“Now, if Grace senses what just happened, she might show renewed interest in Sammi. She wanted her before. Now she’ll crave her company for eternity.”

“If she sensed what happened,” Sammi said.

“It’s a big if,” Lilou agreed.

Angela heard no doubt in the nymph’s voice, but it inspired hope, not fear.

Hope that Grace’s Fold, and Vince, might not be closed away forever after all.

15

15

The Fold is in darkness, and there is lightning in the east.

She is crouched on a rock high on the western valley slopes when she sees it illuminating the sky. She has a rabbit clenched in one hand, its neck broken, throat ripped out and chest and body half-skinned, but she is not happy with its meat. The blood is too thin and young, and it tastes of the human world. The flesh is weak. She has chewed and swallowed two mouthfuls, and already she craves something richer. It is not long since she ate properly. She should control her hunger, learn to manage with wild animals some of the time. Her Kin need time to heal between meals.

She drops the dead rabbit and stands, looking across her valley at the lightning sheeting across the opposite hilltop. The sound that rolls in is subdued, but she can smell it on the air, ozone and the memory of old times.

That is not me. That is not from my world. She knows everything about the Fold, and if she sits and concentrates for some time she can feel its ebb and flow through her insides—the drift of its river along her veins, the breeze in the valley stroking down her spine, creatures large and small stepping through her flesh. She can become the Fold, and in those moments she knows everything that is happening within its confines.

She knows that the lightning is not a product of the Fold’s ebb and flow. This is something else.

It’s her.

Her nostrils flare as she breathes in new scents. Her eyes widen as she thinks of the girl, in her hands for such a short time but in her memory forever.

It’s her, and she has found herself.

Another flash arcs above the hills, and this time the crack of thunder reverberates across the Fold. Startled creatures flap and flee. Closer to the river, a larger creature—one of the Kin, though she’s distracted and cannot tell which one in the darkness—takes hoof, afraid that she is preparing to feed once more.

She is done feeding for a while. She wipes the rabbit’s blood from her chin and starts down the hillside. The wings folded against her back, unused for so long that she is not even sure she can part them from her skin, itch and twitch.