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roommate said. “I thought something was happening.”
    Kim took one of the other chairs. She tightened her robe about her. It was chilly in the house, and this traveling always left her cold. “It did,” she said, wearily.
    “You know what you have to do?”
    She nodded.
    “Is it all right?”
    She shrugged. Too hard to explain. She had an understanding, of late, as to why Ysanne had withdrawn in solitude to her lake. There were two lights in the room: one on the ceiling and the other on her hand. “We’d better call the guys,” she said.
    “I already have. They’ll be here soon.”
    Kim glanced sharply at her. “What did I say in my sleep?”
    Jennifer’s eyes were kind again; they had been since Darien was born. “You cried out for forgiveness,” she said. She would drag the dead from their rest and the undead to their doom .
    “Fat chance,” said Kimberly.
    The doorbell rang. In a moment they were standing all around her, anxious, disheveled, half asleep. She looked up. They were waiting, but the waiting was over; she had seen an island and a lake like glass.
    “Who’s coming with me to England?” she asked, with brittle, false brightness in her voice.
    All of them went. Even Dave, who’d had to virtually quit his articling job to get away on twenty-four hours’ notice. A year ago he’d carried a packet of Evidence notes into Fionavar with him, so determined was he to succeed in the law. He’d changed so much; they all had. After seeing Rangat throw up that unholy hand, how could anything else seem other than insubstantial?
    Yet what could be more insubstantial than a dream? And it was a dream that had the five of them hurtling overseas on a 747 to London and, in a Renault rented at Heathrow and driven erratically and at speed by Kevin Laine, to Amesbury beside Stonehenge.
    Kevin was in a fired-up mood. Released at last from the waiting, from months of pretending to take an interest in the tax, real estate, and civil-procedure courses that preceded his call to the Bar, he gunned the car through a roundabout, ignored Dave’s spluttering, and skidded to a stop in front of an ancient hotel and tavern called, of course, the New Inn.
    He and Dave handled the baggage—none of them had more than carry-ons—while Paul registered. On the way in they passed the entrance to the bar—crowded at lunchtime—and he caught a glimpse of a cute, freckled barmaid.
    “Do you know,” he told Dave, as they waited for Paul to arrange for the rooms, “I can’t remember the last time I was laid?”
    Dave, who couldn’t either, with greater justification, grunted. “Get your mind out of your pants, for once.”
    It was frivolous, Kevin supposed. But he wasn’t a monk and couldn’t ever pretend to be. Diarmuid would understand, he thought, though he wondered if even that dissolute Prince would comprehend just how far the act of love carried Kevin, or what he truly sought in its pursuit. Unlikely in the extreme, Kevin reflected, since he himself didn’t really know.
    Paul had the keys to two adjacent rooms. Leaving Kimberly, at her own insistence, alone in one of the rooms, the four others drove the mile west to join the tour buses and pocket cameras by the monument. Once there, even with the daytime tackiness, Kevin sobered. There was work to be done, to prepare for what would happen that night.
    Dave had asked on the plane. It had been very late, the movie over, lights dimmed. Jennifer and Paul had been asleep when the big man had come over to where Kevin and Kim were sitting, awake but not speaking. Kim hadn’t spoken the whole time, lost in some troubled country born of dream.
    “What are we going to do there?” Dave had asked her diffidently, as if fearing to intrude.
    And the white-haired girl beside him had roused herself to say, “You four will have to do whatever it takes, to give me enough time.”
    “For what?” Dave had said.
    Kevin, too, had turned his head to look at Kim as she replied, far too