All things considered, he could guess where Minisino’s club had sent him. There were stories about a place that lay between the world of the living and wherever the dead go when their time was finally up and done. A kind of holding ground. Supposedly, everybody paused here on their journey. Most went on, took the next turn of the wheel. Those that didn’t . . . they stayed here, or haunted the world of the living. Restless. Unhappy. Unable to go back, unable to move on.

The key here was, you had to be dead to reach this place.

Funny. He’d always thought he’d be looking death straight in the face when his time came. Instead, he’d been taken down by a coward’s blow from behind.

It was his own damn fault.

He should have stayed on track. He should never have let himself get involved in a war that wasn’t going to happen anyway. He should have realized that the ghost buffalo couldn’t cause any damage if they crossed over to the world of the living, and let the fairy courts and buffalo sort it out between themselves.

It didn’t help that nobody else had seen it, either. Not Tatiana or Jack. Not Ayabe. Not even Raven. None of them.

Only that slip of a shadow of Christy’s had her eyes open wide enough to actually see what was going on.

Being distracted as he’d been was no excuse, but what he should have done was forget the buffalo and concentrate on his own business. Family business. The kinds of things that buffalo war chiefs and fairy queens didn’t care about and certainly wouldn’t lend a helping hand to fix because they were too busy creating endless crises of their own.

But it was too late now. He wasn’t going to see either Cassie or Jilly again. Wasn’t going to hunt with Honey, carouse with Jack, shoot a game of pool at Jimmy’s, or have any more arguments with old Jack Whiteduck back on the rez.

That wheel had turned all the way to the end and let him off here.

He turned around in a slow circle, trying to decide where to go. Heading for the water seemed like a good bet. At least it would be a start. Trouble was, he just couldn’t pinpoint where it was. It sounded like it was coming from all around him.

Maybe it was. Maybe he was on an island.

Then he heard something else—the scuffle of a footstep in the dirt. He faced that direction and then there was Minisino, stepping out of the mist.

“Which one of them killed you?” Joe asked him.

The buffalo war chief stopped and studied him without expression for a long moment.

“The big fat black man,” he said finally. “Picked me up with one hand and gave me a shake that broke my neck.”

“Raven.”

Minisino nodded.