“Good question. You okay? I mean you did some power stuff there.”

“Very little. I’m fine.” She sounded tired, but he wasn’t going to argue. Tony didn’t know how it worked on the wizard’s world, but on this one I’m fine meant any injuries short of decapitation weren’t to be discussed. “You?”

“I got bit,” he said as the light changed.

“No surprise. It wasn’t a fun experience for poor Shania. Or the shadow. It must have thought the dog was a perfect host; four legs against two, we’d never catch it. But the dog didn’t have quite enough sense of self to sustain it.”

“I was going to ask.”

“I know.”

“And,” he added, his leg throbbing as he remembered, “I got kicked.”

“Why?”

“They were aiming at the dog. Where are we going again?”

“Tsawassen. Near the border.”

“Right.” He headed up the ramp off Westminster and onto 99 South. “So the people are going to be okay? I mean, the shadow wasn’t in any of them for very long.”

“The one boy may not recover.”

“What?” Tony fought the car back onto pavement as his jerk toward the wizard put the right wheels on the shoulder.

“The second boy, the older boy, was twisted—his pattern wasn’t compatible. I doubt the potion will be enough.”

“Can’t you do something?”

“Like what?”

His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “I don’t know; untwist him.”

“No.”

“Fuck.”

“This isn’t all bright lights and vodka, Tony.” He would have protested he knew that, but the memories weighing down her voice kept him silent. “Stopping the Shadowlord is about stopping death and destruction. Only two dead and one injured; we’ve been very lucky so far.”

He supposed that was hard to argue with. They were twelve kilometers down the highway before he tried. “If we’d waited for Ben to come to the gate, this never would have happened.”

“But if he’d gotten through the gate, if he’d given the Shadowlord the information he needs to invade, it would start happening with a soul-destroying frequency.” After a long moment she sighed and said, “All the easy answers get lost in the shadows.”

They reached the South Delta Baptist Church at 8:10. Tony parked in the nearly empty lot, twisted around, and dragged his backpack out from between Ben’s legs. “It’s past sunset,” he told the wizard, nodding west to where the sky had turned a thousand shades of orange and yellow and pink. “I need to call Henry.”

“The Nightwalker cannot help us now.”