“Of course you didn’t,” Chance said, reaching out to Julian’s warding hands and stripping the Trickster’s mark from him like a man ripping a label from a package. “But you would have. Oh, by the way, everyone? I think most of you know Julian. Julian, these are the victims of Walther Grey, the ones you chose.”

Julian straightened slightly from his crouch and looked around at the unfriendly faces gathering around him. “That’s not true,” he pleaded. “I never said—”

Chance wound the mark around his hand, an action that had no other purpose than to keep his hands occupied with something harmless. “Perhaps you never said it exactly, but you shared gossip, you hinted at who deserved to die, and you gave him that old legend—that you could summon a spirit by assembling a body for it.”

“You think you know everything,” Julian sneered.

“No, I’m only guessing. You’ve kept us guessing for a good while. Do you know how hard it is to track down a man who barely believes in the reality of what he’s doing?”

“This isn’t real either!” Julian shrieked, trembling badly. “This is another one of those damned dreams!”

“He’s half-mad,” murmured Galina contemptuously.

“No. Entirely sane, but not very bright,” Niko remarked.

Xandre made a noise of disgust and turned away, but Danil stepped closer and rested a calming hand on Julian’s shoulder. “We used to talk about the old folk tales, the legends, the things our parents and grandparents passed on. And yes, we used to laugh and say they were all just stories. But seriously, man, when things started happening to you, where was your respect? Your caution? Why did you keep fooling yourself? Why play with things you don’t understand and pretend it’s a game of make-believe?”

“I don’t want to die.” Julian whimpered. “I don’t . . . I don’t want to die.”

“Old man,” whispered the Mermaid.

Chance turned around. She was sitting comfortably, still half-in, half-out of the water. She was looking at him with a strange mixture of resentment and triumph.

“Old man, do you really think this is the end? Do you think this is all of us?”

Chance looked back at the rest of his guides. Danil was still reasoning as if desperate to understand what kind of mind had caused his situation. Galina stood with her arms folded and watched them with exasperation. Xandre was arguing with Niko about whether it was even possible to kill Julian in this place, and shouldn’t they at least try, in the spirit of experimentation if nothing else?

He sat beside her on the wet sand. “Go on.”

“You’ve forgotten the child.”

“I can’t . . . I don’t know how to find him, not while Galina refuses to remember what happened.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “I can take you to where he is.”