The taxi wound its way steadily down the far side of the hill, took a couple of wide turns, then straightened out along a broad, straight, well-lit roadway. Ahead, she could see the dark wall of her destination. Lincoln Park was south of West Seattle proper, bordering Puget Sound just above the Vashon Island Ferry terminal. She found it on the map while she was riding in the taxi, checking its location, situating herself so that she wouldn’t become turned around. When she was satisfied that she knew where she was, she stuck the map back in her pocket.

The taxi passed a park sign, then pulled into an empty parking area fronting a thick mass of trees. Nest could just make out the flat, earthen threshold of a trailhead next to it. There was no one in sight. Within the trees, nothing moved.

She paid the driver and asked him where she could call a taxi to get back into the city. The driver told her there was a pay phone at the gas station they had passed just up the road. He gave her a business card with the phone number of his company.

She stepped out into the mist and gloom, pulling up the hood of her windbreaker as the taxi drove away. Standing alone at the edge of the park, she glanced around uncertainly. For the first time that night, she began to have doubts.

Then Ariel was next to her, appearing out of nowhere. “This way, Nest! Follow me!”

The silken white image floated onto the trailhead, and Nest Freemark dutifully followed. They entered the wall of trees, and within seconds the parking lot and its lights disappeared behind them. Nest’s eyes adjusted slowly to this new level of darkness. There were no lights here, but the low ceiling of clouds reflected the lights of the city and its homes to provide a pale, ambient glow. Nest could pick out the shapes of the massive conifers—cedar, spruce, and fir—interspersed with broad-leaved madrona. Thick patches of thimbleberry and salal flanked the pathway, and fern fronds drooped in feathery clusters. Rain carpeted the grass and leaves in crystal shards, and mist worked its way through the branches and trunks of the trees in snakelike tendrils. The park was silent and empty-feeling. It could have been Sinnissippi Park on a cold, wet fall night, except that the limbs of the northwest conifers, unlike their deciduous midwest cousins, were still thick with needles and did not lift bare, skeletal limbs against the sky.

The trail branched ahead, but Ariel chose the way without hesitation, her slender childish body wraithlike in the gloom. Nest glanced right and left at every turn, her senses pricked for movement and sound, wary of this dark, misty place. The uneasiness she had felt earlier was still with her. At times like these, she wished she had Wraith to protect her. The big ghost wolf had been a reassuring presence. She did not think often of him these days, not since he had disappeared. She was surprised to discover now that she missed him.