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was that? A moment ago, he thought Black might be the real deal, but this talk about Cecil cast a shadow over that possibility.
    Black ignored his question. “This is serious business, my friends. I suggest you get back to your homes and wherever it is you waste away your lives and think hard and long about coming out tonight.”
    Tricks, tricks. He’s manipulating us with tricks. The monotony of Paradise has been interrupted by a traveling trickster.
    Black turned and drilled Steve with a stare. “You going to check outside, Steve, or are you going to just sit there thinking I’m nothing but a bag of tricks?”
    Steve blinked.
    Claude was up already, heading for the door. He shoved it open and stared outside.
    â€œSteve . . .”
    The big Swede stood gaping at the street. He faced them. “You’d better have a look. Something’s wrong with Cecil.”

CHAPTER THREE
    THE MONASTERY
    Wednesday
    DEEP IN a monastery hidden in the mountain canyons not so far from Paradise, Colorado, an orphaned boy named Billy hurried to class, letting his gaze wander over the bas-relief pictographs inscribed in the roughhewn stone around him. The pictures peered from their graven settings with fixed eyes. He could rarely look directly at the pictographs without it raising gooseflesh, and he wasn’t sure why. Now proved no exception.
    He pushed a heavy door open and squinted
in the sunlight that filled the library. The monastery was laid out like an old wagon wheel, cut in half and buried into a wedge-shaped gap in the cliff so that its spokes ran into the mountain. At the center lay the one room that had a direct view of the sky through the top of the canyon—the hub of this half wheel, though it wasn’t quite symmetrical.
    A large, reinforced glass canopy bridged the opening—one of the only truly modern things about this otherwise ancient monastery. Sunlight poured into the expansive atrium. The library’s wood floors encircled a large lawn where three oak trees and a myriad of shrubs grew. A welcome half-acre of escape from the Gothic halls.
    Billy ran through the empty library and shuffled down a stone hallway leading to one of the monastery’s many classrooms. He was late for writing class. In fact, he might have missed it. Not that it really mattered. He’d made the rest of his classes this week—what was one small writing class out of twenty-one subjects? There was mathematics, there was history, there was theology, there was geography, there was a whole line of other disciplines, and Billy excelled in all of them, including writing. One missed class, although highly unusual, wouldn’t mar his record.
    He ran a hand through loose red curls and stopped to catch his breath before a door near the end of the hall. The soft whisper of voices floated through the oak door. And then a deep one, above the others.
    Raul?
    Yes, there it was again. Raul, the head overseer, was teaching this evening. A warm flutter ran through Billy’s gut. Then again, any of the twelve overseers would have triggered the same response.
    His hand trembled slightly as he reached for the door. He could handle this. He would just pull himself together and handle this like he’d handled everything else.
    He twisted the knob and stepped into the room.
    Raul stood at one end of the room next to a bubbling stone fountain. The other students—thirty-six in all if they were all here—sat at desks in two large semicircles with their backs to Billy, facing the tall, white-bloused overseer. A few glanced Billy’s way, but most seemed intent on whatever nugget of truth the teacher had just tossed out.
    Raul eyed him. You’re late. Most overseers had to restrain their pleasure with the students, easy as it was to pound their backs with accolades or lift them from their feet in big bear hugs. But Raul’s idea of a compliment was a slight nod.
    Billy took a seat behind the