She could barely keep her tears in check when Angel finally reappeared and walked toward them. She was prepared for what she was going to hear but unable to imagine living with what it meant. She had struggled all day to keep from breaking down completely, and several times had gone off alone to cry. Owl must have known, perhaps the others, as well, but no one had said anything. Angel trudged up to them, her face reflecting frustration. “I couldn’t find anything of the source,” she said. “But something’s certainly happened. That mist is impenetrable. No matter how often you go in, you come out again right where you started. As far as I can tell, it wraps around the entire valley. I tried everything to get through it. I even used the Word’s magic. Nothing worked.”

She looked from face to face, stopping finally with Owl. “It was Hawk who did this, wasn’t it?”

Owl nodded. “Tessa told me that he said yesterday he was going back up into the pass to do something. She made him promise to wait until morning, but he went up sometime during the night.”

“I didn’t see him,” Angel said. “Are you sure he isn’t here? He didn’t come back?”

Heads shook slowly. Candle was crying soundlessly. Sparrow stood with her hands on Owl’s shoulders, and River was hugging herself.

They tried not to look at Tessa, but they couldn’t help themselves. She bore the weight of their shifting gazes for as long as she could and then walked away before they could see her break down.

THIRTY-FIVE

WILLS WALKED THE EMPTY CORRIDORS OF HELL, talking with the ghosts of the dead. A quarter mile underground, buried in his coffin of concrete and steel, he carried on his one-sided conversation with Abramson, Perlo, and Anderson—or was it Andrews? He could never remember her name. They had begun appearing to him a while back—he wasn’t sure exactly how long—come to keep him company. They were only faint presences at first, shadowy and elusive, enough so that he wasn’t sure if he was seeing things or not. It wasn’t until they began to be there all the time that he knew they were real.