the fading light, but even in bright afternoon it would be hard to tell a log from a large reptile. “There are alligators here?”

“I have no idea.” He glanced back at me, smirking. “I don’t know anything about what lives down here.”

“I guess we’ll find out, then, won’t we?” I muttered.

A mosquito buzzed loudly around my ear, and I tried to swat it away to no avail. It finally landed on the back of my neck, and I slapped it hard to be sure I got it.

“You should be careful about making loud noises, though,” Konstantin said as I followed a few steps behind him.

“Why? Will it attract alligators?” I asked sarcastically.

“No, but the Omte startle easily, and we definitely don’t want them startled.”

Beneath the water, the thick mud threatened to rip off my boots with every step I took, making it very slow going. I told Konstantin that there had to be an easier way to get to Fulaträsk, but he reminded me that the Omte didn’t want to be found. They made it as difficult as possible for anyone to stumble upon them.

It had gotten dark enough that we needed to pull out our cell phones and use them as flashlights to help guide our path. But there was still so much around us we couldn’t see, and the wetlands were alive with noise—frogs, insects, and birds were loudly chirping their nighttime songs.

Somewhere high above us, I heard the flapping of wings, but I couldn’t move my light fast enough to spot them. I’d also heard the high-pitched squeaks of bats, so I figured that they were zooming around to feast on the plethora of bugs.

Occasionally I felt something swim up against my leg, but since nothing had bitten me yet, I tried not to worry about it.

Lightning bugs flashed around us, their tiny bodies twinkling through the trees and reflecting on the water. In the twilight, surrounded by the music of the animals and the still waters underneath the thick canopy of branches, there was something beautiful about the marsh, something almost enchanting.

“Bryn,” Konstantin hissed, pulling me from my thoughts.

I’d fallen a few steps behind him because I’d paused to look around, but now I hurried ahead. He held out his arm, blocking me, when I reached him.

“Shh!” he commanded, and then he pointed toward where his light had picked up two glowing dots on a log, just barely above the surface of the water. It was an alligator, not even a meter away from us, and it looked massive.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. Back away slowly, I guess.”

He kept the light on the alligator, and we started to move away when I heard the sound of flapping wings again. It sounded much too large to be a bat, and it was followed by more flapping. Whatever it was, it was very close by, and there were more than one.

I turned my flashlight toward the sky, and it caught on a huge brown bird flying above us. The bird circled us for a moment before settling down on a long branch, and I finally got a good look at it.

With its large wingspan, pointed beak, and thick feathers down its long neck, it was unmistakably a bearded vulture. Bearded vultures weren’t native to this area—they were something that had been brought in with trolls from the old world, like Gotland rabbits and Tralla horses.

We were in Omte territory.

The cypress and willow trees around us towered several stories into the air, and from the corner of my eye I saw a flash near the top of one. I shone my light up toward it, and with the weak power of my TracFone, I could just make out the outline of a large tree house.

It wasn’t exactly a luxury tree house, but it was much more than the average one you might find in a child’s backyard. The wood seemed warped and worn, with moss growing over it, and a sagging porch was attached to the front. But it was easily large enough to house a family, and it even had a second story attached to the right side that climbed up along the trunk of the tree.