Awakenings

            “When you talked to her about it, you sounded like you knew what it was like on both ends of being a sibling—being the one worried about and being the one worrying,” I said quietly as Phelan and I headed toward where I assumed my brother would be, beyond the supply tent, working on the ductwork to lay in those trenches the other were digging.
            Phelan smiled and nodded slightly.  “That’s because I do,” he said quietly.  “To a certain degree, anyhow.  I have a younger sister, in some ways more precocious and troublesome than I.  Aoife.  If there was ever a soul in the whole of the world that could get themselves into more trouble than Teague and I, it’s her.”  His gaze and voice became wistful.  “I don’t know where she is, what’s become of her.  She was one of the few that came across with us.”
            “Well, that explains how you know about being a frightened big brother,” I said quietly, putting my hands back into my pockets.  “But what about scaring big brothers?  Is that firsthand, too?”
            He laughed weakly.  “No, not really, just the receiving end.  Teague and I, though, we managed to scare his older brother more than a couple times before…”  His voice trailed away, eyes focusing distantly for a moment and he shook his head slightly.  “Well, sufficient to say I learned the lessons well.”  I could hear the sounds of metal against metal, some kind of hammering and started to walk a little faster.
            Phelan’s voice stopped me.
            “She has a druid’s gift,” he said, his voice soft.  “More strongly than I’ve encountered in a couple hundred years.”
            I blinked at him over my shoulder.  “But she’s, like, ten years old.”
            He shrugged.  “She has it.  You can’t tell me you didn’t notice that she’s very aware of what we used to be able to call the unseen world.  Those gifts can manifest very early, often in response to trauma.”  He spread his arms.  “And if this wasn’t trauma, I’m not exactly sure what trauma is.”
            “Well, you’ve got me there at least,” I murmured.
            In the lee of one of the ruined dorms, we found Matt hammering a strip of metal flat against what looked like a makeshift anvil.  I’d never seen this little set-up before; it must have been something new he’d put together in the past couple days.  His face was smudged with dust and dirt and he was sweating despite the chill.
            He happened to glance up at our approach and he grinned when he saw me, a smile that shrank when he got an eyeful of Phelan.  “Thought you were seeing to the wards with Carolyn,” Matt said slowly, looking back at me.  “But then I saw her back here and you weren’t anywhere to be found.  Who’s this?”  He jerked his chin toward Phelan.
            Phelan eased forward and offered Matt his hand.  “Phelan Conrad.  I’m a friend.”
            Matt shucked off his glove and reached for Phelan’s hand, though his eyes were on me.  I smiled reassuringly.
            “Kira sent him, but he ran late.”
            “By about twenty-three days,” Phelan said, smiling sheepishly.
            Matt smiled wryly as he shook Phelan’s hand.  “You probably need to work on that, then, don’t you?  Timing is everything.”
            “Believe me, I’m starting to realize that.”  Phelan released my brother’s hand after a moment, then nodded to the tools laid across the anvil.  “Arts and crafts?”
            He snorted.  “I wish.  Working on some heating conduits so we don’t all freeze to death huddled around a bonfire this winter.  None of us are quite confident enough to try to fell some of the bigger trees to make some kind of lodge, and no one wants to spend the season in that damned tent.”  He gestured toward the half-collapsed dorms.  “And the buildings that’re still standing aren’t safe.”
            As if to punctuate his words, there was the soft rumble in the distance of another building—at least a section of one—falling in on itself.  Phelan winced and nodded.
            “I see.”
            Matt nodded grimly and picked up his hammer.  “So we’ve got to make do with what’s at hand, you know?”
            Phelan nodded mutely, watching as Matt went back to work.  I cleared my throat.
            “Matt?  Was there something you needed from me?”
            He grunted.  “Yeah, it was just a question, though.  About those things and what hurts them.”
            I tilted my head to one side, studying Matt as he lifted the hammer to resume his work on the sheet of metal.  “What about it?”  What’s he been thinking about?  How the dutch oven crushed those things’ skulls like they were eggshells?  And the birdshot chewed them up?  What do those—
            “Holy shit,” I mumbled suddenly, looking at Phelan.  “The iron.  The iron hurts them, doesn’t it?”
            “Cold iron will do bad things to just about anyone or anything that’s born of or spent too much time in any of the Otherlands,” he said quietly.  His expression clouded for a moment.  “Stick an iron blade in me, it might not end well.  Steel, or another alloy, I might fare better, but that’s because I was born across the sea, not across barriers.”
            I blinked at him, open-mouthed, then nodded slightly.  Matt just stared.
            “What the hell are you talking about?”
            Phelan opened his mouth to speak, but closed it and looked at me as I touched his arm.
            “Later,” I said softly.  “We can explain it all later, after dinner.  You can explain it all.”  I looked sidelong at my brother.  “The ones who are still here, do you think they can handle being…initiated, for lack of a better term?”
            He frowned for a moment, then shrugged.  “Better now than later, I guess, Mar.  We’ve lost five since the fight.  Number’s already down.  Maybe who we’ve got left will be made of sterner stuff than the ones who ran away.”
            We can only hope.  I nodded mutely.  “Things are about to get stranger.”
            Matt looked at me deadpan.  “Bring it on.  I’m not sure how much worse it could get.”
            Phelan smiled humorlessly.  “Bad enough,” he said quietly, “though I don’t think it’s anything you won’t be able to handle.”
            “Is that supposed to be comforting?”  Matt asked, looking between the two of us.
            Phelan shrugged.  “It’s supposed to be true.  That’s all I have to offer.”
            My brother nodded slowly.  “All right.  I guess I’ll have to accept that—and explanations at dinner.”  He waved us off with the hand still holding the hammer.  “Go on, get out of here.  I’ve got some more work to get done while there’s still daylight.”
            I pecked him on the cheek.  “Good luck.”
            “Thanks,” he muttered, then got back to it.
            Phelan smiled wryly as we walked away.  “He’s a reluctant believer, isn’t he?”
            “Yeah,” I said softly.  “But he’s coming around.  Just like all the rest.”  I shrugged.  “They’ll have to, if we’re going to keep on surviving.  Right?”
            “Aye,” Phelan said softly.  “Or at the very least, accept that there is more to the world than what they can see with their eyes.”
            “If you can convince Thom, I think everyone else will be easy.”  At least, that’s what I hope.
            “Indeed.”  Phelan grinned puckishly.  “And now it’s more than high time I meet him.”
            I laughed to cover the queasy feeling in my stomach.  “Yeah.  Right.  It is.”

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            “Thom may not react well to you being here, you know,” I said as we walked back across the plaza toward Little Mac and the ravine.
            “Mm-hmm,” Phelan said, nodding slightly.  “You already told me that.  It is what it is, will be what it will be.”  He shrugged slightly.  “Even if he disapproves of my presence here, I’m not leaving until I’m good and ready to go.”  He grinned, mayhem and mischief mingling in his bright eyes.  “And I’ll tell him that to his face if I have to.”  He patted the arm that was wrapped around his.  “Don’t you worry for one moment that I’ll take his crap.  I won’t forget what you asked of me, either.”
            I nodded slightly.  “Thank you,” I said softly.
            Phelan’s tone gentled.  “You’re not wrong about his needing to accept what is, Marin.”
            “I know,” I said.  I was saying it a lot, I realized, and it was beginning to sound like I was on the defensive when it came to just about everything.  I tried not to sigh.  “That doesn’t make anything easier.”
            Phelan smiled wryly.  “If this was meant to be easy, Marin, everyone would have survived rather than a select few.”
            I looked at him sidelong, brows knitting for a moment.  I still caught glimmers of the Phelan-that-must-have-been, the one from some distant past.  “What’s it like?” I asked softly.  “Living then and then living now?”
            He shook his head slightly.  “There’s not really a comparison to be made.  Too different.  Why do you ask?”
            “Do you still have the tattoo?”
            He startled, looking at me strangely.  “Yes,” he said slowly, his hand drifting to the back of his neck.  “How did you—”  He cut himself off, staring at me for a few long moments.  “What have you seen?” he breathed, eyes large.
            I shook my head slightly, thinking that my heartbeat should’ve quickened, though it hadn’t.  I was as calm as ever.  “Just you.  As you might have been once, I think.  Like in the days from J.T.’s dreams of you, maybe earlier.”
            Phelan’s breath caught for a moment and he shook his head slowly, his hand falling away from his neck.  “Gods and monsters,” he said softly.  “You remind me of her.”
            “Who?”  Who could I remind him of?  Someone he knew in that long-ago yesterday, probably.
            He smiled a sad little smile and shook his head.  “The woman who helped me with the tattoo,” he said quietly, touching the back of his neck for a moment.  “An old friend, lost for centuries.  You remind me of her, and her brother Caidre.”
            “Oh,” I said softly.  My curiosity tried to amp up, but I tamped it down.  I had to trust him to tell me more in his own time.  Eventually, the words would come.  I had to believe they would.
            We crossed Little Mac and came up around the curve along the edge of Mackinac’s ruins.  I slowly withdrew my arm, just in time to hear Angie’s laughter and the yipping of Birtha’s litter of puppies.  There were a half dozen of them, shaggy little sheepdog pups that were big eyes and all paws and fur, and they were tumbling all over each other and Angie as we approached.
            I waved to her as we came into view and she started to wave back to me until she got an eyeful of Phelan.
            She stopped dead in her tracks and gave a little gasp, just staring, both hands clamped over her mouth, eyes big as saucers.  It took a moment before she glanced at me, then back at him.
            “Angie?  What’s the matter?”  I moved away from Phelan and walked over to her.  I touched her shoulder, crouching down next to her, puppies tumbling around us both.  She looked at me, her eyes still huge.
            “Who is he, Miss Marin?” she whispered, a tremor of fear—or awe?—in her voice.  Her small fingers tangled in my sleeve.  “Who is he?”
            “His name is Phelan, Angie,” I said softly, putting my arm around her and giving her a quick squeeze.  “He’s a friend.  He came to help us.”
            “He’s older than Mr. Rory is,” she said.  “Older than what’s inside of Mr. Rory and Miss Kellin.  But Miss Kellin’s almost as old.”
            Phelan stared at the two of us, looking puzzled for a moment.  Then he smiled an easy smile and shook his head slightly.  “Rory has an old soul, little one,” he said gently, moving to us and crouching down so he was on Angie’s level, so she could look him in the eye.  “But so do you.  You know that, right?”
            Angie nodded firmly.  “Yes, sir, I do.  It scares Paul.”
            Phelan grinned.  “Is he your big brother?”
            Her lips made a little O and she nodded.  “Yes, sir.”
            “Sometimes, big brothers get scared because they can’t protect their little brothers and sisters.”  He tapped her nose with a fingertip.  “You shouldn’t scare your brother.  But it’s okay if you do.”
            “Really?” she asked, her voice a hushed, wondering whisper.
            “Really.”  Phelan tousled her hair and stood up.  “Have the puppies told you their names yet?”
            “No,” she said quietly as she watched him stand up.
            “You should ask them,” he said, his smile gentle, almost paternal.  “Listen to them.  They’ll whisper their names to you, if you listen hard enough?”
            “Really?”
            “Yeah,” he said, still smiling.  “Really.”
            “Wow,” Angie said softly, then looked at me.  “You’re right, Miss Marin.  He’s a nice man.”
            I almost laughed, nodding.  “I’m glad you think so, Angie.”  I straightened up.  “Don’t get too close to the edge of the ravine or the ruins, okay?”
            She nodded.  “Okay, Miss Marin.”  She hesitated a moment, then said, “Mr. Matt was looking for you.  He didn’t know where you’d gone.”
            “Oh.”  Didn’t someone tell him?  That probably wouldn’t have stopped Matt from wondering after me, even if someone had told him what I was doing.  “Well, I guess I should find him, right?  Because big sisters shouldn’t make their little brothers worry, right?”
            Angie grinned.  “Right!”
            Phelan arched a brow at me as we stared to walk again, leaving Angie with the puppies at play.  “Your brother first, then Thom?”
            I nodded.  “Yeah,” I said, waving to Tala, who’d clearly traded tending the fire to keeping a loose eye on Angie and the dogs while doing some other chores.  She waved back, then went back to tending the smokers.  “No sense in making him worry.”
            Phelan nodded in agreement.  “Indeed.  I look forward to meeting him.”
            I smiled wryly.  This ought to be interesting.  Maybe not good, but interesting to say the least.

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            I kept staring at him uncomprehendingly.  “Are you saying that someone can just waltz in here and perform necromancy?  Not that there’s anyone around that could or would do it.”
            Phelan made a sort-of gesture with his hand.  “Contrary to popular belief, most souls don’t cross over right away, especially those taken before their time, or what they felt was their time.  That leaves ample time for someone who knows how to harness them for various means.  If the site of someone’s burial is warded and hallowed, however, the ability for these things to take place is greatly curtailed.”  He shrugged.  “Most places are unconsciously warded and largely hallowed these days.  But burials like the one you guys had to make—that’s not.  There’s a lot of bodies there, right?”
            I nodded mutely, refusing to think about how many.  It was just easier not to number them, less painful.  There had been a lot to bury.
            Phelan nodded.  “That means there’s quite a few souls that could be harnessed if not by the camazotzi, then perhaps by something attached to them.  If they managed to distract you from your burials, or drive you away from them…”  His voice trailed away and he stared at me.
            I understood now, of course.  “Then that would leave the souls attached to the bodies buried here vulnerable, because we’d never think to hallow the ground or ward it, believing in large part that what’s dead is dead and gone.”
            “Precisely,” Phelan said.
            I glanced again at the turned soil and shook my head slightly.  “It’s going to take more than just you and I to do that.  I don’t think I’ve got the energy.”
            He smiled briefly.  “Wait here.  I’ll pull together something temporary, at least, until we can bring a larger group out here.”
            I nodded slightly and sank down onto the half-broken bench, watching as he dusted himself off and walked toward the graves.  He stopped perhaps five feet from the edge of the long trench graves and stood for a few long moments, head bowed as if in prayer.  After a few moments of silence, he began to walk around the grave, clockwise, taking long, even strides.
            He was singing.  The language was one I couldn’t understand, and I could only assume it was in some variant of his native tongue, somewhere between an aria and a battle hymn.  My heart pounded and my throat swelled as I listened to the words that drifted to me on the chill breeze.
            I could see him as he must have looked thousands of years ago, dressed in soft leathers under tooled leather, a bow and sword across his back, a spear in one hand, boots laced to his knee and a wool mantle gathered up around his shoulders.  His head was bare, leaving his fiery hair exposed, windblown.  He was magnificent.
            And yet, strangely, there was something about him, something about his carriage and confidence that reminded me of Thom so much it made my heart hurt without my knowing why.
            Phelan circled the graves three times before he stopped where he had started.  His song ended as he flung his arms out and stood, arms outstretched, head thrown back to the sky.
 

            Arrows flew all around us.  I ducked down behind a barrier, flinching despite myself.  There were more than we’d ever dreamed there’d be.
            “Phelan!” Thom barked from somewhere beyond me.  I opened my eyes, looked to my left.
            My heart slammed into my throat.  Phelan was falling, arms flailing like graceless wings, two arrows in his upper chest.

 
            I gasped in a breath, blinking back stinging tears that had come out of nowhere.  Phelan was lowering his arms now, turning and walking back toward me.  I must have looked terrified or stricken as he moved back, because his brow creased in concern.
            “What’s wrong?” he asked as he crossed through the hedgerows.  He crouched in front of me and took both of my hands in his.
            “Nothing,” I whispered.  “Nothing.”
            There must have been something in my eyes that he could read.  Phelan touched my cheek gently.  “Whatever happens, leannán, whatever you see, always remember that I have lived long and fully, and death will take me when She sees fit to bring me home to undying lands.  Tuiscint?”
            I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, but that didn’t stop a tear from starting to trickle down my face.  Phelan smiled gently and wiped it away with his thumb.
            “I’m all right,” I said softly, trying to convince myself more than I was trying to convince him.
            “I know you are.”  He straightened and offered me his hand.  “The graves will be safe for now—a few days at least, perhaps longer.”
            I took his hand and stood up, nodding.  “Good.  That’ll give me enough time to figure out how to explain all of this to everyone else.”  I managed a rueful smile.
            Phelan laughed.  “I imagine that will be easier than you think.  Was this all you wanted to show me?”  He smiled conspiratorially at me.  “Is it high time I meet Thomas?”
            Now it was my turn to laugh, and I did, nodding.  “Yeah.  I think it is.”  I took the arm he offered and began to lead him back toward camp.

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            We made our way out of the arboretum and back to the concrete pathways of the lakes plaza.  As we drew closer to the library, our shoes crunched on broken glass and I could see deep gouges scraped into the concrete.  My lips thinned.  “Some of them chased J.T. and Drew and Carolyn here,” I said quietly, toeing some of the glass away from one of the deeper gouges.
            “What were they doing out here?  Looting the library?”  He gestured toward the windowless ruin.
            I shook my head slightly.  “No.  Carolyn—the fairies—Carolyn—”  I fumbled for the words until Phelan touched my arm with a knowing smile.
            “I saw the little one on her shoulder.  She sees them clear as day, doesn’t she?”
            I swallowed and nodded.  “Yes.  She always had…glimmers…of them even before this all happened.”  I started to walk again, and he kept pace with me.  “Still came as a shock, though.”
            Phelan grinned.  “Sometimes, these things do.  So what were they doing out here when they got attacked?”
            I pointed ahead of us, at what was left of the Shakespeare garden.  He paused, rocking back against his heels, eyes widening slightly.  “Oh,” he said quietly, then left my side and strode forward, like some kind of knight-protector or avenging angel.  For half a heartbeat, I could see him in leathers with a bow and a blade, hair cropped short and wind-blown, a bright, intricate tattoo gracing the back of his neck, half hidden under a thick twist of metal around his neck.  The image faded as he crossed through the hedgerows into the garden.  I exhaled and followed him.
            “They ripped this place apart,” Phelan said quietly as he drifted through the garden, looking at the shattered plants and broken bits and pieces of wood and stone, scattered leaves and other natural debris.  There was deep pain in his voice as his fingers brushed over the remnants of what had clearly been the fairies’ dominion here on campus.  “I know that there’s no love lost between creatures like the camazotzi and the wee ones of the air, but this…this borders on the barbaric.  There was no reason for this.”
“Except for the fact that they joined us,” I said quietly.  “It was the end of the first week.  They started to come to Carolyn, then they kind of started to stick around us more, I guess.”  I put my hands back into my pockets, watching him and feeling helpless.
            He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, shaking his head.  “There’s too much hate here for it to have just been that,” he murmured, still looking around.  His eyes drifted toward the space beyond the hedgerows, toward the ruins of the PAC and the makeshift graveyard we’d begun on its lawn.  His voice came softly.  “That’s where you’ve buried your dead, isn’t it?”
            I nodded slightly, drifting closer to him.  “Yeah.  There were, uhm, yeah.  Quite a few bodies.  Mercifully not as many as we were afraid of, but still.  Enough.”  I chewed my lip and stared at the churned earth, at the clear signs of our work there.  Maybe someday we’d be able to put stones over that space, erect some kind of memorial. Until then, the turned soil and disturbed grass were the only testimony to the dead, to those we’d lost.
            I looked at him slowly, my stomach doing a slow turn in my belly.  “Why?”
            “I wonder,” he said softly, “if that didn’t have something to do with it.”
            “To do with what?”  I stared at him.  “To do with…with what happened here?  With what they did to the garden?  What could our dead have to do with that?”
            He frowned, sitting down on the grass cross-legged, ignoring the dampness.  “There’s power here, though it’s not necessarily a nexus point.  It echoes one, though—once upon a time, there might have been one here, which is probably why the wee ones chose it for their home, but it feels like it’s drifted since then—eastward, I think, likely toward that great mess of a river.  There’s a major line buried under there, you know.”
            “I know.”  Too many Native American mounds along the river for there not to be something like that going on.  “I could feel it.  There’s minor lines through the ravines.”
            A smile ghosted across Phelan’s face.  “More than minor ones, my dear.”  He waved a hand slightly.  “In any case, to answer your question about the burials and the garden, it seems to me that your lost are more than a little restless.  They’re still here.”
            I stared at him, dread coiling in my belly.  “I know that they are.  Jay sees them.”
            Phelan stared at me for a moment.  “Does he, now?” he said thoughtfully, nodding to himself.  “That certainly explains his dreams.  And his reticence to discuss the nature of the mists you all kept referencing during your description of your first real battle with the camazotzi and the gremlins.”
            “You got that out of the description of the fight?”  I asked with an arched brow.  Phelan simply shrugged.
            “Hints of that, anyhow.”  He leaned back against his hands.  “You said that the first attack by the camazotzi happened here, then?  On he and Carolyn and Andrew?”
            Did he just call Drew Andrew?  How did he know that—no.  That’s not important right now, right?  Right.  “Yes.  It was the first time any of us had seen them, I think, since that day Thom and Drew and I ran into the one down in the ravine months ago.”  I exhaled quietly.  “There was a group of them, and they chased the three of them all the way back to the ward lines.”  I hugged my arms across my chest.  “That was about two weeks ago.  It was part of how we started to realize that something was mucking around with the wards.”
            Phelan nodded slowly, eyes focusing distantly for a moment.  “I don’t think the attack on this place is unconnected to the burials over there.”  He nodded toward the gravesite.  “I wonder if perhaps the camazotzi’s aim was to divert your attention away from the graves and to this garden.”
            I just stared at him.  “What?”
            He pushed himself to his feet.  “We’ll need to ward that ground.  Consecrate it.”
            I kept right on staring at him.  He grinned at me and took my hand.
            “You managed to take me at my word for everything else, and now you look at me like I’m crazy?”
            “Yes,” I said firmly.
            His gaze and his voice softened.  “Regardless of what you or any of us may believe, Marin, any ground you bury the dead in needs to be hallowed and protected.  Especially this close to a place of such great power.”
            “Why?”  I shook my head slowly.  “Phelan, I don’t understand.”
            “I know,” he said softly.  His calloused thumb played across my knuckles.  “And I’m sorry that you don’t, I’m sorry that no one teaches any of you this anymore.  There is a simple truth when it comes to the dead.
            “Just because they have ceased to live doesn’t mean that their souls are beyond the reach of those who would turn them into tools, for good or for ill.”

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            I cast a doubtful glance at the slope before I sighed and nodded.  Either my knee would take it, or it wouldn’t.  “All right,” I said quietly.  “Let me go first.  That way if I fall, I’m not going to take you down with me.”
            Phelan gave me a questioning look before understanding dawned on him.  “You’re sore.”
            “More than a little.  I did something to my knee when I landed in that pile of bookcases.”  I started to ease down the hard-packed slope, moving from root to sapling to avoid tumbling headlong down toward the marsh below.  Phelan followed, keeping one tree or root behind me as we picked our way down the steep incline.
            “How long ago was it?  That first time you saw a camazotzi.”
            “Almost two years ago,” I said quietly as my feet hit the marshy turf of the ravine’s bottomland.
            He landed next to me, blinking.  “That long?” he murmured, sounding surprised.
            I shrugged slightly.  “Yeah.  He stopped believing a few months later.”  I took Phelan by the hand and picked my way across the soggy ground, working mostly by touch and instinct to find the place where we’d been that night.  “It was weird.  The night down here, the two of us with Drew, that’s when I knew he believed, and knowing he believed made me feel…I don’t know.  Safer.  Like I wasn’t crazy.”  I stared out across the tall grasses and sighed quietly.
            “I know I’m not crazy.  It’s just nice to not have to justify my gut instincts sometimes.”
            Phelan squeezed my shoulder.  “Well, at least you know you’re not crazy.”
            I snorted humorlessly.  “Yeah.”

            My heart beat so hard I thought it was going to come right out of my chest.  I crouched with Drew and Thom, trying to catch my breath.  “Did it follow us?”
            “Give me your pendant,” Thom said quietly, fingers tightening around my arm.
            My lips thinned.  Then I felt it, heard it.
            We hadn’t lost it after all.
            I jerked on the chain.  The old clasp slipped and I passed it to Thom, who weighed the pendant in his hand, then held it like a skipping stone.
            “When I throw this, run,” he murmured.
            I blinked at him.  “Thom?”
            “Just run.  I’ll be right behind you.”
            I looked at Drew, who just nodded.  I straightened up.
            “Get ready,” Thom whispered.
            Then I saw red eyes flecked with gold in the moonlight.
            Thom whipped the pendant at the thing.  Drew and I turned and began to run, down along the creek toward the bridge.  The creature roared.
            Out of the corner of my eye, as Thom began to follow us, I saw the boy—tall, gangly to the point of being almost painfully thin.  His blue eyes glinted in the moonlight, wide with panic.  He stood, transfixed and watching as we fled.
            Then the boy dove for a glint of silver laying in the mud.  His fingers closed around it as another of the camazotzi appeared from the darkness.
            It was suddenly daylight, sun shining down through trees that were suddenly older.  The boy straightened up, brandishing the pendant—my pendant—that he’d found in the mud.  Light built around him, around his hand, so bright that the creature reared back for a moment.
            Then it struck, and I screamed.

 
           I bit Phelan’s hand when I came to, eyes wide.  I was soaked to the skin, flat on my back in the marshy ground.  He was on his knees next to me, staring down at me.
            “Does this happen often?”
            I took him by the wrist and pulled his hand away from my mouth.  I was hoarse—I must have screamed in more than just the vision.  “How long was I out?”
            “Only a minute,” he said, starting to help me sit up.  “What did you See?”
            “You say that like you know I saw something.”
            His expression was deadpan as he stared at me.  I just shook my head.
            “Something that doesn’t make sense,” I said softly.  “And let’s just leave it at that.”
            “All right,” he said softly.  He looked around slowly as I got my feet back under me.  “There’s something down here that feels like it’s holding things at bay, but barely.  Some kind of portable ward.”
            “Might be my grandmother’s pendant,” I said softly.  “Thom threw it at the creature so we could get away that night.  We haven’t been able to find it since.”
            Phelan looked at me curiously.  “We could try to find it now, if you’d like.”
            I hesitated, thinking of the boy in my vision, thinking about how painfully like Thom he looked, and shook my head slightly.  “No,” I said softly.  “No.  I think it’s meant to stay out here until someone else finds it.  Someone who really needs it.”
            He looked at me strangely for a moment, then smiled.  It was as if realization had dawned on him, as if he realized what I must have seen when I dropped like a sack of rocks.  “I understand,” he said, then squeezed my shoulder.
            “Well,” he said briskly after another moment, “it doesn’t look like there’s much to see down here, then.  Shall we head back up?  You could probably use a change of clothes.”
            I laughed weakly.  “Yeah.  But we’re not going to go back just yet.  There’s one more place to show you that’s easy to get to.  You need to see that first.”
            “Oh?”  He shrugged.  “Lead on, then.”
            “Right.”  I turned and headed back to the steep slope.  He hesitated for a moment, staring at the grass, at the trees.
            He said something softly under his breath that I couldn’t understand, but I suddenly felt more at peace.  When I glanced back over my shoulder toward him, he’d begun to follow me again.
            I mounted the slope and began to climb, cursing a bad knee and steep inclines.  I was going to be sore in the morning, I knew that much for certain.
            It took us three times as long to make it to the top as it did to get to the bottom.  I collapsed onto the bench, breathing hard for a few moments as Phelan struggled the last few feet to the top as well.
            “And you’ve climbed that in the dark?” he gasped as he sat down heavily next to me, leaning forward with his head almost between his knees.
            I laughed weakly.  “No, just gone down it.  I think Kellin and Rory have, though.
            Phelan shook his head, grinning wryly.  “You’re all crazy.”
            “Takes one to know one,” I fired back, then stood up slowly.  My legs throbbed, but what came next would be an easier walk.  “Come on.  One last stop.”
            He groaned.  “Please tell me no more climbing.”
            “No more climbing.  I promise.”

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            A shiver ran through Phelan.  “How’s that?”
            “Because he could see it even when Drew and I couldn’t.  Before we could—Drew never saw it, I could hear it and feel it, see it after it got close.”  I stepped onto the shadowed path, then kept walking even as the chill of the dim became the chill of the grave and threatened to turn my limbs to lead.  Something whispered in the back of my head that we shouldn’t be there.  Go back, a soft voice whispered.  Go back.
            Phelan hurried after me, a curse on his lips and his power rising, turning him into almost a walking ward.  I knew we would both be protected without even looking as he caught up with me, half a step behind my shoulder.
            “What are you, anyway?” I asked as I led him toward the steep incline that was our destination.  “You and Teague.”
            “Mortal,” Phelan said, apparently trying to be flippant when he said it.  He was sticking close to me, though, and I heard and sensed the strain in him all at once.  “Now, anyway.”
            I glanced back over my shoulder at him.  “And before?”
            A flicker of pain passed through his eyes.  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said quietly.
            I took him by the hand and drew him onward.  We were getting close, now, passing one of the old benches down along this walking trail, the only sanctioned one this close to the edge of the ravine.  “Try me, Phelan.”
            We reached our destination before he screwed up the courage to answer me.  We stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the edge of the steep pathway that led down into a wide, grassy marsh at the bottom of the ravine, one of the few places close to the heart of campus where the floor of the ravine was more than a few feet across.  Phelan took a deep breath, uncomfortable.  My own skin was crawling, and I could sense a faint feeling of wrongness below.  Perhaps the grays—gremlins?—had made their home down there, near where they’d jumped me weeks before.  That was enough to send shivers down my spine, enough to make the spot on my arm where I’d been hit ache dully.
            “Princes of the Áes Dána,” Phelan said after we’d stood there for a few long moments in total silence.  We looked at each other sidelong, and I was shocked to see real fear in his eyes.  His jaw was set but trembling.  “You asked,” he said softly.  “And I’ve answered.  Usually, this is the part where you tell me I’m crazy and walk away.”
            I touched his arm.  “I asked, remember?”  My fingers tightened slightly, then I let go.  “Besides, if I didn’t run when J.T. recognized you from a dream that probably took place two or three thousand years ago, what makes you think I’d run now?”
            He smiled briefly, looking down at his feet.  “Point.”
            “Was it really you?”  I asked softly.  “Not just a reflection of you, but really, really you?”
            “Huh?”  He seemed startled.  “You mean in his dream?”
            I just nodded.
            He winced again.  “Yes,” he said quietly.  “It was really me, not just a reflection of me.  It was a very, very long time ago, but time in the Otherworlds passes differently than it does here, in a lot of ways.”  His Adam’s apple bobbed twice as he swallowed hard.  “We’ve been sitting on the sidelines for a long time.  Teague has, anyway.  I can’t seem to stay away from this world even when I want to.”
            He wasn’t making much sense, of course, but that—as I came to learn later, and many times over—was Phelan. It was who he was and the way he was.  Mysterious without trying, confusing when he meant to be clear.  It was instinct and habit and something he had almost no control over.  It was probably what got him into and out of trouble so easily time and again.
            “You’ve been keeping track of us for a long time, haven’t you?”
            Phelan nodded.  “Yes,” he said softly.  “Yes, I have.  I’ve tried to keep an eye on their souls, on her bloodlines—his bloodlines.”  He swallowed hard.  “It’s been difficult, and strange.  There were generations where there would be no trace, and other times it was clear as day.”  His gaze slid sideways again.  “Am I making any sense?”
            I smiled faintly.  “A little.  Anyone else back there would think you’re crazy, though.”
            He managed to grin.  “They’d be right.”  He took my hand and pointed down toward the marsh.  “That, down there?  That’s what you wanted to show me?”
            I nodded.
            “Very well, then.  Let’s have a closer look, shall we?”

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            I shook my head.  “That’s not why we’re out here, though.  Not to talk about what I’ve seen.”
            “Then why?”  He asked, turning toward me, leaning casually against the bridge’s rail.
            “First, to talk to you somewhere we wouldn’t be interrupted,” I crossed my arms as I turned away from the view below us.  “Because there’s a lot I’ve got to say that I don’t necessarily need an audience overhearing.  Walk with me.”  I started walking again, heading for the far end of Little Mac and the plaza beyond.  Phelan had to jog a few steps to catch up with me.
            “Thom doesn’t believe in any of this most of the time,” I said slowly as we came to the far end of the bridge.  “It’s like he picks and chooses what and when to believe.  He’s afraid of something and I don’t know what it is.  But it started a while ago and it’s mostly only gotten worse since.  Every so often it feels like it’s getting better, then I realize about twenty seconds later that I was wrong.”
            Phelan frowned, tucking his hands into his pockets as we veered left, walking along the ravine into the arboretum.  The ruins of Au Sable Hall glittered in the sun, broken glass still hanging like jagged ornaments from metal and concrete wreckage.  “Are you telling me this so I’ll step lightly around him?”
            I winced.  “Yes and no.  Mostly I want you to figure out what he’s afraid of.  None of us seem to know, and it’s getting harder and harder for…well, for everything.  He can’t keep being in denial.  Everything I see, everything I saw is telling me his denial is dangerous, might even kill him.”  Visions of him dying hadn’t come in the past week or so, though.  Maybe that was a good thing, maybe it meant something had changed.
            Maybe, maybe, maybe.  Could I afford to bank on that?
            No.  Not at this point, not now.  Not yet.
            “Given how he feels about my cousin, do you really think he’ll talk to me about things he won’t talk to any of you about?”
            I had to smile.  “I think that’s exactly why he might.  Besides, you’ve got something to trade for that.”
            Phelan’s nose wrinkled.  “I don’t like the sound of this.  What I know isn’t for sale, Marin.  I give it freely, for everyone’s sake.”
            I winced a little, feeling dirty.  “That’s not what I meant, Phelan.  Not what you know about all of this.”  I gestured vaguely toward the ravine, toward the arboretum around us that was slowly starting to grow wild again, now free from the groundskeepers that once kept it tamed.  “I meant about Teague and Kira.  About all the hows and whys and wherefores of that relationship.  That’s what I mean.”
            He frowned again and finally shook his head as we walked on.  “No,” he said softly.  “No, I can’t do it that way.  I can try to find out why he’s afraid, but I won’t use information about them to bribe him.”
            Shame filled me.  He was right, of course.  I should be ashamed of myself.  How dare I ask him to do that.  What’s gotten into me?  Am I really that damn terrified of what’s happening with Thom?  Why can’t I just be happy that he accepts that there’s things that I can see and do and that he loves me and be done with all of it?  I knew why, though—I was afraid I’d lose him, and I knew I couldn’t withstand that.  “I’m sorry,” I whispered after a moment.  “I shouldn’t have even suggested it.  You’re right, doing something like that would be wrong, and it’d destroy any chance of a trusting relationship between the two of you.”  And do worse if he ever knew that the request had come from me in the first place.  I tried not to sigh and rubbed my eyes, which stung with shameful tears.  Gods and monsters, what an awful human being I am right now.
            Phelan touched my shoulder gently.  “I understand, though.  You’re terrified and desperate and it’s all right to be.  If I was in your place, I have no idea what I would suggest.”  A brief, wry smile touched his lips.  “I’ve never loved someone that way before.  I probably never will.”
            I shook my head slightly and smiled weakly at him.  “Maybe you will.  You never know.”
            He smiled wryly.  “I can see why Kira likes you.  Just enough optimism to not be a total downer.”
            I began to laugh and after a few moments, the laughter verged on hysteria.  Phelan squeezed my shoulder as I bent over double, choking on my laughter and trying to calm down.
            “Sorry,” he murmured.  I shook my head, eyes tearing.
            “No,” I said as I gulped in air.  “No, it’s okay.  It’s just a lot of things.”  I straightened slowly.  “You said she got married.  They got married.  Where are they?  Are they okay?  Safe?  Have you seen them since…?”  Since this all happened, since everything we knew died and the world became something new, something foreign.
He shook his head.  “I know they’re safe, but I haven’t seen them since I helped her load him into the back of her car for a very, very long drive.”
            “Where did they go?”  I asked softly.  “Where was it safe?  How do you know they’re okay?”
            “Instinct,” Phelan said softly.  “They went east and north.  New Brunswick, Newfoundland, something Canada.  I don’t’ remember exactly because Teague loves to be delightfully vague and I was a little annoyed with him at the time.”  Phelan made such a disgusted face that I choked on more laughter.  He smiled sheepishly.
            “He’s family,” he said by way of apology.  “I love him.”
            I grinned and nodded.  “Yeah, I know.”  I squeezed his arm.  “Come on.  There’s a place near here I need to show you.”
            “Oh?” he sounded curious as we started to move.  “What is it?”
            “The first place I ever ran into one of the camazotzi.  It’s how I know that Thom used to believe.”

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            Phelan fell into step with me a few moments after I started walking.  I didn’t look at him and he didn’t spek until we’d wandered through the gap between the ruins of Mackinac and the tent were we were still keeping livestock and building supplies.  I shoved my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt, feeling my skin prickle slightly as we passed through the ward lines to the unprotected area beyond.  He shivered beside me and smiled faintly, glancing me sidelong as I led him toward the bridge.
            “They’re strong wards,” he said simply.  I nodded.
            “Yeah,” I said quietly, eyes on the trees, on the rim of the ravines.  “I hope that they’ll actually do the job.”  I looked toward where the bridge generations of students here had dubbed ‘Little Mac’ and was surprised that it looked intact, even steady.  No new cracks in the concrete of the walkway, the metal rails along either side looked intact.
            Phelan followed my gaze.  “It looks like it’ll hold.  Is there where you wanted to take me?”
            “One of the places,” I said softly.  I closed my eyes for a moment and could feel the power he was talking about, the power that had always been there, just at the edges of our perception.  Were our theories right, the ones that we’d only whispered on those late-night walks?  That we’d been drawn here, felt that we belonged here because of the lines of power—the leylines—that encircled most of campus, that ran its length and breadth from the ravines to the river, that gave rise to enchanted places like the Shakespeare garden, now in ruins?  I took his hand and led him onward, onto the bridge.
            It wavered slightly under our steps and in the wind, but no more than usual.  Panic that began to rise inside of me subsided as I reminded myself that it always swayed a little under my footsteps and had become so commonplace that I’d just learned to ignore it.  Phelan tensed and relaxed almost in time with me, exhaling softly as he followed me out to the center of the bridge, which hung seventy feet above the ravine floor—and the line that lay buried in the creek, among the stones and rocks and trickling water that had become more like a flood in the past weeks.
            I leaned against the rail and stared down, motioning for Phelan to join me.  He peered over the edge of the rail down at the creek and shook his head slightly.
            “You lived here for how many years?  Feeling this every day?”
            “Five years,” I said softly.  The line below rippled, then settled.  They were much calmer now, three weeks after the end of everything.  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.  I could taste autumn coming on the wind.  “It’s calmer now than it was when this all started—when the fragments came down.  Kellin told me that it made her nauseous to get too close to the ravines, the lines were twisting so badly.  Said it was like they were trying to rewrite themselves, like the fabric was ripping or just trying to reweave itself into a new pattern.”  I frowned a little.  I guess it felt a little like that.  I was admittedly more worried about other things.  “Did it feel like that to you, while you were walking?”
            He considered that for a moment, then finally nodded.  “A bit worse than that, I think.  You make them sound positively stable.  I was outside of Chicago when it happened.  There’s nexus points in the city, and they moved and were just ripping things apart.  I was lucky that I wasn’t there.”  He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, voice dropping to a whisper.  “I’d never seen so much death as what I saw three weeks ago.”  His voice was haunted, gaze a hundred thousand miles—or perhaps a thousand years—away.  “I’ve seen a lot of it in my time.  Death.  War.  Some of it truly awful.  But this was worse than anything I’d ever seen.  It really was as if the world itself was trying to break.  I’m still not sure what webwork held it together.”  His voice was almost mournful.  “When we came back here from Tírinna‘Óc, we came hoping that we could stop this, the things that have happened.  When the ways between began to weaken but the bridges were shorter, we knew that something was going to come to pass.”  He winced visibly and shook his head.
            “I never suspected this,” he said quietly.  “It’s worse than I ever could have suspected, worse than Teague or Neve ever perceived.”  He glanced at me.  “Did you?”
            My mouth was dry, heartbeat starting to quicken slightly.  “Did I what?”  He knows about your visions, Marin, I reminded myself.  Either Kira told him, or he’s able to sense that about you, just like he’s able to feel the wards and feel the lines and the power here.
            A weak smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  “This.  What happened three weeks ago.  Any of it.”
            I exhaled quietly and nodded.  “Yes.  Yes, I did.”
            After staring at me a moment longer, Phelan nodded slightly.  “Then he was right to send me and I was right to come.  I’m just sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”  Phelan looked away from me again, toward the creek below.  “It’s going to get harder before it gets easier,” he said, a note a sadness in his voice.
            I laughed bitterly.  “I know,” I said quietly.  “Believe me, Phelan, I know.”
            It was as if he couldn’t look at me.  “You’ve Seen, then?”
            “Yes,” I said softly.  “I’ve seen it.”

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            “You called her Seer, too,” Rory said in a low voice, suddenly looking at Phelan like he was some kind of insect—or an enemy he was willing and able to dissect.
            Phelan blinked at him.  “That’s what she is.  You know that.”  His eyes narrowed slightly.  “But why are you—oh.  Oh.  The one that spoke to you, the thing leading those camazotzi that attacked you with the gremlins.  It called her that, too, didn’t it?”
            I made a soft noise to the affirmative.  “It was going to kill us,” I said softly, cradling my bowl between both hands.  “Thom and I both.”
            Phelan’s brows shot up.  “Thomas is a Seer?  You’re sure?”
            J.T. tossed me a vaguely murderous look and I sighed, shaking my head.  “That was certainly my impression, and clearly it was one that the thing shared.”  I shrugged and sighed again.  “As much as these guys would like to think I am, I’m not an expert.”
            Phelan made a curious noise and rocked back slightly, looking at each of us in turn.  They were brief, but measuring looks, a few seconds of looking apiece before he cleared his throat.  “Well,” he said slowly, “I guess that’ll make a couple of us pretending.  I may know a great deal about all of this sort of supernatural and magical mess, but I don’t claim to be an expert at all.  Given what’s happened, I don’t even know how much good I’ll be in the long run—it seems behaviors are already shifting in ways I wouldn’t ordinarily expect.”
            “You mean the grays,” Rory said.
            “Exactly.”  Phelan’s expression turned grim.  “This is uncharted territory for all of us.  We can barely know what to expect.  All we can do is operate on what we know, what we think we know, and what we learn going forward to keep all of us alive.”
            J.T. snorted humorlessly.  “Which is exactly what we’ve been doing.”
            Phelan shrugged.  “All the more reason for me to stand by my previous statement—you look like you’ve been doing just fine to me.”
            I rubbed my temple.  Looking at it in that way, I guess it does make sense.  “Just don’t let Thom hear you say that,” I mumbled.
            “He’s not going to like me much, is he?”
            J.T. and I exchanged a look.  He shook his head slightly and I smiled wryly.  “No,” I said.  “No, probably not.”
            Tala fed a thin stick of wood into the fire, straightening up and studying Phelan with unguarded curiousity.  “Who are you, anyway?  I mean, I know, Phelan Conrad, but how did you get here?  How did you find us?”  She glanced at me, then back to Phelan again.  “And how do you seem to know so much?  Seems like you know who Thom is.  Are you related to him or something?”
            “Yes and no,” Phelan said quietly, one shoulder hitching upwards in a shrug.  “Do you know Kira?”
            Tala nodded slightly.  Most of them had met her at least once or twice.  “Yeah, she hit the movies with us once.  His cousin, right?”
            Phelan nodded.  “Her husband is my cousin.  Like I told them,” he gestured vaguely to me and the rest, “they sent me to find you here.  I knew where to look because they told me where to come.  As for how I got here?  I walked.”  He smiled humorlessly.  “It was a long walk.”
            “From Chicago?”  I said.  “Yeah, that’s a pretty long walk.”  No wonder he looked so bedraggled by the time he got here.
            “Indeed.”  He took a long swallow from his mug.  “I’m just sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
            Damn.  He really does feel bad.  I shook my head a little.  “Sorry we came down so hard on you,” I said softly.
            He waved a dismissive hand and pushed himself up to his feet.  “Too late to change that now.  Just have to make up for lost time.  Where’s Thomas?”
            J.T. blinked.  “Why?”
            Phelan shook his head.  “They asked me to make sure he was all right.  To talk to him about…”  His voice trailed away and he cleared his throat.  The rest of us exchanged a long look.  We all knew exactly what he was supposed to talk to Thom about.
            Oh, that won’t end well.  I frowned and shook my head.  “That’s not a good idea, Phelan.”  I shoveled two more bites of my stew into my mouth, chewed and swallowed, then got up.  “Come on.  Walk with me and I’ll explain.”  I glanced at J.T.  “Can you keep him busy or something?”
            “He’s busy with the construction,” J.T. said slowly.  “But I’ll see what I can do.”
            I nodded.  “Good.”  One less thing to worry about.  I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders, looking at Phelan.  “All right.  C’mon with me.”  I glanced at the sky.
            The weather would hold for long enough to show him some things, I thought.
            Without looking back to see if he was following me, I started walking toward the ravine.

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            Rory had to practically sit on J.T. to prevent him from doing something else violent to Phelan.  I saw that out of the corner of my eye as I stared at Phelan with a mixture of shock and horror.
            We’re doing fine?  Five of us almost died—or something—three days ago and he said that we’re doing fine?  I swallowed twice before I could trust myself enough to speak, but Carolyn piped up before I did.
            She laughed weakly and shook her head.  “We hit a rough patch a few days ago.  Hard to believe that we’re doing ‘fine’ after that.”
            Phelan’s expression grew serious as he peered at each of us, then started to look around him.  He finally seemed to notice the bruises on my face, the dark circles under J.T. and Rory’s eyes, the stitches in Matt’s face as he walked past, outside the tent, arguing with Davon about something.
            “You weren’t just setting wards for the first time, then,” he said slowly, his voice somehow richer, darker.  It stirred the hairs on my arms, though not in a way I would necessarily categorize as bad.
            “No,” I said quietly.  “No, we weren’t.”
            Phelan stared at the fire for a moment.  “What happened?”
            I frowned and shook my head a little.  “Are you sure you have time to hear the whole story?”
            He smiled wryly.  “I think I’ve got the time.”
            Tala passed me a bowl of something steaming and I dug in with a spoon, having a few bites of some kind of stew and getting my thoughts in order before I began to talk.  I told him about the attack on J.T., Carolyn, and Drew a week ago, then about the attack three days ago.  Phelan’s expression went from serious to grim and then to blank as I described as much as I could remember, then looked to J.T., Carolyn, and Tala to fill in the gaps at the end of my narrative.
            Carolyn finally shook her head as she finished telling him what happened after I passed out.  “So we’ve been in a building frenzy since then, but we couldn’t do much about the wards until Mar woke up today.”
            By that time, I’d gotten some more of the stew into me and was thinking a little more clearly, watching his reaction for any sign of surprise or horror.  There was a little bit of both in his eyes as he looked at each of us in turn, lips thinning to white briefly before the easy smile reappeared.
            “Well, all things considered, I stand by my previous assessment.  You did far better than I could have anticipated under the circumstances.”  He looked down into his mug for a moment.  “Though I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.  You probably could have benefited a bit from my help, though perhaps not as much as you’d think.”
            I frowned at him for a moment.  “What do you mean?”
            He shook his head slowly, meeting my gaze head-on.  “I mean that they might have come after your camp sooner if I’d been here rather than waiting weeks and subverting one of your own to help them do it.”
            I went rigid.  We hadn’t said anything about someone subverting our wardings, just that they’d been damaged somehow.  J.T. took a quick, deep breath and Tala blinked a little.  Rory facepalmed and Carolyn slumped slightly.
            How did he know?  I cleared my throat.  “Who said anything about that?”
            “None of you,” Phelan said quietly.  “But it seemed likely from the way you described the camazotzi delaying when it tried to cross the wardings here, when they were chasing you.”  He gestured toward J.T. and Carolyn. “And the fact that they delayed for so long before mounting an attack.  Clearly, you had some sort of defenses beyond your own manifesting abilities.”
            “Camazotzi?”  Carolyn asked.
            Rory made a face.  “Sounds Italian.”
            “Sounds like L’Engle,” J.T. said, frowning darkly.  “Was in A Wrinkle in Time, I think, but I could be wrong.”  He blinked at the strange look Tala and I gave him.  “What?  I wrote a paper on her for one of my 300-levels.”
            “It’s Mayan, actually,” Phelan said, mostly in response to Rory.  “It refers to a particular deity or monster in one of their mythic cycles.  A bat god.”
            Tala blinked.  “That’s why it sounded familiar.  “I think I read about them once, a long time ago in one of my anthro classes.  One of the Twins cycle stories, I think.”
            Phelan shrugged.  “It’s entirely possible.  I just know what we call them isn’t necessarily what they call themselves, but the nomenclature is acceptable for our purposes.”  He smiled briefly.  “I’m impressed that you were able to turn them back, actually.  They’re nasty buggers.”
            I grimaced.  “Tell me about it.”
            “What about the little gray ones?”  Carolyn asked, hugging one knee against her chest.  J.T. slid his arm around her.  “What are they?”
            Phelan shrugged.  “I’ve always called them gremlins, but that’s not the proper terminology, either.  They’re one of those things from the old times, one of those things that most folks have forgotten how to see, but never vanished.  Those are everywhere.  The camazotzi, however, are not.  They’re one of those things that cluster near places where the ways between are thin, or where there’s power nexi.” His eyes grew momentarily distant.  I could feel him doing something, which startled me.
            I couldn’t usually feel things like that.  I watched him for a moment longer before he seemed to come back to himself.  He looked at me, tilting his head to one side.
            “Teague never mentioned that this place was practically on top of a major nexus point.”
            My mouth went dry.  Kellin, Rory, Drew, and I had discussed things like that from time to time, but no one had ever quite confirmed our theories on that quite like this.  “How do you know?”  I managed to ask.
            The corner of his mouth quirked upward in a slight smile.  “The same way you do, Seer.
            “I can feel it, too.”

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