Now, as Rose approached him, Hawk nudged his sunglasses higher up his nose and hoped he didn't smell too much of beer. He tried to think of how he would explain his absence, but she didn't ask where he had been. She just smiled and waved as if he'd done nothing wrong at all, which, in its way, made him just as uncomfortable.

"What's up?" Hawk asked, determined to match her nonchalance. If she wouldn't admit she was upset, he wasn't going to do it for her. He didn't play such games.

"It's going great, I think!" Rose smiled, turning back to survey the carnival-like crowd below them. She grabbed his hand and led him back down toward the beach. "Tholomey and Blue have got the most delicious chicken going at their barbecue," she said. "Remember that marinade their mother makes? Have you had lunch yet?"

Hawk shook his head, wondering if she really wasn't mad.

"Nice sunglasses," she said.

"Thanks," he answered. "Got 'em at this place in Boston. They weren't cheap, but you can't drive straight into the sunset for five days wearing junk, unless you want to go blind, I guess." He was babbling. Be cool, he told himself. Just shut up, and be cool.

"I wish you didn't have to go so soon," she said, gazing at the beach. "You'll miss all this amazing weather. Can't you stay an extra day or two?"

"It's gonna take at least four days to drive back, Rose," he said. "I've got a lot of stuff to do at work, and this is unpaid leave."

"I know," Rose sighed. "I'm just not ready to start missing you again."

"I'll come back and get you," Hawk assured her. "Soon as I've made something of myself." Rose was silent in a way that made him feel he'd said something wrong. "I don't want us out there just scraping by while all our dreams die on the vine," he said, compelled somehow to explain. "You deserve to live in style. I want to-"

She turned around and put her fingers to his lips, then leaned in to kiss him. He kissed her back, feeling sick inside. Everything was empty all the time now. . . . Even this.

"So," he said as soon as she had let him go, desperate for anything to fill the empty moment with. "We've still hardly talked about your work these days. How's it going up there on the Coast?"

She looked at him sadly for a moment, then turned away as if to scan the beach again, though Hawk wasn't fooled. She'd felt it-the emptiness inside him. Why had he even come back here?

"It's going pretty well," she said, still looking at the beach. "We've prepared almost all the seeds we'd need, and quite a few of the rarest animals are penned or caged and ready to take out quickly if it ever comes to that." She sighed, and said, "I wish they'd find the Cup. Then at least we might know where to take them all."

As he listened, Hawk felt torn between one mind that thought her task made all of his ambitions look like paste and paper, and another that struggled not to sneer at the pointlessness of scurrying around in preparation to go hide again in some new forgotten corner of the world. Would these people never tire of living tiny little lives in fear? This was why he'd left-what he had to get away from.

"Do you think I should?" Rose asked.

Hawk just blinked and stared, realizing he'd become lost in his own thoughts as she'd continued to talk. "I'm sorry. I missed that last bit," he said, his face burning.

She just shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I was only chattering." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny book four inches high and less than half an inch thick. "I wanted to give you this," she said, "before you leave. I've had it since I was a little girl, but I want you to have it now, to remind you of home, and of me."

"Rose, if this is something you care about, I shouldn't-"

She shushed him, and put the book into his hand, curling his fingers around it with her own. "Bring it back to me when you've read it if you want to," she said quietly. "The bent page marks my favorite one." She leaned up to kiss him again, just a brush across his lips, then turned and waved good-bye as she ran down to rejoin the party.

Feeling more sick at heart than ever, Hawk looked down and read the small book's cover. Flower Fairies of the Winter, by Cicely Mary Barker. The gift was quintessential Rose, but what was he to do with it? He sighed and opened it to find the poem she had marked. There was a picture of a butterfly-winged fairy that looked very much like Rose, wearing a child's gingham dress and perched on a dark branch festooned in small white blossoms. A poem on the facing page was titled "Blackthorn."

The wind is cold, the Spring

seems long a-waking;

The woods are brown and bare;

yet this is March; soon April

will be making

all things most sweet and fair.

See, even now, in hedge

and thicket tangled,

one brave and cheering sight;

the leafless branches

of the Blackthorn, spangled

with starry blossoms white!

Very pretty, Hawk thought wearily, but a child's poem wasn't going to do the job Rose had in mind. The sheer naivete of such a gesture might have made him laugh if there'd been any laughter still within him. He shut the book, and jammed it in his pocket, then ambled toward the beach below to get some chicken and, he hoped, a few more beers. Surely no one in a riot like this would ask to see ID. Later, when he'd got his courage up again, he supposed he should go thank her for the gift, but he dreaded having to seem genuinely enthusiastic about fairy poems.

By six o'clock, the time seemed ripe for setting match to powder.

"Hey, GB!" shouted Tique, grinning impishly at Lucifer from within his adolescent guise. "Has Euro gotten back yet? We're almost out of beer!"

"Keep your voice down, will ya?" Lucifer grinned back. "Ya wanna get us all arrested?" Virtually all of Hell's operatives in Taubolt were on the beach by now, disguised as very naughty teenagers. "Light 'em if ya got 'em," Lucifer said in a voice pitched for Tique's ears only. Then he started up the trail toward town. It was time for Agnes Hamilton, or a damn good facsimile, to phone in her noise complaint. Then it was off to haunt the good sheriff's binoculars. Gazing up to estimate the rate of failing daylight, Lucifer smiled to himself and thought again, It's all about the timing.

Donaldson didn't delegate calls from Hamilton. He'd come out himself to have a look, and he'd heard the blare of music and the roar of people long before he'd reached the cliff tops. He'd heard something about a barbecue on the beach but had imagined nothing more than a small gathering of families and friends, nothing so large-or loud. Their little fliers had advertised no such circus. There should have been permits filed for something like this. Hamilton had been right to complain.

He'd brought a pair of binoculars along, and raised them for a better look. People of all ages gathered around coolers and ice-filled buckets full of cans and bottles. The beach was largely shadowed by the cliffs at this hour, so it was difficult to tell how much of what the chests contained was alcoholic, but he wagered by the party's raucous mood that it was mostly booze. The more he looked, the more he realized how many of the crowd were kids, half of whom held cans and bottles too; flashes of aluminum, green and brown glass. Could have been soda, but he'd have bet his shirt it wasn't. He lowered his binoculars and swept his eyes across the beach again. The dancing crowd was large and getting pretty crazy. Numerous bonfires had been lit as evening approached. No permits for those either. He was amazed no one had called him sooner. He raised his binoculars one more time to sweep the beach's margins, knowing that's where the worst offenders would be hanging out, and sure enough, behind a thicket near the bridge, he saw a group half-hidden in the tall grass, passing around something that sure looked like a bong. Their faces didn't seem familiar, but by now the light was too poor to tell for sure.

He trotted back across the field to his patrol car, and radioed for backup. Nearly five months after his promotion and the arrival of his team, Donaldson had yet to achieve anything beyond the prosecution of another handful of teenaged pranks and minor violations. Finally, something major was going down right before his eyes, and he'd arrived in time to do more than scratch his head the morning after. He'd have bet his badge that if they managed to bust enough of those booze-guzzling, bong-huffing kids down there tonight, Taubolt's more mysterious crimes would fall off just as mysteriously, at least until Joby Peterson managed to get them all out and onto the streets again.

Kellerman's Celts had been playing tunes back to back for almost thirty minutes, so when they stopped, everyone just assumed they were taking a well-deserved break until Ian started unplugging amps while his band members packed up their instruments.

"Hey! What are you guys doing?" Blue asked. "You're not packin' up!"

"Afraid we have to," Ian said.

"It's not even dark yet," whined Blue's brother, Tholomey. "What's the hurry?"

As more people gathered to express their disappointment and surprise, Ian grabbed one of the remaining mics, and addressed the crowd. "Folks, we've had a great day playing for you all. Thanks for enjoying us so well. Unfortunately, Sheriff Donaldson has sent word down there's been a noise complaint from up in town. We're being asked to stop. So," he smiled and shrugged, "all good things must end."

There were boos and louder protests from all around the platform.

"Well, let's go up and talk to him," Blue suggested to his brother and several others around him.

The idea was immediately encouraged by everyone close enough to hear, but Ian leaned down to put a hand on Blue's shoulder, and shook his head. "Already been tried," he said. "He's been up there half an hour, I'm told, with several other officers. Yours'd be the third group to approach him. Just leave it be. The party can go on without us."

Rose watched with mild disappointment as people left the beach in larger numbers. It was not the ending she'd have chosen, but it had been a tremendous day, and more than served its purpose. By sunset, a lot of older folks and tourists had already left. The young, always last to abandon a party, were soon left gathered in loose rings around each of the three bonfires, sipping drinks and milking the afterglow for all it was worth. Rose stood in one of these with Ander, Blue, and Nacho, when Joby came to join them.

"It was a really wonderful party, Rose," he said. "I haven't had this much fun in ages. It felt really good. Thanks."

Rose smiled. "You're welcome, Joby. Thanks for coming."

"So, how's Hawk doing?" Joby said a little too casually. "I noticed you were talking to him earlier."

Rose reached out to squeeze his hand, then pulled him off toward the water. "I'm sorry he hasn't come to see you, Joby," she said when they had left the firelight. "I tried to tell him he should, but-"

"Hey, hey, hey," Joby said softly, tugging her to a stop. "That's not your problem and not what I meant. I . . . just wondered how he's doing and figured you would know."

"To be honest, I have no idea," Rose sighed. "He's changed so much, and . . . not any for the better, I think. All he talks about is how much money he's going to make and how . . ." She shook her head and looked Joby sadly in the eye. "He talks as if I were just some kind of trophy he intends to win or maybe buy someday, as if he doesn't know I'm already his. It breaks my heart, Joby. Maybe you were lucky not to see him."

"I've hurt him pretty badly, haven't I?" Joby said, looking down.

"I don't think it's you," Rose insisted. "Not just you anyway. He's been like this for a while now. I don't know why, and I don't think he does either."

"You're probably right," said Joby, not sounding too convinced.

Someone sent a bottle rocket into the air from the grassy dunes behind them. It went up with a shrill whistle, quickly followed by another, just as Blue came running up to say, "Hey, you guys, someone came down to say the sheriff's telling everybody to get off the beach. You think we ought to go?"

"Why?" asked Joby. "It's illegal to stand around a fire on the beach now?"

Before Blue could answer, three more bottle rockets shrilled into the air.

"Fools," Joby griped. "That is illegal. Do they think antagonizing him will help?"

"Look at that!" Donaldson spat, watching the second wave of rockets go up. "Flagrant little bastards."

"Probl'y all high as kites," said one of his patrolmen. All four officers were here now, full riot gear waiting back in their cars in case things got really out of hand.

Donaldson shook his head in disbelief. He'd sent none of his men down to the beach itself yet, knowing that most of his intended targets would run the minute a uniformed officer showed up. He didn't want a single one of them to get away before all the exits had been covered.

"I didn't know this town had that many kids," said his second patrolman.

"A lot of 'em prob'ly aren't from here," said the first officer. "Gang types, most likely, come in for the party. Saw it all the time when I was down in L.A. Word of some big rave like this gets out, they come from all around."

"How many would you say we got down there?" asked Donaldson. His head was spinning. Only the crowds around the fires were clearly visible, but there was lots of vague movement in the darkness back from the beach and under the bridge. If they were all inebriated, this could get very, very ugly in a hurry.

"Could be a hundred," said the officer who'd been in L.A. "Maybe one fifty."

Just then Donaldson's fourth officer rejoined them, having been sent to radio the backup they'd called in from Heeberville an hour before. "They say ten minutes," the patrolman reported. "Maybe less."

"Good," said Donaldson. "Those kids have responded to my evacuation order with fireworks. This thing could come apart at any minute. When the backup gets here I want us all ready to move, so get geared up now." He turned to the officer who'd just been in contact with the force from Heeberville. "You told them where to deploy? Down there, at the bridge flats, and up there on the west end of the headlands?"

"Yes, sir."

"You think they understood?"

"Most of 'em seem to know Taubolt, sir."

Donaldson turned back to look at the beach again. "I've got you now," he muttered under his breath. "Every last fucking one of you."

"So, think we should leave?" Blue asked again.