Lacey’s face was incredulous. She seemed about to laugh. “Peter, I am surprised at you. Perhaps I did not tell it right.”

“No, you told it fine,” he assured her. “I just don’t know.”

She leaned forward in her chair and smiled again—one of her strange, sad smiles, full of belief.

“The ship, Peter,” said Lacey. “Amy is the ship.”

Peter was still trying to make sense of this mysterious answer when Lacey seemed to startle. Frowning sharply, she darted her eyes around the room.

“Lacey? What’s wrong?”

But she seemed not to have heard him. She briskly pushed away from the table.

“I have gone on too long, I’m afraid. It will be light soon. Go and wake her now, and gather your things.”

He was taken aback, his mind still drifting in the night’s strange currents. “We’re leaving?”

He rose to discover Amy standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her dark hair wild and askew, the curtain shifting behind her. Whatever had affected Lacey had affected her also; her face was lit with a sudden urgency.

“Lacey—” Amy began.

“I know. He will try to be here before daybreak.” Drawing on her cloak, Lacey gave her insistent gaze to Peter once more. “Hurry now.”

The peace of the night was suddenly banished, replaced by a sense of emergency his mind could not seem to grasp. “Lacey, who are you talking about? Who’s coming?”

But then he looked at Amy, and he knew.

Babcock.

Babcock was coming. “Quickly, Peter.”

“Lacey, you don’t understand.” He felt weightless, benumbed. He had nothing to fight with, not even a blade. “We’re totally unarmed. I’ve seen what he can do.”

“There are weapons more powerful than guns and knives,” the woman replied. Her face held no fear, only a sense of purpose. “It is time for you to see it.”

“See what?”

“What you came to find,” said Lacey. “The passage.”

Chapter Sixty-Eight

SIXTY-EIGHT

Peter in darkness: Lacey was leading them away from the house, into the woods. A frigid wind was blowing through the trees, a ghostly moaning. A rind of moon had ascended, bathing the scene in a trembling light, making the shadows lurch and sway around him. They ascended a ridge and descended another. The snow was deep here, blown into drifts with a hard carapace of crust. They were on the south side of the mountain now; Peter heard, below him, the sound of the river.

He felt it before he saw it: a vastness of space opening before him, the mountain falling away. He reached out reflexively to find Amy, but she was gone. The edge could be anywhere; one wrong step and the darkness would swallow him.

“This way,” Lacey called from ahead. “Hurry, hurry.”