“I think I’ll get my digs in while they’re still tall, dark, and handsome, then. Beards never did much for me. I thought we thought he was the bad guy,” Kelly said more quietly.

Lara dropped her chin to her chest. “We did, but you heard him. He was telling the truth.”

“So basically you have no idea who’s out there waiting for us. Okay,” Kelly said to Lara’s nod. “I’m pulling over when we get to the top of that hill, so we’ll be right in the sunlight. And then you can do that voodoo that you do so well.”

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

Kelly straightened, eyes wide. “I can’t believe you just said that! Wow, you’re like a real girl! Somebody call Geppetto!”

“You are not helping.” Lara harrumphed at Kelly’s smile, then looked ahead to the peak of the hill they climbed. Sunlight blinded her as they crested it, a lash of brilliance that reminded her of the true paths she’d created.

None of them were like the one she needed to build now. Two had simply led her home, figuratively and literally, and the third had been seeking indeed, searching out the staff’s location. She thought the fourth had been something else entirely, less a path than a thread that pulled the world into alignment so it answered her need. That need had, perhaps, helped open a door between worlds, had perhaps helped mark the road Ioan ap Annwn wanted to take, but even that was unlike searching out a single man. An enemy, Lara thought, and made that idea clear in her mind. She was preparing to hunt an enemy, an individual with malicious intent. He’d struck at her and her friends repeatedly, and people had paid for that with their lives.

Dafydd might well have paid for it with his life.

Lara’s hands clenched into fists. “No one else.” Truth vibrated through the warning, its strength making Kelly catch her breath as she pulled the car over. Lara got out without thinking about it, feeling a little elfin as she did so: it seemed like being outdoors would help, even if her magic shouldn’t be constrained by steel. She took the staff from the backseat as Kelly got out, and murmured, “I wish I meditated, or something. I feel like if I only had the right kind of mental discipline this would be easy.”

“Think about what it’s like when you’re sewing,” Kelly suggested. “I’ve seen you do it a few times. You get into the zone and nothing bothers you.”

“Just stitch it all together, huh?” Lara smiled, but the idea caught, creating a tapestry in her mind. The door Dafydd had opened to the Barrow-lands began it, golden rectangle against a Seelie night, and black-winged monsters picked out in shining silk against a matte sky. There was something else there, a nebulous being whose presence was only known by his absence, but someone had set the spell to sic the nightwings on them.

The tapestry wound through the hours she’d spent in the Seelie court, reshaping itself into battle. There came the dark thread again, seizing Dafydd’s will before another slash of gold cut it off when Dafydd was thrown back to Lara’s world. And then the attack in the garage, threads finally winding together to make a visible form. A hum struck up at the base of Lara’s skull, the excitement of recognizing a true thing, and the staff, as if sensing her use of magic, warmed in her hands.

Encouraged, the tapestry wove itself faster, dark streak broadening until it became a violent smear of black: the scene they’d just left. Still it leapt forward, details lost as darkness raced away through white threads that turned to bells. Silver, white, pale gold, all ringing with sweet chimes. Goose bumps lifted on Lara’s arms and she opened her eyes, barely daring to breathe.

For an instant she glimpsed a layer of radiation and heat; of all the wavelengths of light that human eyes and minds interpreted into sensible, comprehensible objects and colors. She could see past those constructions, could see a truth that lay outside of her ability to translate into anything meaningful. If she only knew the right direction to look she thought she might see through the heart of the universe, see all the way to its creator and perhaps through that, too. The music was that of the world again, made tenfold, far too much to bear.

Her mind folded under the strain, crumpling with the weight of too much vision and a terrible inability to understand. She dropped to her knees, staff falling away as she hid her face in her hands, and overwhelming song and sight collapsed under her cry.

The tapestry threads remained, though, black against white scoring a mark through her mind. Lara whimpered and felt Kelly’s hands on her shoulders, and through incessant bells heard her friend ask, “Are you all right?”

“I can’t open my eyes.” Power drowned her voice, making it sound like she spoke through water. She ached with trying to contain it, her skin stretching too tight over blood and muscle. “The world hurts my mind. I can see his mark if my eyes are closed, but I can’t open them.”

“Okay. Okay.” Falsehood, all of it: Kelly thought nothing was okay, and was verging on panic. Her fear made spikes in the music, driving into the sides of Lara’s head. “Okay,” Kelly said a third time, and panic faded into determination. “If I get you into the car, can you tell me where to drive without looking?”

“I think so. If I can keep my eyes closed. It’s hard not to look.” Mankind had never been good at not looking, from Lot’s wife to now. Looking upon an angel was said to burn out the viewer’s eyes, and yet the impulse to do so was enormous. An angel couldn’t be so bright as the burning, bewildering world she’d glimpsed. Wanting to look hurt as badly as looking did, magic and human nature clashing with each other.

Maybe that was why humans had so little magic. Maybe their need to explore and investigate had trumped their inner gifts, forcing them to try and absorb more than their minds could handle. Her hands were pressed over her eyes, holding her lids shut, and still she wanted to see. Anyone weak enough to give in to all the glory magic could show them might well have ruptured with it.

Lot’s wife, she thought again, and had an agonizing spike of sympathy for the woman that manifested in a lingering headache.

“Okay,” Kelly said breathlessly. “Okay. Stay there a second. I think David’s coat is still in the backseat. I’ll make you a blindfold? Will that help?”

“Yes.” Relief cracked the single word. “Yes, please.” Barely a minute passed before Kelly tied Dafydd’s coat over Lara’s eyes, arms wound around her head and the back dangling over her face. Almost none of his scent remained in the fabric. “I can’t really breathe.”

“It’s a modern Middle Eastern look,” Kelly said. “I think it suits you.” She flipped the coat back over Lara’s head without loosening the blindfold. “Better?”

Lara drew a shaky breath, grateful for the physical inability to open her eyes and take in a world stripped to its essence by truth. “Much. Thank you.”

“No problem.” Kelly slipped her hand into Lara’s and tugged her gently upward. “Can you navigate?”

Rough-woven white cloth spread out behind her eyelids, the black mark across it jagged and unfriendly. It made a schism in the otherwise pure tones of music, off notes drawing her as strongly as true ones ever had. It was exhausting, and she’d only held on to that much power for a minute or two. “As long as I don’t have to get myself into the car, yes.”

“That much I can help you with.” Kelly guided Lara into the Corolla, buckling her seat belt with motherly efficiency, then hurried around to the driver’s side. “The staff’s in the backseat. Lead on, Quixote.”

Lara turned her head, stymied in giving Kelly a dirty look. Just as well, she thought; with the truth burning in her gaze it might do Kelly physical harm. “That’s two literary references inside of ten minutes. What did you do while I was gone, study the classics?”