Terry Brooks - Angel Fire East

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Don't you see? I wouldn't let go of him. I didn't intend it. I didn't mean for him to become a part of me. But I made it happen without ever realizing what it was I was doing. I thought it was his choice. But it wasn't. It was mine. It was always mine."

Pick rubbed his beard. "That doesn't make any sense. You haven't been happy about him living inside you for years. He must have known, yet he didn't do a thing about it. So why is he standing up to you now? If he couldn't or wouldn't break free before, why is he doing so now? What's changed?"

She looked back at Wraith, at his tiger face, fierce and challenging, at his gleaming eyes fixed on her as if they could see what she could not. "The morph," she whispered.

"What?" Pick was confused. "Speak up!"

"The gypsy morph," she repeated. "That's what's changed."

She could almost see it then, the truth she had been searching for since John Ross and the morph had appeared on her doorstep three days ago. It was a shadowy presence that darted across her consciousness in the blink of an eye and was gone. It whispered to her of Little John, of why he took the form of a four-year-old boy and spoke her name and came to find her and called her Mama. It whispered to her of a revelation waiting to be uncovered if she would just believe.

She thought suddenly of the Freemark women, of the way the magic passed from one generation to the next. She thought of Gran, and the sacrifice she had made for Nest so many years ago.

When she spoke, her voice was distant and searching. "Pick, if I set Wraith free, will I lose him? Will I lose his magic?"

Pick was silent for a long time. "I don't know," he said finally. "Maybe."

She nodded slowly. "I'll have to chance it. I'm leaving him out there to do what he wishes. I won't take him back inside me." She took a deep breath and turned away from the ghost wolf. No words were necessary. Wraith would know.

"Call Jonathan," she ordered Pick. "Fly to the house on West Third and start checking. But be careful. I'll take John in the car and meet you there."

Pick grumbled to himself for a moment, then whistled sharply. The barn owl reappeared out of the trees, gliding past Nest's outstretched hand, his great wings brushing her shoulder softly. The sylvan jumped onto his back, and in seconds they were gone, winging away into the night.

Nest watched them fade into the snowfall, keeping her back to Wraith. When they were gone, she turned to see if he was still there. He wasn't. The ghost wolf had vanished. She stared at the space he had occupied, then glanced around quickly. There was no sign of him.

"Good hunting, Wraith," she whispered.

Then she was running for the house and John Ross.

They drove through the mostly deserted streets of Hope-well, Nest at the wheel and Ross beside her in the passenger seat. Neither spoke. Snow continued to fall in a curtain of thick, soft flakes, and everything was blanketed in white. The main streets had been cleared by the plows on their first pass, but the side streets were mostly untouched, the snow spilling over onto sidewalks and lawns in a smooth, unbroken carpet, the metal roofs of parked cars lifting out of the winterscape like the humped backs of slumbering beasts. Streetlights glistened off the pale crust in brilliant bursts that spread outward in halos of diminishing radiance. Everywhere, there was a deep, pervasive, and enveloping silence.

As she steered through the shaken-snow-globe world, Nest was shot through with doubt. She could not fathom doing what she knew she must without Wraith to stand beside her, even though she had accepted that it might be necessary. She tried not to dwell on the enormity of the task that lay ahead— getting into the demon lair, finding the children, and getting them out safely, all without having Wraith's magic to aid her. She tried not to question her belief that giving up Wraith was somehow necessary in order to discover the secret of the gypsy morph, even though that belief was essentially blind and deaf and paper thin. She had not told Ross of it. She had not told him of freeing Wraith. If he had known, he would never have let her come with him. She had told him only what she felt necessary—that Pick had gone on ahead to scout the grounds and entrances to the demon house in order to find a way in. What happened from here forward must be on her conscience and not made a burden on his.

When they reached the intersection of West Fourth Street and Avenue G, Nest pulled the Taurus into the mostly invisible parking lot of a dry-cleaning service two blocks away from and out of sight of their destination. From there, they walked through the deep snow, down unplowed walks and across deserted side streets until the old Victorian came in sight. West Third was plowed, but empty of traffic, and the old houses were mostly dark at the ends of their snow-covered lawns and long drives. Even the one in which Findo Gask and his demons took shelter had only a few lights burning, as if electricity were precious and meant to be rationed.

They were almost in front of the house, keeping to the shadows and away from the pale glow of the streetlamps, when they saw the sheriff's cruiser parked in the drive.

Nest shook her head at Ross as they paused beneath a massive old hickory. "Larry Spence." She spoke his name with disgust and frustration. "He just can't manage to keep out of this."

Ross nodded, eyes fixed on the house. "We can't do anything about him now. We have to go in anyway."

She took a deep breath, thinking of all the chances she'd had to put Larry out of the picture, to scare him so badly he wouldn't dream of involving himself further. It might have spared them what they were about to go through. It might have changed everything. She sighed. That was the trouble with hindsight, of course. Always perfect. She hadn't even considered doing harm to Larry. She had always thought he would lose interest and drop out of the picture on his own. But maybe that was never an option. Maybe the demons had gained too tight a hold over him for that to be possible.

She glanced at the cruiser one final time and dismissed the matter. She would never know now.

They worked their way along the edge of a hedgerow separating the old Victorian from an English manor knockoff that was dark and crumbling. They drew even with the front entry and paused, kneeling in the snow, staying low to the ground and the shadows.

If I'm wrong about this, Nest kept thinking, unable to finish the thought, but unable to stop repeating herself either.

She didn't see where Pick came from. He just appeared, dropping out of nowhere to land on her shoulder, giving her such a fright that she gasped aloud.

"Criminy, settle down!" the other snapped irritably, grasping her collar to keep from being shaken off. His mossy beard was thick with snowflakes, and his wooden body was damp and slick. "Took your time getting here, didn't you?"

"Well, navigating these streets isn't like sailing along on the open air!" she snapped back, irritated herself. She exhaled a cloud of breath at him. "What did you find?"

He sniffed. "What do you think I found? There's traps and trip lines formed of demon magic all over. The place stinks of them. But those are demons in there, not sylvans, so they tend to be more than a little careless. No pride of workmanship at all. There are holes in that netting large enough to fly an owl through—which is exactly what I did. Then I slipped through a tear in the screen on the back porch, which they forgot about as well, and got inside through the back door. They've got the children down in the basement in a big playroom. You can get to them easy."

He scrunched up his face. "The bad news is that something's down there with them. I don't know what it is. Might be a demon, might be something else. I couldn't see it, but I could sure as heck smell it!"