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Haarm shrugged uncomfortably. “And we do what we can, yes? We stand up for the victims.”

I shook my head. “No. We just protect the balance. We push back against evil so that it will not tip us into nonexistence.”

“That’s a dark way to put it,” Haarm said. “You make it sound as if we’re just limiting the damage. Come on, little Mara, we’re the good guys, right?”

I know he was just trying to break me out of my funk. Or maybe he was just being a smart-ass because he’s a smart-ass by nature. I probably should have said something lighter, something generous to improve the mood. I didn’t.

I said, “What deed of yours made you a messenger’s apprentice, Haarm?”

Haarm actually took a step back. His pale skin flushed.

“Good guys,” I said with more aggression than was kind. “We’re monsters, too, the three of us. Monsters being punished by being made to punish monsters.”

15

I STOOD ALONE IN THE NEARLY FEATURELESS blandness of my abode. I just stood there. The silence buzzed in my ears. The full weight of my loneliness came down on me hard.

I missed my friends and school. I missed my home and my mother. I missed the weekly pilgrimage to place flowers on my father’s grave.

I wanted so desperately to be in my own room. I wanted so desperately to sit at the kitchen table with my mom and gossip over a plate of brownies. It wasn’t a feeling, it was a physical craving, a need.

On a lesser level I missed the internet and my phone. I hated not knowing what was happening in my own little world, back in San Anselmo.

I wanted to cry but they would have been empty tears of self-pity, and I suppose my subconscious understood that I had no right to feel sorry for myself. I was alive. Samantha Early was not.

I don’t know how long I stood there staring at nothing, feeling alone before my eyes came to focus on the book of Isthil.

I picked it up and sat down on the couch. The sound of air escaping the cushions as I sat was loud to me. So was the sound of paper pages being turned.

In my head one of Graciella’s songs was playing.

I’m a bit of a mess.

I s’pose that you know.

Does that scare you off, or push you away?

Are you fool enough

To love me despite?

Or love me because of,

My bruises and all.

I had begun by being skeptical of Isthil and the Heptarchy and all of it. But I had seen Isthil myself now, and maybe she wasn’t God in the way I’d always thought of God, but she was something, some creature of great power. Her mere presence had weakened my knees so that I had knelt most willingly to her.

Now I needed her to be real, to be something more than a very imposing creature who had earned Messenger’s devotion. I needed her to be wise.

I needed her to be right.

Into existence came the Seven.

Summoned by the will of existence itself.

Summoned to serve existence.

Summoned to ensure that this time,