The wind was blowing already, as the sun’s warmth pushed air from the east. The silt would cover his marks within an hour.

As far as the Horde would be concerned, Thomas Hunter had disappeared. For now.

Or so he desperately hoped.

“HURRY!” KARAS SPUN BACK. FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE Johnis had met this young bundle of spice, she looked truly frightened. Her eyes shot to the stairs down which Johnis had come the last time he’d been here. Nothing.

“What’s going on?” Silvie asked in a high, nervous voice. “Is that you, Johnis? What’s happening?”

Karas finally got the cage latch to fall open and threw the door wide. Johnis had been here once and knew that talking to Silvie now, in this state of transition to full Horde, was nearly pointless. It took a very seasoned will to remain clear.

But this time Rosa recognized him without hesitation. She hurried over. “I’ve been waiting, Johnis! I knew you would come back. Silvie and I have been waiting. I wasn’t sure, you know, that it was you before. But I’ve been waiting, Johnis. I’ve been here waiting for you . . .”

Johnis lifted his finger to her lips. Once-pink lips cracked gray with disease. He couldn’t take her disorientation, her rambling, because he knew it came from the priest’s abuse, not simply the disease.

“Shhh, Mother. We have to hurry.”

The floor above them creaked.

“Lie down, both of you.”

“Johnis, what’s—”

“Lie down!” he snapped. “On your backs! Both of you.”

“Not the water, please,” Rosa begged. “Not the water, Johnis.”

“You don’t mean that. Lie down, please, Mother, hurry.”

Silvie stepped back. “Johnis, maybe you should listen to her.”

“Get down!” he yelled, realizing too late that anyone upstairs would surely hear.

They dropped down immediately this time, put their arms by their sides, and stared up at him with wide eyes.

“Close your eyes,” he said, unwinding the twine on the bottled lake water.

They clenched them tight, and he threw, rather than poured, the water over them from above. Rosa gasped, whether from the cool water or from the healing he couldn’t tell, but her transformation was immediate and staggering. Sweet, sweet relief, flushing her body from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet—Johnis had felt it twice before.

He splashed the healing waters over Silvie, soaking her clothes and hair, then moving back over his mother, then splashing even more on himself.

“What . . . what is that?” little Karas asked, voice wound tight. “What’s happening to them?”

Johnis was about to splash the last of the water over Silvie when her voice stopped him.

“Do want to see?” Silvie asked. “We could wash you.”

Karas backed up two steps, terrified. “No . . . no.”