He leapt forward. A burst of static boiled inside my head. My face jerked aside as if I’d been

slapped. I pitched forward, Christophe grabbed at my arm but I evaded him, and I was halfway

down the path before I realized I was moving. The pins and needles should have made me clumsy,

but they didn’t. I ran past the bleachers, was just in time to see the ghost of Graves streaking toward

another small stand of oaks.

He ran like the running was joy to him. Wulfen move fast and fluid, and he did it without getting

hairy. His coat snapped behind him, a faraway sound, and he plunged into the stand of trees just

seconds before I did.

The trees crowded close around a small clearing, and the grass here wasn’t mowed. Shade and light

whirled together, there was a snap! inside my head, and everything . . . stopped.

Darkness dilated in the evening air. The oaks drew close, whispering with their fresh new green

leaves, and I caught a confused jumble of activity before Shanks bolted into the clearing and nearly

collided with me.

He yelled something unrepeatable and leapt away, almost hitting a tree. I jolted back into my body

and stared at him.

“Don’t do that!” he yelled. “Jesus!”

“I lost it!” I yelled back. “I almost had it!”

“What the—” But he shut up as Christophe stepped past him, appearing out of thin air with a whispering sound.

“This is not a good idea.” The djamphir’s eyes glowed blue in the shade. Light does funny things

this close to dying altogether; the shadows moved like live things over Christophe’s pale skin and

turned Shanks into an umber statue. “Come back inside, Dru.”

I searched for the internal tingle that would tell me the touch was willing to show me more.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Until a soundless flash filled the whole clearing, lighting it up inside my head like kliegs on a foot-ball field. I stalked past Shanks and stopped, kneeling in front of a weird thorny bush. It might even

have been a rosebush, but it looked blasted and half-crushed.

A tiny strip of material, no bigger than my pinkie finger, clung to it. Heavy black cotton, from a

long black coat. I gingerly tweezed it free, held it up. It had dried stiff, probably because it’d gone

through dew falling. “He came this way. Can we—”

“I don’t smell much.” Shanks hunched his shoulders miserably. “They cut the grass earlier today,

but I . . .”

I waited, but he just spread his hands. The entire clearing was a thick soup of shadows and a chill

that wasn’t just evening creeping up. It was cold, and I smelled intent, like a hex brewing in a dark

corner.

My hand turned into a fist around the scrap of material.