He comes in close and sits on the bank next to me. He smells like pine needles and something spicy-sweet. “Do you need me to prove it to you?”

I nod. “That would be nice, since it’s kind of impossible to believe.”

“You didn’t have to rent a kayak to go across the river, kid,” he says.

“What? Are you saying I can part the waters? Or walk on water?” I joke.

He smiles. “Which would you prefer?”

My jaw drops. “I was only kidding.”

But his face never changes. I get the suspicion that he’s serious. “But you don’t want to go over there,” he says. “If you’re over there, you ain’t alive. And I’m trying to keep you alive. So don’t try to go over there again, okay?”

“If I have such control over water, then why did you have to save me from drowning twice?”

“Because you don’t know how to use your abilities, kid. Until you do, you can’t protect yourself from nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “You are Mistress of the Waters. That’s no small thing.”

“Mistress of the Waters?” I say the words, tasting them.

“Yeah.” Then he mutters, “Pretty much the sorriest Mistress of the Waters I’ve ever come across.”

I cross my arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve brought dozens of your ancestors across. But you are … different. I’m not supposed to take you across. Not yet. But damned if you’re not giving me the hardest time keeping you out of trouble. You don’t listen. You didn’t listen when I told you that fancy pole of yours wouldn’t catch you nothing, and you don’t listen now.”

I snort. Am I really being lectured by a ghost about how to live my life? “Jack told me he was sent to take me across.”

“No,” he says, his face stone. “Jack is no good. He’s lying to you, trying to trick you.”

“I don’t understand. What does he want from me?”

He’s not looking at me anymore. He’s scanning the riverbank. I don’t think he heard my question. He reaches down and grabs my wrist. “Look. We’re not safe here. Can we go somewhere?”

“You can come back to the cabin with me.”

He hesitates. “Can you see the river from there?”

I nod.

“I think I can do that. Can’t get too far from the river.”

“Or what?”

“Or I get pulled back. The river’s like a stake in the ground with a chain tied to it. And I’m the dog.” He reaches down and helps me stand. “Can you walk good? How’s that ankle of yours?”

“It’s not too bad,” I say, putting my weight on it. I hop up and down. It’s just a numb ache, barely perceptible. I move it back and forth, testing it, but then suddenly I must do the wrong thing, because pain shoots up my leg. I shriek and fall to my knees. “Except when I do that.”

He reaches down and touches it. I feel the rough skin on his finger pad just barely swiping under my anklebone, and the whole thing begins to tingle. “Better?”

I jump. I move. I do everything I did before, but the pain does not come back. “So you did do it, last time? To my back? You can heal me?”

He nods like it’s no big deal, and we start to walk toward the cabin. He’s looking over his shoulder. Something is bothering him. As I walk behind him, I notice he is leaving a trail of small droplets of black blood on the dirt. I rush to keep up with him, and though he’s holding his arm close to his chest, I know it’s that same cut that’s bleeding. It looks as fresh as ever. I pull off my jacket and clamp it over the thing. He doesn’t argue. “Old war wound or not, I’m not letting you bleed all over the cabin.”

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“You’re Trey Vance, aren’t you?” I ask him, finally. “The boy who told on those other boys who killed the girl. I heard your story. They pulled a knife on you. That’s where you got that cut. And you jumped in the water but you couldn’t swim.”

He laughs, but there’s sadness in his voice. “That’s what happens over time. Stories get twisted out of shape. But no. I couldn’t swim. Lived my whole life by water, first in New York and then in Oklahoma, and never learned to swim. How’s that for irony? The one at my home outside of Tulsa was muddy and full of them leeches. No fun. Some kids on the river where I died even made a rhyme up about it after, as a warning.

“Trey Vance, who took a chance

And was pushed in the river grim

.

He lost his life not by a knife

But because he couldn’t swim

.

“They say I’m famous in twelve counties. Whenever kids don’t want to learn to swim, their mommas always say, ‘Now, little Bobby, you know what happened to Trey Vance, don’t you? Get your butt back in the water.’ ”

“Thought you said you were a ‘powerful good swimmer’?”

He nods. “That’s the good thing about this place. You get to be what you wanted most to be when you died. And hell, if I’d have been a good swimmer, I’d still be alive.”

I look down at his arm, which he’s hugging to his body. “You can heal me, but you can’t heal yourself?”

He shrugs. “That power’s beyond me.”

“Is it beyond the all-powerful Mistress of the Waters?”

“You joke about it, but that’s ’cause you don’t understand it,” he says. We cross the highway and start up the driveway. “Can’t heal the dead. But you can bring a person back to life. The Mistress of the Waters can do that. It’ll damn near destroy all her power, but she can do it. I think that’s what they want your momma for.”

“Who wants her?” I sputter.

“They want her to make them alive again.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. Jack, I think.” His face twists. “It’s hard to get you to understand, when even I don’t know what’s what, sometimes.”

I groan. “I want to understand it, but you’re making it so damn hard. If I’m destined to become this royal-over-the-waters, shouldn’t I just go and accept my destiny?”

“No. Not now.” He stops suddenly, trying to think of the words, then exhales, defeated. “Being here is dangerous. Too dangerous for you.”

“Why? Is it because of Jack? Who sent you, anyway?”

“Mistress Nia,” he says softly. “Your momma.”

Every time someone says my mother’s name, I cringe inside. I’m so used to having that reaction to her, I can’t rid myself of it. And so when Trey says her name again, I bite down hard on my tongue and don’t say a word until we’re in the cabin. When I open the door, I can already hear loud snores emanating from one of the upstairs bedrooms. Hugo, no doubt. Our little kayak trip seems a million years away, almost as if it never happened. And the funny thing is, when I look down, I realize my clothes are completely dry. Not like they dried, but like they were never wet in the first place. They’re not stiff with river grime. My hair even smells like the shampoo I used the evening before.

I turn to Trey, about to ask him why my mother would send him as a warning, when I see him staring into the hallway mirror. There’s no reflection. I am standing behind him and yet all I see in the glass is myself. He shakes his head. “I ain’t seen myself in a mess of years. What year is it now? 1940? 1945?”

I know my eyes are bulging. “What year did you …”

He chews on his lower lip. “Last I was like you, it was 1935.”

How could he have somehow misplaced so many years? “It’s much later,” I say.

He grimaces. “It’s hard keeping track of the days here. I tried for a while but lost it.” He runs his hands through his hair. “What do I look like now? Hell?”

“Um … fine,” I say. For someone who has been dead for so many decades, he doesn’t look half bad.

He looks around the house and whistles long and loud. “This the way people living these days? This a hotel?”

“No, it’s Angela’s parents’ vacation cabin.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Just the three of them? Live here?”

I nod. “But only a couple weeks out of the year.”