Logan let the others gather without him, moving over to a rusting picnic table to take a seat alone. He was surprised when Candle came over to sit across from him. The little girl didn’t say anything for a long time. She just sat there, staring down at her feet and off into the leafless trees, her red hair catching the last rays of the fading sun as the night closed in.

Finally, she looked up at him. “Thank you for everything,” she said. He grinned despite himself. “That’s a lot to be thanked for.”

“Well, for keeping us safe.” When he didn’t say anything in response right away, she quickly added,

“Not just the other night, but all the other times, too. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if you hadn’t come with us.”

He nodded, vaguely uneasy that a ten-year-old child could make him feel so embarrassed. “I’m just doing what I was sent here to do,” he said, the reply sounding lame, even to him.

“No,” she said, her somber face lifting, her eyes fixing on his. “You were sent to help Hawk. Not us.”

She was so smart, he thought. She understood so much. “I know that,” he said. “But I have to do what’s right, too. Helping all of you feels right to me.”

“Even though we aren’t magic?”

“Even though. Anyway, Hawk wouldn’t be very happy with me if I told him we were leaving you behind.”

“Hawk would never leave us,” she said. She studied him a moment. “Hawk is our father.”

He nodded. “I know that. I know that Owl is your mother. Maybe I’m your uncle. Or something like it.”

“You’re our friend,” she said.

He smiled. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

She didn’t smile back. “I just wanted you to know.”

She got up and walked away. He stared after her, wondering at her grasp of things. She knew better than anyone about keeping those she cared about from danger. Except she hadn’t done so lately, he realized suddenly. Owl had told him about her gift, a gift that had saved the Ghosts from harm any number of times. But Candle hadn’t warned them of danger even once since he had arrived, he realized. What did that mean?

He watched Owl while she finished putting away their dishes and supplies with help from River and Sparrow and then as she gathered the Ghosts around her and read them a story. He sat back in the shadows, listening to the sound of her voice in the darkness.

When she was done and the kids were drifting off to sleep, he walked over to where she was sitting in her wheelchair and knelt down beside her. “I enjoyed that,” he said.

“That story?” She laughed softly. “Everyone likes being read to. Reading and storytelling before bed has become a tradition with this family.”