“Then make it decaffeinated,” she suggested, and this time all three of them bolted for the door. There was a moment’s struggle while they stuck there, before the orderly squirmed out and Gary and Billy had room to follow. After a few seconds, the door swung shut.

“Wow,” I said, impressed. “How did you do that?”

“Years of practice,” she said modestly. “I had six suitors, at one time. I had to find some way to deal with them. Now, what can I do for you, Joanne Walker?”

I studied her curiously for a moment, trying to see the young woman who had had so many suitors. It wasn’t hard: she still had magnificent cheekbones and a firm chin, and I realized suddenly that she bore a striking resemblance to—

“—Katharine Hepburn, yes, I know,” she said patiently. “And no,” she continued as my jaw fell open, “I don’t read minds. I’ve heard that from nearly everyone I’ve met since I was fifteen, and everyone gets the same expression just before they say it. I never,” she added, for emphasis, “met Spencer Tracey. Now,” she said again, and pushed herself up carefully, a faint wince crossing her features, “tell me why you’re here.”

I didn’t know where to start. “A friend of mine was murdered yesterday evening,” I finally said. Had it really only been last night? “I think by the same man who came into your classroom this morning.”

Henrietta’s expression tightened. “I’m very sorry.”

“Me too.” I stared at my hands. “I’m…” I trailed off. Henrietta waited patiently.

“Young lady,” she said eventually, when I didn’t speak, “the creature that killed my students walked into my classroom without anyone seeing him. Mark was dead before we saw his killer. Whatever you are trying to work yourself up to telling me, I don’t believe it can possibly make my day any more unpleasant.”

“Sorry.” I looked up. “I need to find him. I have to try to help him.”

Her eyebrows, white as her hair, shot up. “Help him?”

“He’s very sick.” I remembered the bleak fall through blackness and found myself standing up, taking a few steps as if I could get away from the memory. “Help him. Stop him. I think they’re almost the same thing. Can you tell me everything you remember about him?”

“The police have already taken my statement.” She pushed herself up a little farther, wincing again. “I presume you’ve received the physical description. As tall as you, brown hair, green eyes?”

I nodded. “Very well,” she said. “The classroom door was closed. I never heard it open. I have no idea how he entered. I was writing on the chalkboard—whiteboard,” she corrected herself, “and for a moment I thought the sound I’d heard was the marker against the board. It was that kind of sound, a high-pitched squeak, enough to raise hairs on the neck without causing real alarm. But then the children started screaming.” Her voice shook.

I could feel the unlocked energy inside me bubbling with the impulse to help her somehow, to ease her pain. I came back to the bed and sat down, taking her hand.

The touch opened a link, unexpectedly vivid. Memory bludgeoned into me, relegating Henrietta’s words to the distance: “I turned around.”

I/Henrietta turned around to unfolding horror. Mark, a sandy-haired basketball player who got poor grades because he was lazy, lay sprawled on the floor, dark blood spilling from a gash that opened his chest. Jennifer, voice choked off by a hand around her throat, was dangling in the air, struggling against the man who held her up. Her killer cast her aside and her body caught on one of the chairs. Blood drained down her shirt as she slowly tilted over. Other children screamed, knocking desks over and pushing them out of the way as they tried to get away. The memory resonated peculiarly before I realized what was wrong with it: high school kids weren’t children, to me. They were, well, kids. Henrietta’s thoughts defined them differently. I felt a wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with what was going on in front of me and a lot to do with breaking down the walls of my own perceptions. I shivered, wondering if it was Henrietta or me doing it, and brought my attention back to what was going on.

The man in the children’s midst was not large; he merely seemed that way, wide shoulders and gore-covered hands adding a terrifying depth to him. Long light brown hair splashed over his shoulders, drops of blood coloring it. He reached out with inhuman speed to close a massive hand around another boy’s arm. “Anthony,” Mrs. Potter said, very faintly. “Oh, no. Not Anthony.” I wasn’t sure if the words were spoken out loud, or if I was hearing her thoughts at the time the memories came from.

With one savage jerk the killer shoved a knife into Anthony’s chest and yanked it up. The boy fell to the floor. Jennifer’s body collapsed over his, her hair spilling over his legs and onto the floor. Perhaps five seconds had passed since the first bewildered, terrified squeak.

I could see more, now, through Henrietta’s memory. The blond girl I’d seen in the theater stood pressed up against a far wall, screaming. Other children scrambled by her. A boy grabbed her arm and pulled her down to the floor. She disappeared in a flash of pale hair as the killer swelled. Blood and ichor seemed to fill him, making him appear too large to fit into the room. What Adina said about power spilling over from the inside suddenly made sense.

Oh, God, I was so far out of my league.

Paralysis left my—Henrietta’s—muscles, and I leaped forward, crashing into the killer’s back an instant too late, another child already dead in his hands. He stumbled forward, dropping the boy. A tiny sound cut through the killer’s roars of frustration and my own incoherent screams: the clink of dog tags. The last dead boy was his mother’s only child, Adrian, and he wore the tags from a father who’d died in a war fifteen years earlier.

I looked up into the killer’s eyes. His voice, thick and distorted with rage, filled my mind. Fool! he screamed. The circle is broken! His eyes were green, brilliantly green, inhuman, like Cernunnos. The snarl he gave me showed eyeteeth that curved into unnaturally vicious points.

Then there was pain, white fire plunging into my belly. I screamed, my memories separating from Henrietta’s and leaving me with a final conscious thought: Oh no. Not again.

Oak trees surrounded me, so large and neatly spaced I began counting them. I reached thirty-five before realizing I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. I shook myself and took a better look around.

The oaks weren’t the only foliage; they just dominated it. Slighter trees grew between them, stretching up toward slate-gray light. It was drizzling, most of the rain filtered out by the enormous trees. The forest floor was very green, soft moss rolling up over gentle hills. Everything was muted, clouds and moss combining to quiet the sounds of the forest. I took a deep breath of damp cool air. Only then did it occur to me to wonder where the hell I was. I was getting jaded.

I looked around again. In my limited experience, wondering where the hell I was made somebody show up and tell me.

No one showed up. I stood there for a minute. “I’d like to go home now,” I announced hopefully. Wind ruffled my hair, but I didn’t think it was responding to me. I shrugged and stuck my hands in my pockets and went for a walk. I hadn’t been in a forest since I left North Carolina. I was surprised at how much I’d missed the sound of wind and rain on the leaves. In ten years I hadn’t even thought about it.

There was a lot I hadn’t thought about. I was pretty sure it was all going to come home very soon now. I pushed the idea away and kept walking.

A stag walked out of the forest in front of me, so calm I expected him to say something to me. He didn’t. We gazed at each other across several yards of empty space, and then he tossed his head and bounded off into the woods as silently as he’d arrived. I grinned after him. I wasn’t just getting jaded. I was turning into a world-class freak. Talking stags. What next?