“I want to see what it’s coming from.”

“Big Dan just wants us to get the fiddler.”

“True. But he didn’t say anything about not having a look about before we do.”

Rabedy sighed. Maybe Big Dan hadn’t said it in so many words, but when he’d told them not to screw this up, he’d no doubt meant just this kind of thing. The trouble was, Rabedy knew exactly what Gathen was feeling.

The door was locked, but bogans know a hundred spells to convince a security device to open for them. There might as well not have been a lock for all that it stopped Gathen from opening the door. He let it swing all the way open before he stepped inside.

Rabedy hesitated a moment, then sighed and followed him into the room. There were two humans sleeping inside, a man and a woman, each in their own bed. The light came from the woman, a dreamy, yearning glow the warm yellow of a harvest moon, as though she was made of the radiance and her human skin couldn’t quite contain it.

Thrice-blessed, Rabedy remembered Odawa saying, but this light was neither canid nor corbae magic. It was old, old. A light that had been waiting in the dark for the world to be born.

“I didn’t see her shine like this,” Gathen said. “Earlier, in the bar, I mean.”

Rabedy nodded. He hadn’t either.

“Makes you wonder about that pluiking Odawa,” Gathen went on. “How blind is he? Because he saw this.”

“Maybe he sees on some other level than we do.”

“I’d like to shove his head up the crack of his own ass and find out what he can see there.”

“Why do you say that?” Rabedy asked.

“I don’t like him—I don’t care what Big Dan says, or if he’s the boss. I don’t trust that pluiking green-bree, and I don’t like him. There’s something not right about the way he’s gadding about with us. He’s old and he’s powerful—what does he need us for?”

“To be his eyes.”

Gathen shook his head. “He doesn’t need our eyes. He saw this, remember?”

He moved to the woman’s bed as he spoke, one hand stretched out.

Don’t, Rabedy wanted to tell him, but it was too late.

As soon as Gathen touched her, the light flared, blinding them both. When they both stopped blinking, the bed was empty. The light was gone, but so was the woman. Gathen stood by the bed, sucking on the ends of his fingers.

“What happened?” Rabedy whispered.

“Pluiking light burnt me.”

“No, I mean, where did she go?”

“Damned if I know. Guess it has to do with that luck Odawa was on about. She must have been wearing some kind of safeguard spell that we couldn’t see because of the light.”