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“Caz, could we talk for a minute?” Raleigh sounded so normal. Like it was a reasonable thing to ask.

The horrifying part was that Iwantedto. I wanted to get up and go with him. I wanted him to tell me something that would allow me to make sense of what had happened, that would show me a way to forgive him.

I picked up my drink, said to Dax, “Gosh, it’s so noisy in here I can hardly hear myself drink.” I sipped my lemon drop.

Raleigh didn’t say anything. The moment stretched. He continued to stand there beside our table. Dax and I continued to drink. Then, at last, he moved away.

I did not let myself look at where he went. I felt physically ill. LikeIwas the one who had done something unfair, unjustified.

Dax murmured, “Jesus. That was brutal. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“You learn so much in stir.”

After a moment he said, “Okay, but it was county jail, right?”

I tried to match his tone, meet the moment. I said airily, “Same-same.”

Dax giggled.

Now that was a sound I hadn’t heard in a very long time. It made me smile, though my heart still felt like a lead weight in my chest.

Dax and I continued to talk. I don’t think it was about anything important. We had dinner eventually. I don’t remember what I ate. It wasn’t much. There wasn’t room in my belly with all that churning bile. I didn’t look for Raleigh. I didn’t even know if he stayed beyond grabbing a quick beer. I never so much as glanced around the room.

Dax and I had a final drink—Mexican-style coffee, I think—and then I left.

Dax told me he was staying for another drink. It crossed my mind he might have been planning to meet someone.

I walked out alone, the wooden doors swinging shut on the noise of the restaurant. After the cocoon-like warmth, the night was shockingly cold. And quiet. The scrape of my boots on the frosty pavement, the buzz of a power transformer overhead, were the only sounds as I walked around the building to the parking lot. There were still plenty of cars in the lot, sharp angles and precise details blanketed in glittering frost. I didn’t look to see if an LCPD SUV was parked in the rows of moonlit vehicles. It took a couple of tugs to unstick the driver’s side door of the Range Rover. I yanked it open, slid into the what felt like a refrigerator, and sat for a few minutes letting the windows defrost, listening to a song on the CD player.

The song that had been playing the night I was arrested.

“Little Moments” by John Coggins.

In a moment everything changes.

Yeah, not exactly an original thought, and yet my throat closed up, my eyes flooded.Jesus, not this again.What the hell had happened to me that I couldn’t face Raleigh without nearly having a panic attack or hear a sentimental song without wanting to cry my heart out?

This wasn’t me. This wasn’t who I had been. Why couldn’t I be that guy again? Why was I stuck in this sad, bitter, vindictive shell of man?

I got control, turned off the player, and turned the key in the ignition. The Range Rover grumbled into life. I carefully reversed out of my parking slot, pulled out of the parking lot.

The streets were mostly clear but icy in patches. After I left town limits, the roads were empty and a lot slicker. It hadn’t snowed for the last couple of days, but the constant cycle of snow melting during the day and refreezing at night made for tricky driving conditions. I drove at a sensible and sedate speed. I wasn’t smashed—I’d given up on that idea after Raleigh had walked into the restaurant—but I was probably over the legal limit, and getting pulled over was now very high on my list of things to avoid.

It was only about a thirty-minute drive from Little Copenhagen. The highway was dark and empty, snowy fields glimmering to either side. Overhead, the night sky was crystal clear and dazzling with stars. I loved driving at night. Sometimes Raleigh and I would—

Hey, think about something useful for a change.

Easier said than done, because I was thinking of Freyja as I drove past Hiraeth Hollow.

Nothing helpful. That goes without saying. She had to have been hit by a car or fallen through the ice. Maybe a farmer had shot her. Something terrible had to have happened. She’d never run away for more than few hours—and that was usually because she lost her way.

She would have been lonely without Astrid at the house.

Even so.

She wouldn’t know what to do except come home. She wasn’tCall of the Wildbreed.

So yes, I was watching the side of the road, keeping an eye out for her. The Rover’s headlights cut a path across the snow and black shadows. The highway ahead endlessly unrolled beneath the starlit sky. I was going a good clip. The odometer ticking toward seventy. The hum of the engine was a reassuring soundtrack to the solitude of the late-hour void.