I opened my eyes. Briallen stood over me, her arms crossed, a pale white light flickering behind her eyes. "Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"I was trying to stop a murder."

"And almost got yourself killed. You don't even have a weapon on you, do you?"

"I have a knife," I said weakly. The pain in my head was receding to a dull thudding at the base of my skull.

She snorted and took a seat. "Fat lot of good that would have done you. What exactly happened tonight?"

I gave her the rundown, starting with Keeva at the Flitterbug so she could understand how the whole disaster happened. "I just don't get what I missed. We were obviously in a seven-day cycle. Why tonight instead of last night?"

Briallen leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. "I've been scouring books for days. Now that…" She jumped up and let out a strangled cry of anger. "What a fool! What an idiot! It's a lunar cycle, Connor."

"Are you sure?"

She frowned at me. "I'm dead sure. The calendar is just a feeble tracking mechanism for the moon, not the other way around. The first murder occurred during the new moon, three weeks ago yesterday, the second followed a week later on the quarter moon, the third a week after that on the full, and now tonight, eight days later on the last quarter."

My mind raced as I tried to reconcile the dates in my head. "Are you sure?"

"Why do you keep saying that?" she snapped. "Trust me, boy. I'm a woman and a druidess. I think I know the cycles of the moon. It never occurred to me that I was doing invocations in the garden every night a murder's occurred. I'm out there so much, I never made the connection."

We both started at the sound of something falling out in the hall. In the tense moment that followed, a loud moan broke the silence. Briallen was out of the room and halfway down the stairs before I even reached the landing. Down in the vestibule, a flit lay on the floor groaning. I'd recognize the pink wings anywhere.

"Stinkwort!" I leaped down the stairs after Briallen.

As she crouched on the floor next to him, he pulled himself into a sitting position. He held his left arm close to his waist. "Call me Joe, dammit." His voice was weak. His eyes flickered to Briallen. "Sorry, m'lady."

"Don't mention it, Joe," Briallen muttered as she reached out her hand. Amazingly, he sidled onto her palm, something he'd normally considered beneath his dignity. Without dropping his arm, he rolled it slightly away from his body to display a wound. A deep gash ran the length of his forearm to the base of his palm. Thick blood welled up, and he clenched the arm against himself again.

"This night is cursed," Briallen muttered again.

Cradling Stinkwort in her palms, she rose, and I trailed after her up the stairs into the study. She placed him carefully on the table and began searching in boxes beneath it.

"He got another one," said Stinkwort through clenched teeth. "I followed him to a warehouse but got there too late. Chased the bastard all the way to Charlestown before he turned to fight. I almost had him, too. He used some kind of incantation I've never encountered before. It slowed me down, and he stuck me. The damned freak stuck me."

Briallen poured something foul-smelling onto a cloth and held it close to Stinkwort's arm. "This will sting." It always stings, I thought. She pulled his arm and swiftly draped the cloth over the wound before it could ooze again. He yelped, but she held on. Light welled up from her hands, a white nimbus that fluttered like a candle in the fog. A pink aura sprang up around Stinkwort. It twined within the white light, pulling it into his arm in an incandescent swirl. He growled in pain.

Briallen clutched my arm with her free hand. "Sorry, Connor, I need some of that back."

I could feel a tug in my chest, and my mind went fuzzy. It seemed a long moment later that she released me. I swayed on my feet, shaking the dizziness from my head. Stinkwort had his eyes squeezed shut as the brightness of Briallen's essence sheathed his entire arm. All at once, the light went out as though a switch had been thrown. Stinkwort sat breathing heavily, his arm draped across his lap. A thick ugly crevasse of scar tissue ran the length of where the wound had been.

My joints felt like they were held together with string. I stumbled out of the room, back to the parlor, and collapsed in a chair. Briallen came in a few moments later and sat down, too. She was very pale as she stared into the fire.

"Is he all right?" I asked.

She stirred up from her reverie. "He'll live now. He almost died. He lost a lot of blood, and his essence was severely weakened trying to compensate. That's why I had to tap you."

The soberness with which she said it took me off guard. "Well, that's one less person on my conscience tonight."

"You didn't kill anyone, Connor."

"Didn't I? I turned an arrogant little boy and a simple country flit into bait with a glamour stone I gave them."

"Stop being so self-centered. This is not about you. Shit happens."

"I don't see how you can be so indifferent," I said, trying to quell my anger.

"I'm not. I'm just not taking it personally. There's wisdom in knowing the difference between your sensibilities being challenged and your heart being threatened. I'm just telling you not to lose perspective."

I slouched farther into my chair. "How do you manage to make me want to apologize when you piss me off?"

She smiled. "By being right all the time. How are you feeling? Are you up for a short walk?"

"I'm exhausted, but I'll go if you want me to."

She stood. "The invitation is equal parts honor and obligation."

She took my hand and let me pull myself up. I felt lightheaded for a moment, but it passed quickly. She led me out of the house into the street.

"Where are we going?"

"To pay our respects."

We walked up the street in the cool predawn air. Very little noise disturbed this end of town at that time of night. The sky began lightening in the east as we came out on Beacon Street. We crossed over to the Common through an old iron gate and proceeded down a brick lane. At the bottom, a small empty concrete pond basin shone a dull cream color in the light of the streetlamps. Small stones and broken glass crunched under our feet as we crossed that to a hill on the other side. Briallen took my hand, and we climbed the shoulder of the hill. At the top, a circle of trees enclosed an empty grassy space, and we stopped at the verge.

The sound of singing broke the early-morning silence. Its low cadence rose and fell in a mournful chant that grew subtly louder. A group of six or seven flits came out of the underbrush nearby, their wings dimmed of light as they walked. I realized one of them was Stinkwort. They wore simple red caps on their heads and held sprigs of myrtle leaves in one hand. With the ouier hand, they carried a bier of grass and twigs, on which the dark form of Tansy lay facing the sky. Her face was gracefully calm in repose, her wings already curving around her body like a brittle gray shroud.

The procession moved solemnly to the very top of the hill and lowered Tansy to the ground. The flits slowly circled the body, dropping the leaves around her until she was wreathed in myrtle. One by one they winked out until only Stinkwort remained. He produced a small tea rose from the sleeve of his tunic and reverently placed it on Tansy's chest. Then he, too, disappeared.

Without speaking, Briallen touched my arm, and we descended the hill. Neither of us spoke the entire way back. I couldn't help feeling responsible for the scene I had witnessed no matter what Briallen said. We reached the front door of the house when Stinkwort suddenly appeared in front of us.

"Thank you for attending," he said, with a small bow.