“Would you like to come live with me in a Romanian castle, Randall?”

He did, of course. But there were two things Coralis never shared with the boy—or with anyone.

First, he’d known Evelyn and George. They were on a mission to Shangri-la when they’d met their untimely deaths in an avalanche.

Second, he adopted Randall.

Coralis stood suddenly, excusing himself as he left the cabin. There was something he needed to do—for himself, for his family. He quickly passed from car to car, seeking the end of the train. Then he laughed at himself when he came face-to-face with the wall that was the rear of the train. In his absentminded state, he momentarily forgot he was not on a train of yesteryear, which would have had a caboose—an open-ended car at the tail end where one could stand to see the tracks behind them.

He reversed his steps and came to the connection between the sleeper cars and the crew’s quarters. Wrapping his long coat tightly to his body, he willed himself to become unseen. Though the space between the cars was totally enclosed, he tapped his wand against the side to create an opening that closed as soon as he stepped through. Lithely gripping the side of the train, he climbed a ladder and sat on the edge of the roof. Unperturbed by the force of the wind, he crushed a unique crystal in his palm and began to chant an ancient spell.

And somewhere in another country, in the stifling-hot trunk of a battered car, a family member in the form of a falcon heard him.

The average body heat of a bird is higher than that of a human. But there is a limit to the amount of heat it can tolerate. To regulate its internal temperature, a bird will resort to openmouthed breathing or panting, or it can hold its wings out away from its body in an attempt to cool down. Being tightly bound and gagged and shoved in a sack, Randall could do neither.

He was approaching his limit. Twice he had faded to the edge of unconsciousness. Both times he managed to force himself back to a drowsy state of awareness. He could not afford to miss any vital piece of information.

He had given up cursing at himself for allowing the brief lapse in concentration that placed him in this dire predicament. Instead, he embraced it as fortuitous. He could not have gathered the details of his captors’ heinous plans if all he had done was follow them from a lofty altitude.

But the dangerous combination of extreme heat and lack of oxygen was causing him to lose his grip on reality. To cross the plane from reality to hallucination would be disastrous.