“The fitness center,” Ryodan says.

“Right. Or playing a washboard, banging on a pot and singing.”

“The Laundromat folks,” Dancer says.

“And the weird wire contraption around the dude’s head wasn’t a medical device for an injured neck. It was a harmonica holder,” I say. “With their primitive band, the small family managed to make whatever noise draws the Hoar Frost King.”

“The band in my subclub must have made it, too.”

“So why didn’t it ice the entire club?” Christian says.

“I’m guessing it’s drawn to a specific sound. The same way I like Life cereal but not Chex. They’re both little squares of crunchy goodness but they sure as feck ain’t equal to my taste buds. And all the audio equipment in your warehouse must have been hooked up and turned on. At the church where I almost died, they were singing and playing the organ. At all the underground pubs there was a band or a stereo playing.”

“The WeCare folks were singing and playing the organ, too,” Dancer says.

“So how do we figure out what noise it likes?” Jo says. “All the scenes got blown up, didn’t they?”

“I don’t think we need to,” Dancer says. “We just need to set up somewhere and make an enormous variety of sounds. Wait for it to come.”

“Great idea, kid,” Christian says. “Then we all bloody get iced!”

“Not necessarily,” Ryodan says.

“What do you mean? What are you thinking?” Jo’s sloe-eyed puppy-dog expression says she thinks he’s the smartest person she’s ever met. Gag me! Dancer’s the smartest person she ever met, and I’m second.

When he tells us I just shake my head. “It won’t work,” I say.

“Actually, Mega,” Dancer says, “it might.”

“Bull-fecking-crikey. He’s assuming a lot of things.”

“I think it’s worth a try,” Dancer says.

“Are you defending him?” I say.

“Only the idea, Mega.”

“Are you sure you can pull this off?” I ask Ryodan. “You know how many things could go wrong?”

Ryodan gives me a look.

Jo’s gone white. “You’re crazy. You’re talking about setting one monster free to destroy another.”

“The world is turning to ice,” Ryodan says to Jo. “If this continues, the Hoar Frost King will finish what Cruce started: the destruction of the world. Sometimes you plug the hole any way you can, and worry about fixing the boat later. If the choices are sinking today or tomorrow, I’ll take tomorrow.”

Him and me think alike a lot of times. I’d never tell him that.

To me, he says, “You and the kid get what we need.I want to be ready by nightfall.”

I am blasted by the crimson complexity of Margery’s rage.

She surges to her feet to demand my immediate resignation as Grand Mistress, but before she can incite the hue and cry upon which she so thrives, one by one heads bow and hands rise. White flags of surrender are hoisted until each woman has her arm above her head save one. My cousin reclaims her seat in the pew, fists clenched in white-knuckled balls on her lap.

I open myself with a tight, narrow focus. Her fury is bottomless, directed in its entirety at me. She believed she was his only one. She castigates me for the wanton ways of our enemy. She is a fool in too many ways to number: in affairs of infidelity, if a man strays, it is not the fault of the woman with whom he lays. A worthy heart eschews temptation, despite the magnitude. Clearly my heart is not worthy.

I dismiss her and regard my girls with regret and resolve.

In my silence, I failed my charges. It was not merely myself I isolated. I cut them off from one another.

“Did any of you tell someone else?”

I hear no replies and need none. I can tell from their faces that not one of them spoke of it. We became a group of close-huddled islands in our shame, eating and working and living side by side, in complete disconnect. For more than a month each of us waged the same hellish battle, and rather than sharing that burden, suffered it alone.

“We permitted him to separate us,” I say. “It was exactly what he wanted. But it is over. We have called his bluff and are now united against him.”

Cruce’s enormous wings rustle. It is the only sound I have ever heard the projected image of him make. Oh, yes, our enemy is gaining strength with each passing day!

Again I wonder if it is Cruce or the presence of the IFP that causes the grass to grow. If it is the IFP, might its location above Cruce’s cage also be weakening the integrity of those icy bars? I have not permitted myself to visit his chamber since last Sean and I made love. Failing my soul mate to anchor me, I risk nothing.

Did this clever, clever prince devise a way to summon a fire-world fragment to set him free? Were I to make the long descent into the bowels of this abbey today, what would I find?

Darkness, moss, and bones?

No bar where once one was?

“Must we leave the abbey?” Tanty Anna exclaims. “Is it the only way to escape him?”

“It’s our home! We can’t leave!” Josie protests.

“Where would we go? How would we get there? Dog sleds?” Margery says.

“There aren’t any dogs left. The Shades ate them all,” Lorena says.

“That was a joke. The point is we can’t leave,” Margery says. “Under any circumstances. This is our home. I will let no one drive me from it!”