She sounded like his mom, Ned thought. Really precise.

The man sitting on the boulder stared up at Kim, as if his eyes could penetrate thoughts through the dark. Ned kept the flashlight beam on his shoulder; he found himself breathing faster.

“You actually believe that? What you said?” Cadell murmured.

“I do.”

The Celt seemed amused again. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with yet, do you?”

“I think I do. I think we all do by now. I think the failure’s yours.”

She had taken a pair of scissors from her sister’s hand and began cutting away the shirt. Uncle Dave’s shirt this time. Cadell’s had been sliced away in the villa the first time this was done.

His deep voice was quiet. “Not every man who fought at Waterloo or Crécy or Pourrières was a warrior. Being at a battlefield doesn’t mean anything in itself.”

“True. You begin to sound less of an idiot,” Kimberly said. Her hands were busy as she spoke. “There are even men I have known—three or four of them—who could certainly best my husband, but I am not persuaded you are one, with a wrecked shoulder, especially.”

“You make me want to test him, for the joy of it.”

“I know I do. That’s why he’s by the car. This is about Melanie.”

“Melanie is gone,” Cadell said. “You must accept that. It is about Ysabel. Everything always is.”

“No. For you and the other one. Not for the rest of us,” Meghan Marriner said. She handed Kim sterile wipes to began cleaning the wound again.

“We’re sure he missed the brachial?” Ned’s mother asked.

Her sister nodded. “He couldn’t have moved the arm. There’s no major muscle implicated. This is just an infection risk. The knife was in his boot.”

“You up to date with your tetanus shots?” Meghan said. “Got your immunization record?”

Aunt Kim laughed. Cadell said nothing. Ned watched his aunt’s hands moving quickly, exposing the wound. “I can’t suture out here, obviously, and I still don’t think he needs it.”

“Clean, debride, antibiotics.”

“Yes.”

Cadell remained silent through all of this, sitting very still. Moments passed, the wind blew. It really was cold. Then, softly, the man who’d called them here said, “You have never seen her. You have no way of realizing what this is. What she is. You will say you understand, but you do not. The boy knows.”

The air I breathe is her, or wanting her.

Aunt Kim looked at Cadell. She hesitated, choosing words, it seemed. “Yours,” she said finally, “is not the first love I have known to last for lifetimes. It isn’t even the second. You will forgive me if I value one of us more than your passion.”

Ned blinked. It wasn’t what he’d expected. Cadell took a breath. Then the Celt smiled again. “I begin to wonder if I should pity your husband.”

“He’d say yes, but I don’t think he suffers so much,” Kimberly replied, her hands packing the wound with gauze. She looked into her patient’s eyes again. “And he could give you the same answer I did.”

Ned watched Cadell gaze at his aunt. Then the Celt turned and stared at Meghan, and finally at Ned himself. Aunt Kim wrapped the wound in silence. Ned held his light steady and looked up above it at the tower and the stars.

Impulsively, he said, “Why did you put that skull and the other thing under the cathedral?”

Cadell looked at him. He actually seemed surprised. “Why do you think I did?”

“I have no idea why you did it.”

“No, I mean, why do you think it was me?”

Ned felt himself flushing. “Well, I mean…”

“He told you I did?”

This kept happening with these two. He could never get his balance. Now he was trying to remember if Phelan had actually said so, in as many words.

“He led us to think so.”

“And why would I have done something like that?”

“To…to bait him. Because he was searching for you?”

“Down there? Really?”

Ned swallowed.

“There’s been nothing there for a thousand years,” Cadell said.

“So…so what would he have…?”

“He wanted to bring you in. Obviously.”

“It isn’t obvious at all.”

“Of course it is.”

“But why?”

“He sensed you, read you as someone linked to this world.”

“Before I knew it myself? ’Cause I had never—”

“That can happen.” It was his aunt, interjecting. “Happened with me that way. Someone knew me before I understood anything.”

“But why would he want me?” Ned protested.

Cadell’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “He looks for ways to balance matters.”

“He threatened us with his knife!”

“One of his knives,” Cadell said dryly.

“He never once asked for…he never…” It was hard to form thoughts suddenly, cause words to make sense. He was trying to replay that first morning in his mind, and he couldn’t.

“The Roman? Ask for something?” Cadell was still amused. “That he would never do. He sets events in motion, and takes what he can use.”

“He said you like to play games.”

“That’s true enough.”

“He kept telling me to stay away. That there was no role for me.”

The smile remained. “Do you know a better way to draw a young man? To anything?”

Ned felt anger surge. “The dogs outside the café? Was that you?”

“That was me.”

“Playing games?”

“I told you I didn’t expect you to come out. Neither did he.”

“This makes no sense!” Ned cried. “When would he have had time to steal those things? And get them to the cathedral? Why did it look like him?”

“Not difficult. He made a bust of himself long ago, for her. You could have thought of that—which of us is the sculptor?”

Ned swallowed.

“For the rest…we both sensed you as soon as you arrived. I was curious, he was more than that, it now seems. He needed you more. It wouldn’t have been difficult to learn who your father was—and where he was going that morning, Ned.”

First time he’d ever used Ned’s name.

“I imagine, if you bother to check, you’ll find the two things were stolen from the museum storage the night before you found them. He had them with him and was watching to see if you went inside the cathedral that morning. If you hadn’t, he’d have tried something else. Or not. He’ll never have only one thought, you know.”

“Oh, God,” Ned said.

“Should we believe you?” Meghan Marriner asked quietly.

Cadell looked at her. “You’ve given me a great deal, coming here, and I’m grateful. A debt. I have no reason to lie.”

There was a silence. The round tower rose above them. A backdrop.

“I told him something,” Ned said. “When he left.”

“And that was?” Cadell’s voice changed, a rising note.

Ned drew a breath. “I told him I’d sensed her…Ysabel…in the cemetery.”

That tension again, as if the air around them were a stringed instrument, vibrating.

“And now you’re angry with him and telling me?”

“I feel cheated.”

Cadell shook his head. “He does what he can. We don’t fight the same way.”

“He can’t fly, or summon spirits,” Kimberly murmured.

“Neither of those, no.”

“And he has to be there when she’s summoned?”

The big man nodded. “He’s at risk, otherwise. There have been times she’s come to me simply because he wasn’t there.”

“Unfair,” Meghan Marriner said.

“Why would it be fair?” He turned to Ned. “You must hear what I am trying to say: everything else, everyone else, is insignificant. It is about her. It always has been since he came through the forest.”

Ned looked away, fists clenched. “Fine. None of us matter a damn. I get it. Well, now I’ve told you both. Keeps it even.”

“He kept it even, too,” Kim said, still quietly. “At the villa. Wounded himself.”

Cadell laughed. The amusement angered Ned now. “I wouldn’t have done that, I confess it. He’s a different man.”

The Celt stood up, shirtless again, the bandage white in the moonlight. You were made aware of ease and power as he moved. “I must go.”