Jed leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “I know it’s easy for me to say, as a grown-up, but the things that make you feel left out now—those things that make some kids a little distant from you—are the same things that will someday draw those very kids to you. Right now they want to be like everyone else, but with time they’ll admire you for being yourself. They’ll follow you because you are a natural-born leader.”

Sarah Beth chuckled. “Yeah, right. I’m a leader that nobody wants to listen to, follow, or even hang out with. . . . Darilyn, she’s the natural-born leader. Not me.”

Someday you’ll see, he thought. When it matters, you’ll be the one they look to for strength, not her.

They sat in silence, watching the sun paint the sky fire red as it dropped below the western horizon. As the night crept in, so did a hint of melancholy . . . in both of them. He thought he sensed her poking around inside his mind for a second, but then the feeling was gone.

“Does he come to you at night?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” he said, knowing exactly which he Sarah Beth referred to.

“In your dreams?”

“Yes.” He looked up at her. “You too?”

She nodded. “He’s the reason I learned how to build the wall. To keep him out. It works when I’m awake, and I think being here at St. George’s helps too. It’s weird, but I feel stronger here, with all the other Watchers around, than I did before I came. But at night, when I’m asleep and relaxed . . . he sneaks in and he tortures me in my dreams.”

“Me too.”

“Sometimes I wake up screaming.”

“Me too.”

“I think Victor really hates me. I think he wants me dead, Uncle Jed.”

He took her little hand into his bear paw and gave it a gentle squeeze. “He’s afraid of you,” Jed said softly. “He’s afraid of your gifts, and that fear makes him lash out and it also makes him very dangerous.”

“Do you think he’s going to come for me again? I mean, he’s already tried twice. What’s to stop him from trying a third time?”

Jed took a moment to decide how to answer before simply saying, “It’s good that you’re here, Sarah Beth, at St. George’s. You’re safe here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you kidding me? A school with hundreds of Watchers and Trinity Loop ten miles away? It will be a cold day in hell before he can step foot inside these gates,” he said with all the SEAL bravado he could muster.

She seemed to like that answer because she smiled and popped to her feet. “C’mon,” she said, grabbing his wrist and giving it a tug.

“Where are we going now?”