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Devlin shifted back into two-legged form. He crouched nude on the floor, hair a wild tangle across his face. He glanced at Cass with gleaming eyes.
    “I told you, for true,” he said, his voice thick and rough. “It’s a long way back from hell, and we got a ways to go yet.”
    He stood, and Cass’s gaze swept over him, seeing in her mind the way she’d translate his lean, taut-muscled body and blood-smeared face onto paper, but that was all she saw, no matter how far into him she looked. Her throat tightened. She watched as Devlin pulled on his jeans and T-shirt, then tugged on scuffed-up scooter boots.
    Bending, he eased Raleigh’s limp piss-and-shit-stinking body onto his shoulder, then stood. He looked at Cass. She stood and led him out the back door into the courtyard with its ivy-blanketed walls. Water gurgled through the white stone fountain, splashing into the small pool below — normally a musical, soothing sound, clear as wind chimes in the night. But not on this night. This night she only heard the liquid passing of time, time measured in cold water, time spilling away forever.
    Crossing the courtyard, Cass unlocked the padlock on the door leading to the street on the other side of the building. She stepped onto the sidewalk. An old battered Ford pickup was parked at the curb. She looked back at Devlin, lifted an eyebrow. He nodded. Cass glanced up and down the sidewalk. All clear. She stepped out so Devlin could follow with his burden.
    Cass waited, hand on a cold bronze horsehead hitching post, while Devlin heaved Raleigh’s body into the bed of the pickup and covered it with a tarp. She watched, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, numb inside and out — just like she’d been after Alex had been shot. Wrapped in cotton. Muffled. Unreal. Her head and heart ached.
    “Follow me.”
    The words shook Cass awake like a hand to a dreamer’s shoulder. She looked at Devlin and just managed to catch the keys he tossed to her.
    Devlin trotted across the street to a motorcycle. It was the Harley she’d seen outside his shack. He kick-started it into rumbling life. Cass started the pickup and followed when Devlin pulled away from the curb.
     
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    Raleigh’s body splashed as it slipped into the swamp’s night-blackened water. Orange lambent eyes flashed for a moment before sinking beneath the surface. The water suddenly churned.
    ’ Gators, Cass thought. “Justice,” she murmured, throat tight. She closed her burning eyes. Made herself see — one last time — the designs Alex’s blood had made on the floor, the dark spatters on his patterns and sketches.
    Raleigh’s voice: I didn’t shoot Alex! He’s my fucking brother!
    Remembered: He’s dead, isn’t he? Cass?
    And Helena’s calm words: I’d do it again. I have no regrets.
    “ Automne be your name,” Devlin murmured. “You be the twilight season caught forever between summer and winter, for true.”
    Fingers brushed at her temples. Cass’s eyes flew open. Devlin stood just a handspan away, his lambent eyes full of moonlight. His fingers whispered against her temples again, there and gone, but the feel of him burned against her skin.
    He gazed into her — she knew he was seeing — and she tensed, felt herself knot up against him. Leaning in, he nuzzled her, rubbing his cheek against hers. His scent — musk, sweat, and night-cooled green ivy — lingered upon her face. He smelled of the deepest night, wild and hidden. He also smelled of blood — Raleigh’s blood — and death.
    “Your Sight is gone, and that’s a shame , ” Devlin said. He straightened, but remained where he was, his heat baking into her body. “That be a hard price to pay. Didn’t I tell you to take your talent and go?” He looked away suddenly, staring into the night. “Our walk be done, for true.”
    Cass nodded, then said, “I was right about Raleigh, wasn’t I?” She blinked back the tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “He shot Alex —