He was still held by the memory of Anwatan’s calm presence and didn’t even shiver. Instead, her calmness seemed to have settled inside him as well, as though she’d left it with him as a final gift.

Well, you don’t even deserve a second chance, he told himself.

So if he got one, then blessings to the Moon. And if not, he would finally have to pay for running with Big Dan’s gang.

He’d never believed in fate before. But now he felt firmly held in its grip, and all he could do was wait.

Jilly

Del’s exactly where Raylene and I left him. Lying against the wall, the leather cords holding him captive. He looks up when I come into the parlour and glares at me.

“So, it’s just you and me again,” I tell him.

“You’ll be sorry once I figure a way out of this.”

I shake my head. “You still don’t get it, do you? It’s over, Del. We’re done here.”

But he doesn’t get it, and why should I be surprised? This isn’t the old drunk Raylene tracked down in a Tyson County trailer park. This is the Del of our childhood, full of piss and vinegar. The one who figures everything’s always going to go his way because the world owes him.

“I can wait,” he tells me. “I’m patient as hell, little sister. Sooner or later, you’ll let down your guard.”

“The trouble is, it’s got nothing to do with whether I’m paying attention to you or not.”

I crouch down on the floor so that we’re seeing eye to eye.

“See,” I go on, “I know I can’t get rid of you. You’re always going to be in my head.”

“Damn straight.”

“Except it’s no longer on your terms. It’s on mine.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not the way it works. And as soon as I get myself untied, you’re going to see.”

“Yeah, about your being tied up,” I say. “That’s not going to work for me either. I don’t like the idea of leaving anybody like this, unable to move, lying on the floor in an empty room for the rest of their lives—especially not when that room’s in my head.”

“So let me go.”

He tries to use what he thinks of as charm, looking at me from lowered lashes, dimple in his cheek from the touch of a smile. Maybe that worked on the girls back in Tyson—though I’m guessing not, or why’d he have to come sniffing after his little sisters?—but it’s sure not working on me.

“Yeah, right,” I say. “As if that’s going to happen.”

“Hey, we’ll let bygones be bygones. You go your way and I’ll go mine. No hard feelings.”