Johnis dropped to the ground, walked several feet closer, and stopped. “So this isn’t a dream,” he said. “I mean . . . you’re really real. I wasn’t killed by the Horde back there and am now in another world, speaking to ghosts.”

Gabil laughed and wiggled a little jig, delighted.

“Gabil? We talked about this,” Michal warned.

“Sorry. He’s just so . . . cute.”

“He’s a man,” Michal said. “Sixteen years old. ‘Cute’ is the wrong word.”

“I’ll bet the women line up for a chance to get close to you, don’t they?” Gabil asked.

Johnis just stared at him, dumb.

“I knew it!” Gabil thrust his fist in the air and threw back his head. “He’s sooooo . . . cute!”

“Gabil!”

“Sorry.”

The silly Roush pulled his right wing over his face and peeked over it with emerald green eyes. “So sorry,” he said in a muffled voice.

“Have you ever noticed the mark behind your right ear?” Michal asked.

Johnis touched his neck. He’d never seen it himself, except dimly reflected in water, but he knew he had a birthmark behind his ear—a circle split with two hash marks like an X. “Yes.”

“The circle mark,” Michael said. “A similar tattoo marked humans’ foreheads to show they’d been united with a man or woman before the Great Deception wiped out all such markings through the skin disease. It was the symbol of marriage. But on you it means you’ve been chosen by Elyon.”

“Chosen? Aren’t we all?” Johnis was still having a hard time accepting the fact that he was talking to two fuzzy white bats.

“All humans are chosen—yes, of course,” Michal said. “But you are special.”

Johnis didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

“You are chosen to save the humans, lad,” Michal continued. “ ‘A chosen child marked by Elyon will prove his worth and destroy the Dark One.’ This was the second prophecy given to Thomas Hunter. He’s guarded the secret closely to protect the young from coming under attack from anyone wanting to upset the balance. Something similar happened once in history.”

This was all quite ridiculous, of course, but Johnis didn’t bother stating the obvious. They all knew the original prophecy: that a way would come when things were at their worst. But this bit about it coming from a boy seemed preposterous to him.

“How’s that tied to saving us humans?” he asked.

Gabil pulled his leathery wing from his face and blurted the answer. “By dealing with the slimy, black, flea-infested, snaky, beady-eyed bat vermin one final time, lad!”

“No, actually, that’s not it, Gabil,” Michal said.

“Or something like that,” the shorter Roush insisted. “In the end, anyway.”