"You've cheated!" Basquel screamed. "That means we win, and you'll be punished! Master! Master, come and see what they are doing!"

"I'm already here," said Lucifer, stepping from beneath the trees, not guised as GB, but as himself, tall and dark to Michael's tall and fair. "Did you really think I'd let you go unwatched all this time with such an important charge?" he asked Basquel.

Michael moved to stand between Hell's ruler and Hawk, saying, "You'll have to deal with me to have him back."

"Have him back?" Lucifer said dismissively. "There's hardly any point now. Not after all this. First Lancelot. Now Mordred. It seems I shall have to improvise again. No, Michael, I've only come for . . . closure." He turned to Basquel with ominous calm. "Whose idea was it to stay and chat in front of the boy once you'd been exposed?"

"What?" the creature said, its fear instantly apparent. "I didn't-I never-"

"You did," Lucifer said quietly. "It seems I should have listened to Kallaystra. She may be slow and lazy, but she didn't waste the boy completely, as you have done."

"No!" Basquel quailed, rising to his feet. "I've served no one but-"

"Yourself." Lucifer sighed, throwing both arms up to bathe the quaking demon in a brilliant light that flared and vanished leaving only Basquel's final scream behind.

Lucifer looked back at Michael then, smiling unpleasantly. "I know my terms with your Employer do not require you to obey Him. An oversight, I must confess, but who'd have thought so many of Heaven's brightest surviving stars hid such potential for subversion?" Lucifer's grin evaporated. "I still intend to win this wager, and then . . . you know the price for failure in your Master's domain, as well as Basquel knew the price in mine. I look forward to seeing what a few millennia of confinement to this forsaken rock pile does to all that fierce self-confidence of yours, Michael."

Before Michael could respond, Lucifer had vanished without so much as a glance at Hawk, who stared openmouthed at where he'd been, then turned to stare at Michael.

"Jake?" Hawk said. "Who was that? . . . Why'd he call you Michael?"

Michael pursed his lips, calculating the damage, and what might be done about it.

"What did they mean about your . . . master?" Hawk insisted.

"You and I must talk now," Michael said quietly. "A very long talk, about a lot of things, but first, let's find you something to eat. You'll need a clearer head for this."

He reached down to help the boy up, but whatever strength Hawk had possessed before seemed drained now. He could barely stand, so Michael bent down and picked him up as if he were a child.

"Jake?" Hawk asked quietly, as Michael carried him from the clearing. "Was it them . . . that killed her?"

"No," Michael said. "Her death was just an accident. A terrible accident . . . Or I'd have been there."

After a moment, Hawk murmured sadly, "I never thanked her for the book."

"You will," the angel said. "Now rest until I find some food. There will be time for questions then." He looked down to find Hawk already fast asleep against his chest.

Rose had lived quietly at the very heart of all that Taubolt was, and her memorial service overflowed the high school's huge central room through every door. Joby had been at school all day, helping to prepare, and so secured a seat inside where he waited now, reflecting on the week since Rose's death.

Her young friends and former classmates had gathered within hours of the accident and stayed together all that week, traveling from home to home like a large nomadic family. Cooking and sharing meals together, sleeping side by side on floors and couches, they'd gone from grief to laughter back to grief again and again as they remembered Rose and coped with the fresh and devastating wound of her sudden, awful absence. Invited along, Joby had spent much of that week traveling with them, astonished at the strength and honesty and wisdom of these children who had known so little grief before Taubolt had begun to change for reasons no one could explain.

As the town had reeled in shock, Donaldson had been quick to deny any fault in the accident, and express his sympathy with a gesture of "goodwill," releasing all the boys arrested that night without bail to await their court hearings in Santa Rosa later that month. For now, the issue smoldered unaddressed, until the community's more urgent grief was dealt with. But Joby had not forgotten his vow to Nacho that night. When Rose was laid to rest, he would make certain Donaldson paid . . . for everything.

Laid over all of this was Joby's fear for Hawk. Though his new car remained parked where he had left it at the Connolly's house, Hawk had not been seen since running off that night. Joby had spent hours that night driving through the darkened town, then searching the highway and surrounding roads without success. By now, he woke and slept suppressing dread of being the next to grieve a child deceased.

As Rose's parents were ushered through the hushing crowd toward a row of chairs around the center of the room, Ander began to play his guitar and then to sing lyrics that Joby quickly recognized from one of Rose's many poems.

"The bark is rough,

against my determined hands,

but still it

does not hurt me.

I have climbed all this way,

with branches cracking in my face,

just to hear the gentle song

of the wind.

I will wait now for a while.

And suddenly the song begins,

rippling and laughing.

The trees will dance

to the happy melody, carrying me with them

as they sway to the

music of the wind."

Ander played an interlude evoking gusts of wind through leaves, as Joby recalled the first time he had heard her whispering to Bellindi in that thicket on the headlands. She had seemed so strange, if fair, running from him, laughing, with flowers falling from her hair. . . . Could she truly be gone? . . . Did such wounds ever fully heal?

Ander's voice rose again, breaking Joby's reverie.

"My life is like the wind that blows through

my hair on a cloudy day.

My life is like the fish that swim

in the deepest depths of the ocean.

My life is like five thousand years of light

that will never go out.

My life is like the hills,

rolling away forever."

Ander played gently for another bar or two, the notes rolling softly into silence.

As there was currently a dearth of religious ministers in Taubolt, Bridget O'Reilly stood to conduct the ceremony that Rose's parents and friends had prepared. Her opening statements of welcome were brief and unassuming, as were the things she said of Rose before turning to Rose's parents and inviting them to speak.

Tom and Clara stood and turned to face the crowd. Clara smiled; Tom tried with less success. Their eyes were red and rough, their faces pale and puffed with grief. They'd been in near seclusion all that week, attended by just a few of their oldest, closest friends. Joby braced himself for a painful display of grief.

"Rose was conceived on the shores of a lake high in the Sierras," Tom began. A pale smile crossed his face at last. "I can't tell you exactly which one. . . . We saw a lot of lakes that trip."

There was an instant of surprise before the whole room rang with laughter mixed with tears and admiration. Tom and Clara laughed as well. What amazing people, Joby thought. No wonder Rose had been so remarkable.