Sandor gave way to the look of epiphany on his brother's face.

"Rayven's after her, right, but is he?" he said. "Stay with me, here; and make a pot of tea. Go back to what the two gravediggers said at the end, because that's what Rayven has to do. Perhaps if we deconstruct it, we can figure out his master's intentions."

Sandor put on a pot, and I thought back to the dream; the words may as well have been written in stone, graven on the insides of my eyelids.

"The war is starting. Battle lines will be drawn. She and the vampire are headed towards Prague. Find the other one and kill him. Do not let it survive." But, so what? I thought.

But Septimus said, "Don't you see? The Lare you saw, Halsey, in the Stromovka, the grey wolf, if it was interested in you, why hasn't it come back yet? Did it lose its way, or is it after someone else?"

"Hold on... no..." I said.

"Oh yes," said Septimus.

"You think the Lare, that is the grey wolf, is Rayven's Lare; that somehow it's trying to reconnect with him?" I said.

"Rayven is tethered precariously to this existence; the only thing that can knock him out, is his spirit animal," said Sandor.

"It would try to protect him," said Septimus. "It would try also to save his soul. That's what the gravediggers were doing when they had Rayven and were trying to perform the Last Rites. But he murdered them. We tried to save you, they said. Remember?"

And when Rayven had cornered me for a second time, I thought, in the Stromovka, and said Mine at last, That's what he was afterme. But he had been afraid of the Lare; it showed its fangs to him and would have attacked Rayven, if Rayven hadn't skedaddled. The Grey Wolf was tracking me, because Rayven was tracking me. It all made sense. The Grey Wolf was Rayven's Lare. Do not let it survive.

"Which just goes to show," said Septimus, "how unnatural the raising of the dead truly is. Lenoir would want his servant not to have to worry about the Lare or the Last Rites, to keep him tethereduseable."

Lenoir took the mother lode of Rayven's talents, his abilities. So Laurinaitis said. Did Lenoir want Rayven's soul now, as well?

"You're forgetting the Rede," said Sandor. "The Wiccan Rede to Do No Harm. Rayven had his chance, Halsey. He made his choices. If he has a soul, perhaps it can be saved, but that isn't what you should be worried about."

"No," said Septimus.

"We have to stop him," said Sandor.

"What about the Last Rites?" I said.

"To destroy Rayven, we must first find the grey wolf. Either that, or kill Rayven's master, and I don't think you want to go up against him just yet."

"No." I shook my headbut that would mean leaving Rome, leaving everything; starting over, in a way. To find the grey wolf, would Rayven have to be near me? I asked.

Sandor nodded. "And therein lies our great advantage," he said. "After all, Rayven wants you dead."

I felt like I had taken a wrong turning, only to find myself, mysteriously, back at the beginning. Rayven... His Lare... the Last Rites...

Somehow I needed to find out everything I could about necromancy, even if that meant going against the Rede I could take Rayven's soul, thus destroying him beyond the reach of his master; only, the Wiccan Rede kept stopping me... There was no way around it. I was going to have to address the Wiccan Rede.

Rayven's a demon. So if he was brought Back, I thought... The gravediggers were trying to save Rayven. That's what they were doing when he murdered them; so, if I murder Rayven...

Am I helping him? Maybe by reuniting Rayven with his soul, I can kill him. But his soul is in Limbo... or nothat's his spirit animal...

How do I murder somebody without dooming myself elevenfold? And what about this flesh offering? I thought. I couldn't exactly raise the dead without doing some serious Dark Magic. It must take huge amounts of magical energy to raise the deadenergy I don't have... unless

Chapter 17 Epilogue The Dark Path.

I flipped through the Everything book, back in my room, thinking about the Dark Path.

Nota bene: Magic drains YOU, if you let it.

If I was going to stop the Dark Order from rising, first off, I couldn't do it today; I wasn't ready yet; I hadn't learned enough. If I summoned Rayven now, he'd probably just end up killing me.

The S Bros told me about the Dark Path, but that didn't give me any clues how to walk it, or if I should. What I needed was a guide...

I booted up my laptop, typing my request into the search engine. It was still counting back from IX, the Roman-numeral web site.

When I had thought the grey wolf was Risky, I thought he was protecting me But if he was Rayven's Lare... It created a whole new sort of problem for me.

I opened a second window, doing a quick search for Lares There were different types. The Lar Familiaris was a family spiritA Guardian. What had Mistress Genevieve said? "Your Mother and Fatherrest their soulselected me your Guardian."

I reread the letter.

I already had a Lare. A guardian, in a way. Mistress Genevieve. I had been in Rome, now, thirteen months, time enough to figure out certain answers were not necessarily here.

Let's look at what you know, Halsey. Parents murderedraised overseas You're eighteen According to Mistress Genevieve, that is the year, apparently, We Come Into our Powers... ("Magnetism pulls us back to the beginning. You to yours is a powerful tug.") What if she's right? If so, Rome would be my beginning... St. Martley's my middle, and now... Was this the end?

A psychopath and his henchman were after me... Until I knew why, I'd be stuck in shadows, locked in a mystery.

Risky was the lar familiaris of Ballard's family, not mineenos Lases iuvatetheir paterfamilias. It was his job to protect their secrets...

Somehow, Risky had managed to safeguard not only the truth, but us ever finding out about it I scribbled a long and detailed note to Ballard, which took me most of the night, before finally ripping it out of my Diary. I continued adding P.S.'s, crafting it, until it was perfector as nearly perfect as I could make it. After all, it was imperative Ballard not flip out, when he read it, which is exactly what he'd do, if I messed it up. I had been looking at the web page for hours, when it occurred to me: The sitemaker's name was listed at the bottom of the pagethe webmaster's name.

I scribbled it down, feeling like I had my first lead.

I wrote another letter, addressing it to Manon, basically apologizing for leaving her in the lurch.

Vittoria was still upI could hear her moving about; it was a shame there weren't more spots at House Rookmaaker. But Vittoria was like mea wanderer, eclectic. "Besides," I wrote, adding another postscript, "subpar magiceven ordinary magicisn't enough anymore, Ballard, not really." If I was going to walk the Dark Path, I had to become Adept, Fledged, Beyond Fledged... Everything was packed. Laptop, my books...

Volume IV would either be a doorstop or a dead end. Still, I couldn't help thinking I had come up short. My time in Rome was ending, perhaps forever; a plan was forming.

Dressing, I gathered my things.

I left my room and crept into the hallway.... Downstairs, past my landlady. She twitched in her sleep.

Sandor and Septimus let me into their shop.

"Now, remember: wait until I'm out of Rome," I said, "then you can tell him. All right?"

They nodded. They seemed to take for granted my leaving. I handed them the page I had ripped from my Diary, to give to Ballard.

"When the moment is right," I said.

One good thing: Now that Skarborough was on the case, she would keep Ballard informed of my hunt for the Dark Order.

"How will you get past the Riders?" asked Septimus.

I shrugged. "Magicmaybe. I dunno," I said.

I threw my leg over my Gambalunga. Part of me felt like a coward, like I was running away; the other part, that I was running towards something.

Could my visions, like those of Lenoir, change? In the recurrent vision I had of Ballard, where he led the army, he stood alone. I was not there.

Unless what I saw was a chimera, the war was going to happen. Battle lines would be drawn.

I was a neophyte, unfledged. To figure out the hints which had been dropped my way, I would need to find real magic. The Dioscuri had set me a mission, after all, to find themwhoever they wereso that's what I'd do.

As for House Rookmaaker, somehow I didn't think my parents' bequest lay simply in the stone and mortar of a long-dead House. Rather, I had a role to fulfill. And, if I had to walk the Dark Path... so be it.

A crossroads was before mea choice. The Perseid meteor shower flashed across my vision, overhead; I waved good-bye to the S's, weaving my way through Rome. A list was forming in my head of the things I would need to do, and the places I should go; a list of impossible complexity, which I memorized there and then.

Paris... Find the website... Find the webmasterLook into Them...

Numbly, not really thinking about it, I headed onto the A1 autoroute, away from Rome.

Whether or not I made it was beyond the point. Whereas before, I had been in the dark, this time they would bethe Dark Order.

Ballard would be all right; he had the twins; he had Lia and Gaven; he had his own magic to find out. Besides, something told me, if he left Rome now, he would be exiled forever, the Quirinal would never let him back in.

Ballard needed Rome; I did not. I just had this inkling, like a preternatural intuition, really, which the current Il Gatto would definitely understand, about being reckless; otherwise, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, I would find myself face to face with something I could not defeat, because I had been too scared to try. My backpack felt heavy, as I rode out of town.

The north star was Fomalhaut.

I thought about circles and souls, Steampunk, and the Last War; a House of Spirit and of Fire; and I thought of my House; and I thought, This is my world now; and I'm prepared to fight for it. So, this is it, for now, I wrote in my Diary.

Checking to make sure all the flips and switches were in order, I accelerated my Gambalunga away from Rome, towards the City of Light.

Discover other t.i.tles by T. D. McMichael.

The Wiccan Diaries, Vol. 1.

Eight of Jacks.

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