Zack lowered the gun, wrapped his good arm around Nell. He held her there a moment as she reached out, clasping hands with Mia, and linking them all.

“Stay with them,” Zack told her. “I’ll deal with him. I won’t kill him. He’ll suffer more if he lives.”

Ripley watched her brother walk toward the writhing man, take out his handcuffs. He needed to do this last thing, she thought, and she needed to let him. “He gets two minutes to secure and Mirandize that smear of slime, then I want him taken to the clinic. I don’t know how bad he’s hurt.”

“I’ll take him.” Nell looked down at the blood, Zack’s blood, on her hand, curled her fist over it, and felt life pump. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Courage”—Mia reached out, touched the pendant—“breaks the spell. Love weaves another.” She pulled Nell into her arms for a fierce hug. “You did well, little sister.” She turned toward Ripley. “And you found your fate.”

Early on the Feast of the Saints, long after the balefires were charmed away, before dawn broke the sky, Nell sat in the kitchen of the yellow cottage, her hand resting loosely in Zack’s.

She needed to come back, to be there, to tidy away what had happened and what might have happened. She’d swept away the negative forces that had lingered and had lit candles and incense.

“I wish you’d stayed overnight at the clinic.”

She turned her hand under Zack’s, squeezed. “I could say the same.”

“I’ve got a few stitches, you’ve got the concussion.”

“Mild,” she reminded him, “and twenty-three stitches is more than a few.”

Twenty-three stitches, he thought. A long, nasty gash. The doctor had called it a miracle that no muscle or tendons had been severed.

Zack called it magic. Nell’s magic.

She reached out to touch the fresh white bandage, then trailed her fingers over the gold locket. “You didn’t take it off.”

“You asked me not to. It got hot,” he told her, and brought her gaze back to his. “An instant before he cut me. I could see, in my head, in that quick blur, the blade going toward my heart, then being deflected. As if it hit a shield. I thought I imagined it. But I didn’t.”

“We were stronger than he was.” Nell brought their joined hands to her cheek. “I was afraid, drowning in fear from the minute I heard his voice. It took away everything I’d built, everything I’d learned about myself. He paralyzed me, sucked out my will. That was his power over me. But it began to come back, and when he hurt you, it flooded back. But I couldn’t think, not clearly. Hitting my head was part of it, I suppose.”

“You ran to save me.”