“Good,” he breathed, careful not to disturb her semi-trance. “Now, leave the case files, leave what you know, and move outward. There’s a whole universe before you, but somewhere in it there’s the scent of jasmine and sandalwood. Find it, follow it to where it grows stronger.”

“I’m afraid of what I’ll see,” Miranda whispered.

“Too late for that,” murmured the Trickster. He raised his voice. “You said you wanted to care. So care, then!”

Miranda’s eyes flashed open, and she stared at him with challenge and fury. Chance shot him a quelling look, then turned his back on him, intent on Miranda. “What do you see? Can you find her? Show us.”

Miranda’s attempt fluttered for a moment, unsure of its direction, but then it took strength from her surge of determination and anger. The scene outside the window, which had stalled on the football game in the backyard, fragmented and reassembled itself into a darker picture: indoors, nighttime, the warm glow of flame under glass in a lamp. There were two people sitting at a table in the room: Niko and Marinel. Niko was crying, not the silent tears of the kind men will admit to, but the gulping, desperate sobs of a small boy. Marinel’s face was the face of the woman Chance had seen with Lukas at the shelter, though full-fleshed and unshadowed by grief. She turned slightly away from her husband in irritation as he broke down, and her eyes were half-closed in contempt.

“It doesn’t matter, Niko,” she said. “I am still leaving.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“All I’ve done,” Niko cried, “everything I’ve done has been for you and Lukas.”

Marinel stared at the wall and replied in a monotone. “I am raising our son by myself as it is. You can still provide money for his support. Nothing will change. You already give us your money instead of your time. Nothing will change.”

“Just a few more months,” he begged. He was water poured out, a beaten and empty man. To hear him was to cringe in shame and pity. “Just long enough to finish the project. Then I’ll be back to one job. We can go back to the way it was before.”

“Was there a before?” she asked with sudden sharpness. “I don’t recall. It feels like it’s been this way forever.”

She made a small sound of frustration and disgust. Her eyes never looked at him, and her face turned even farther from him. Her coldness seemed to hurt him more than screams and tears and loud words of anguish; at least those would have hinted that she still needed him.

“Danil—” he began bitterly, but she cut him off in an instant.

“Don’t say his name. Don’t dirty it with your insinuating tone and your hatred and your—please, don’t!”