There was a silence around the table. It was chillier now, with the day ending. Steve was bare-chested, wrapped in his towel. He had to be cold. Ned looked at the eastern trees beyond the driveway and the red car and the green wire fence. The moon would rise soon. For the second time.

“Do we tell her parents?”

It was Greg, and after a moment Ned realized the question was addressed to him, as if he was the one who should know, or decide. Steve was looking at him, as well, waiting for an answer. That was pretty tough to deal with. So was the worry on their faces. You had to call it fear, really. He didn’t know the exact relationships among his father’s team, but Melanie would be someone they cared about. A lot.

“Um, we’ll see what Aunt Kim says, but I think—”

“I think we have to wait three days,” Kate said, unexpectedly. “If we can.”

“Three, because…?” Steve asked.

Kate looked pale and anxious, but determined. “Three, because what are you going to say to them? And because that’s how long she gave the men to find her.”

“And why does that decide it?”

It was difficult, knowing this, but he did seem to know it. He had been there, on the plateau. “Because if we have any hope of getting Melanie back, it’s by finding her before either of them does.”

“Christ!” snapped Steve, standing up in his towel and bathing suit. “Is this hide-and-seek or James Bond? What do we do if we find her? Ask her pretty please to change back, and don’t forget the green streak in her hair?”

Ned glared at him. “How the hell do I know? What do you want me to say?”

Greg looked from one to the other of them. He held up his hands in a “T” for time out. “We’ll fall off that bridge when we cross it,” he said.

Ned managed a shrug, but he was still mad. Really. What did they expect from him?

Steve was looking at him. “Sorry,” he said, sitting down again. “My bad. I’m freaked. I have no idea how to act.”

“None of us do,” Kate said. “Unless maybe Ned’s aunt?”

“It’s like going to war,” Greg murmured. He scratched his beard.

“How can you know how you’ll behave, or anything like that?”

They heard a footfall. Ned’s father was in the doorway to the kitchen. He stood there, shaking his head. “I have no idea what you said,” he murmured to Ned, “but she is coming. And she didn’t explode.”

“Not on the phone,” Ned said.

His father considered that. “Right. Not on the phone.”

“How’s she getting here?” Ned asked.

“She thinks she can get to Khartoum tonight on a UN food plane, then to Paris in the morning. Then down here.”

“So, like, late afternoon? Evening?”

“That’s right,” his father said. “She’ll phone.”

“I’m missing something,” Greg said. “Why would Dr. Marriner explode? That’s not her style.”

Another footfall, from the far end of the terrace. Aunt Kim walked back. They all turned that way. The sun was behind her, almost down.

“Dave’s coming,” she said. “He’s going to try for a military flight to anywhere in Europe tonight. Then connect.” She stopped as she saw them staring at her.

“Ah,” she said. “And Meghan’s on her way?”

Edward Marriner nodded.

“How nice,” said Kim, again.

CHAPTER XI

Ned had forgotten about the van. They had to go back for it. Greg had a second set of keys, Aunt Kim had her car.

Ned said he’d go with them.

His father looked as if he wanted to veto that, but Ned was the one who knew where the van was, and it was getting dark. The approach of night made them decide to take off right away.

“Please come straight back. Would you like to sleep here tonight?” Edward Marriner asked his sister-in-law.

Kim nodded. “I think I should. Kate, do you want to stay with us? Or have you had enough of this?”

Kate hesitated, then shook her head. “I’ll stay. If there’s room for me? I can call and say I’m overnighting with a friend.” She gave Ned a look, and shrugged. “Marie-Chantal does it all the time.”

“She’ll be jealous,” he said, half-heartedly. He was thinking that it was Beltaine eve now.

“Only if I say it’s with a guy,” she said.

“It definitely isn’t with a guy,” Edward Marriner said firmly. “You and Kimberly can have Melanie’s room on the ground floor, if you don’t mind sharing?”

Aunt Kim smiled. “’Course not. It’ll make me feel young.”

“And maybe we’ll have her back tomorrow,” Ned’s father added.

Kimberly looked at him, seemed about to say something, but didn’t. Ned realized that she’d been doing that a lot.

“Let’s get your van,” she said.

SHE DROVE QUICKLY and well. Traffic had thinned out. It didn’t take long to get there. Ned found that unsettling.

You were sitting where you could grab a Coke from the fridge and listen to U2 on your headphones, and then you were in a place where a bull had just been sacrificed and a man had drunk its blood and summoned a woman to life, between fires. No transition space between those things.

He’d thought about distance and speed and the modern world a couple of days ago, on the way to the mountain. He’d even had a notion to write a school essay about it, saying clever things.

The memory felt absurd now, another existence entirely. He looked at Kim in the glow of the dashboard lights. He wondered if that had been the feeling that had driven her from home after whatever had happened to her. Could you be drawn so far into this other kind of world that your own—the one you’d known all your life—felt alien and impossible?

“Just ahead on the right,” he said, as the headlights picked out the brown sign for Entremont.

She saw it, and turned, a little too fast, the wheels skidding briefly.

“Sorry,” she said, downshifting as they climbed.

“That’s how I drive,” Greg said.

He’d been quiet, had taken the back seat so Ned could navigate. Ned was impressed with him, and grateful: Greg had been a lot easier than Steve about accepting their story. He wondered about that, too. What made some people inclined to believe you and others to react with anger or shock? He realized he didn’t know a whole lot about Greg or Steve. Or Melanie, for that matter.

The headlight beams, on bright, picked out the closed gates and the parking lot to the left of them. Kim swung into the lot. The van was alone there.

They all got out. Greg punched his remote and the doors of the van unlocked. Kim opened the passenger side.

“Her bag’s here.”

“Figured. Okay, let’s go,” Greg said, going around to the driver’s side. “I’ve got the creeps here, big time.”

Ned heard him, but he found himself walking the other way, towards the gates. They were locked, but could be climbed pretty easily. Kate had said the security guy came just to open them and lock up. Ned looked through, saw the wide path that led east to the entrance.

Trees mostly hid the northern wall of the site from here, but he knew it was there, and what was on the other side. The wind had pretty much died down now.

“Ned, come on!” Greg called.

He heard his aunt’s footsteps coming over.

“They’re probably still in there,” he said, not looking back. “She told them to give her all night. Not to start looking till morning.”

She sighed. “If I had any real power, dear, I’d go in with you, see what we could do. But I don’t, Ned. We won’t get her back by getting killed there on Beltaine.”

“Would they do that?”

She sighed again. He looked at her.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I wasn’t here. If they thought we were going to interfere, from what you’ve told us…”

“Yeah,” he said. “If they thought that, some of them might.”

“And we are,” Aunt Kim said. “We are going to try to interfere.”

“How?”

He saw her shake her head. “No idea.”

“Come on!” Greg shouted again. They heard him start the engine.