“Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

“O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do, / They pray—grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

Claire moved closer. The frayed ends of her coat brushed against my chest.

“Saints do not move,” she whispered, “though grant for prayers’ sake.”

“Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take. / Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.”

Beneath shattered lights, atop a ruined field, surrounded by an audience of battered survivors and the mangled dead, we kissed, and kissed again. While I closed my eyes and sank into a dark enjoyment, two random thoughts pricked at me like a pesky mosquito. Did someone deal with Gunmar’s gallbladder after I’d tossed it to the field? And where, come to think of it, had Professor Lempke gone?

Those worries were lost as Claire ran her hands over my back. Warmth sealed her body to mine and in the dizzy nirvana of the moment I felt her teeth scrape across my lips as she continued to murmur Juliet’s most lovelorn of lines.

“Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”

I kissed her cheek, her eyelids, raised on my toes to kiss her forehead.

“Sin from thy lips?” I said into her hair. “O trespass sweetly urged! / Give me my sin again.”

Her arms tightened around me in a hug that was every bit as crushing as a Claire Fontaine hug ought to be. I wheezed happily within her grip, feeling her trollhunter heart beat opposite mine, the taste of her warrior’s lips still salty upon my own. I looked through blowing wisps of her hair to find Tub at the sideline next to Grandma, making fake gagging faces through a wide grin that gleamed with the latest in dental technology.

To my surprise, Steve Jorgensen-Warner stood there, too, unaware of Tub’s presence, staring at the field of battle with a face drained of emotion. His uniform was grass-stained from play but free of gore, leading me to believe that he’d managed to hide away during the skirmish and was only now crawling out to absorb the aftermath. Tub looked at his former tormentor, who no longer looked as intimidating as he once did. I had a feeling that my friend was done paying a toll, and might, in fact, reclaim the Trophy Cave as his own.

Tub regarded Steve for a long time. Then he examined the random pieces of football equipment scattered at his feet. Then, once more, he looked back up at Steve, as if an idea was forming that was every bit as brilliant as tuning the jumbotron to static. Tub gently guided Grandma aside before kneeling down and picking up one of the helmets of the Connersville Colts. Only when he stood up again did I realize what had been staring me in the face all night.