“We saw the van’s lights, then they stopped,” his father said. “We got nervous.”

“And charged to the rescue? Like that?” Greg said, standing up carefully. He was still rubbing his chest. “Jeez, you look like extras storming the castle in Frankenstein. All you need’s a thunderstorm and accents.”

Ned’s father scowled. “Very funny, Gregory.”

Kate giggled, looking at her hammer. “I couldn’t find a stake,” she said.

Dracula wasn’t that far from the truth here, Ned thought, with risen spirits abroad.

This was all release of tension, and he knew it. They’d been scared, now they weren’t—for a while, anyhow.

“Ned, you okay?” his father asked.

Ned nodded.

It occurred to him that no one had seen what he’d done to Cadell. Greg had been flat on his back, out cold. Ned decided to keep that part to himself. He looked at his aunt.

“What was the name of that figure?” he asked. “The one you mentioned. With the horns. From when we met Cadell.”

Aunt Kim hesitated. “Cernan. Cernunnos. Their forest god.” Her expression changed. “He had them again?”

“Yeah.”

She shook her head. “So much for my powers of intimidation.”

“He left when we felt you coming.”

“As an owl?”

Ned nodded. “I think he was worried about you, or at least unsure.”

Aunt Kim made a wry face. “Probably scared of Peugeots. Famous for bad transmissions.”

They were trying to calm him down, Ned realized. He must look pretty freaked out. He managed a smile, but he didn’t seem to be fooling anyone. He kept remembering what he’d done, the feeling of it.

“Let’s go up,” Kimberly repeated. “You two can tell us what happened, but in the house.”

His father said, “Right. Greg, I’ll drive. You can ride shotgun with this.”

Greg eyed the hoe. “Thanks, boss. That’ll make me feel so protected.”

He had to be in considerable pain, Ned thought, remembering Greg flying backwards and that crumpled landing. He wasn’t letting on, though. People could surprise you.

Ned wanted to smile with the others, joke like them, but he couldn’t do it. He stared at his hands again. What he was feeling was hard to describe, but some of it was grief.

This time, when he came downstairs in the middle of the night his aunt was in the kitchen, sitting at the table in a blue robe. He hadn’t expected anyone—she startled him. The only light was the one over the stove-top.

“You get insomnia too?” she asked.

Ned shook his head. “Not usually.”

He went to the fridge and took out the orange juice, blinking in the sudden light. He poured himself a drink.

“Kate sleeping?”

She nodded.

He walked to the glass doors by the terrace.

“Did you go out? It looks beautiful, doesn’t it?” He saw the moon above the city.

“We’re better off inside, dear. It isn’t a night for wandering.”

“But I did go wandering,” Ned said, looking at the pool and trees. The cypresses were moving in the wind, which had picked up again.

“And because I did, Melanie’s gone. If we hadn’t gone up—”

“Hush. Listen to me. The two of you went because Kate was halfway inside the rites already. She said so. You said so, how different she became. She was starting for the fires when Melanie came.”

It was true. It wasn’t a truth that made you happy.

“I could have said no.”

“Not easy, Ned. Not in this kind of situation. You were in it too.”

He looked at her. “Did you ever say no?”

His aunt was silent for a time. “Once,” she said.

“And what…?”

“Long story, Ned.”

He looked away, towards the moon in the window again. He crossed back and sat at the table with her. He said, “Did you see that Veracook put rowan leaves on the window ledge?”

Aunt Kim nodded. “Probably outside all the doors, too, if we look. The past is close to the surface here, Ned.”

“Which part of the past?”

She smiled faintly. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Right now, from what you’ve said? I’d guess a lot of it, dear.”

He drank his juice. “We’re not going to get her back, are we?”

His aunt raised her eyebrows. “Oh, my! And which part of what family did that come from? Not ours, that’s for sure. Is your father like this?”

Ned shook his head.

“Then stop it right now. We haven’t even begun looking. You go get some rest. This is three in the morning talking in you. And remember, we have six good people here, and two more coming.”

Ned looked at her. “Well, yeah, but if my mom kills you we’re down to seven.”

His aunt sniffed. “I can handle my baby sister.”

He had to smile at that. “You think so?”

She made that wry face. “Maybe not. We’ll see. But really, go back to bed. We’re starting early.”

They’d made their plans. Both cars, two groups. Aunt Kim, with Kate in her best geek mode, had chosen the destinations. It had seemed hopeless, even ridiculous when they’d discussed it. It seemed more so now, in this dead-quiet of night.

He said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you, from before.”

She sat still, waiting.

“When the druid slammed Greg I thought he’d killed him. I got…I lost it, I guess. I’m really not sure how, but, like, I slashed sideways with my hand, from at least four, five metres away, and I…I cut Cadell’s horns off. Halfway up. Like, with a light-sabre, you know?”

She said nothing, absorbing this. Her expression was strange, though. She reached out, almost absently, and finished his orange juice.

“You aimed for the horns? Not him?”

He thought about it. “I guess. I don’t think I actually aimed at all. I had no idea I could even…” He stopped. It was pretty hard to talk about.

“Oh, child,” Aunt Kim said.

“What do I do about it?”

She squeezed his hand on the tabletop. “Nothing, Ned. It may never happen again. It was Beltaine. You’d seen the boar, a druid, the fires. You were pretty far along that road. And you have our family’s link to all of this. Maybe more than any of us. But you probably aren’t going to be able to control it, and maybe that’s just as well.”

“So I just forget what happened?”

She smiled again, sadly. “You’ll never forget it, Ned. But there’s a good chance it’ll never come back. Keep it, a reminder that the world has more to it than most people ever know.”

“My dad said something like that.”

“I like your father,” she said. “I hope he likes me.”

“You need my mom to like you a lot more.”

“Meghan? She loves me. Like a sister.”

Ned actually laughed.

“Go to bed,” his aunt said.

He did, and to his surprise, he slept.

Up in the wind at Entremont, middle of the night, he is remembering other times, watching the torches burn down. He is thinking about the forest, the first time he came here.

He’d been afraid of dying that day, so many lives ago, walking through black woods, following the guides, no idea where they were taking him, if he’d ever get back to the shore and sea, and light.

Even half lost in reverie, he is aware when the other man returns to the plateau, in his owl shape.

It isn’t as if Cadell is making a secret of anything.

Phelan is looking away south, doesn’t bother turning to see the other man change back. He keeps to himself at the end of the ridge overlooking the lights of Aix below. The sea is beyond, across the coastal range, unseen. He feels it always, a tide within, and the moon is full.

He is undisturbed by the other man’s disregard of the rules she has given them. It isn’t as if such behaviour is unexpected.

She is not going to make her choice because one of them has sought some advantage. They have fought each other or waged wars here for millennia. She is as likely to see Cadell’s flying as evidence of a greater desire for her. Or not.

It is never wise, he has learned, to believe you know what Ysabel will think, or do. And this newly devised challenge is unsettling.