I don't move. "No."

Despair shimmies through my blood. That's what he wants: despair. I won't give it to him. Instead I look for light-the white light. My hands. My power. I helped Court before. I can do it again. I lift my palms, pointing them toward her. I focus. White light. Healing. Love. My voice is more powerful than I expect. "Get out of my friend."

He says nothing.

"I can make it hard for you. I can fight you, make you weak." I focus all my thoughts on healing, on surrounding Courtney with the white light. My body shakes from the strain. I know I can't last long, but I know I have to. It'll help Alan. It'll help Courtney. It has to. But it costs. Magic? Power? It doesn't come cheap.

Court's body jumps back a little. "Stop it!"

I don't say anything. Focus. I just focus.

"I said, STOP IT!" she orders.

The door behind me is breaking apart. A piece of it flings into me. The wood stakes itself into my arm. The pain is intense. Still, I don't even rip it out. I keep my hands outstretched.

"DO NOT PROVOKE ME!" Courtney/the River Man screams.

My hands shake from the force, from the power. My heart rate is up to five hundred beats a minute or something. I can feel the power welling inside me, focusing, but at the same time it drains me.

It's worth it. It's worth it to save Court.

"Courtney! Fight him!"

He makes her laugh.

"I love you, Courtney!" I scream. She looks up at me, and for a second it's her eyes I see again. "I love you!" I scream. "Help me! Mom! Help me!"

I don't know why I yell for her, for my mother, but I do. And then it's like hands are on my shoulders. The smell of vanilla is in the room with us.

"Fight him!" I insist. "Help me fight him."

Wood and plaster squeals. Court shudders, collapses on the floor next to her fluffy blue rug, then gasps. The house shakes. I am falling down, too, dead tired. The smell of vanilla is growing fainter.

"Mom," I whisper. "Mom ..."

But n.o.body answers.

* 24 *

ALAN.

I am not in my body. I am not in the sweat lodge. I am not in the physical world.

It's a strange feeling to be outside your body, but there I am, standing in a dark s.p.a.ce that seems to be filled with movement I can't see. It's like being blind and standing in the middle of a busy interstate with more highways running above and below me.

There is little I can do to prepare you.

I spin around, and there is Onawa. At first, just her green eyes show, but then her tawny, sleek body materializes in the darkness. She is huge, much larger than the cougars in the zoo back in OKC. Her head is level with my chest. Is she actually speaking to me?

It is not for you to decide your cousin's fate.

Her mouth doesn't move. It's more like her words are put directly into my head, but there's no doubt the words are coming from her.

"Is it up to her?" I ask.

It is up to the one who made you, who made her, who made everything that is.

"How ..."

You simply ask, Spirit Warrior.

"Why do you call me that?"

He is attacking her now.

I feel the panic take hold of me for a moment. Panic, I've found, causes the astral consciousness to retreat to the physical body, ending the psychic experience. Onawa calms me, though.

Be at peace, Spirit Warrior. Look into my eyes.

I do. I focus completely on her huge green eyes, so fierce and wild, but at the same time calming and wise.

The Healer will buy you time.

"Healer? Aimee?"

She is not alone. Her allies are weak, but together they will prevail for a while. You must be prepared to return to them.

"Tell me."

Your body will be purified by heat, but will your mind be pure?

I can only look at her.

You must put aside your arrogance, Spirit Warrior. It is not you who will free your cousin.

"The Great Spirit. Through me?"

You are learning. This dark spirit will attack you. It will know things about you. It will say things that are true and things that are not true. It will speak of things that have happened and things that may happen. You must ignore it. You will not speak to the dark spirit except to command it to leave.

"I understand," I say.

If you do, you will find your destiny today, Spirit Warrior.

"Alan?"

The new voice is female, soft and weak. I turn away from Onawa to find a woman standing next to me. She is nearly transparent, and the form I see is like an old lady's scarf being pulled by the wind. She is literally ragged and rippling around the edges.

She looks so familiar. Then I realize who she is: Aimee's mom.

"She needs you, Alan," the ghostly woman says. "Please help my baby. He's coming back. He shouldn't be here ..." The wind rips her to shreds, and she flutters away into the world of unseen traffic.

Sit on my back, Spirit Warrior.

"What?" I don't get it. Onawa is speaking to me now. Okay. But ... did she just tell me to get on her back?

I must take you somewhere. Sit on my back.

"Where?"

She doesn't answer. She only looks at me with those huge, patient green eyes. In a daze, I throw a leg over Onawa's back and grab hold of her neck. Where is she taking me? She leaps forward, and I can feel her muscles tensing and relaxing as she races through the darkness that has no floor, ceiling, or walls, moving faster than I ever could, moving faster than sound, faster than the night.

There's a tunnel of light ahead and we race toward it. The round doorway grows bigger and bigger, and then we explode through it and into light.

We have left the Spirit World, but we are still spirits. Now, however, we are standing in a familiar location in the physical world. I look at my body sitting cross-legged in the sweat lodge. My hair is damp and hanging over my glistening shoulders. Sweat runs off my body. The air is humid. I slide off Onawa's back and stand over my body. Somehow, as a spirit, I can stand in the low-roofed sweat lodge; Onawa, while still seeming huge, also fits in the low structure.

Enter your flesh, focus your mind on the Great Spirit, and go to meet your enemy. Your cousin and the Healer need you now.

Onawa fades away like Aimee's mother did back in the dark place. I give my body one more look, wondering for a minute how I'm supposed to do this, then just jump at it as if I'm making a tackle.

I fall over on my side, suddenly heavy with flesh and muscle and bone. I push myself up and sweat runs into my eyes. I wipe it away and get to my knees. Reaching outside the flap of the lodge, I grab my clothes and pull them on.

"I'm coming, Aimee. Hold on ..."

It looks like an Oklahoma tornado has torn through the hallway upstairs. There's not a picture frame left on the wall. The furniture Aimee and Courtney moved from Court's bedroom is shattered into hundreds of pieces. Courtney's clothes are torn and strewn up and down the hallway. Along both walls are deep scratches that dig all the way through the plaster. Worse, though, is the sight of Court's bedroom door. It's gone. Only a few jagged splinters hang on the bra.s.s hinges in the doorframe. Pieces of the door are in the hallway, and I know there will be a lot more inside.

I want to run. I want to run to Aimee.

But I can't. I walk slowly. I remain calm. I remain focused.

"He's coming back, Aimee. He's coming back! He-" Courtney seems to choke on her own voice. Then another voice speaks, a deep, cracked, evil voice. His voice. "Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d boy. Come meet your destiny."

I step into the doorway. It's a shocking scene and shakes me to the core, but somehow I keep my composure. Courtney is tied to the posts of her bed. There are socks wrapped around her wrists to keep the ropes from chafing. She's still wearing her shoes and socks, white pieces of rope knotted around her ankles.

"We've been waiting for you, boy," Courtney says with the demon's voice.

Where's Aimee? For a moment I can't find her.

"She's got a boo-boo." The thing on the bed cackles at its own joke. Aimee-my Aimee-is slumped against the wall, a long splintery piece of wood protruding from her right arm, just a few inches below the shoulder. Her face is pale and drained, and she's so weak. I kneel beside her and take the hand of her injured arm. Her green eyes meet mine.

"We collapsed on the floor. He lost energy for a bit and I only barely got her tied to the bed, and then ..." She trails off as if speaking all that so rapidly wore her out.

"I met your mother, Aimee."

Her eyes light just a little.

"This will hurt. Go clean it, then wrap it in a towel, okay? We'll get you to the hospital when this is over."

She gives the slightest nod, and I take the splinter in my left hand, steadying her arm with my right. "Great Spirit, let it be your will this doesn't hurt her too much."

Slow and steady, I pull the shard of wood from her arm. Her beautiful, tired face winces, scrunching up in pain, and then the splinter is out. I toss it aside. Her arm is bleeding, but the blood is not spurting. No major veins or arteries were hit. I guide her out of the room. I watch as she stumbles into the bathroom, then I turn to Courtney.

"Impressive," the thing on the bed says. "But you won't pull me out of this girl like you pulled the splinter out of your wh.o.r.e."

"No, I won't," I answer.

Do not speak to it! Onawa's voice roars through my head.

"Courtney! I know you can hear me. You have to fight this thing. Fight him, Courtney. You told me you want this evil spirit to leave you alone. Fight him now."

He growls something inarticulate and inhuman as I take a step toward the bed. Courtney's body begins thrashing wildly, and I'm afraid for a minute that the ropes won't hold, that the wooden bedposts will break off, that I won't be strong enough.

"GET AWAY!"

I reach for her.

"Please don't, Alan."

I stop. The voice is Courtney's-almost. I study her face for a minute. It's a raw, red mess of leaking sores. Her eyes burn with a feverish light, and she smiles a wicked, evil smile that isn't hers at all.

My fingertips make contact with her side. Her mouth opens wide, wide, wider than it should ever open, and she makes a sound that no human could possibly make. It's a low-pitched shriek that builds and builds, thudding at my brain like a jackhammer. The River Man makes her turn away from me. Her arms strain against the ropes. I sit on the bed and press my left hand to her back, under her heart.

I close my eyes and focus.

You are a tool of one who is greater.

"Great Spirit, if it is your will, send this dark spirit out of my cousin. Fill me and use me to do your will."

Keep praying.

The thing growls like a caged, angry bear.

I repeat my prayer.

The thing speaks again. "You can't fight me. You are nothing. Your father left because he knew you would be worthless."

"Shut up!" I scream at the thing.

Do not speak to it!

The River Man laughs at me, a low, rumbling chuckle that is very out of place coming from my little female cousin.

"Do you know the things she used to do with Blake?" he asks.

"Great Spirit, I am weak," I call out. "I can't do this. You have to do it. If it is your will, send this dark spirit out of my cousin. Fill me and use me to do your will!"

The River Man screams again. I repeat the prayer, saying it over and over while the thing inside my cousin thrashes and fights me. Again and again I say it, until the words run together. No, they are not running together. I am speaking another language.

It's the language from my Navajo CDs.