And then he let himself go. The silver thread went tight and reeled him back toward his body. A moment later and the corpse shivered in Cassie’s arms. He opened eyes that were caked shut with dust and salt. The first thing he saw was the blurry image of Cassie’s face as she leaned down to kiss him.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” she whispered.

He sensed movement on either side and realized it was the crow girls dancing around when he heard their voices.

“He’s back, he’s back!”

“Should we fix him, Lucius?”

“Should we, should we?”

“Oh, say we can!”

And then there was Raven’s gruff voice: “Didn’t I bring you here to do just that?”

“Well, yes.”

“But what if you’d changed your mind?”

“Then there’d be shouting.”

“It’d be all bad Maida. Bad Zia.”

“Would you just get to it,” Raven told them.

Cassie’s face left his field of vision, replaced by the merry faces of the crow girls.

“Hello, crow dog,” Maida said.

Zia nodded. “Hello, hello.”

They put their hands on his head, running their fingers through his hair to where his scalp was split open. He winced when they touched the open wound.

He was about to complain. He heard Cassie warning them off. But then he felt the wound close, the flesh knit. The sharp ache in his head vanished.

He didn’t just feel healed. He felt renewed.

His vision cleared and the crow girls came into sharp focus above him. Zia winked before they pulled their faces away.

“Careful,” Cassie said as he started to sit up.

“Don’t have to be,” he said. “There’s not a damn thing wrong with me anymore.”

Zia smirked.

“Better than new,” Maida said.

Joe sat all the way up and nodded. “No kidding. What did you do to me?”

His gaze went from one to the other.

“Filled you with a bit of Grace,” Zia said.

Maida just stuck out her tongue. The pair of them bounced to their feet and did a little stomp dance around him and Cassie, then they leapt into the air and two crows sped off, vanishing before they’d gone more than a few dozen yards into the sky.

“You really okay?” Jack asked.

Joe stood and gave Cassie a hand up. He put his arm around her shoulders.

“Like Maida said: better than new.”

Jack wore a man’s face again, and a big grin like he’d just drawn a fourth ace to match the three in his hand.

“Man,” he said. “I could’ve used those girls that time Zella’s old man beat the crap out of me. It took me weeks to get back on my feet.”

“Zella’s that puma girl Jack can’t stay away from,” Joe said to Cassie.

“I remember.”