“There’s something else,” I said when he did. “We’ve been told there’s a cousin with them. An old and powerful one from one of the fish clans—blind, but still formidable.”

Walker’s brow darkened. “Who?”

“The only name we have for him is Odawa, and I don’t believe he’s local.”

“I can find out,” he said.

He looked like he was about to go and do just that.

“Sir?” I said.

He waited for me to go on.

“Will you help us track down our friends? We know they were taken into the otherworld, but none of us are that familiar with travelling through it on our own.”

“Do you know where in the otherworld?”

I shook my head. “No one can seem to get a trace on them.”

“Do you have any idea how big the otherworld is?”

I was about to tell him that I did, that it was world upon world, vast and confusing, but then a cell phone went off. The tone played the opening bars of The Flintstones theme.

“Crap,” Cassie said.

Trust her to have that on her phone. Her preferences have always ranged from the tasteful to the tasteless.

She pulled out her phone and looked at its screen.

“It’s Joe,” she told us.

Walker gave her a considering look as she spoke. It was as though he was seeing her for the first time.

“I know you,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, “but I really need to take this. He might have news about Jilly.”

Walker turned to me. I thought he might be angry, considering how Cassie’d just blown him off, but he only looked thoughtful.

“And Joe is?” he asked.

“Joseph Crazy Dog.”

“Ah.”

He looked as though he was going to say something else, but stopped himself.

“. . . behind the hotel,” Cassie was saying. “With Walker. Uh-huh.”

She turned to us to say, “He’s going to be right here,” but she needn’t have bothered because hard on the heels of her words, Joe came stepping out of the between, a cell phone in his hand. He gave Cassie a quick hug and nodded to me before turning to face Walker.

“Is it just me,” I heard Andy say from behind me, “or does none of this seem so weird anymore?”

I didn’t bother to respond. I was more interested in what news Joe had. But Walker spoke first.

“I should have realized,” he said, “that one of Cody’s people would be mixed up in all of this.”

“Well, first off,” Joe told him, “I’m not one of Cody’s ‘people’—whoever the hell they’re supposed to be—and the reason I’m involved is that somebody’s made the mistake of messing with my family.”

“Your . . . family.”

“Her name’s Jilly. She’s like my sister, or my daughter.”

Emotion flickered in Walker’s eyes.