Now I was the one groping for an answer. “I want to.”

“Then do.”

He started to reach for me, then pulled back. I didn’t know if I was disappointed or relieved. “What do you need before you leave?” he asked, back to all business.

I need you to touch me, I thought, deciding I regretted his reticence after all. I need you to hold me and make me feel like you really do love me more than any prophecy.

Instead, I matched his serious air. “Nothing on the other side. But once we get back ... well. Then I’ll need your help to talk Pagiel down.”

Jasmine came to Tucson with me. Her reaction surprised me. I’d expected her to go wildly in one direction, either to adamantly support him or else hate him for the familial confusion in their romance. But she adopted neither attitude. She was serious and focused, united with me on talking sense to him.

The hardest part about being in Tucson was the waiting. I split my time between Roland’s house and my own—the latter delighting Tim and Lara. Jasmine, Roland, and I scoured the news obsessively, waiting for any sign of Pagiel’s band of merry men. The whole time I wondered if it would be futile, if we’d hurry to wherever he was and be left with only a trail of dust. While he had been recently spotted in Arizona, his range also meant he could very well appear in another state. If he showed up in Texas or something, we’d never reach it in time.

While the grocery store and farmers market thefts didn’t go unnoticed, most of the media attention was on the haboobs. They were big and sensational—and not common here in such great numbers. They were great distractions from the paranormal nature of the robberies and gave rise to all sorts of theories. Thankfully, it was a human trait to find “reasonable” explanations for weird events before jumping to crazy ones. Well, kind of. There were those who thought the dramatic sandstorms were a sign of the coming Apocalypse. Others blamed climate change and warned of worse to come. No one had suggested a supernatural invasion.

I thought a lot about Dorian in my free time as well. I missed him more than I expected and was torn over whether I could trust him. I wanted to. Badly. He seemed so sincere in his change ... but I’d believed him before, only to be deceived. I’d loved him once and wanted to again, but how could you love someone without trust?

“Eugenie!”

Jasmine’s cry rang through my small house, making me jump. I had been sitting in my bedroom one afternoon, trying to soothe my troubled thoughts by putting together a narwhal jigsaw puzzle. Footsteps came tearing down the hall, and Jasmine appeared in my doorway.

“Eugenie,” she gasped. “On TV ... a haboob.”