“It’s that, too. But, mostly, it’s that ritual is calling and you can’t . . .” David actually hesitated. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his breath pluming like smoke in the cold. “Ritual is calling,” he repeated, “and there’s no one powerful enough to be safe with you.”

“The way Allie is safe with Graham?”

“Yes.”

That sounded more like a sure, why not to Jack. “Except for Charlie.” It always came back to Charlie.

“Yes, except for . . . Jack.”

Steam rose where the damp air touched his skin and, when Jack looked down, he realized he stood in an irregular circle of charred grass about two meters across. The edge of the char stopped at the edge of David’s feet. “Sorry.”

“Ritual’s unanswered call makes you restless. That’s all this is.”

“This?”

“This,” David repeated solemnly. “What you feel for Charlie.”

“Oh.” Was that what they were talking about, what he felt for Charlie? While ritual, or at least what happened during ritual, definitely had something to do with it, Jack admitted, it certainly didn’t explain everything. But it was what David wanted him to think, and it was no skin off his tail if pretending he agreed made David happy. Appeasing the powerful was a basic survival skill. “Okay.”

They stood together in silence for a moment, more aware of the city around them and the land under them than the rest of the family. Except for maybe Allie, Jack amended silently.

“Don’t you ever want to leave?” he asked at last.

“It’s not what I am.”

“Who.”

David snorted, sounding as much stag as man. “That, too.”

“Cha Cha!”

“Edward!” Charlie scooped the toddler up out of the crib, balanced him on one hip, then reached for his brother. She never had trouble telling the twins apart when they were awake. Edward’s speaking voice was pitched a little higher than Evan’s, although Evan could hit a higher pitch while shrieking, and they were seldom quiet at the same time unless they were asleep. They both had brown hair and blue eyes like their daddy and a sprinkle of freckles like their mama. Katie insisted she could tell them apart by the pattern of the freckles. While not entirely willing to call her a liar, Charlie couldn’t.

At just over eighteen months, they still mostly shared a personality.

The moment she reached the living room, they demanded to be put down, so she settled on the floor with them.