I was about to ask what had happened to Buck when he looked suddenly into my eyes, intent.

“Have you ever seen blue light?” he asked. “When you touch somebody in a medical way, I mean? To heal them.”

Gooseflesh rippled up my arms and neck, and I had to take my fingers off his neck, because they were trembling.

“I haven’t done it myself,” I said carefully. “But I saw it. Once.”

I was seeing it again, as vivid in my mind’s eye as it had been in the shadows of my bed at L’Hôpital des Anges, when I had miscarried Faith and been dying of puerperal fever. When Master Raymond had laid his hands on me and I had seen the bones in my arm glow blue through my flesh.

I dropped that vision like a hot plate and realized that Roger was gripping my hand.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

“I’m not scared,” I said, half truthfully. “Just shocked. I hadn’t thought about it in years.”

“It scared the shit out of me,” he said frankly, and let go of my hand. “After he did what he did to Buck’s heart, I was afraid to talk to him, but I knew I had to. And when I touched him—to stop him, you know; I was following him up a path—he froze. And then he turned round and put his hand on my chest”—his own hand rose, unconsciously, and rested on his chest—“and he said the same thing to me that I’d heard him say to Buck: ‘Cognosco te.’ It means, ‘I know you,’” he clarified, seeing the blank look on my face. “In Latin.”

“He knew—what you were—just by touching you?” The oddest feeling was rippling over my shoulders and down my arms. Not exactly fear … but something like awe.

“Yes. I couldn’t tell about him,” he added hastily. “I didn’t feel anything strange, just then, but I was watching closely, earlier, when he put his hand on Buck’s chest—Buck had some sort of heart attack when we came through the stones—”

“He came with you and Bree and—”

Now Roger made the same helpless gesture.

“No, this was … earlier. Anyway, Buck was in a bad way, and the people who’d taken him in had sent for a doctor, this Hector McEwan. And he laid his hand on Buck’s chest and—and did wee things—and I saw—I really did, Claire, I saw it—a faint blue light come up through his fingers and spread over his hand.”

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.”

He laughed.

“Aye. Exactly. Nobody else could see it, though,” he added, laughter fading out of his face. “Only me.”

I rubbed the palms of my hands slowly together, imagining it.

“Buck,” I said. “I assume he survived? Since you asked if we’d seen him.”

Roger’s face changed at that, a shadow passing behind his eyes.

“He did. Then. But we—separated, after I found Bree and the kids … It’s …”