“Sure. It's more peaceful at this time. No distractions. We can talk all we want.” She pinched the two halves of the shawl together under her chin.

“Um, okay. But do you know your way around? There's only moonlight out there.”

“Moonlight is perfect.”

“If you say so.”

Walking arm-in-arm with her mom down a strange country lane, past midnight, just the two of them alone for what seemed like forever in every direction, would have been the most magical thing in the world for Rose once upon a time. But she was not herself right now. Too many shocks and unanswered questions over the past few days had taken their toll. They hadn't even reached the line of trees that marked the start of Hank's driveway and followed the adjoining road around to the east, when the moon disappeared behind a thicket of cloud. Rose literally couldn't see the ground below her feet.

Luckily, she remembered her cell phone had a light. When she switched it on, it produced an odd tunnel effect, lighting the two of them and the ground ahead fairly well, but it barely reached the low stone walls on either side. The result was haunting and intimate.

“'He's not who you think he is'. That was what you said to me last night,” Rose reminded Blythe. “What I just saw definitely fits that description. But I need you to tell me what I just saw. I need to hear the words spoken out loud. Mom, who is he?”

“He came for me, sweetie. Three nights ago, he came because it was my time. I had a heart attack. I should have died. When Bellamy arrived, he just appeared from out of the shadows in the room, said he was there to help me pass on, to take me to somewhere he calls the Great Beyond. He's Death, Rose. The man we call Bellamy is the Bringer of Death, a carrier of souls to the afterlife. He was summoned to take me like he'd been summoned to take countless other souls over the centuries.”

She heard the words but didn't really take them in. Couldn't. She was outside herself listening in, a third party in this tunnel of light through the darkness. The words couldn't hurt her while she was like this. She was skeptical but unable to analyze. Guarded but unarmed. What her mom said had to be true because too many extraordinary things had happened over the past few days and only an extraordinary explanation, even a frightening one, would do them justice. But if it was all true, it also meant that Bellamy was gone.

“Why didn't he take you?”

“Because he saw you, Rose. He saw you in that photo I keep on my little table.”