8

8

KATIE SAT IN her car on the darkened road, holding the hand-stained glass fragment in her lap. Her thumb hovered over the darkest of the etchings upon it, the rose with black-red petals. Crucian Crowe. She longed to touch it, stroke its surface, and to feel the climbing roses shimmering and warming to her caress . . . but she hesitated, knowing it would bring them forth, snatching them from their home inside the ancient glass—

—The Rosarium Glass, world unto itself, sustained by its own garden’s bewitchments, and by the illusive ones partaking of its magic who might or might not be immortals.

Katie stopped herself, and wrapped the piece of rose glass within its coarse red buckram again, slid it under the front seat of the Avenger. She got out and locked up the Dodge with her key remote, left the car there with its alarm light blinking. Started walking.

She wasn’t even sure where she was—the street sign read Rebecca Avenue.

Leaves were moving in the night wind. The