Neil took a look back at the bus, still standing on the bridge with its windows frosted up. He could hardly believe that Toby was inside there, taking part in some unspeakable and unimaginable ritual. He could hardly believe that Toby had summoned down the squidlike Sak, and had actually sacrificed Mrs. Novato to him. But he was here, on this gloomy and fearful night, sitting in his pickup at Lake Berryessa with an Indian and a sarcastic mystic from New York, and he knew that it had to be true.

He started the motor, and they drove off back down the highway.

Singing Rock fingered the amulets around his neck. “I think we’re going to have to bide our time until it gets dark,” he said. “Then we’ll come back and see what we can do to lay down a medicine circle.”

“How are you going to lay down a circle when the bus is on the bridge like that?”

“It’s going to be very difficult. That’s the reason Misquamacus chose to stop there. Nobody can come near without his knowing, and nobody can surround the bus with all the magical paraphernalia that you’d need to keep him permanently imprisoned there.”

“So what’s going to happen now?” asked Neil.

Singing Rock rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure. I think we’re going to have to play this the way it comes.”

They drove in silence for a while along the darkening road. But after a few minutes, Harry said, “There’s one small thing that’s been bothering me. Something we never checked out. I thought about it last night, but then it slipped my mind again. I think if we’ve got ourselves a couple of hours to kill, we ought to go look for it.”

“What’s that?” asked Singing Rock.

“It’s something that Toby mentioned to Neil real early on, when Misquamacus was first making himself known. He said something about the prophecy that is still buried on the stone redwood. Now, we never took the trouble to check out what that prophecy was, or where it was, or anything.”

Neil reached the steep junction with Route 128, and turned right toward Chiles Valley. “It was my guess Misquamacus was talking about one of the trees up at the Petrified Forest in Calistoga,” he remarked. “I never went there, but I heard there’s a huge stone redwood that’s still half-buried in the hillside.”

Harry turned to Singing Rock. “You want to go take a look? I think we ought to. If there’s something on that tree that we don’t know about, and Misquamacus springs a nasty surprise on us, then we’re going to regret it for the rest of our lives, which might be for five or ten minutes or so, if we’re lucky.”

“How are you doing for gas?” Singing Rock asked Neil.