Jay had shown them to this cabin after the confrontation with Mallian and the fairy, the closing of the Fold, and the fighting and killing that had surrounded those events. Jay’s Kin lover Tah had died, and Angela would not have blamed the older woman if she’d handed her and Sammi over to the law. She knew that Angela was still wanted by the authorities for her supposed part in the massacre in London, and that would always be the case. Yet Jay still sometimes came to visit, and she did her best to persuade Angela that Vince was never coming back.

Lilou, too. The nymph had suffered her own loss when she’d seen her old friend Mallian swallowed up by the Fold. She had betrayed Mallian, desperate for his plotting of Ascent—an aggressive revelation of the Kin to the human world—to fail before it had begun. She had acted for the good of the Kin, the good of humanity, and out of her own strong beliefs that revealing the Kin to the world would lead only to conflict, pain and death. Still troubled by her actions, each time they met she also tried to persuade Angela that she would never see Vince again.

Angela knew that they were both right. Vince was universes away, trapped in a whole new place and time created by the fairy Grace.

Sometimes she wished that he was dead. She hated herself for thinking this, but the constant not knowing was so much harder.

Hiding, living a lie, their lives on hold, she and Sammi had grown closer than they ever would have if none of this had happened. That at least was a silver lining. She knew that a time would come when they would have to re-evaluate their situation and face the future with a more solid plan, but she was good at persuading herself they should wait another few weeks.

Angela looked through the steam from her coffee mug, out the open front door and into the woods. She had always been a city person, but now she loved the wild, relished the wilderness. She went running most days, and she and Sammi often kayaked along the nearby river. The woods here were vast and beautiful, and she was discovering places where people might never have been before.

It was all a placeholder. She and Sammi both knew that their lives would have to move on one of these days.

Just another few weeks, she thought. Just a little while longer.

Sammi appeared in the doorway with several eggs in her hands. She smiled at Angela and went through to the kitchen, then glanced back into the living room.

“Someone’s coming,” she said.

“Huh?” Angela sat up and spilled coffee onto her T-shirt.

“Down the valley. They’re walking, and they’ll be here soon.”