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She lay dead, her eyes wide with shock, her chest cut open. Her blood was blue. He hadn’t known that. Around her was a halo of snow roses, though with the afternoon sun, most of them were already fading to droplets and sticks.

The wards broke an instant later.

Elves rushed in.

Silver appeared at Adam’s side.

“Oh,” he said.

Dautre crouched beside her, peering at her and trying to discern what he was seeing.

“Where is her heart?” he asked, looking up with tears streaking his face.

“Search in pairs,” Silver told his guard. “No one goes alone. Keep in sight of each other.”

“We should check his room,” Adam said. “I can take you.”

“Dautre, stay close,” Silver commanded.

He nodded and rose.

Adam led them upstairs, Sight open. Silver’s eyes tracked everything, the blue beetles, the artwork. Adam appreciated it. Dautre was stricken and likely to miss something. Adam was numb.

He hadn’t liked her. She’d used him, but nobody deserved to die like that, and at the hand of their child, who she’d thought a boy, who she’d tried to protect.

North’s room was as tidy as always, but there were a few changes. The wardrobes were open, and inside soul jars gleamed, row after row of them, filled from the morning’s carnage. No wonder there had been so many banshees. North had been prepared, and he’d won. Whatever he’d been trying to accomplish, he’d won.

It had all happened today, Adam realized. His day off. He felt suddenly very tired.

A laptop sat on the white, wooden desk.

It was quite modern, connected to a battery unit and a router that looked like it had come from NASA.

North appeared.

“Hello, Adam.”

He was dressed like a cross-country skier and holding a cell phone, so his face was pretty large on the laptop’s screen.

“Lore is North in . . .”

North smiled. “Javanese, though you’re pronouncing it wrong.”

Adam vowed to do an internet search on the name of every person he met from now on.

“I appreciate you trying to help but I won’t need lessons, though it was really sweet of you to offer.”

“Why did you do it? She was your mother.”

“Because I needed to. The ritual calls for the blood of Alfheimr. I need it to set the Empress free and get my wish. I’d like to think my mother would understand. After all, she’s the one who left her books from the Elven Academy lying around for a child to find.”

He said the word like it was a curse.

“You could have shown me who you are. You could have told me. I would have found a way to help you, to make her understand.”

“How? Where in the realms is there a place for me?” North gestured to his face with his empty hand. “I have to make one. It’s the only way. She tried and she failed. She relied on humans. I’m not making that mistake.”

“But you used them to help you bring the banshees into the mortal world and the spirit realm.”