“Where?” his father asked.

“It started in the cathedral. The baptistry and the cloister.”

The blue eyes were direct now. “Where you sent me?”

“Yes.” Ned took a chance. “Did you feel anything there?”

Another silence. “Leave that for the moment. Go on.” His father was used to giving commands, Ned thought, but he didn’t do it in a bad way. It was almost reassuring.

He looked at Kate. “We met, I guess that’s the word, we met a man in there, and then later some other people who…who don’t seem to belong in our time. Like, they’re from the past? And it…it is a Celtic kind of story, I think.”

“You think?”

“It is,” said Kate. “We know it is. We’re just really hesitant because it’s scary and totally weird and people won’t believe us. But today is, well it’s May Day eve.” She stopped.

“I knew that, as it happens,” Edward Marriner said, after a pause. He looked at his son. “We used to go on picnics, when your grandmother was alive.”

“I remember. And tonight was…is a really powerful night. For the Celts.”

“Jesus, Ned.” His father shook his head. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Kate and I went up to a ruined site near here, called Entremont, this afternoon.”

“It was my fault,” Kate interrupted. “Ned didn’t want to go.”

“I did want to. But Aunt Kim said I—”

“You tried to stop us.”

“But I went.”

“Hold it,” said Edward Marriner. “Aunt Kim said…?”

Ned closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to do it that way. But if there was a good way to do this, he sure hadn’t thought of it.

“I know. Mom will kill all of us. Or she’ll get spitting mad. Aunt Kim says she used to get spitting mad.”

“Ned. Please. Be extremely clear. Right now.”

Ned nodded. “Aunt Kim called me when we were leaving that restaurant two nights ago. After I had that headache thing by the mountain? She realized somehow that I had connected to something she knows about.”

“She called you? Your aunt telephoned you?”

That same look of disbelief, the one that should have been funny.

“Yeah. Remember, in the restaurant driveway? She was already here. She flew down because she realized something had happened to me. She knew, Dad.”

“Flew down?”

“From England. She lives there. With Uncle Dave.”

His father sighed. “I actually knew that. And she…?”

“She met me that night. When I said I wanted to go for a walk?”

“Jesus, Ned.” Third time he’d said that.

Ned still thought he might cry. It was embarrassing. “Dad, she’s really great. And she was trying to help. To explain what had happened to me. That it was in her family, and Mom’s. And she told me not to go anywhere that might involve…those guys. But I did.”

“I made him go,” Kate said again. “And we got trapped, and had to call for help.”

“But it was supposed to be Greg.”

“And if Melanie hadn’t come when she did it would have been me who became…someone else.”

Kate was the one who was crying, Ned saw. He watched his father register that.

“Why you?” Edward Marriner said quietly.

“There…needed to be a woman. Both men were there, they were calling her. They needed Ysabel. And I was supposed to become her…it was already happening. Then Melanie came, because we’d phoned.”

Wordlessly, Edward Marriner picked up a serviette from the table and handed it to her. Kate wiped her eyes, and then blew her nose.

Ysabel. The name, spoken on a villa terrace, a bell-sound in the word. He could still see her. He could see Melanie, changing, between flames.

They heard a car changing gears on the steep slope of the road.

His father turned quickly, and Ned could see hope flare in his face: the heart-deep wish that this was Melanie in the van, that it had all been an elaborate practical joke, to be dealt with by a thunderous grounding of his only child.

Ned looked. He saw the red Peugeot.

“That’s Aunt Kim,” he said. “I asked her to come. We’re going to need her, Dad.”

His father stood quickly, scraping his chair, staring at the car as it came through the open gates. They watched it pull into the first gravel parking space. The engine was turned off.

A woman got out and looked across the grass at them.

Medium height, slender. White-haired. She wore a long blue-and-white flower-print skirt and a blue blouse over it, held a pale-coloured straw hat in one hand. She closed the car door. It made a chunking sound in the stillness.

Ned lifted a hand to her. She took off her sunglasses and began crossing towards them, walking briskly. His mother’s walk, Ned thought.

Edward Marriner watched her come up the stone steps. He cleared his throat.

With real composure, given the circumstances, he said, “Kimberly Ford? Hello. Ned and his friend have…have been trying to explain what this is about. Thank you for coming. You do know what your sister will do to all of us?”

He extended a hand. Aunt Kim ignored it. She dropped her hat on the table and, stepping forward, gave him a long, fierce hug.

She stepped back, looking at him. “Edward Marriner, I have no idea why my sister lets you keep that silly moustache. I am so glad to meet you, and so sorry it is this way.”

She stepped back, a brightness in her eyes. She was crying now. There seemed to be an epidemic of it.

Ned’s father cleared his throat again. He handed Kim another of the serviettes from the table. She took it and wiped her eyes. She looked over. “Kate?”

Kate nodded. “Hi,” she said in a small voice.

“Hi to you, dear. Are you all right?”

“Sort of, I guess. Not really. We were saying…trying to say…it was going to be me up there it happened to, if Melanie hadn’t come.”

Kimberly held up a hand.

“Stop, please. I don’t know enough. And I’m sure Ned’s father knows less. Back up, start with the cathedral, take us to what just happened.” This crispness was his mother’s, too, Ned thought. She took a chair.

Edward Marriner sat opposite her. He glanced meaningfully towards the pool where Steve was still swimming. Kimberly looked over. She turned to Ned. “Melanie’s been changed? Into someone else? Is that it?”

Ned nodded. “Both men were there. The one Kate and I saw, and the one you and I met by the tower.”

Aunt Kim closed her eyes. “Damn.”

“I’m sorry,” Ned said, miserably. “I know you told me not to…even Phelan told us.”

She stared at him.

“He’s the one we met first, Kate and me.”

“He has a name now?”

Ned nodded. It was all really hard, sitting here above a swimming pool, holding images in his head of twinned fires and a slaughtered bull, that stone bowl held high, filled with blood. “The other one’s Cadell. Melanie named them, after she—”

Aunt Kim held up a hand again, like a traffic cop. She looked at the pool, and then at Ned’s father. “You still need to back up. But I think everyone has to be here,” she said, gesturing towards Steve. “You can’t keep it from him, if she’s really gone.”

“Is she?” Edward Marriner asked. “Gone? I mean, that’s so…”

Kim nodded. “She’s changed, anyhow. They wouldn’t make this up.”

Ned’s father drew a slow breath, processing that. “Greg, too, then,” he said, finally. “We’ll have to wake him.”

“I’ll do it,” Ned said. He needed an excuse to move.

He went into the house. Veracook smiled at him. He saw that she’d gathered some stalks of flowers and leaves, had laid them above the kitchen sink, sideways on the ledge, not in a vase.

She noticed his glance and flushed a little.

“Don’t tell Vera,” she said, in French, a finger to her lips. “She laughs at me.”

“What are they?”

“Rowan. To protect the house. A special night tonight, very special.”

Ned stared. He didn’t say anything, just went upstairs to get Greg. He felt burdened, heavy with a weight of centuries.

IT WAS STEVE, surprisingly, who insisted they call the police.