When he left, she dragged linens and blankets out of a cupboard and made the bed in the largest bedroom. Then she crawled into it and slept straight for almost thirty hours. After waking, she ate one of the prepared meals, a chicken curry dinner, took a short walk, then slept another fourteen hours.

Except for Jamael, nobody knows where I am, she thought, reveling in the peace and silence in the farmhouse.

She didn’t turn on the television or the radio. Instead, over the next few days, she took longer and longer walks. One night she took her new violin with her. When she reached an open place where she could look out over the land meeting the sea, she remembered the black and white hall and her pact with Lord Azrael, and she played all the wild grief in her heart for an audience of one.

On the third day, she thought she might be able to make a phone call but backed away from that almost immediately. Had Robin managed to get her message to any of them?

Sitting at the kitchen table, she stared at the phone. Instead of calling, she punched in Vince’s phone number, which was one of the ones she had memorized, and sent him a text.

This is Sid. I’m just outside Scarborough, and I’m okay.

Okay being a relative term, of course.

Almost immediately, her phone rang, and she winced from the strident noise. But everyone on Earth had endured two months of uncertainty, and it wasn’t fair to avoid talking to them just because the phone seemed strange, and her emotions felt raw enough already.

So propping her forehead on the heel of one hand, she answered and began to let her old life back in.

“I’m different,” she warned Vince. It was easier to talk to him. He could deal with what happened privately and not break down on her like Julie would. “It was bad, I’m not human any longer, and I’m dealing with a lot of emotions. I can’t stand it if any of you fuss at me right now. Got it?”

“Got it,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. Easy. “It’s all going to be okay. Just tell me where you’re at. Let me be your guard dog. Nobody will get to you again without going through me first.”

At his words, a silent, unamused chuckle shook through her. She almost told him, Vince, I could guard you now.

But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Okay.”

She told him where she was staying, and he drove up to the farmhouse within a matter of hours. Vince had set up a temporary office in London from which to direct the search for her, and Robin had, in fact, delivered her message to him.

After they talked, she felt ready to talk to others. Two days later, Julie and Rikki came, along with Vince’s wife, Terri, and it turned out the farmhouse wasn’t too big after all. They had all been wounded by what had happened, and not just emotionally, although Sid knew they each cared about her.

But Vince had not been home to the States since the car wreck. After recovering from his injuries, he had spent all his time spearheading the search. Sid was the biggest client at Julie’s boutique PR firm, and for two months, Rikki, her manager, had been living in limbo. They all needed to take a breath and figure out how to move on.

At first, careful though everybody was, the air felt raw and charged with too much emotion. Sid escaped a lot, changing into her lycanthrope form to run for miles over the vast moorland of the park.

As she said to them, her need to run away wasn’t personal. She was dealing with both PTSD and the sensory overload from the lycanthropy virus.

Gradually, they all adjusted. Patience and steadiness were the house rules, until she could finally unbend enough to hug Julie. From there, things got better.

Not terrific. Not even okay. Nothing soothed the gaping hole in her chest where she mourned how things had ended with Morgan. But still, better.

Within a few days, they had sketched into place a rough game plan for how to proceed. Julie crafted statements for the press on Sid’s return and recovery without going into detail about what had actually happened.

There were some legalities that would need to be taken care of. The British authorities wanted information about how the kidnapping occurred, but Vince would field as much of that as he could over the next week as the news broke. Then Sid’s contract with his security firm would be terminated until the next concert tour, whenever that might be, and he could finally return home for good.

As for the rest of the current tour, it would be cancelled, not postponed, and the remaining ticketholders’ money refunded. Sid didn’t know when she would be ready to perform in public again. She needed to get used to the stimulus of being in large crowds before she crossed that bridge, and she didn’t know how long that would take.

“It will happen someday,” Sid said to Rikki’s worried expression. “But definitely not until next year, which is apparently only four and a half months away anyway.”

To Rikki’s credit, her response was instant and sincere. “You get to be who you are. You get to play when you want, for whom you want, and when you want. You’ve been going ninety miles an hour for several years anyway. We’ll just throttle back until you’re ready to go again. I promise you, none of this is going to be a problem, Sid.”

After the third day, her houseguests began to leave. Terri left for the States, and Vince went back to London to finalize things before heading home. Julie was the last to let go.

“I hate to leave you stuck here in the middle of nowhere!” she exclaimed.

Sid smiled. “In the middle of nowhere is exactly where I want to be. I’ll be home in a month or so. Maybe two.”

Julie sniffed. “If you’re going to stay that long, I’m coming back again in a few weeks.”

“That would be fine. But just you. Not any of the others.”

Julie studied her face. “What are you going to do here all by yourself?”

“I’m going to relish having time off. I’m going to read books I’ve been meaning to read for years, and watch TV. I might even go sightseeing.”

And somehow I need to figure out a way to live without Morgan, because there’s no point in trying to go forward with anything else until I can do that.

But she didn’t say it. She hadn’t told any of them what had happened in Avalon, and after a couple of gentle attempts, they had wisely given up asking, at least for the time being.

Finally Julie left as well, and welcome silence settled back in the farmhouse.

By the end of the second week, Sid was beginning to sleep better. She was no longer succumbing to the long bouts of exhaustion, and her appetite had evened out. She thought she might possibly try a trip into town.