The warm feeling peaked and then exited his body through his hands in short bursts. He could feel the familiar bitter taste on the tip of his tongue, widening to fill his mouth. It lasted only a few moments. Then the warmth faded and the bitterness disappeared. He released his grip on Logan Tom and gently laid him down again.

When he straightened, the Knight of the Word was looking up at him. “You’re back,” the other whispered.

“So are you,” Hawk answered, smiling.

Gathered close around the hay wagon the Ghosts stared wordlessly, eyes wide, except for Catalya, who was standing well back from the others where they couldn’t see that she was crying.

SEVEN

LOGAN TOMcould not remember all the details. Whether it was the intensity of his battle with Krilka Koos or his shock at being stabbed with a viper-prick or something else entirely, he had lost bits and pieces of what had happened just before he lapsed into his coma. Hawk’s gypsy morph magic had been enough to bring him back to consciousness, but not enough to restore his memory. Given what he could recollect, he decided it might be just as well. Because what he did remember haunted him in a way that nothing had since the death of Michael. It had taken him years to come to terms with that experience, and in truth it was just weeks ago, while on his way west to find the gypsy morph, that he had finally done so. There in that mountain pass amid the spirits of the dead, he had put the ghosts of his old life to rest and banished at last the terrible sense of guilt and failure they had fostered in him.

Now it seemed he might have awakened to an entirely new form of haunting. It wasn’t the events themselves that were troubling. He understood that he couldn’t expect to control events any more than he could control the rising and setting of the sun. He had responded to them in the best way he knew how, and by doing so had saved his life. He did not regret any part of that. Nor did he feel any particular regret for what he had done to Krilka Koos, a dangerous and messianic madman who would have killed others if he had not been defeated and disabled. Krilka Koos had courted his fate and had found it.