“And if the cards showed that,” Cassie put in, “I’d be the first to call him to us.”

I could tell Siobhan didn’t understand—or at least she didn’t agree. I sympathized, but I still wouldn’t do it. I didn’t know Joe’s real name, anyway. I’d heard him referred to as everything from Bones to Joseph Crazy Dog, depending on who I was talking to.

And I trusted the cards enough to believe that wherever Jilly and Lizzie were, their situation wasn’t critical. Lizzie was just riding that pony. Jilly leaned against a tree and was looking out over a landscape of rolling forested hills. Neither seemed in any immediate danger. We were the ones obsessing and worrying.

“Well, what about that other guy?” Con asked. “Didn’t Walker say Lizzie could call him for help? She didn’t say anything about having to use a secret name with him.”

Cassie and I looked at each other.

“You never know,” she said. “If he made that offer to her, he could respond to us as well. And Walker was the name he gave her to use—or rather, Walks-with-Dreams.”

I gave a slow nod. “I guess we could try. Although we might be taking the risk of having a seriously pissed off stag show up and complicating matters even more.”

Siobhan stood up from her bed. “Well, I say we try it. What do we do—just call the name?”

“I suppose,” I said. “But not in here. We can’t just call him into this room because what if he shows up in his stag shape? We need to go somewhere else, like the woods behind the hotel.”

Siobhan looked around at each of us, then started for the door.

“Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for?”

Andy and Con walked over to the door where Siobhan stood. I waited for Cassie to put away her cards before joining them myself. A little reluctantly, I might add. I had an uneasy feeling about this. The trouble with the spirits of the wild was that unless you’d gotten a promise from them before, you never knew how they’d react to being summoned.

But like Siobhan, and for pretty much the same reasons, I was willing to take the chance.

Lizzie

The landscape was a dreary grey for as far as Lizzie could see, which wasn’t all that far because of the banks of fog that shifted with the winds. Sometimes a hole appeared in the fog and she caught glimpses of the water that she could hear lapping against the shore, or the grey dunes that disappeared into the distance opposite the water. But mostly the fog hung close, blocking her view. It made the air damp and cool, waking a chill in her.