A single candle burned in a bowl of water in the center of a very cramped, uneven circle. Around the candle there was a pouch made of red flannel stitched with runes, a rattle made from a painted dog bone, and a scatter of crystals. It looked like the tables my mother set up around the house for holidays where she burned incense and left offerings of milk. It might have freaked some people out, but I was instantly comfortable. The ground was bumpy with tree roots when I sat down, crossing my legs.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked as Charlemagne wedged himself between me and peeling trunk and rested his head on my knee.

“There is a spell that might help us to locate Nicholas,” Isabeau explained, the candle light glinting off the chain mail on her dress and the pendants around her tattooed and scarred throat. With her long dark hair and green eyes, she was pretty as a doll. You know, the kind of doll that came to life at night to kill monsters. “Kala is stronger, you understand, but she will not leave the caves, and humans are not welcome.”

“And Isabeau thinks we need you for this,” Logan added quietly. “Your connection to Nicholas could make the difference.” He pulled a shirt out of a bag and handed it to me. “You need to wear this.”

I shrugged out of my coat and pulled the black T-shirt over my head. It smelled like Nicholas, like black licorice and sandalwood. I hugged myself, forcing the lump in my throat to dissolve. “What else?”

“Isabeau is going to dreamwalk,” Logan answered. “Kind of like astral traveling.”

“Right.”

“You know what this is?” She sounded surprised.

“You’ve never met my mother.” Logan and I smirked at each other. My mother made power bundles of sacred objects for each of the Drake brothers on their sixteenth birthdays, to help them through the bloodchange. And she danced naked under the full moon in our backyard all the time. A little astral travel was nothing.

Isabeau nodded once, impressed. “Bien. This will make it easier.” She jabbed more painted bones in the ground in a circle around us. One of them was wrapped in copper wire. She passed me an amulet made of garnet beads and tarnished silver. I slipped it over my head.

“Ready?”

I wiped my palms on my jeans, feeling a nervous giggle well into my throat. I was finally doing something. Something useful. I felt the jaws of panic which had been clamped around my throat for days release, just a little. I could breathe again.

“I’m ready.”

“I will take you,” Isabeau said. “All you have to do is relax and follow me.”

“It’s a little disconcerting,” Logan warned me. “Hell, when it happened to me the first time, I thought someone had slipped me drugs.”

I nodded. “I can do this.” I took a deep breath and muttered Mom’s mantra. Logan sat where he was, a sword balanced across his knees. He stayed focused, guarding us.

At first nothing happened. I took deep breaths, as my butt got numb from the cold ground. I breathed some more. And then it was like the pendant Isabeau gave me started to heat up, slowly, then like an ember cradled over my belly button.

“Open your eyes,” Isabeau murmured. “Lucy.”

“I don’t feel any different. I don’t think it worked.” I opened my eyes, disappointed. “Whoa.”

Isabeau was standing in front of me, and yet I could see right through her to where her body was still sitting among the tree roots. Charlemagne sniffed me, then put his chin on his paws. The edges of the branches and the dog bones glittered. Logan’s sword was so bright it was hard to look at. The world had been bleached to bone and then certain areas painted with carnival colors. Even I was glowing faintly.

“Why am I pink?” I held up my hand, looked right through it. It made me feel really weird. “I look like bubble gum.”

“It’s your aura,” Isabeau replied.

“My aura’s cotton-candy pink? Dude. That’s embarrassing.”

“Come, we haven’t much time.”

I stood up, feeling all floaty and lightheaded. My boots hovered just above the ground. I could feel the wind, but not the cold bite of it through my clothes. And the hot pulse of the amulet burned, shooting sparks.

“Um, is it supposed to do that?”

“Think of Nicholas. Think of him as hard as you can.”

I hadn’t done much else in days so that part was easy. I imagined his tousled dark hair, his serious smile, and the way he looked at me just before he was going to kiss me. I saw his favorite black tie, the photo of us on his desk, the winter-storm gray of his eyes. I visualized him so intensely, so completely, that the sparks whirling off the amulet like a Catherine Wheel stuck together. They clung to each other until they’d formed an outline, his outline. His shoulders, his tall lean body, the gleam of his fangs.

I reached out a trembling hand to touch him because I couldn’t help myself. My fingertips dragged through the sparks, and they came apart like fireflies. I snatched my fingers back, but he was already gone. The tiny floating lights shot away from us, between the boughs.

“Viens.”

Isabeau grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the tiny grove. We half ran, half flew through the forest, following the trajectory of the streaking lights. They took us over a swamp, around massive red oaks, through a herd of sleeping deer. A buck lifted his head, antlers pale as butter.

The sparks turned red, like embers. They swirled in a whirlwind, hovering over a flock of bats. Beneath them, Solange and Constantine sniffed the air and searched the undergrowth for prints. Isabeau shot me a curious look.