Joe gave the musicians what he probably thought was a reassuring smile, but with the fierce light in his eyes, it was more like a wolf baring its teeth as it confronted an enemy. Except, Cassie thought, this enemy was made up of cousins. Cerva, but still Joe’s kin. He wasn’t letting on, but she knew that was the hardest part of this for him—maybe even harder than leaving Honey to look out for Jilly.

Joe could be as fierce as any predator, though in situations such as this, he was usually the mediator. But with the way those buffalo were revving themselves up, she doubted they’d even be capable of listening to reason anymore.

He turned and took her hand. But before they could step away into the between, Siobhan moved forward.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

Joe and Cassie paused to look at her. Cassie expected Joe to argue with the fiddler, if he didn’t just shut her flat down. Instead, he nodded in agreement.

“This is going to spill over into your world,” he said, “so you’ve got a stake in it, too. But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t see us making much more than a statement here, and then we lose our lives.”

“But you’re going.”

He nodded. “My problem is I’m an eternal optimist. I always figure something’ll come up at the last minute.”

She smiled back at him. “Me, too.”

“Then let’s go and give it our best shot.”

In the end, they all went, leaving behind an empty hotel room.

Christiana Tree

“Remember those kids who asked if they could use one of my stories for a film school project?”

Saskia and I were sitting on cushions on the floor of Christy’s study, leafing through an old photo album and smiling at all the pictures of the Riddell boys when they were young. At the sound of Christy’s voice we lifted our heads and looked over to where he was sitting at his desk, reading e-mail on his laptop. It was such a nice quiet day: the sun shining outside, the three of us in here, just hanging out like the family we’d come to be. I cherished moments like this.

So, why did I feel this sense of foreboding, creeping around under my skin, burrowing deep in my bones?

Saskia nodded in response to Christy’s question.

“I remember,” she said. “You told them it was okay.”

“I know. For a school project. Except now—” He pointed a finger at the screen of his monitor. “—Bernie tells me that they’ve made a DVD out of it and are selling it on the Internet. He found a link for it on eBay while he was doing a search on my name.”

“Your friends need to find better things to do with their time,” I said.

“Ha ha.”