Lara, grateful, said, “Thank you,” and drank her wine much too quickly, eager to make her escape. Turners Falls streets were laid out in tidy square blocks, and following the barman’s instructions was easy, even with three glasses of wine in her. The waterfront was as he’d suggested, a mix of old mill buildings and newer ones similar enough in style to retain character but unique enough to mark themselves as modern. The canal itself reflected streetlamps, and there was indeed a sense of revitalization as couples took after-dinner walks along the water, greeted by dog walkers and joggers. It had the feel of a town reinventing itself, and Lara found the Canal Bar with her own sense of purpose renewed.

A group of locals, mostly young men, sent wolf whistles and approving jeers toward her as she approached. Nerves clenched her stomach and she wished Dafydd or Kelly were with her after all. Retreating, though, wasn’t an option, and she made her hands into fists, hidden by her skirts, to urge herself forward.

An older man with military-cut gray hair and a limp stepped through the group of younger men, raising his cane to smack one of the youths on the shoulder as he passed. “Your mother’d never forgive you for harassing a woman that way, Denny. Behave like a gentleman.”

“Denny” swallowed a protest into a look of embarrassment as the older man came forward to offer Lara his hand. He was in his sixties, and wore a beaten-up black leather jacket over a blue T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days. “Sorry about that, Miss Jansen. I’m Old Jake. Been waiting for you a while now.” He glanced beyond her, eyebrows lifted, then looked back at her. “Where’re your friends? Two men and a woman. They were expected, too.”

“Expected?” Lara squeaked the word, then cleared her throat. “There are, um. Just three of us. How did you know?”

He flashed a sharp smile. “You want the hoodoo mystic answer or the practical one? You were on the news,” he announced, choosing which answer she got. “But I’ve been waiting a lot longer than that. C’mon inside, let me get you away from these hooligans.”

Bemused, Lara followed him into the bar, which was brighter and more welcoming than she expected it to be. Jake waved a waitress down, ordered himself a beer and Lara a ginger ale without asking, then gave her a sly look of curiosity.

“Ginger ale’s fine, thanks. Great, in fact. How did you—”

“Know the history of Turners Falls, Miss Jansen?” Jake leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Lara thought he might kick his feet onto the table between them, he looked so comfortable, but instead he thumped his chair forward again as the waitress hurried back with their drinks. Lara waited for the woman to leave again before giving Jake an uncertain smile.

“Not really. Only what I read on the tourist board on the main street.”

“About the massacre. Does it mention the men were gone from the village that night? That it was mostly women and children who died?”

“God,” Lara said involuntarily. “No. That’s even more horrible, somehow.”

“No, Miss Jansen, what’s horrible is the men left knowing their wives and children would die, but they went anyway, or so that’s what the family stories say.”

The wine she’d drunk swirled up in a twist of bitter nausea. “Why would anyone do that?”

“They were given a vision, a holy duty to carry out. A woman’s voice, charging the men to save an artifact before the great falls were stopped.”

“The worldbreaking staff?” Lara whispered. Then even more softly, around a knot in her throat, she asked, “My voice?”

Gentleness slid across Jake’s expression. “Now, I wouldn’t know that, Miss Jansen. I’m Old Jake, but I’m not that old. It’s just a story handed down over a dozen generations. They say the shamans asked the spirits, and the spirits said to empty the great falls before the white men came.”

Despite the churning in her stomach, Lara smiled a little. “Forgive me for saying so, but you look pretty white yourself, Mr …”

“Jake,” he said easily. “Just Old Jake, Miss Jansen. That’s how everybody knows me. And bloodlines mingle over the years. My sisters, they got more of the Indian blood than me, but I’m the one patient enough to sit around waiting for a myth to come walking through the door.”

“Lara. Please, just call me Lara. Jake, I’m not even sure what I’m looking for isn’t a myth itself.”

His gaze sharpened on her. “Now, that’s not the truth, is it, Miss Lara?”

Discomfort surged over her in a toneless howl. “Anyone else would think it was a myth.”

Satisfaction colored his expression, and he picked up his beer to take a long drink. “Stories say the shamans feared what would happen if the white men found the gift of the waterfalls. That it was a terrible power for the one who could use it, and that a dozen dozen men would come searching for it. That it could be kept safe, but only with the blood of the land.”

Cold crept up Lara’s spine, more insiduous than anything Emyr had cast on her. “Breaking your own world to protect it.” Dafydd was right: the staff was a thing of dangerous power, even to mortals, if ensuring its safety destroyed communities. She wondered abruptly what price Brendan had paid, nine centuries earlier, to bring it across the ocean; wondered how his own world had been shattered in the bringing, because she was suddenly certain it had been.

Jake nodded again, his satisfaction turning grim. “And so the warriors took it away, and left their families to die, because they couldn’t stay and not fight. And one of us has been waiting ever since to give the burden to the one who comes for it.”

“How do you know it’s me?”

He steepled his fingers over his beer, then noticed it again and lifted it to drink. Lara glanced at her own untouched ginger ale and left it alone, the wine in her stomach more than enough to make her feel unwell already. Jake set the half-empty beer glass down, wiped his upper lip, then flicked answers off on his fingertips: “Her companions are a giant, a wise woman, and a spirit man. She will know the truth of the stories when she hears them.” He paused, giving her a hard stare, and Lara nodded to both, though the descriptions of her friends struck her as a little funny. Kelly would never think of herself as a wise woman, but after the levelheadedness she’d displayed throughout the day, Lara could hardly think of a better descriptor.

“And,” Jake finished pragmatically, “she’ll be the only one with the knowledge to look for it. I saw you on the news, and knew you’d come here today. I expected you to be earlier.”

“We took the long way around. Did”—Lara swallowed—“did the news say anything about Detective Washington? Is he all right?”

“Not dead yet, anyway, and where there’s life, there’s hope.” The platitude had the strength of conviction behind it, unusual enough to make it sound true. Jake leaned forward, pushing his beer aside like it blocked his view of Lara. “What will you do with it? With this thing we’ve protected all these years?”

Lara shook her head, eyes closed briefly as images of the Barrow-lands, of Emyr’s shining citadel and the sprawling black opal Unseelie city, and of the people, one so bright and one so dark, and both unhealthy with it, washed over her. “The legend I’ve been told says it’s a weapon to break a world. That it’s been used already to destroy. But a scalpel can help cure as well as kill.” She opened her eyes again, meeting Jake’s gaze, and willed truth into her voice. “If you’ll grant me the burden to carry, I’ll use it to try to heal a world.”

Satisfaction slid over Jake’s face again. He nodded once, sharply, then hefted his cane from beside his chair, and laid it on the table between them with a resounding smack.

“I thought it would be bigger.” There was nothing extraordinary about the cane: it was a polished length of aged wood, knobs and lumps still giving it character. Lara stared at it until it swam in her vision, sending a spike of pain through her eyes. She rubbed them, then looked again at the cane, then Jake.