Chapter 7: The Wedding Run

On the eighteenth of January the moon didn't rise.

I stood outside the hill's grooming barn at six o'clock and looked for it anyway.

The bond had gone quiet an hour after sunset, the way it had in December.

A radio switched off in another room.

"Nothing?" Tobin asked.

"Nothing."

"Good." He threw a coil of rope into the cab. "Then he can't feel us coming."

Ginny had packed us enough food for a week.

Sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, a thermos of soup, two bags of cookies, and a bottle of whiskey wrapped in a dish towel.

"That's for the four," she said. "Not for you two."

"Yes, Mom."

She flicked my ear.

Then she hugged me hard, which she had never done.

"Bring my brother back," she said into my hair. "And yourself, idiot."

The owner's old cat climbed Cairn Pass slower than Roman's had.

Tobin sat forward with his face near the glass the whole way, reading the dark.

Where the slide had buried the road, the debris had set up hard as concrete.

We crawled over it in low gear, the cab tipping until the coffee thermos rolled off the seat.

At the cairn I stopped.

On the Idaho side behind us, nothing pulled at me at all.

On the Montana side ahead, the old place at the back of my neck stayed empty.

"You okay?" Tobin asked.

"I'm crossing back into his land on purpose."

"On the one night it isn't his."

I drove past the stones.

The far side of the pass dropped away in front of us, and there it was.

Dark Moon Lodge, lit up like a wedding cake.

Every window glowed gold.

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