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altitude, Mara. It’s about attitude .” Pearl steepled a fragrant, manicured hand to the throat of her silk jacket, the nails deep peach against the material’s brilliant sapphire blue. Colorful. Lilith’s sisters were as colorful as tropical fish. “I can only assume poor little Alice has adjusted as best she can to her circumstances, surviving by inherent strength of character. It’s a great testament to her lineage if she’s managed to survive on such thin air.”
    “You’re assuming poor little Alice has a lineage,” Mara retorted. “I say ‘poor little Alice’ is going to be a huge, ordinary disappointment. She’s not one of us. It just can’t be.”
    “Oh, you’re such a cynic! You have the heart of a shark. Yes, a shark.” Pearl fluttered her hands. “Keep away! I’m as heartless as a Killer White! I’m Menacing Mara, Queen of the Unimpressed.”
    “Oh, go swim up a sewer pipe. And take ‘poor little Alice’ with you.”
    “I’ll hear no more of such nonsense,” Lilith said quietly. “Pearl, restrain your whimsies. Mara, hold your sarcasm. I’m tired of you both. This is about our family honor. Our family’s past, our family’s future. We’re going to meet Alice Riley and determine precisely where she belongs. And if what I suspect is true, we’re going to beg her forgiveness. Now, be quiet .”
    Pearl and Mara traded accusing glares as if they were teenagers scolded by a teacher. Both were startlingly beautiful, and far younger looking than their ages. Pearl’s long locks remained the color of flame, and Mara’s thick mane, when unleashed, made a luxurious mahogany river down her back.
    Don’t encourage Lilith’s noble guilt , Mara hissed silently to Pearl.
    I like noble guilt , Pearl glared back.
    Neither old nor young, neither this nor that, the sisters glided across the mountain bridge with the strained dignity of royalty visiting an inferior neighboring kingdom.
    Barret guided the car with mysterious German precision up a twisting mountain road that crested a forested ridge. He devotedly managed the sisters’ cars, their boats, their home. He had loved Pearl nearly all his life. Life, Barret Anzhausen mused, ebbed and flowed with the gift of extraordinary unknowns and the deepest of faith. He moved his crippled right leg gingerly as he braked the car.
    “There is the town of Riley,” Barret announced. In the small valley ahead of them, the plain, pragmatic town of Riley peeped from among trees and pastures, a sterile mountain burg anchored to bone-dry land surrounded by hulking, dry mountains.
    Lilith shut her eyes, filled with pity and regret. She had been to Riley once before.
    Young, then, dark-haired and somber, Lilith had stood at Joan Riley’s grave in the cemetery of a Riley church. Autumn leaves danced across the raw rectangle of red mountain clay. A plain granite marker read simply, Joan, 1950-1968 . The Rileys had not bothered to list Joan’s stillborn baby, though Lilith had understood the baby’s body lay with its mother’s. Lilith shut her eyes. My half-sister .
    Gold and red mountains looked down like silent guards, making Lilith draw up straighter in response, even as despair weighed her into silence. She touched Joan Riley’s engraved name. My dear , she began, then stopped. There were no words for this tragedy, no song for it.
    There was no answer but the unforgiving wind.
    Lilith had bowed her head in thought as she walked back to the cemetery’s gravel drive. I should have come here sooner. I could have taken care of her and her child. I should have known there was a child.
    The churchyard lay on a knoll overlooking the town of Riley. Pulling a soft cashmere wrap around her pale suit, Lilith looked down at the pragmatic mountain town, sunken into forest. In the distance, the woodland parted to outline a pretty lake, where poor Joan had gone after giving birth to a Bonavendier. The only place that would have made sense to an ordinary girl thrust into