She took a deep breath, steadying herself. She didn’t understand, but she couldn’t afford to take time to try to do so. She backed up against a massive old tree. When it came for her, she would see it or hear it. She waited, staff poised, magic at her fingertips, body tensed to lunge in whatever direction the circumstances required.

But nothing happened.

She waited as long as she could stand, and then she worked her way around to the front of the cottage. The monster’s trail was clearly marked from where it had emerged from the crawl space, a series of deep prints and scattered debris. She followed it with her eyes until she lost sight of it at the water’s edge. She tracked it then, moving slowly, cautiously to the riverbank. Far out in the water, a dark shapeless bulk surged through the waters of the Columbia, heaving its way north toward the far bank.

She stood looking after it. Had it really been a demon? She couldn’t be sure, but she thought so. If that’s what it was, it would know she was a Knight of the Word. So why hadn’t it come after her? Why had it killed Larkin, but let her be? Why had it chosen to leave?

Had she frightened it? Had her magic been more effective than it seemed?

The unanswered questions floated through her mind like the ghosts of the dead. WHEN SHE HAD DETERMINEDfor certain that the monster was gone and not coming back, she went into the cabin, hoisted Larkin Quill over her shoulder, and carried him out into the open air, back into the woods below the cliffs. When she found a patch of high ground, she laid him down and went back for a shovel. It took less than an hour to dig the hole and bury him, and when she was done she stood over him for a long time, remembering how much she had liked and admired him. She tried to think good thoughts and not bad, tried to think of him alive and not dead. She wished Simralin, who had been so close to him, could have been there to share the moment. Simralin would never have a chance to grieve over his body. She would never have a chance to say good-bye. Angel was sorry for this, but it couldn’t be helped.

She said a few words in Spanish, soft words that she remembered Johnny saying over the body of a boy he had liked and lost. Life was uncertain. Death was forever.

When she was finished, she packed a sack with water and food, closed up the cottage for the last time, and set out upriver to find the children and Helen Rice.

FIFTEEN