She wheeled back and began running again. Ahead, the scarlet dove swept across the trees, just barely staying in view. She followed it out of the city and down the Elfitch and back toward Glensk Wood. She found that odd. It wouldn’t be going there, would it? Would Pan have gone home?

Even when she was well beyond Arborlon and continuing south, the scarlet dove leading her on, she was still trying to decide.

THE OTHER BOY’S NAME WAS ALIF, and Xac Wen had seen him around, but didn’t know him otherwise. He listened to what Alif had to tell him, questioned the boy’s memory, and dismissed him.

That Prue Liss.

Girls were strange anyway, but she was stranger than most. First she screamed like she was under attack when she wasn’t and said she saw a ghost. Then she went looking for Panterra Qu and claimed she’d found him and was going off to join him. Alone. Without coming back to tell any of it to Xac and without asking for his help—which she almost certainly would need—but instead sending Alif in her place.

No explanation for any of it.

How did she find out where Panterra was if all she was doing was searching for him in the Ashenell? She was already leaving the cemetery when she encountered Alif, so she hadn’t found him there. But where had she found him?

He started off in the direction she had taken—the one she must have taken to have encountered Alif where she did, not too far outside the south gates. Maybe it was too late to catch up to her, but he intended to try. He didn’t like being left behind like this. She owed him an explanation, and if he could find her he would demand one. Hadn’t he done an awful lot for her? Hadn’t he stayed with her when he could just as easily have left?

But instead, she had left him! That was the thanks he had been given for all he had done!

He passed through the south gates and began walking toward the edge of the city and the Elfitch. Along the way, he stopped Elves he knew and asked if they had seen a young girl, describing her. A few had noticed such a girl, a strange one who was half running, half walking, staring off into the distance as if she were seeing something they weren’t. Xac Wen didn’t know about this last part, but the “strange” label certainly fit. He picked up his pace, thinking he might still catch up to her.

But when he reached the Elfitch, he discovered she had passed the guards stationed there some time ago and no one had seen which way she went after that.