I could hear the water, hear the earth itself shifting and softening, and the plants themselves growing, and Thorne, Thorne insisting that I come out, that I talk to him, that I was needed, always needed, and Cyril saying, “Ah, leave the son of a bitch alone.”

Now that’s my kind of bodyguard! Leave the son of a bitch alone indeed.

I turned to see Louis was looking at me. The old familiar green eyes and the faint smile. Is Amel inside you? Is it you, Amel, looking through Louis’s eyes?

“Very well,” Louis said.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged and smiled.

“I’ll come if you want me. I’ll come and I’ll stay and I’ll be your companion if you want. I don’t know why you want this or how long you’ll want it, or what it’s going to be like, being with you and watching all your antics up close, and trying to be of help and not knowing how to be of help, but I’ll come. I’m tired of fighting it; I give up; I’ll come.”

I couldn’t believe I’d heard right. I stared at him as helplessly as I had in the hallway of the townhouse when I’d first seen him, trying to grasp what he had said.

He leaned close to me, and he put his hand on my arm. “ ‘Wither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people’; and because I have no other god and never will, you shall be my god.”

Was it Amel speaking these words through him? Was it Amel touching my arm through his hand? Had Amel lied about not being able to find Louis? When I looked into these green eyes, I saw only Louis, and the words echoing in my mind were Louis’s words.

“I know what you need,” he said. “You need one person who is always on your side. Well, I’m ready to be that one now. I don’t know why I tormented you, made you pay for asking, made you come all this way. I always knew I was going to come. Maybe I thought you’d lose interest because I never really understood why you wanted me in the first place. But you’re not losing interest, not even with the whole Court, and so I’ll come. And when you tire of me and want me gone, I’ll hate you, of course.”

“Trust me,” I whispered. He was cutting me to the heart and making me happy, and this was pain.

“I do,” he said.

“It’s you, you saying these things, isn’t it?”

“And who else would it be?” he asked.