I sighed. "Yeah, well, it's been kind of a rough last couple of days."

"Ophelia Dawkins has been kidnapped?"

"Sometime last night, I think. She was there when I went to bed, and gone this morning. Jim says her room smells like Bafamal, so that can only mean someone con-jured up the demon and had it snatch her."

Amelie did a pretty good impression of Drake's head tip. "You are a very linear thinker, are you not?"

I smiled at the praise. "I try."

She shook her head. "It will not benefit you. You have much learning to undo before you can step into the role you were meant to take. A Guardian draws her power from her understanding of the possibilities, not in linear order. You must shake yourself of the desire to see only those things that can be arranged to match what you know, and learn instead to embraceall the possibilities that exist."

"That sounds strangely like a quantum physics class I once took," I said warily.

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Quantum theory is just another way people have of ordering that which can-not be ordered."

"Ah. As I failed miserably in that class, I think I'll quickly change the subject to something I can think about without having to lie down in a quiet room with a cold wet cloth over my eyes. You don't happen to have any idea of why someone would want to kidnap Ophelia, or where they would take her?"

She shook her head. "You do not see, and yet it stares you right in your eyes. Do you have your talisman?"

"Sure." I plucked it out from where it rested between my breasts.

She took it from me, holding her hand open flat to show it resting on her palm. Slowly she closed her hand over it, then held up her other hand, also closed. "Now, tell me, which hand has the talisman?"

I touched her left hand, the one that I had seen holding the talisman. She opened her hand. It was empty.

"Uh … well, you must have palmed it to your other hand, although I don't quite see how since your hands never moved—"

She opened up her right hand. It, too, was empty.

"Now," she said, tapping me on the forehead. "Close your eyes and open yourself up to the possibilities. Tell me where the talisman is."

I felt a little silly doing this in the middle of a busy park, but I sensed she was trying to show me something important, and since I hadn't done too well trying to mud-dle through things on my own, I figured it was to my ben-efit to learn. I closed my eyes, pushed away all the noises and distractions that surrounded me, shoved down all the worry and panic and confusion that filled me, squashed even the faint burn that was my feelings about Drake, and opened the magic door in my mind. I pictured the talis-man, remembering what it felt like, how it felt beneath my fingertips, visualized the smooth, curved lines of the warm jade touched here and there with cool gold.

I opened my eyes. I knew where it was. "It's in my hand," I said, blinking in surprise at the hand that rested on my thigh. I turned it over, opened my fingers, and stared at the talisman resting on my palm.

"How … I don't understand. It was there all along, but I couldn't see it or feel it?"

"That is because you did not consider all the possibil-ities, only the one you believed to be true. In order to be a great Guardian—and I believe you have that within your ability if only you will seek it—you must learn to see not just what you know to be, but those things that also might be."

I absorbed that for a few seconds. "So you're saying that I should consider the possibility that Ophelia hasn't really been kidnapped?"

Amelie just looked at me, neither confirming nor denying that idea.

"If that's so, then it would mean she disappeared for some reason of her own."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Which would also mean that if Bafamal was in her bedroom, it was because …" Goose bumps rippled up my arms. "Because she summoned it there. And if that's the case, then I couldn't have summoned it when I thought I did. Oh, holygrenouilles —that's why it could lie to me! She summoned it before I could, probably telling it what I was going to do and what to say to me after it pretended to be summoned." I stood up and faced Amelie. "That's why the circle felt different! That's why I was so sick and feeling icky yesterday—it wasn't just a depression over leaving Jim behind—the demon was there all along. It was the demon's presence that I felt!"

I spun around, holding my talisman to the sky, sud-denly feeling as if I were a hundred pounds lighter. "I wasn't wrong! I wasn't stupid! I was right about Ophelia! Sheis the murderer, wahooo!"

"That is a very strange thing you are celebrating," Amelie said with a dry smile.

I grinned and sat down. "I know, call me wacky, but it does make me feel better to know that I wasn't wrong about her. I've been wrong about so many other things. But I suppose I shouldn't be celebrating yet. I still have to draw her out and get her to confess before enough wit-nesses that Inspector Proust will be able to charge her."

Amelie smiled and looked out over the park. Dusk was setting in, but the rain had stopped some hours ago, and now the soft, warm summer air was luring people out to the park.

"It's going to be a long night," I said with a little sigh.

"The longest of the year."

I did a quick mental calculation. "Oh, that's right, today is the summer solstice. Midsummer."

"Litha," Amelie said, still watching the people strolling by us. "It is also the night of the full moon." She slid me an odd look. "You have chosen well for the night of your challenge."

"Pure happenstance. I didn't actually set it up this way. Ophelia kind of pushed me into it."

She shook her head. "You are not seeing the possibili-ties, my friend. But come, we have much to do if we are to ready you for the tasks you have chosen to undertake."

I stood up when she did. "We do? I don't want you get-ting into trouble on my account—"

"We won't go back to my shop," she said, putting her fingers to her lips and blowing a shrill whistle. "What we . need we have here."

The shrubs near us rustled; then Cecile emerged at a stiff waddle, Jim following with a plaintive note in its voice. "But baby, it can work. I'll lie on my back and you can lower— Oh, hi. This isn't what it sounds like."