“Oh my God. What happened?”

“Something I didn’t anticipate. The monsters were more cunning than I thought. We built a power circle,” he said, idly drawing one in the earth in front of him. “We called the spirits to protect us, and we drummed to catch the monsters’ attention. We wanted to draw them into the circle, where we could slay them and free our people.”

I nodded, clutching my hand closed over the wound in it. “What went wrong?”

“The monsters tried to become us,” Virissong said. “They tried to take the places of our own souls. My spirit protectors were strong, and rejected the monster that tried to take me. But Nakaytah…”

“She wasn’t strong enough.” I felt dizzy, as if I’d lost far more blood from the cut than I thought I had. “What happened?”

“She leaped at me with tooth and nail,” Virissong said. “She took my knife from my belt as we struggled, cutting me here, and here.” He pushed up a sleeve, showing a strong white scar across his forearm, and then another across his belly as he pulled his shirt out of the way. “I carry these scars forever, to remember her by.”

My fingers found their way to my cheek, brushing over a thin scar that ran from my eye socket to the corner of my mouth. “I understand,” I said. Virissong nodded, letting his clothes fall back into place.

“I took the knife from her,” he went on after a few seconds. “I was stronger and larger and trained in hunting, if not war. She… ran forward. Onto the knife. I pulled it away, but it was already inside her. Blood went everywhere. It brought down the power circle, as you did a little while ago.” He nodded at me, an acknowledgment of repeating patterns. “I saw the monster that had infected her fly free, beyond the power circle and into the world. I vowed that day I would never rest until I had brought it to its death.”

“And three thousand years later you’re still trying.” My voice was tight and choked. Virissong inclined his head.

“I chose to spend many lifetimes in the Lower World, waiting for a time when I had a chance against the monster again. I think the tide of the Middle World is changing, now. I think there are many who look to embrace a better way of life. I think now is the time I must make my final challenge. But I’ve grown weak, being away from the Middle World for so long. It’s why I need your help, and the coven’s help. With the power you lend me, I can become whole again, joining spirit and body together as they are meant to be.”

“And the monster?”

“Together we’ll track it down and destroy it,” Virissong said, voice flat with ancient emotion. “And from that, I hope a new world will be born. A better one.”

I nodded slowly. “What happened to your people, Virissong? Did the cold end?”

“It did. The spirits were right. With the battle no longer shaking the Lower and Upper Worlds, the Middle World became safe and normal again.”

“That’s good. But—” Something nagged at me, a prickle at the base of my neck. I frowned vaguely at Virissong, then at Judy, who sat quietly beside me.

Virissong’s eyebrows rose. “But?”

“But what—” Another tickle ran down my spine, like an elementary school fire alarm buzzing in the distance. I frowned less vaguely and rubbed the back of my neck. “What happ—”

The tickle turned into a shrill that broke through my trance, finally recognizable as the phone ringing. I stumbled to my feet and picked up the receiver, my voice groggy with disuse. “Hello?”

“Joanne Walker?” The voice was unfamiliar, even if I wasn’t half-asleep.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know a Gary Muldoon?”

I woke all the way up inside of an instant, cold making an ugly burp of nervousness in my stomach. “Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“This is Dr. Wood at Northwest Hospital. We’d like you to come down right away. Mr. Muldoon has had a heart attack.”

CHAPTER 12

Saturday, June 18, 6:33 a.m.

I didn’t know how I got to the hospital. I didn’t know if I even hung up the phone. All I could hear was my heartbeat and the memory of the day I’d met Gary, when a human banshee called Marie told us both that Gary wasn’t going to die any time soon. Soon. What was soon? Was six months soon? It seemed soon to me. How far in advance had her ability to see death coming worked? She hadn’t said, and it was much too late to ask her. I remembered her body, lying across her living room floor, the heart torn out, and I wondered if six months was soon.

The doctor I’d spoken to on the phone met me in the waiting room. She was short, with dark sympathetic eyes and a quick reassuring smile that I didn’t buy for a minute.

I felt like I was watching myself from a safe distance of several feet. From out there, the pain and fear couldn’t really get to me. All I could really feel from out there was the itch in my nose that made me want to sneeze, something that happened every time I went into a hospital.

In there, inside my body, everything was tunnel-visioned and I kept asking, “A heart attack? Not a stroke? A heart attack?” as if it were important, but I couldn’t figure out why it would be. In there, there wasn’t enough room to breathe, like someone’d sat on my lungs. I wanted to stay out here, distant, where it was easier to breathe. The doctor—I had to look at her name tag to remember it was Wood—sat me down and put her hands on my shoulders.

“A heart attack. He’s very weak right now,” she told me. “He’s weak, but he’s awake,” she said. “He wanted to see you, Ms. Walker. Can you do that?”

I snapped back into my body so hard it made me cry out loud, a sharp high whimper. Blood flow tingled through my fingertips, painfully, but the pain gave me something to focus on. “Yeah.” My voice was all rough again. “Yeah, of course. Is he gonna be okay, doctor?”

She nodded and gave me another reassuring smile. “He realized very quickly what the attack was and got to the hospital before significant damage had been done. That was a few hours ago. I called as soon as he was stabilized.”

“I’m sorry.” I had no idea why I was apologizing.

“It’s okay.” The doctor smiled at me. “You all right?”

“No.” My voice cracked, and I put on my best brave smile in return. “But I can pretend.”

She patted my shoulder. “Come on, then.”

“There’s my girl.” Gary’s voice was too thin, his gray eyes dulled, but he smiled as I put my hand into his. Power fluttered very gently inside me as we touched, and I nearly burst into tears at the realization that there might actually be something I could do. I held off for a minute, though, hanging on to Gary’s hand.

“Your girl, huh?” I sat down on a stool beside his bed, trying not to sniffle. “When’d I graduate from being a crazy dame to being your girl?”

“Right about the time my arm started tingling and aching,” Gary said. He looked like he’d lost thirty pounds in the eight hours since I’d seen him. His skin was ashy, the Hemingway wrinkles that I found so reassuring now deep and haggard around his mouth and eyes. “You look like hell, Jo.”

I gave a shaky laugh. “I look like hell? Anybody shown you a mirror, Gary?”

“They don’t need to. I’m feelin’ like the old gray ghost.”

“Yeah, well.” I tightened my fingers around his. “No giving up that ghost, okay? Not for a while yet.”

Gary snorted. “You kidding? You’ve only just gotten started. I’m not plannin’ on checking out for a while yet. I want grandkids,” he said with a wink and a sudden grin. My heart lurched.

“That’s why you’re hanging around, huh? Nice to finally find out there’s a reason.” My attempt at levity fell flat, but Gary smiled anyway, then let his eyes close, which told me as much as anything how tired he was. I’d never met a more open-eyed kind of guy than Gary. We stayed like that for a few minutes, me trying to memorize him while he breathed, then I closed my own eyes, hoping I wouldn’t cry.