She glanced at her watch. Three-thirty. Her plane would begin boarding around four. She looked down at her bag, glanced over at the security check and the people lined up to go through the metal detector, and went back to thinking.

The demon had been present when she had gone to Fresh Start to find John Ross. Her magic, into whatever form it had evolved, had reacted to the demon and made Nest physically sick. The demon had tracked her or followed her or intercepted her message and found her later at Lincoln Park. Which? It had killed Boot, Audrey, and Ariel, and had tried to kill her. And then it had gone back to the city and set fire to Fresh Start. Why?

Her head hurt. Nothing fit. She walked down the concourse with her bag to an SBC stand and ordered a decaf cappuccino. Then she found a different seat and thought about the demon some more.

What was she missing?

Stay away from him, Ariel had warned her of John Ross. He has demon stink all over him. He is already lost.

Seemed right to her, given his refusal to accept the possibility he was in danger, that he might be fooling himself about his vulnerability. But John Ross genuinely seemed to believe that he was a different person, no longer a Knight of the Word, no longer a keeper of the magic. He was shattered by San Sobel, and now he was in love with Stefanie Winslow and committed to the work of Simon Lawrence, and his life was all new.

Like her own was new, she thought suddenly. She had left the past behind as well, back in the park of the Sinnissippi, back with the passing of Gran and Old Bob, back with the end of her childhood.

She thought suddenly of her mother. There was no reason for it, but all of a sudden she was thinking about how much she missed not having her there while she was growing up. Gran and Old Bob had done the best they could, which was pretty good, but the gap in her life that her mother’s death had left wasn’t something anyone could fill. She wondered if that was how John Ross had felt before Stef had come into his life. He had wandered alone for more than ten years in service to the Word, living with his terrible dreams of the future and the responsibility they forced on him in the present. It was so hard to be without someone who loved you. Everyone was affected by the absence of love. Even her father, who was a demon …

The words froze in midsentence, crystallized in her mind, and hung there like shards of ice. She had been trying to think of something earlier, something that spoke to the issue of the demon’s behavior with Ross, something from her past. Now she knew what it was. It was her father’s behavior toward Gran, years ago.