Jonas had already considered this. “We have a bargain, old mother. You go west with the glass... unless you die beside the trail some night. You’ll pardon me for saying so, but you don’t look well.”

She cackled. “I’m better’n I look, oh yar! Years left ’fore this clock o’ mine runs down!”

I think you may be wrong about that, old mother, Jonas thought. But he kept his peace and only held his hands out for the ball.

For a moment longer she held it. Their arrangement was made and agreed to on both sides, but in the end she could barely bring herself to ungrasp the ball. Greed shone in her eyes like moonlight through fog.

He held his hands out patiently, saying nothing, waiting for her mind to accept reality—if she let go, there was some chance. If she held on, very likely everyone in this stony, weedy yard would end up riding the handsome before long.

With a sigh of regret, she finally put the ball in his hands. At the instant it passed from her to him, an ember of pink light pulsed deep in the depths of the glass. A throb of pain drove into Jonas’s head... and a shiver of lust coiled in his balls.

As from a great distance, he heard Depape and Reynolds cocking their pistols.

“Put those away,” Jonas said.

“But—” Reynolds looked confused.

“They thought’ee was going to double-cross Rhea,” the old woman said, cackling. “Good thing ye’re in charge rather than them, Jonas... mayhap you know summat they don’t.”

He knew something, all right—how dangerous the smooth, glassy thing in his hands was. It could take him in a blink, if it wanted. And in a month, he would be like the witch: scrawny, raddled with sores, and too obsessed to know or care.

“Put them away!” he shouted.

Reynolds and Depape exchanged a glance, then reholstered their guns.

“There was a bag for this thing,” Jonas said. “A drawstring bag laid inside the box. Get it.”

“Aye,” Rhea said, grinning unpleasantly at him. “But it won’t keep the ball from takin ye if it wants to. Ye needn’t think it will.” She surveyed the other two, and her eye fixed on Reynolds. “There’s a cart in my shed, and a pair of good gray goats to pull it.” She spoke to Reynolds, but her eyes kept turning back to the ball, Jonas noticed... and now his damned eyes wanted to go there, too.

“You don’t give me orders,” Reynolds said.

“No, but I do,” Jonas said. His eyes dropped to the ball, both wanting and fearing to see that pink spark of life deep inside. Nothing. Cold and dark. He dragged his gaze back up to Reynolds again. “Get the cart.”

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