The three of them fell silent for a long moment, but Cassie could see where their thoughts were taking them. Andy was the one who started to voice the question.

“So then Joe,” he began.

Cassie nodded. “Isn’t like you or me.”

“Who isn’t?” a familiar voice asked from the middle of the room.

“Jesus!” Andy cried.

He fell back onto the bed and banged into Con’s legs as he tried to get away from the man who’d suddenly appeared in the room with them. Siobhan and Con just stared wide-eyed, but Cassie jumped up from where she was sitting and flung herself into Joe’s waiting arms.

“You aren’t,” she said into his shoulder and hugged him tightly. “You’ll never be like anybody else.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

She gave him a harder squeeze. “I’m glad you’re back. I was getting so worried.”

He pulled back, the trace of a smile touching the corner of his mouth.

“And bored,” he said.

“That, too.”

It was only then that she realized Joe was on his own.

“Where’s Jilly?” she asked, stepping back to look around the room. “And the others?”

“It’s complicated,” he told her. “And right now we’ve got bigger problems.”

“But—”

“See for yourself.”

He opened up a view of the between and the rhythmic sound of drums and stamping hooves filled the room, loud as thunder. Cassie and the musicians could see the massing buffalo, facing a glow that Cassie knew was how the city manifested in this place between the two worlds. Standing on the plain, between the buffalo and the city, was a lone figure, the many tines of his antlers lifting high from his brow.

“Is that . . . ?”

“Walker? You bet.”

Joe did something to the opening he’d made into the between so that the roar of sound was gone, but they could still see.

“He’s there,” Joe went on, “standing all on his own—the only thing between the Newford courts of fairy and way more pissed off buffalo soldiers than anybody’s got the time to count.”

“What does it mean?”

“War.”

Cassie shivered. “Oh, god. Why are they doing this?”

Joe shrugged. “What have they got to lose?”

Cassie turned to look at him.

“Everything,” she said, her voice soft.

Joe gave her a slow nod.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Revenge starts out tasting sweet, but dealing in hurt is always going to leave a mark on your spirit. Still, I’ve got to tell you—if someone killed you to make clothes out of your skin, or just to cut a steak from your thigh, I wouldn’t be taking the time to worry about the state of my soul. I’d just be taking them down—any and everybody who had a hand in it.”

“And then?” Cassie asked. “It wouldn’t bring me back.”