On the way back from the funeral, he puts some money into an account. For Lister’s kids. For Lister’s wife. He doesn’t know how long that money will last now that the Organization has gone to hell, but he does what he can.

Later, he talks to Skelly. She said she’s been down to see Nora already and asks him, has he gone yet? He tells her he hasn’t – he’s sent her a care package, meats and cheeses and those non-pareil things, but he says he’s got one more thing to do before he sees her.

“I gotta go see my ex-wife,” he says. “I made a promise.”

He knows something’s wrong when the plane turns over the ocean. Candlefly can feel it bank hard to the right – and then they’re flying in a new direction. Traveling south along the Spanish coast, not across the country. Which means he is not going home.

Home is Mallorca.

They’re heading toward…

The Canaries. That has to be it.

This is not good news.

As soon as everything went to hell – in some ways, quite literally – at the dig site, Candlefly knew it was done. Something had happened. No – Mookie Pearl had happened. A rogue element he again underestimated. His mistake. A big mistake. A final one.

He told Haversham to run.

Haversham didn’t hesitate. He turned tail and bolted.

As he ran, Candlefly shot him in the back of the head.

Then for him it was time to book a private plane and get out of here – already they were calling what happened a terrorist attack. If that got attached to him in any way, that would blow back on his family. They’d stayed hidden and out of sight for a long time. How crass and hollow it would be to suffer now not from some supernatural danger but from the mortal bureaucracy of American Homeland Security.

And now this. A turn of the plane.

A half hour later they land. The pilot doesn’t show his face. The door opens, and the steps descend. Outside, to one side is the snow-tipped peak of Mount Teide. On the other, the steel-blue ocean. And ahead: men with guns.

Ah. That’s how this is, then.

They walk him down a trail. To an old church with a dead tree outside that looks like a skeleton’s hand reaching toward – and forever failing to reach – heaven.

At the steps he sees her:

Renata.

His wife. Beautiful – those dark eyes, those broad hips, the way the wind feathers her shoulder-length hair. She looks like an eagle, cutting a dark, strong, noble shape.