Gabriel reached out, tentatively. His figure flickered in the glow of the oil lamps, and an older man appeared, one with graying blond hair and tired blue eyes. It was Gwynn as I’d seen him before—the aging Gwynn, the weary Gwynn, the broken Gwynn.

“Ewch i ffwrdd,” Gwynn said, his voice firm, his body straightening, the exhaustion evaporating into resolve. “Fynd nawr!”

His form flickered, Gabriel reappearing and then Gwynn and then Gabriel again, fingers splayed as he pressed them to the glass.

“Fynd nawr!”

Again the birds stopped, for longer now, and then, as a body, they began to hiss and shriek as they hovered. Then they swooped away as one, disappearing into the blur of darkness beyond the cottage.

“Those are the sluagh?” I whispered.

“No, they’re the harbingers of the sluagh. The sluagh is still coming. We need to get—”

A tremendous, deafening roar, and I doubled over, hands to my ears. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. The beating of a thousand wings, amplified a thousand times, rising to a frenzy.

The cottage quaked. The shutters cracked against their latches. The door warped inward, boards groaning. And then…

Silence.

Everything stopped at once—the roar and the quaking and the groaning—and the silence was, for a moment, almost painful, like coming out of darkness into the light.

“They’re gone.” I turned to Gabriel. “You did it. You got rid—”

“No,” he whispered, his eyes widening, filling with a look that wasn’t quite Gabriel, wasn’t quite Gwynn, somewhere between the two. “No!”

He slammed into me. Hit me square in the back, taking me down so fast I didn’t have time to brace as I fell face-first to the floor with Gabriel overtop of me. Then I heard the barest whine, like a single mosquito. I lifted my head, tasting blood trickling from my lip. Gabriel’s hand went to the back of my head, ready to push me down and—

The cottage exploded.

It shattered, a million slivers of wood shooting into the night, darkness billowing in, black clouds that writhed and whipped about us.

I heard a distant bark. Frantic barking.

Lloergan.

Gabriel pushed me down, his body on mine, shielding me as the black smoke wound around us. Fingers clutched my arm. I flew to my feet, Gabriel suddenly gone, and when I turned, I saw a woman in the writhing blackness. A woman with long blond hair and flashing brown eyes.

“Out!” she snarled. “Get out now!”

I knew that voice. Knew it well. But my brain wouldn’t make the connection, and I found myself being dragged through the black smoke as I yelled, “Gabriel!” and twisted to look for him, seeing only…

Light. A blinding flash of light, and then I was in an apartment. An ordinary apartment, almost exactly like mine, with an old sofa and chairs and—

“Olivia!” Gabriel called.