She shut the door on the men and turned around. Sam’s heart beat in his throat. That face. She had been crying, but the puffiness around her eyes just made her more beautiful, made him want to grab her face and kiss away the redness, to hold her and feel the warmth of her sweet, earnest face against his chest.

Those men, they had done something to his state of purity when they had laughed like that. Sam was confused. He felt his power diminished. What was it? Doubt? How could he doubt Katie, with her messy blonde hair and brilliant blue eyes, and those lips, pink and slightly ragged from the cold. He wanted to kiss them so badly. Katie raised her head slightly, as if she could smell something on the air. She looked around the lobby, her eyes lighting up with love as though she had glimpsed something precious. For a moment, Sam very nearly spoke her name.

But he had a task. And as she stood with her back to the front door, Sam moved towards the stairs. He stopped at the bottom as he saw Craig McGee come out of the lounge. Katie’s expression of dreamy ecstasy faded. ‘They need you back at the detachment.’

He nodded, putting his hat on and making for the door. Katie looked at his face and put a hand out to his arm as he reached for the handle behind her. ‘Are you okay, Craig?’

Sam held his breath. Craig? Since when was his wife calling this policeman by his first name?

McGee looked at his feet and shrugged. His face had lost all colour. It was the grey mask of an ill man. Haunted, tired and fighting an internal battle for his reason. He looked up at her and tried to smile.

‘Guess so.’

Katie kept her hand on his arm, and for a moment she knew how sore his heart must be. How lonely and sad and lost he was. She leaned across and kissed him. Craig McGee looked at her without expression, opened the door and left.

The feeling was like a numb leg coming back to life. Sam felt his blood return to his nerves, and the heady concentration that was keeping the prayer alive, keeping the pulse of his spirit pure, drained from him like it was being sucked by a pump. A woman and a man could do to the shaman what the Trickster with all his grisly visions could not.

They had broken his faith in himself. Broken the prayer with their betrayal.

Katie raised her head, looked across at the stair and her mouth made an O. She pressed herself back against the closed door again, this time with her arms across her chest.

‘Sam.’

He looked at her coldly, turned and walked up the stairs.