NIGHTFALL BROUGHT A COOLINGin the air and fresh solitude to the forest bordering the Columbia. The walk back had tired Angel sufficiently that she had fallen asleep almost immediately on her return and not awakened again until Larkin told her that dinner was waiting. Sitting on his porch, looking out into the failing light cast across the surface of the river by the setting sun, she worked her way slowly through her meal, washing it down with cold springwater, and thinking ahead to the trip upriver to where the children were encamped. She ate in silence, and Larkin let her be. Maybe he sensed that she preferred it that way. Maybe he just wasn’t feeling talkative himself. He sat across from her, his blank gaze fixed, his face expressionless.

When her dinner was finished, she went out back of the cottage to where the waterfall provided a makeshift shower and washed the day’s grime and sweat from her body. She closed her eyes and let the water splash over her, leaving her skin alive and so cold that it tingled. Alive, she thought, speaking the word silently. One word. A word that could mean so much. She had finished washing and drying and was wrapped in her towel and standing in the tiny room Larkin had provided for her when the Elven Tracker appeared suddenly beside her, materialized as silently as a wraith returned from the dead.

He touched his finger to his lips, warning her not to speak. He touched his clothes, telling her to dress. She stared at him, and then dropped the towel and quickly slipped into the pants and tunic and boots he had provided her. All the while, Larkin stood as if poised to flee at a moment’s notice, his body still, but his head turning this way and that. His black hair, spiky and stiff, seemed a conduit for his fear. Angel felt it radiating off him and taking up residence in her, sharp-edged and roiling. He stepped forward cautiously as she pulled on the second boot and straightened. “Something is out there,” he whispered, his words so soft that Angel could barely make them out. “A very dangerous something that . . .”

In that same instant, she saw the feeders, crowding through the doorway behind him, lithe and shadowy.

“Larkin!” she hissed.

The floor exploded beneath him, and a huge, mud-clotted arm fastened on his ankle and pulled his entire leg into the hole. He went down in a heap, arms flying out from his sides, head thrown back. A second arm, as massive and encrusted as the first, reached up, tearing apart more of the already splintered floorboards. Angel barely had time to grasp what was happening before she heard Larkin Quill’s neck snap and watched his lifeless body cast aside as the feeders, pouring through the doorway now, swarmed over him in a blanket of darkness.