“My talisman points me toward the gypsy morph,” he said. “But it does not speak. The bones you took from my pocket, they’re the finger bones of Nest Freemark’s right hand. When cast, they point toward the gypsy morph. If the morph is here, the bones will tell us.”
The kids looked at one another with varying degrees of suspicion and doubt. “These bones alive?” the darkskinned kid demanded incredulously.
“They have magic,” Logan answered. “In that sense, yes, they are alive.”
The kid looked at Owl. “Let the man throw them. Let’s see what they do.
Then we decide what we do with him.”
The older girl seemed to consider, then looked at Logan. “Are you willing to try using these bones from out there?”
“I will need you to separate enough that I can pick out which one of you the bones are pointing to.” He looked at the boys with the prods. “You will have to trust me enough to take the prods away so that I can move.”
The darkskinned boy looked at his burly companion and then shrugged. He moved his prod back from Logan’s neck about two feet. “Far enough for you, Mr.
Knight of the Word?”
Logan waited until the other boy had followed suit, then knelt slowly. The kids crowded closer as he took out the black cloth and spread it on the floor.
The light from the candles barely illuminated the space in which he worked, blocked in part by the crush of bodies.
“Move back,” Owl ordered when she realized his difficulty, motioning with both hands. “Let him have enough light to see what he is doing.”
Logan glanced up, then took out the finger bones and cast them across the cloth. Instantly, the bones began to move sliding into place to form fingers, linking up until they were a recognizable whole. The street kids murmured softly, and one or two shrank back. Now we will find out, he thought.
But the bones turned away from the circle of children and pointed instead toward Logan, the index finger straightening as the others curled together.
“So, guess you be the gympsy moth or whatever,” the darkskinned boy sneered. “Big surprise.”
Logan stared, perplexed. This didn’t make any sense. Then, abruptly, he understood, and a sinking feeling settled into the pit of his stomach. He moved to one side, away from where the bones were pointing. The bones did not move.
They continued to point in the same direction—away from him, from the children, from the room, and off into darkness. He stared at that darkness, feeling it press in about him like a wall, closing off his hopes for ending this.
“The bones are telling us that the gypsy morph isn’t here. Is there someone missing—someone who might have been here earlier?”
He looked back at Owl, then at the other kids, already anticipating the answer to his question. Candle’s small hands curled into fists and pressed against her mouth.
“Hawk,” she whispered.
*
WHEN HE REGAINED consciousness, his head pounding with the pain of the blow he had absorbed, Hawk was alone in a black, windowless room with an ironclad door that let in just enough light under the threshold to let him measure its size. He sat up slowly, found that he wasn’t bound, tried to stand, and sat down again quickly.
He took a moment to recover his scattered thoughts. The first of those thoughts left him filled with regret. What a fool I’ve been. He should never have come without Cheney, should have waited another day for the big dog to recover, should have realized the danger to which he was exposing himself . . .
Should have, should have, should have . . .
He took a deep breath and blew it out. What was the point in chastising himself now? It was over and done with. They had caught him out, and he was their prisoner. He thought about how they had captured him. They hadn’t just stumbled on him; they had been waiting. That suggested that they knew about his meetings with Tessa. In all likelihood, she had been found out, too. If so, she would face the same fate they decreed for him.
For the first time he felt a ripple of fear.
Fighting it down, he climbed to his feet and began exploring the door to see if there might be a way out. They had taken all of his weapons, even the viper-prick, and he had nothing with which to spring the lock. Nevertheless, he kept searching, running his fingers along the seams and across the door, then all along the base of the walls, hoping that his captors might have left something useful lying around.
He was still engaged in this futile effort when he heard their footsteps approaching. He moved back to the center of the room and sat down again.