"You seem very chipper," she said dryly.

"Yessiree!" Donaldson grinned. "Spring is in the air! I can feel it!"

"Then I surmise you've heard from Sheriff Mansfield," Hamilton said crisply.

The smile slipped from Donaldson's face. How could she possibly . . . Then it all dropped into place. Hamilton's campaign for more police presence was hardly any secret.

"That's right," said Hamilton with obvious satisfaction. "You've me to thank for your sudden windfall, Sheriff Donaldson. When Mansfield called to let me know you'd received his letter, I just had to come by and congratulate you personally, and say how much I look forward to working more closely with you in the future."

"Well, hi, Rose!" Laura smiled. "Welcome back. How was your trip?"

"It was fine. We saw some neat campuses," she lied, unable to tell Hawk's mother anything about the Garden Coast, "but I still plan on going to Brown."

"Arthur will be glad to hear that," Laura said. "But he's not here now, I'm afraid."

"I know," Rose said. "I just left him in town. I've come to see you, actually."

"How nice." Laura smiled. "I'd love to hear more about your college tour."

"And I'd love to tell you sometime," Rose said, more sincerely than Laura knew, "but I've come to talk with you about . . . about Hawk."

"Oh?" Laura said, her smile fading. "Please, come in." As they headed for the living room, Laura asked, "Are you two having trouble?"

"I'm not sure," Rose said, taking a chair beside the windows. "But I think Hawk is. I'm pretty worried about him."

"I see," said Laura as she sat down on the couch. "I am too, Rose. I might as well just say that. He's been terribly depressed since what happened in November. It meant so much to him when you and the others came over after the memorial service. He was a great deal better for a week or two, but then . . ." She sighed and shook her head. "He just started slipping even deeper than before. Nothing I or Joby try seems to help at all. Then, after Solomon's stroke last week . . ." She groaned, covering her eyes. "It just never seems to stop these days! It hit Joby pretty hard, but Arthur! It's been like watching Arthur smothered right before my eyes. I don't know what to do."

"That's what I was afraid of," said Rose, having hoped she'd just caught Hawk at a bad moment in town that morning. "That's how he was with me too. I came back full of things to tell him, and he acted like it all just caused him pain. I ran into Nacho later, and he said Hawk's not even speaking to him anymore. He was pretty irritated, actually, and he's not the only one. It's as if Hawk's trying to shove his friends away."

"I'm so sad to hear that," Laura said wearily. "I'd hoped . . . Maybe I should take him to a therapist or something. But I haven't been able to find one any closer than Santa Rosa, and I just didn't want to make him feel . . ."

"Sick," Rose finished sympathetically. "I think he is, though," she said quietly. "And I think something pretty drastic needs to happen, or I'm not sure what he might do to himself once he's managed to shove all of us far enough out of his life."

"He won't be shoving me or Joby anywhere," Laura said fiercely. "Or you either, I imagine," she added more gently.

"Failing to get rid of us doesn't mean he won't just remove himself," said Rose, remembering all too clearly how effortlessly he'd closed her out that morning.

"Have you got any good ideas then?" asked Laura. "I'm running pretty low."

"That's why I came to see you," Rose said. "I can only think of one, and it's really drastic. I didn't even want to suggest it to him until I'd talked with you."

Hawk sat inside the dripping cavern where his life had gone awry, feeling like an outcrop of the cold stone surrounding him. No one but himself ever came here anymore. Without Solomon's incarnation spell, demons might be lurking on the very wind. For those of the blood, gatherings of any kind were no longer safe.

Outside the cavern mouth, surf boomed more loudly on the rocks. The tide was coming in. He'd have to leave soon if he wanted to stay dry, but he couldn't seem to move-a thought that summed up his entire existence better than any he'd come up with yet. He almost wrote it down, but even that much willful movement proved beyond him.

Solomon had always said that words had power to make sense of chaos, bring healing, defeat injustice. If so, Hawk was not half the bard he'd once imagined. The notepad on his lap was covered in line after line of writing, each one crossed out more angrily than the last. He'd stopped bothering to erase things hours ago. He'd stopped writing altogether some time later. The voices in his mind these days no longer murmured stories full of wonder and heroic daring, or even weighty consolation. Now they only whispered that his mentor would be dying soon, off in Santa Rosa, as everybody died in Taubolt now-except for Hawk, who deserved no such release.

The voices whispered now that those who'd said such reassuring things to him after Jupiter and Sky had died were merely being "nice" and, having discharged that obligation, only wished to leave both Hawk and what he'd done behind them. Hawk had several times caught Joby and GB coming out of Joby's inn, or wandering from the woods together. He had no idea what they might be doing, but it was clear that in GB Joby had found some new, and doubtless more enjoyable, "project" to occupy his time. One with more potential than Hawk could hope to offer anymore. Even Rose spent days or weeks away from him up on the Garden Coast now. Why sit here in some cave, after all, when she could be so useful elsewhere? Hawk's inner voices said that even Rose found him easier to take now at a distance. And that was for the best. Hawk felt like a filthy hand that left dark, repellent smudges on any clean surface it touched. It was less painful to be alone than to be caught in anyone's attention being this.

Such a short while back, he'd thought nothing could be worse than all the grief and shame and anger he'd been feeling. Now Hawk felt nothing anymore at all, which was proving even more unbearable. All around him people grieved, and cried, and comforted one another, while he, able to let nothing in or out, felt only the hopeless void. In Hawk's mind there was a janitor now, who came each day to sweep away the bodies without a hint of feeling. Something had strangled his heart, and with nothing left alive inside him, it seemed cruel that he must go on living anyway.

His attention was pried from this cesspool by the sound of someone's sloshing approach outside. When Rose's face peered through the cavern's entrance, Hawk remained utterly still, more from inertia than any particular will to hide. But when her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she found him and came inside.

"What are you doing here?" she asked quietly. "The tide is more than halfway in, and everyone's worried sick about you."

He'd grown so still that it was hard to talk but he tried as he would not have done for anyone but Rose. "Now you can tell them I'm all right."

"Are you?" she asked softly.

What was he supposed to say?

She glanced at the pad in his lap, and asked, "Are you writing?"

"No."

Seeing the hurt in her face, Hawk was surprised to discover that he could, in fact, still feel something. The things coming from his mouth only shamed him more.

"Hawk," Rose said uncertainly. "You're obviously not okay."

You're not the way we want you anymore.

"I'm worried about you," she said when Hawk did not reply. "Everyone is."

You're a burden to everyone now.

"Hawk, please talk to me."

A surly, boorish burden . . . You're offending her.

"What would you like me to say?" Hawk murmured.

"Hawk," she sighed, coming to sit down beside him, "people can get lost in grief. It can bang them up so hard they can't find an exit, and you've been through too much."

You're not as strong as all the others . . . You can't handle this like they can.

Rose reached out and took his hands in hers. Your hands are clammy and covered in grit . . . She's repulsed but she won't tell you so . . . "You've got to do something to break out of this."

They can't put up with your behavior anymore.

"Your mother and I were talking," Even your mother is talking behind your back . . . You're breaking her heart . . . filling her life with grief . . ., "and we both think maybe this place is the problem. I mean, Taubolt's under attack, and you know as well as I do that things are probably just going to get worse for quite a while." They're all dealing with lots of bigger problems than your own . . . If you were just grown-up enough to see that . . . "You haven't even had a chance to get your head above water before the next wave hits, and if you stay here, it's just likely to go on that way. We both think maybe you should leave for a while." You should leave. "I'll miss you terribly, but if you can put some distance between yourself and all this, maybe it would help you heal. I don't think Taubolt's going to be very good for that now," she said, giving his hands a squeeze.

You should leave.

"You could stay with your grandparents for a month or two."

You should leave.

"Even Joby thinks it might be a good idea."

There it was. Even Joby wants you out of the way while they deal with Taubolt's real problems. Hawk wondered whether Joby had consulted GB about it too.

"Hawk, please say something. You're scaring me with all this silence."

You're scaring her . . . You should leave.

In the darkness behind his eyes, Hawk watched his fingers leaving gouges in the muddy rim as he lost his grip at last, and plummeted into the bottomless abyss he'd been staring into all this time. . . . He'd lost her.

"You're right," he said tonelessly. "I'll go."

He found that he could move now, if not much faster than honey over ice. He got up without a word and headed for the cave mouth, unable even to look back.

"The moment is upon us," Lucifer said briskly as the triangle appeared. "I've just pried Joby's eyes open. He's headed up to see her now. Tique, you stay with him until he gets there. He was quite upset, of course, and left me like the proverbial bat out of hell in that jalopy of his. I don't want him driving into a ditch or something on the way. Timing will be crucial here."

Tique nodded sharply before vanishing.

"Trephila," Lucifer continued, "go use whatever time remains to get Laura as agitated as possible. Help her spill some milk or break some dishes. Use whatever's close at hand, and no need to be subtle. Since she's still ignorant of our existence, she's not likely to suspect anything unless you incarnate in her face."

Trephila vanished with a smile.

"Eurodia, you will stay with me in case our machinery should require any adjustment in motion. Kallaystra will have whipped the boy's wounded feelings into heat by now, but he mustn't arrive until it's all over but the crying. If this goes right, it should produce quite a blast." He actually smiled. "In the end, it's always about timing."

Joby took another corner much too fast, and almost lost control. What was left of his rational mind kept telling him to slow down, but the rest of him was no longer listening. He needed to hear Laura tell him that it wasn't true-more, perhaps, than he needed to live through this if it was. That embattled little corner of rational mind kept insisting that it couldn't be true-that she'd never have done this to him-or to Hawk. But after GB's innocent misapprehension, Joby had done the math again and again in his mind, and the answer just kept coming up the same. He could not believe he'd failed to see it for so long, except that Hawk already had a father! Everyone had talked about him, on and on: the abusive, alcoholic, abandoning bastard. It made Joby want to bash his own forehead on the steering wheel.

He arrived at last, crunched to a halt on the gravel drive beside her house, and bounded up the stairs. But as he raised his hand to knock, fear stayed his arm. What if it were true? How could he face it? He still hadn't knocked when Laura opened the door, doubtless having heard him on the stairs.

"Joby!" she said. "What's . . . Is something wrong? You look-What's happened?"

Seeing no way to ease into it, he asked, "Was Sandy Hawk's real father?"

Laura's mouth fell slightly open as panic changed her face. "How did you . . ."

"Oh God," he groaned, turning to sit down on her stairs before his legs gave way. "Oh my God!" he moaned again, dropping his face into his hands, weak with helpless grief. "How could you do this?" he whispered inconsolably. "To any of us?"

When she didn't answer, he turned back to find her clinging to the door frame, pale and shaking with emotion. "What was I supposed to do?" she pleaded roughly. "Joby, you were headed off to Berkeley with high honors, that whole bright future ahead of you. Was I supposed to crush all that because one night I'd gotten it into my head to seduce you? I loved you more than that!"

Her eyes had filled with tears, but Joby just felt numb with disbelief. "You loved me?" he demanded. "So you never let me know I had a son? What about all those things you told me at the hospital? How you just wanted all of me-the broken parts and all the rest? What a load of crap! You asked me to come out of hiding, and I did! How long did you plan to go on hiding this little detail from me? Forever? What about Hawk? Did you love him too much to let him know he had a father?"

"That isn't fair!" she wept, her grief becoming anger in an instant. "I married Sandy so he'd have a father! You have no idea what I've sacrificed to spare you from-"

"Sacrificed?" Joby cut her off, leaping up as the horror of it all unfolded in him. "It wasn't your sacrifice to make! You took away my chance to be a father-my chance to watch my son grow up-my chance to be there when he needed me. Do you know what I've thought every time Sandy's name was mentioned? I thought, how could that abandoning bastard leave this beautiful boy? But that abandoning bastard was me! You made me an abandoning father!"

"How dare you!" Laura snapped. "As if you'd left me any choice! You were a mess, Joby Peterson-already half out of your mind with imaginary guilt about Lindwald! What was I supposed to say? Oh, and by the way, I'm pregnant with your child too? What would you have done with that, Joby, on top of all the rest?"

"I'd have married you! Ask Ben! He knows!" Joby cried, forgetting Ben was gone. "I told him the morning Jamie died! I was on my way to propose to you!"

Laura slid down the sill to sit crying in the doorway. "You were in no shape . . . no shape to be a father, Joby," she sobbed into her hands. "Ben told me what you were like when he saw you in Berkeley. Couldn't even leave your damn bed, but you'd have been an awesome father, if only I had let you?"

"If I'd had something in the world to think about besides myself-"

"You-were-in-no shape-to be a father," she said more fiercely, wiping at her eyes and standing up again. "Ben saw that as clearly as I did. Give us all at least a little credit before you play the blameless victim."

"Ben knew too?" Joby gasped, and all at once remembered, as if he'd just been there, hiding around that corner in the music room at high school, listening to his two most trusted friends discussing what they mustn't tell him. "Was I the only one who didn't get to know that Hawk was mine?"

"Arthur!" Laura shrilled. "His name is Arthur!" She began to cry again in earnest. "It was as close to naming him for you as I could come without making Sandy jealous. Can't you see anything? I never stopped loving you, Joby. I'd have given anything to have you there raising our son instead of Sandy, but how could you have-"

"And I condemned that man," Joby groaned, turning from Laura. "Of course he drank! Of course he mistreated you and ran away! There he was, knowing all the while that you were still in love with the man who'd left him holding all my baggage."

Laura made a strangled noise, then screamed, "Get out! Get out of here, you selfish, monstrous ass!" She whirled around and slammed the door, leaving Joby on the porch alone. From inside the house, he heard her scream again-no words, just pain, followed by a torrent of heart-wrenching sobs.

When Joby didn't answer, Hawk pounded on his door again. Joby's car was here, so he figured Joby must be too. He'd already been angry by the time he'd gotten home from his encounter with Rose. Then he'd found his mother, a sodden wreck, on the couch. It seemed there were still some things Hawk cared about. His mother's pain was one of them.

Hawk pounded for a third time, and was drawing breath to yell Joby's name, when the door finally lurched open. Joby looked not much better than his mother had, though that bothered Hawk not nearly as much.

"I was sleeping," Joby apologized, looking mournfully at Hawk.

"Pleasant dreams, I hope," Hawk said coldly. "What did you do to my mother?"

Joby only stared at him in dull surprise.

"You know. The woman you just demolished?" Hawk growled. "When I asked her what was wrong, she said to ask you, so I'm asking. What the hell did you do?"

"She didn't tell you?" Joby said stupidly.

"She hasn't been like this since the day my fucking father left," Hawk snapped. "Answer my question, or I'm going to write you off as fast as I did him, and you can fuck yourself 'til Hell freezes over before I talk to you again-not that you'd care, I guess, now that you've got GB to kiss your ass."

"Come in," Joby said wearily, walking back into his room. "It's not a conversation to have standing in the doorway."

Hawk followed Joby in, and said, "Okay, I'm inside. Now you'd better tell me fast what happened to my mom, or I'll go right back out-for good."

"Hawk," Joby sighed, folding wearily into a chair beside his stove, "your mother's kept a secret from both of us until today. When I found out, we had a pretty nasty argument, and . . ." Joby looked so bleak that Hawk didn't need him to confirm what he had guessed at first sight of his mother's condition.

"You've broken your engagement." Hawk shrugged.

"You don't seem too upset," Joby murmured sadly.

"Things don't upset me like they used to," Hawk replied, though, privately, he felt the blow as yet more evidence of the universe's enmity toward himself. "So what's the awful secret?" Hawk asked, careful not to sound as if he cared too much.

Joby stared at him in dismay. "I know you're angry, Hawk, and I can understand that, but I didn't want to hurt your mother. I care about her deeply."

"Huh," Hawk grunted, sitting on Joby's bed. "Just yesterday, you loved her."

Joby looked as though he might be going to cry, and Hawk was ambushed by a sudden stab of remorse. Not for the first time, he wondered what was wrong with him, when he'd become so cruel, so eager to wound. But then he thought about his mother's grief-swollen face, and shoved his sympathy for Joby aside. "It's now or never," Hawk said, starting to rise. "I'm leaving Taubolt tonight, like you all want me to. If you won't tell me why my mother's in this shape, I'll wait until she wants to say. Your choice."

"Tonight?" Joby said, sounding startled. "Why so sudden?"

Hawk just turned and started toward the door, tired of being stalled and jerked around by everyone. He had problems of his own to manage.

"I'm your father, Hawk," Joby said behind him.