Carrie shook her head sadly. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. He's collecting girls. Kidnapping them, rounding them up. He's going to take you to wherever he keeps them. You'll see . . . they'll be there. All of them."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Sure it does. It's a s.e.x trade thing, Stace. That's what they're doing, kidnapping women for the s.e.x market. He tells them it's him who's saving them from some evil cult or coven or some such bulls.h.i.t, but that's just to confuse them. It's all about s.e.x and money for him. Do you know how much money a good-looking white bird like you is worth to some Arab prince? Or to a brother in Dubai or someplace? All of this . . . all the elaborate steps he's taken are just to make it work. He uses a lot of money and a lot of tricks because the payoff is huge."

"No, Carrie, you're wrong about him. It's not like that at all."

Carrie ignored her; she gave Stacey's hands another squeeze. "Now listen, you need to come with me, okay? The police sent me in to get you away from him."

Stacey felt like the seat was tilting under her. This made no sense at all. She hadn't imagined the man who abducted her, who got her to strip naked, who tried to lure her into a wall of shimmering light.

She could not have imagined it.

Nor could she have imagined that Rhymer came out of the night to save her.

It had happened.

Right?

Now Carrie was telling her that all of those things were false-lies or the product of some kind of drugs, maybe mind manipulation. Did that make sense?

Or . . . which made more sense? A coven of evil elves who wanted to t.i.the her to h.e.l.l or a manipulative b.a.s.t.a.r.d who wanted to sell her to the s.e.x trade?

Neither seemed to be part of any world Stacey lived in.

Right?

She stared into Carrie's eyes, looking for the lie, looking for something that made sense of what her friend was saying. After all, this was her flatmate, her girlfriend for the past three years, the person she trusted with secrets she would not have shared with anyone else. The boyfriends, the bad dates, the skeevy English professor who'd come on to her last year-that's who this was, holding out a hand with chipped Chancer-red nail lacquer, ready to whisk her away to safety while the police brought down the madman who called himself Rhymer, and the whole network of s.e.x traffickers working with him. Maybe they'd taken him already and that was why he'd vanished.

Or were the police outside waiting for Rhymer to come out of the bathroom? Were the SWAT team, the Lothian and Borders squad cars all poised to pounce?

She looked out the window, but there wasn't anything on the street except a bronze-colored Bentley parked right outside, with two official-looking men in charcoal suits standing beside it, the people on the street glancing as if expecting a celebrity to pop out any moment. Not a policeman in sight. But from here she couldn't see the Fiat either.

"I have to get you out of here," Carrie insisted.

And then like an echo, Rhymer's voice seemed to whisper in her ear. A fragment of his last riddle.

" . . . the friend who is nae what you see . . ."

The blood in Stacey's veins turned to cold slush.

Carrie sat there, eyes intense, mouth . . .

Smiling?

It was so small a thing. Just the tiniest upturn at the corners of Carrie's full lips.

A smile.

Why in the wide blue f.u.c.k would Carrie smile?

And where the h.e.l.l was Rhymer himself?

If this was a trap, how had it been laid? Was the hostess one of their kind? Smiling so nicely at everyone?

Smiling like Carrie.

"Will you come with me, sweetie?" asked Carrie with that smiling mouth.

A word rose to Stacey's lips. It came slowly and reluctantly, and Stacey knew that to speak it would cost her. It would hurt her.

She said, "Skinwalker."

For a tiniest fraction of a second, Carrie's facade slipped, the brown eyes flickered with a degree of intelligence that had never shone in the girl Stacey knew. It was weird.

No, it was alien.

In that moment, seeing that different mind look out at her through those familiar brown eyes, Stacey knew-as surely as she knew her own name-that Carrie was dead.

The monsters had come and stolen her friend away. Stolen the light that was Carrie's light. Stolen her laugh, her dreams, her joy of living. Stolen everything. It was worse than murder. Using her body like this was a new, foul kind of rape.

"Oh, G.o.d, Carrie . . ." Stacey said as she jerked her hands away. Tears threatened to flood her eyes. And she repeated that dreadful word. "Skinwalker. You're part of that coven."

Carrie's smile blossomed into something overripe, swollen and nasty. She rose and came around the table and clamped a hand on Stacey's biceps. The pain was immediate and intense. "You need to come with us now."

"Why? Why didn't they just take you or somebody else?"

Carrie abandoned all pretense of being herself as she jerked Stacey out of the booth.

"Rules," she hissed, making that word into something hideous. "Your new boyfriend put the sigil on you. h.e.l.l has tasted you. n.o.body else will do."

Tasted. She shivered.

G.o.d almighty.

She tried to pull away, but it was hopeless. She twisted around to yell for help, but everyone in the place was already looking at her.

Every single person was smiling.

At her.

Their smiles were wrong. All so wrong.

Like Carrie's.

Stacey sagged against Carrie. "Where's Rhymer?"

Carrie-or the thing that had invaded her body-sneered with contempt. "Your savior ran away like the coward he is."

"No . . ."

"He saw us and he fled."

"He wouldn't do that."

Carrie laughed. "That's exactly what he does, you silly little cow. How do you think he's survived for so many years?"

"No!"

Carrie leaned closer. "Why do you think that so many people have died in his stead? Or hasn't he confessed his failures? His crimes? Thomas the Rhymer is a coward who stole his immortality, and all he does-all he's capable of doing-is bring pain to those he pretends to protect."

"And what are you?" snapped Stacey. "You're nothing but monsters who-"

"Who pay a t.i.the to h.e.l.l," finished Carrie. "Yes, we do. And why? Because appeas.e.m.e.nt is the only thing that prevents the legions of h.e.l.l from waging war on all the realms of the living. In this pathetic world of yours, and across all the worlds." She leaned close, and Stacey could smell a rotting-meat stink on her breath. "That's the truth that Rhymer won't tell you. He delights in the songs sung about him and the tall tales you humans tell, but his freedom is bought at what cost? He paints us as evil, tries to make us out to be the villains. But it was his own escape that nearly brought down all the infinite worlds. His arrogance is his greatest crime."

"He saved my life!"

"Your life?" spat Carrie. "What is your life compared to a billion billion lives? To a trillion worlds? The t.i.the to h.e.l.l is so small a price to pay, you should drop to your knees and thank all of the G.o.ds of all the worlds that you were chosen as the true savior of the universe. You-you pathetic b.i.t.c.h. We 'monsters' killed your girlfriend, but we chose you to be the sacrifice that would save everyone. She's dead. A waste. Am I supposed to mourn for you? To feel sorry for you?"

Dazed and confused beyond speech, Stacey could find no will left to fight as Carrie dragged her outside, leading her to the Bentley. One of the bodyguards opened the rear door. Cold hands reached out, dragged her into the back.

"Here is the t.i.the," said the skinwalker in Carrie. "Try not to let her tears of self-pity drown you."

There were only two seats in the back, with a paneled elbow rest and divider between them. The other seat was occupied by a heavy older man with salt-and-pepper hair and jowls. His eyes were blue, but watery, almost colorless. She knew she'd seen him before, in the news somewhere. An MP maybe.

Kingdoms, never kings.

The two men in the front seat turned around to look at her. They were both important-looking older men.

"This is the t.i.the?" asked the driver with an imperious sniff. "How far we have fallen."

"Please," Stacey pleaded. "Just let me go."

Carrie, still lingering in the doorway, said, "I tried to explain the truth to her, but she's too stupid to listen."

"It's always the same with those the Rhymer tries to save," said the other person in the front seat, an iron-haired man with a military bearing. A general, perhaps. "Some whimpering, simpering b.i.t.c.h who thinks that Prince Charming will protect her from the Big Bad Wolf." He made a disgusted sound.

"Please, please . . . this doesn't make sense," pleaded Stacey. "Why would Rhymer do this?"

"Why would he try to save you?" asked the fat statesman in the backseat with her.

They all laughed. Short, bitter laughs that were entirely without humor.

"We have a word for it," said the driver. "Actually there's a word for it in every language throughout all the universes, but they all mean the same thing. It describes people like Rhymer."

"Tell me," she begged. "I have to understand."

"Why . . . he's a terrorist, my dear," said the military man. "I thought that was obvious to anyone. He wants to start a war with h.e.l.l."

"It wouldn't be a war," said Carrie coldly. "Without the t.i.the . . . it would be fire and slaughter forever."

They all looked at Stacey as she wept.

"That's who Thomas the Rhymer is," said the driver.

Carrie's mouth wore her vicious, secret little smile as she slammed the door.

9.

They left Marfield, turned away from the direction she and Rhymer had come, and headed somewhere else. Stacey sat in stunned silence, staring out at the road for signs. The next listed Balnuaran of Clava. She knew that site and where she was if those burial cairns were only twenty kilometers up the road. They pa.s.sed the Nairn viaduct, and shortly after that they turned onto the narrow paved road past Balnuaran. A dozen or more tourists milled around between the three cairns in the crisp autumn weather, a few of them in medieval or Druid costumes; but the car rolled on past. To the left lay a farmhouse and outbuildings, and a large brown field full of baled wheels of hay or gra.s.s. Another farmhouse went by on the right. A sign read MILTON OF CLAVA, directly after which the road banked left at an acute angle. Instead of turning, the Bentley pulled off to the right, effectively blocking a narrow footpath between low wire fences. It seemed to lead straight into the afternoon sun.

The fat statesman remained where he was until her door had been opened and she'd been led out. Then he came around the nose of the Bentley and stepped in behind her to propel her along the path. The two black-suited men remained with the car, no doubt to keep anyone else from coming along after them.

Stacey knew that she could run. That she should run.

But her legs wouldn't deviate from the path.

What if it was all true? What if her life was the price that could save so many?

Everyone she ever knew. Everyone in the world.

In . . . all the worlds, if that part was true.

Could she actually run away from that, as Rhymer obviously had? Could she be so selfish? So murderously self-centered?

And yet . . .

Why had Carrie smiled that last little smile?

Who was telling the truth?

What was the truth?

Was there any? Or was this all a two-sided game with no good guys, only bad ones? And her life as the only piece on the board.

Help me, she prayed, mouthing the words but not speaking them. Help me.

But she had no idea to whom her plea was directed.

G.o.d-if there was a G.o.d-seemed to allow this madness. Did that mean that He was complicit in so much misery?

Of course He is, she thought, scolding herself. People died in pain and misery every minute of every day. All she had to do was google the statistics of rape, child abuse, murder, genocide to know that any G.o.d of this world did not care about suffering, pain, and death, or it was part of His indescribable plan.