River, too, was almost back to normal. She sat with Owl and Candle in the backseat. The others rode in the hay wagon, even Panther and Catalya, who were deep in conversation at the wagon’s very rear, heads bent close. Rabbit had climbed onto Panther’s lap and curled up. The boy seemed unaware of the cat’s presence, his entire attention riveted on the girl. A strange pairing by any measure, yet it seemed to be working. It made Logan smile.

They were traveling south again, following the cracked and weed-grown ribbon of the freeway through country that was hilly and forested with the skeletal remains of dead or dying trees turned silvery and black and barren, limbs stripped of foliage and rendered as stark and lifeless as bleached bones. The plan was to continue on the more accessible paved roadway until they found an intersecting road that would take them east to where Hawk had left the camp of children and caregivers on the banks of the Columbia River. Traveling cross-country as the boy and Tessa and Cheney had done in coming west was impossible with the hay wagon, and abandoning the wagon meant that most of them would have to walk. Walking would slow progress considerably, and everyone agreed that speed was important. Travel gave Logan time to consider his response to the magic, the feelings it generated, and what he must do to live with it. He knew he had to find a way to control it, if he could not banish it. Rash use of the staff’s terrible power could be as addictive as any drug. He had been so grateful to leave behind the days of ferreting out and destroying the slave camps to come in search of the gypsy morph. He’d needed to find something new so that he could rebuild his emotional shield. But he had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. He had traded one form of madness for another.

It was nearing dusk when they found the road they were searching for, a two-lane highway angling east off the freeway into the foothills that fronted the distant bulk of the Cascade Mountains. They were almost to the Columbia River by now, as reckoned by Hawk, and would sight it by morning. They pulled the AV and the wagon it was towing into a paved roadside rest area built for travelers in better days and set up their camp. They ate from their dwindling supplies—reminding Logan once again that they needed to forage for food—and when dinner was finished drifted into smaller groups to talk until they grew sleepy.