“So CB knows about . . . ?” A disapproving flick of pale fingers served to indicate the general situation.

“Not all of it. He hasn’t seen the shadows.”

“Why haven’t you told him?”

Easy to hear the subtext—Why haven’t you told him so he could’ve done something?

“There’s nothing CB can do.” This was the absolute truth. If not all of it.

The boy seemed to consider that for a moment, brows drawn in, a fold of his lower lip caught up between his teeth, then: “So, in this other world, you were a scientist?”

“A what?” Arra hurriedly revisited everything she’d just said and snorted. “No, in this other world, I was a wizard.” She waited, but the comment about robes and pointy hats and Harry Potter never came. Upon reflection, hardly surprising. She very much doubted that Tony’s friend the Nightwalker slept in a crypt on a layer of his native earth. Their relationship—whatever it was and she was certainly in no position to judge—would have dealt speedily with cliché or it wouldn’t have lasted long enough to develop the bonds so obvious between them. “Our enemy was also a wizard. Naturally powerful, he had . . . It’s difficult to describe exactly what he had and what he did without indulging in excessively purple description.”

“Yeah, well, too late.” From the sudden flush, it was obvious the comment had slipped out accidentally. Arra decided to ignore it—and not only because she had a strong suspicion it was accurate. The story was difficult to tell without falling into the cadences of home.

“Wizards, like most people, are neither good nor evil, they merely are. This wizard, the enemy wizard, made a conscious decision in his search for ever more power to turn to the darkness and, in return for that power, accept its mantle.”

“The mantle of darkness?”

“Yes. It sounds like the title of a bad fantasy novel, doesn’t it?”

A sudden grin. “I didn’t want to say . . .”

“He had a name once, but he came to be called the Shadowlord.”

The grin disappeared. “He’s found the gate and he’s followed you through.”

Arra blinked. That was unexpected. “Has anyone ever accused you of leaping to unwarranted conclusions?”

“Unwarranted?” Tony’s eyes narrowed and Arra found herself surprised by the intensity of his emotion. She had expected astonishment, wonder, even, in spite of all he’d seen, disbelief. Perhaps fear when he finally realized what her story meant. But rage? No. She’d forgotten that anger was the first response of the young; the gods knew she’d seen the evidence of that often enough in the past. His left hand raised, one finger flicked up into the air. “You opened a gate from another world where . . .” A second finger. “. . . you were fighting an evil wizard called the Shadowlord and, hey . . .” A third and final finger. “. . . the shadows around here are suddenly Twilight Zoned!” All three fingers folded into a fist. Not threatening, but definitely challenging. “I’m right, aren’t I?”