"Yes," Selene said. She looked directly at me. "Do you want to talk about Hunter?"

That was all it took, and suddenly I was crying silently, my shoulders shaking, my face burning. In a moment she was beside me, holding me. A tissue appeared, and I took it. "Selene," I said shakily, "I think he's dead."

"Shhh," she said soothingly. "Poor darling. Sit down. Let me give you some tea." Tea? I thought wildly. I think I killed someone, and you're offering me tea?

But it was witch tea, and within seconds of my first sip I felt my emotions calm slightly, enough to get myself under control. Selene sat across the table from me, looking into my eyes.

"Hunter tried to kill Cal," she said intently. "He might have tried to kill you, too. Anyone standing there would have done what you did. You saw a friend in danger, and you acted. No one could blame you for that."

"I didn't mean to hurt Hunter," I said, my voice wavering.

"Of course you didn't," she agreed. "You just wanted to stop him. There was no way to predict what would happen. Listen to me, my dear. If you hadn't done what you did, if you hadn't been so quick thinking and loyal, then it would be Cal now in the river, and I would be mourning him and possibly you, too. Hunter came here looking for trouble. He was on our property. He was out for blood. You and Cal both acted in self-defense."

Slowly I drank my tea. The way Selene put it, it sounded reasonable, even inevitable. "Do you—do you think we should go to the police?" I asked.

Selene cocked her head to one side, considering. "No," she said after a moment. "The difficulty is that there were no other witnesses. And that knife wound in Hunter's neck would be hard to explain as self-defense, even though you and I both know that's the truth of it."

A fresh wave of dread washed over me. She was right. To the police, it would probably look like murder.