“I see,” I said, scrutinizing her face. “And you kissed Connor?”

“Yes.”

“And?” I couldn’t see her expression as she turned her back on me, searching for a particular track on the Raveonettes album. She remained silent as the song began, swaying to the music.

“And nothing.” She held her palm out. “Connor’s not coming. You gonna hand over that ring?”

I ground my teeth but pulled the ring off my finger, dropping it into her grasp. With its weight absent, my hand felt strangely bare. I clasped my fingers tight, trying to ignore the emptiness that made my bones ache.

Adne drew a single skean from her belt, resting its sharp point on the edge of the white gold band. She closed her eyes, drawing slow, long breaths. I stood perfectly still, not daring to take any breaths of my own. The air around her seemed to thicken, shimmering as if someone had flung gold dust over her.

Very slowly she began to draw the skean away from the ring. As her hand moved, a single, thin line pulled away with it. A tiny golden strand.

Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled slowly. “There it is.”

The breath I’d been holding whooshed out of me.

She glanced at me. “It’s okay, Calla. I know what I’m doing. A location thread weaves a window; we can’t go through it, but we can see what’s on the other side. Now we’ll be able to find him.”

I nodded, but my legs were shaking. “What if he’s not alone?”

“That’s the point,” she said, handing the ring back to me. “The thread will lead us to him, and we’ll have enough time to decide if he’s in a place we can get to him or if we have to wait. Okay?”

“Okay.” I was relieved she wasn’t insisting that the two of us could take on an entire Guardian pack.

Adne began to move her arm in a slow circle, around and around. The golden thread grew longer, swirling into a slender spiral in front of her.

“You want to watch this?”

I sidled closer, peering over her shoulder. The spiral was shimmering, stretching into a slender cone. In the distance I could see the other end of the thread moving, lengthening. I began to see shapes flashing by the spiral, blurry and unfocused. It was as if we were soaring through the air at incredible speed, moving too quickly to make any sense of the terrain. I squinted into the spiral, which now pulsed with bursts of light, trying to glimpse anything familiar. I thought I made out a tree, then a steep rock face. The outline of buildings. All at once the spiral shuddered, the golden light clearing, giving us a view of a pine-covered mountain slope, wilderness interrupted by a swath of clear-cut forest.

“Do you recognize anything?” Adne asked.

I nodded, though my body felt like it was turning to stone.

“He’s here,” she said, peering into the spiral. “But I don’t know if he’s alone. Considering it’s the middle of the night in Vail, anyone who’s there would be sleeping.”

“He’s alone,” I murmured.

“Are you sure?” She glanced at me, frowning. “If you are, I should open a door right away.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the window Adne’s thread had created, leading us to this place. To Ren.

“I’m sure.”

Adne closed the door and turned to me.

“What is this place?”

Without the gleam of the portal, the sliver of moon hanging above us cast only a little light on the clearing. Half-built structures formed a semicircle around a paved cul-de-sac with a dry fountain at its center. Foundations had been poured, now only gaping holes in the ground, and wooden beams rose at different heights toward the night sky. Here was the legacy of the Haldis pack: skeletons of houses, carcasses of lives that might have been.

My throat felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. I had to clear it several times before I could speak.

“This was where my pack was supposed to live. We were going to move here after the union.”

“Really?” She frowned, and then her eyes went wide. “Oh.”

I bit my lip, nodding.

“Where do you think he is?” she asked, gazing at the silent construction site.

I pointed at a structure on the crest of a short rise, the only completed house on the lot.

“There.”

“Are you sure?”

“That was supposed to be our house,” I said, unable to look at her.

“Oh, man.” She put her hand on my arm. “Calla, I . . . I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” I said, though I didn’t feel as confident as I tried to sound. “No one else will be here. This place has been abandoned. The pack it was being built for no longer exists.”

“Right,” she said. “So how do you want to do this?”

I stared at her. “You don’t have a plan?”

“My plan was to find my brother. I did. The end.”

“But we have to convince him to come back!” I couldn’t believe I was managing to whisper, considering my rising panic.

“That’s why I brought you along,” she said, gazing around the abandoned plots. “And was that the right call or what?”

I bared sharp canines at her, but I didn’t argue, turning back to gaze at the house fifty yards away.

“If I were to suggest a plan,” Adne said slowly, “I’d say you should go talk to him. Howl if you get in trouble. Or scream. Whatever works.”