She couldn’t stop thinking about last night, couldn’t get past the fact that she hadn’t been able to do anything for Alan Brewer.

Why was that? What good was a gift that only worked some of the time? Why had she been able to heal Darren Brewer but not his father?

She needed to talk to somebody, and there was no one else she could turn to except an old priest who brought flowers back to life. The wizard damned well better have some answers for her, if she was foolish enough to brave the dark and scary forest and risk getting eaten by a bear.

Her determination served her well and carried Libby for the first hour of the climb until she heard something off to her left. A branch snapped, and she spun around and pointed her flashlight in the direction of the noise. But all she saw were leafless trees for as far as the flashlight beam would penetrate.

And then she saw two little pinpricks of light.

The eyes weren’t moving but staring at her, unblinking, just a few inches above the ground. Was it a tiny animal, a rabbit or a fox or something? Or was it a bear crouching low, preparing to strike?

Dammit. What was she doing out there in the middle of the woods at four-thirty in the morning, with only a flashlight and an overactive imagination?

A white blur suddenly swooped through the beam of her light, and Libby screamed. She stepped back, tripped on a rock, and fell into a growth of fir trees.

“Dammit, Mary!” she sputtered, slapping a branch out of her face. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Her only answer was the echo of her own voice.

Libby slowly got up, brushed herself off, and straightened her cap. Well, she wasn’t alone anymore—not that an owl would be much help against a bear. She continued walking in the only direction she knew to go, and that was up. But instead of just shining her flashlight on the ground, she now pointed it into the trees every so often, looking for the owl.

“Mary,” she called in a singsong voice, feeling more desperate than foolish. “Where’s Father Daar’s cottage?”

A sharp, high-pitched whistle came from her right, and Libby turned and started in that direction, her singsong turning to whispered curses as she ducked to avoid low branches and tripped over fallen trees. For nearly an hour, she followed Mary, sometimes with only a whistle to guide her, sometimes catching a glimpse of the owl gliding silently ahead. Finally, scratched, cold, and dog tired, Libby saw a faint light up ahead. She stumbled into the clearing but came to an abrupt stop at the sight of Daar standing on the porch of his cabin, silhouetted by the glow of a kerosene lamp hanging on the wall behind him.

“If ya don’t have my staff with ya, girl, ya can just turn around and go back down the mountain,” he said, his growling voice carrying through the crisp night air.

“I want a cup of coffee.”

“Ya can have one if ya brought my staff.”

“Michael has it.”

“Then have a mind ya don’t get ate by a bear on yar way back,” he said, turning and walking into his cabin.

Libby stood rooted to the ground, staring at the closed door of Daar’s cabin. She knew he had coffee in there; she could smell it, dammit.

She marched up to the cabin, stomped up the four steps and onto the porch, and used her flashlight to bang on the solid wooden door. “I’m not leaving!” she shouted. “I want a cup of coffee, and I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to ya,” came his muted reply.

“It’s a law that you have to give shelter to anyone lost in the woods,” Libby told him.

“Along with food and something warm to drink.”

“Ya just made that up. Now go away, before I turn ya into a dung beetle.”

Libby banged on the door again with her flashlight. When that got her no response, she leaned her head into the wood and quietly started to sob. “My—my gift is broken,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t work when I needed it last night.”

The door opened, and she fell into the arms of Father Daar.

Libby buried her face in his shoulder and continued her soft tirade. “I couldn’t heal Alan Brewer. I fixed Darren’s broken arm, but I couldn’t do anything for his father. There was so much chaos. The colors kept swirling and wouldn’t let me reach his injury.”

Apparently not knowing what to do with a woman crying all over him, Daar roughly patted her back with one hand while trying to push her away with the other. Finally, he guided them both over to the table and seated her in one of the chairs. Libby looked down at her clasped hands and continued.

“Nothing I tried would work. I even had Michael there, holding me, but I couldn’t get through to Alan.” She looked up. “It was as if he was fighting me. Why would he do that? He was in pain. Didn’t he want to be healed?”

Daar sat down in a chair next to her, scratching his beard, his eyes narrowed in thought.

“Of course, he would want to be healed. Ya say ya tried but couldn’t get through? But that ya healed the boy?”

Libby nodded. “Darren had a broken arm, and I was able to go in, see the break, and mend it. And I could see Alan Brewer’s injury, but I couldn’t reach it. The colors kept driving me away.”

Daar fell silent. He stood up, went to the stove, and poured a cup of coffee. He brought it back and set it on the table in front of her. Libby picked it up, blew off the steam, and carefully sipped the black, strong-smelling brew.

“Tell me what happened,” Daar said, taking a seat beside her again. “I know the Brewers. Ya say they had some sort of accident?”

“Alan and his son Darren fell off their roof while trying to put up Christmas lights.”

“And young Darren broke his arm?”

“And Alan broke his back and dislocated his shoulder,” she added. “I didn’t have any equipment, and the ambulance was taking a long time. So I tried to use my gift to heal him.”

“And ya couldn’t,” he finished softly, frowning in thought. “What exactly did ya see, Libby? Ya entered his body?”

“Yes. Just like all the other times, I—I was actually able to move inside him. I heard his heartbeat, each breath he took, felt his pain. And I saw exactly where he was hurt and knew just how to fix it.”

“And when ya tried? What happened then?”

“Nothing. I could see the broken vertebra, but I couldn’t get near it. The colors kept lashing out at me, driving me back.”

“And MacBain was there? And still ya couldn’t do anything?”

“M-Michael was holding on to my shoulders.”

Daar stood up again and paced to the hearth. He silently poked at the slowly burning fire for a time, then turned back and faced her, his brows drawn into a frown.

“Not everyone is meant to be healed, Libby,” he said softly. “Or, if they are, it has to come from themselves, not from an outside source.”

“But I could have saved him months of rehabilitation.”

“Aye. But he was not open to your gift, lass. I know Alan Brewer as a stoic, private man.

He’s God-fearing, but that doesn’t always translate to believing in miracles.”

“So you’re saying my gift only works on believers?”

“Something like that,” he said, nodding. “It’s more likely that Brewer just can’t comprehend what’s not tangible. If he can’t touch it, smell it, or see it, then it probably doesn’t exist.”

“But I didn’t believe, and I have the gift.”

“Aye. But you were open to the possibility, lass. Ya perform miracles every day in your work, and ya know—deep down, where it counts—that you are not alone in your surgery.”

His smile was warm. “As a doctor, ya work with a knowledge of the human body, but each procedure ya do is an act of faith, is it not? Not only faith in the science, but is there not something else guiding yar hand in surgery?”

“I hadn’t thought about it in those terms,” Libby admitted, frowning into her cup of coffee. She looked at Daar. “I just did whatever I had to.”