Beyond Raven he saw the humans—the three musicians he’d met back at the hotel in Sweetwater when he went to find Cassie. They stood in an uneasy group, the two men on either side of the woman, protective, though there was no longer a threat in evidence. But that was from Joe’s own viewpoint.

Their anxiety probably came from the cousins that still remained. Unlike Raven and the crow girls, the cousins wore their animal heritage on their human shapes. Walker and Ayabe both had their tall racks of antlers, lifting up into the sky. Jack was a coyote’s head on a man’s body, his dark, unblinking gaze on Minisino’s body as though he expected the dead cerva to get up at any moment.

“This is depressing,” Joe said, turning to Anwatan.

It was too much like watching his own funeral.

The deer woman nodded. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Go ahead. Just climb back into that body of yours.”

“Climb back into it, huh? Just like that.”

She gave him another nod. “Can’t you feel it reaching for you?”

That immobile, dead thing? Joe thought. It wasn’t reaching for anything. It just lay there with its head in Cassie’s lap, a limp, lifeless thing.

But as soon as she’d said it, he realized Anwatan was right. He could feel a pull and then he saw the loose, silvery thread that ran from where he stood to the corpse Cassie was holding.

He glanced back at Anwatan.

“You’ll get back to me on this business with your bogan?” he asked.

“Soon,” she told him. She looked past him to where her father stood. “Will you . . . will you tell him goodbye?”

“You don’t want to do it yourself?”

She shook her head. “It’s why I brought us here like this. I don’t want him to see me again. It hurts him too much, and I feel every ache that lies in his heart.”

“It hurts him not to see you, too.”

“I know. But he has to get used to it.”

“I’ll give him your message,” Joe said.

And then she was gone.

He stood for a long moment, staring at the dead body in Cassie’s arms. His dead body.

It was funny, he realized. He could accept it. He didn’t feel any personal need for another chance at life.

But his time on this wheel wasn’t done. He could feel it straining to turn. He could sense all the connections, all the lives that were a part of this turning that needed him to be here before he could go on to see what the next world held for him.

Never thought getting killed could be a selfish act, he thought.