I can almost feel her hair against my hands, smell it against my cheek. Her eyes. It would be so intense to look into those eyes while ...

I throw the covers off. The air in the room is cold. Too cold. Even for late fall in Maine, I think. My whole body breaks out in goose b.u.mps. I grab an old pair of gray sweatpants off the foot of my bed, then pull on a Sooners sweatshirt and turn on the reading lamp.

"Great Spirit, protect this house. Protect Courtney's family. Deliver us from this evil spirit. Send it back where it came from." I repeat this over and over as I light the sage incense. The smell doesn't come fast enough. I reach for one of the sage bundles.

It flies away from me, slamming into a wall and exploding out of its binding so that the individual stalks scatter and rain down around the room.

I can feel him.

The shadow stands in the corner by my closet. It's huge and thick, completely cold and evil. It waits across the room from me. The cold rolls from it to me like waves, like the current of an icy river. Its head nearly reaches the ceiling. How can he be so strong? He's drawing all this energy off of my cousin, and I hate him for it.

The river of ice slams into me again. I stagger back, reaching behind me to try to steady myself. I almost knock over the incense. The shape takes a step toward me, and suddenly I'm scared. Maybe I can't do this. Maybe I can't win.

The sound of an angry cat rips through the night. This isn't in my mind. This isn't even outside. For just a moment I see her: Onawa, bright and shimmering, wild and beautiful with bared fangs and burning green eyes, stands between me and the River Man.

The black shape screeches and vanishes with a loud pop that leaves the room smelling of sulfur and rot. Onawa turns to look at me, her face set, her eyes warning me.

And that's when I realize it: I am just a tool here. I'm just a tool in a battle that's so much bigger than me and Aimee and Courtney.

The moment I realize this, she's gone, and my bedroom door flies open. Aimee is in the room first, with Mom and Aunt Lisa right behind her. Aimee runs at me, throwing her arms around me as she hits me with all her force. I'm still unnerved by what I've just seen, and I stagger under her fear and fall onto the bed, my own arms wrapped around her.

"Alan!" Aimee sobs.

"Alan, what in G.o.d's name is going on in here?" Mom demands.

"What was that, Alan?" Aunt Lisa's face spasms with worry.

It takes a minute before I whisper, "I'm okay. I'm all right."

Still, Aimee won't let me up. She won't move. I look at the older women. Their eyes are fixed on me.

"What's that smell?" Aunt Lisa asks.

"Incense," I say, glancing at the burning cone.

"No, not that." She sniffs again, then wrinkles her nose. "It's like a rotten piece of steak or something."

"I don't know," I lie.

"Alan, what was that noise?" Mom asks. "It sounded like a lion."

"It was me." I hate lying. Even worse, I hate lies that sound lame. "I had a dream, and ..." I try to look embarra.s.sed before finishing. "I guess I might have screamed when I woke up. Sorry."

"That was you?" Aunt Lisa asks, wrapping her arms around herself. Mom looks just as skeptical as Aunt Lisa does.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I probably sounded like a little girl, huh?"

"No, Alan, it sounded like a mountain lion," Mom says.

"Well, it wasn't. I mean, I'm not keeping a mountain lion in my room. I swear it. Look under the bed."

Why is Aimee still holding me like I'm going to evaporate?

"Don't be a smart-a.s.s, Alan," Mom warns.

"Come on, Holly," Aunt Lisa says. "He had a dream and screamed. I'm sure our big football star is embarra.s.sed enough about that. Go back to bed."

Mom's face concedes, but then she finds a new cause as she looks from my face to Aimee, wrapped around me like a winter coat. She starts to say something, but Aunt Lisa stops her again. "They're fine. Aimee's a good girl, and Alan's a good boy. Trust them."

"They're on the bed," Mom argues.

"Alan," Aunt Lisa asks, "do you promise your mother you'll behave yourself ?"

"Yeah. It'll be a while before I'll be going back to sleep."

"It isn't sleeping she's worried about."

My face burns scarlet, and that makes both women smile. "I promise," I say. Then they leave us, but I note that Mom leaves my bedroom door open a crack. I'm sure she leaves hers open enough to hear if I close mine.

"I'm so scared, Alan," Aimee whispers. "I had a dream, too. The River Man had you. He was here and he had you by the wrists, just like he had Chris, and he was dragging you down and down and down to a dark place, and you couldn't get away."

She sobs again, and I hold her tighter. I wonder if I should tell her what really happened. Not now, I decide. She doesn't need to know right now. She's upset enough. My stomach growls. Courtney will be home in the morning. Then Aunt Lisa will join Mom at work for a shift and a half.

"It'll be okay," I whisper back to Aimee, my face pressed into her beautiful red hair. "I love you." The words just come out. Now, the feel of her on me, the smell of her, the strength of her arms around me ... I can't help but say it.

"It's because we might die. You're saying that because one of us might die." Her voice trembles with some sort of emotion that I can't recognize, and I don't know how much of what she's saying is true. I know it's crazy to care so much about someone so quickly, but I can't imagine her not here, can't imagine not being with her-and there's no other word for that than love, is there? I want her to be safe. I want her to be with me. I want to be with her. It's all like some c.r.a.p country song, but she's like a ball of sunshine when I'm with her-even when things suck. That's got to be love.

"It isn't just that," I say. "It's not just because we might die."

"But that's part of it."

"Maybe. But there's no other word that even comes close to describing how you make me feel, Red. Nothing."

She finally looks up, her big green eyes wet and shining, but there's a happy gleam in there, too.

"Really?" she asks.

"Yes, really," I promise. "I've never felt like this before."

"Me, either," she says, looking awkward for a second. She shivers. "Wow, I'm cold."

Despite the door being open a crack, we get into my bed, under the warm blankets, and she curls up against me, her hand on my chest, her leg thrown over mine. I can't believe I told her I loved her. I can't believe I said that. It was too soon, way too soon. I've totally blown it.

She clears her throat. I wait for her to tell me how crazy I'm being, for her to echo my every single insecurity.

"I love you, too," she says slowly, thoughtfully. "n.o.body can die. None of us can die."

Then there's a long silence, and I'm thinking she must be just about asleep, until she says, "You didn't have a dream, did you? He was here. And Onawa was here, too."

She looks up at me. She's so close to sleep that I could almost believe she's talking in her sleep, but I know better. I kiss her lips. Her mouth is so warm and her smell is so strong and feminine. I let my head fall back onto the pillow.

"Yes," I admit. "But we're okay. Sleep, Red. We have a big day ahead of us."

I can hear Mom and Aunt Lisa talking about us when I open my eyes. It's morning and they're in the hallway outside my bedroom.

"You saw how they're sleeping," Mom is arguing.

"That doesn't mean they did anything," Aunt Lisa says. "And even if they did, can you really hold it against them? They're seventeen years old."

"That's too young."

"Holly, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I don't think they did, but either way, he's your son and Aimee is one of the nicest girls you'll ever meet."

"Your mom hates me now," Aimee whispers.

"No, she doesn't," I whisper back, wishing she could have slept through this. "She's thinking about what her life was like before she met my dad."

Mom is saying, "Still, right here, in this house, with us in the same hallway. I can't believe-"

"Mom!" I call. "We did not have s.e.x. We just got cold, then fell asleep. Please chill out. I promise Aimee is as pure right now as she was when she walked through the front door yesterday."

Aunt Lisa laughs. Mom doesn't say anything.

Aimee whispers, "Unfortunately," and smiles up at me, almost making me laugh.

Mom pushes the door open and gives us a critical look. "In my day, boys and girls didn't sleep like that unless they'd had s.e.x first."

"That was the Stone Age, Mom. Or the eighties, or whatever. Kids today aren't animals. We can control ourselves."

She tries to give me her angry stare, where she presses her lips together real hard and a line forms between her eyes, but she slips and smiles just a bit.

Aunt Lisa is wiping tears off her cheeks. "Come on, Holly. We're going to be late getting you to work."

"You two ...," Mom says, looking at me and Aimee as Aimee tries to scurry out of the bed.

"Mom, I promised to behave. It wasn't easy. I mean, she couldn't help herself. She was all over this hunk of Navajo manhood, and I had to keep telling her I'd promised not to let her violate me. Eventually she wore herself out and fell asleep."

"You are a horrible liar," Aimee says, but she winks at me with the eye Mom can't see from her angle.

"Alan, I'm taking your mom to work, then picking up Courtney. She slept through the night without incident, they said, so she can come home, but we have to watch over her. You'll help with that? Maybe Aimee can stay a while, too?"

"Sure, Mrs. Tucker," Aimee says. "I'll stay. Dad said I could miss school today because of ..." Her face suddenly falls as she remembers the boy in the river.

"Okay. Thank you," Aunt Lisa says. "I'll bring Court home, then I have to go to work. You want me to bring you all something to eat? Courtney's already texted me to say she wants a cheeseburger."

"I'll just have some fruit," Aimee says. "You still have oranges, right?"

"Of course," Aunt Lisa says. "We always have fruit for you, Aim."

"Fruit for me, too," I say. My stomach growls again, and I think how sweet it would be to bite into a nice juicy orange. Or a banana. Yeah. A banana. But not now.

"Make sure he eats, Aimee," Mom says. "I don't believe he did last night." She gives me a stern look, and I don't answer. How do moms know these things?

"I will, Ms. Parson," Aimee says.

"And ... you two behave," Mom says. She gives us another worried c.o.c.king of her eyebrows, then leaves.

Sitting at the table in the kitchen, Aimee's trying to peel an orange with her bare hands. Little bits of peel come off in dime-sized pieces. I put my hand over her hand holding the orange and lift it so I can kiss her fingers while I stand next to her. The smell of the orange is overwhelming.

I. Am. So. Hungry.

I take the orange out of her hand and go to the kitchen counter, pluck a knife from a rack and twirl it automatically, then slice the orange into quarters and peel the pulp off the skin.

"A knife-twirler, too," she comments. "There's just no end to the things you can do with those hands."

I put the orange quarters into a little bowl and place the bowl on the table in front of her. "Nope."

I sit down beside her and sip from my gla.s.s of water. She actually bites into the orange pieces and sucks the juice out, like a vampire, before eating the pulp. It makes me smile, and that makes her self-conscious, but she doesn't stop.

"What do we have to do?" she asks.

"Sweat lodge. You'll have to stay here with Courtney, so I'll build it myself."

"In the woods? By yourself ?" Her face crinkles up with concern.

"Yeah. I'll be okay."

"That's what I thought yesterday, too," she says.

She has a point. I stand up and go to the kitchen window and look out over the backyard to the woods beyond. On the other side of that slope is the river. "I could go back there, just over the hill. Build it there."

"Can't you do it in the backyard? We have the privacy fence," she argues. "I don't want you to go into the woods."

"I'd still have to go into the woods to cut some branches to use as the frame for the lodge," I explain. "Unless you have an answer for that, too."

"I guess not."

"All right. That's what we'll do. I bought a saw. I'll cut some saplings and bring them back to the yard."

She comes to stand behind me, putting her arms around my waist. "You'll be safe?" she asks. "Should I come with you?"

"I'll be okay," I tell her. "I promise. One of us needs to be in the house to listen for Courtney coming home. If Mom and Aunt Lisa can't find us in the house, they'll see what we're doing in the backyard, and then they'll never leave us to finish it. Holler at me as soon as you see them. Okay?"

"Holler?" she teases, grinning at me. Then she mocks my drawl, saying, "You ain't in Oklahoma no more."

I have to admit that I'm surprised cutting the saplings goes without incident. Why? Is he gathering his strength? Does the River Man know we're about to fight? Does he know Courtney is on her way home? I think about all these things as I cut down about a dozen small, flexible trees and haul them to our back fence, where I heave them into the yard.

I'm in the backyard stripping limbs off the saplings when I hear Aunt Lisa's SUV roll in. I run inside to join Aimee as we welcome Courtney home. Aunt Lisa turns her over to us, hugging her repeatedly, then hugging us and hugging Court again before she leaves for work.