The ocean burned.

“What the hell’s wrong with your eyes?” Ronan asked.

Adam’s pupils were still tiny. “Takes me a while to come back.”

“Creepy bastard. What’s with the Devil?”

Adam stared up at the dark stained glass of the church. He was still partway caught in the kingdom of the headlights. “I can’t understand what it’s telling me. It feels like it’s holding me at an arm’s length. I need to find a way to scry deeper, but I can’t without someone to watch me in case I get too far away from myself.”

Someone in this case being Ronan.

“What are you trying to find out?”

Adam described the circumstances surrounding his eye and his hand with the same level tone he would use to answer a question in class. He allowed Ronan to lean in to compare his eyes – close enough that Ronan felt his breath on his cheek – and he allowed Ronan to study the palm of his hand. The latter was not strictly necessary, and they both knew it, but Adam watched Ronan closely as he lightly traced the lines there.

This was like walking the line between dream and sleep. The night-sharp balance of being asleep enough to dream and awake enough to remember what he wanted.

He knew Adam had figured out how he felt. But he didn’t know if he could step off this knife-slender path without destroying what he had.

Adam held Ronan’s gaze as Ronan released his hand. “I’m trying to find the source of what’s attacking Cabeswater. I can only assume it’s the same thing as what was attacking that black tree.”

“It’s in my head, too,” Ronan admitted. His day at the Barns had been marked by dreams that he’d hastily woken himself from.

“Is it? Is that why you look like hell?”

“Thanks, Parrish. I like your face, too.” He briefly described how the corruption of the nightmare tree seemed identical to the corruption of his dreams, hiding his relative distress over the content of the dreams and the fact that it was evidence of a larger secret with an excess of swear words. “So, I’m just never sleeping again.”

Before Adam could reply to this, movement from above caught their attention. Something light and strange flapped between the dark trees that lined the neighbourhood streets. A monster.

Ronan’s monster.

His albino night horror rarely left the protected fields of the Barns, and when it did, it was only to trail after Ronan. Not in a faithful, canine way, but rather in the careless, widening gyre of a cat. But now it flew down the street towards them, straight and purposeful. In the purple-black space, it was as visible as smoke, dragging ragged-edged wings and cloth from its body. The sound of its wings was more prominent than anything else: thump, thump, thump. When it opened its pair of beaks, they trembled with a ferocious cry inaudible to human ears.

Both Ronan and Adam tipped their heads back. Ronan shouted, “Hey! Where are you going?” But it glided over them without so much as a pause. Straight on towards the mountains. Ugly fucker was going to get shot by some terrified farmer someday.

He didn’t know why he cared. He guessed it had saved his life that one time, probably.

“Creepy bastard,” Ronan said again.

Adam frowned after it and then asked, “What time is it?”

“It’s 6:21,” Ronan replied, and Adam frowned. “No, 8:40. I read my watch wrong.”

“Still time if it’s not far, then.” Adam Parrish was always thinking about his resources: money, time, sleep. On a school night, even one with supernatural threats breathing on his collar, Ronan knew that Adam would be stingy with all of these; this was how he had stayed alive.

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. I want to try to find out where this devil is – I’m trying to decide if I can scry while you drive. I wish I could drive and scry at the same time, but that’s impossible. Really, all I want is to move my body where my mind tells it to go.”

Overhead, a streetlight buzzed and then went out. It had not been raining for several hours, but the air still felt as charged as a thunderstorm. Ronan wondered where his night horror was heading. He said, “OK, magician, if I’m driving while you’re whacked out, how am I going to know where to go?”

“I guess I’ll try to stay present enough to tell you where to go.”

“Is that possible?”

Adam shrugged; the definitions of possible and impossible were negotiable these days. He leaned to offer his arm to Chainsaw. She leapt on, flapping to balance as his sleeve twisted under her weight, and tilted her head as Adam carefully stroked the fine feathers by her beak. He said, “Never know until we try. You up for it?”

Ronan jingled his car keys. As if he was ever not in the mood to drive. He jerked his chin towards the Hondayota. “Are you going to lock your shitbox?”

Adam said, “No point. Hooligans got in anyway.”

The hooligan in question smiled thinly.

They drove.

Adam jerked awake at the sound of a car door closing.

He was in his terrible little car – was he supposed to be in his car?

Persephone settled herself in the passenger seat, her froth of pale hair cascading over the console on to the driver’s seat. She carefully placed the toolbox that had been on the seat on the floor between her feet.

Adam squinted against the colourless new dawn – was it supposed to be daytime? – his eyes still pinched with exhaustion. It felt like only a few minutes had passed since he’d emerged from his night shift at the factory. The drive home had felt like too enormous an undertaking without a few minutes of sleep; it felt no more doable now.

He couldn’t understand if Persephone was really there or not. She must be; her hair was tickling his bare arm.

“Take out the cards,” she ordered in her small voice.

“What?”

“Time for a lesson,” Persephone said mildly.

His fatigued brain slid out from under him; something about all of this struck him as not entirely true. “Persephone – I — I’m too tired to think.”

The thin morning light illuminated Persephone’s secret smile. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

As he reached for the cards, fumbling into the door pocket he used to keep them in, it struck him. “You’re dead.”

She nodded in agreement.