Adam measured the dock at Skara Brae with his gaze, sizing up the space where another booth would go – the bearded lady or perhaps the lizard man. Alraune would have a tent where she would read the tarot. There would be a snake charmer, acrobats, musicians, a wondrous talking beast, and Summer, the bright lady of irresistible charm, avatar of the season and perhaps of other powers as well.

Adam did not know what Summer would do to entertain the crowds at the Carnival but he was eager to see.

He worked with steady purpose, here and at the Salon, painting signs, making schedules, planning for contingencies and crises that might never happen, and like the tug of a sinister claw at the edge of his consciousness, he remembered the note.

In the Salon’s mailbox, polite enough in tone:

The names echoed somewhere in Adam’s memory but his thoughts were too crowded, with the Carnival, with the lingering touch of ancient magic, and with the cake that Tammy sold him, rich and sweet and laced with something that granted the most amazing visions, a sense of peace and well-being that helped keep him focused with quiet fever on the countless tasks at hand.

He had run out of cake and that was a nuisance. He had the beginning of a headache and a rising edge of anxiety that grew, perhaps, out of the note that had been left to them.

The note had not been the whole of it – the ground floor of the Salon had been riffled, the boxes and chests searched with rough haste, a book of erotic verse left open as though it had been laid down when someone turned to another task.

But nothing was missing, so far as Adam and Alraune could see. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity or it may have been related to a certain tome Commander Soulshadow had given him, the dark spellbook of a necromancer, in a time before Adam had found the answer to his questions about the hedge maze.

He listened for a moment to the sea lapping the barnacle-crusted posts of the pier, rhythmic as a heartbeat, the ocean’s pulse, and he saw a pattern of meaning in the motion of the water, felt arcane energy just beneath the rippling motion, hidden unless someone broke the seal and dove into the mystery.

Decardo and Cherry’s archaeological discovery kept recurring to him, and Adam had suggested that to the guard Iljian in Trinsic, the soldier Captain Kaelyn had assigned to hear Adam and Alraune’s tale of the note and entry into their home. Iljian had been no use – he had declined to help them, suggesting instead they hire guards – and he had called them graverobbers! The line between archaeology and body-snatching might sometimes be thin, Adam knew, but Decardo and Cherry were no ghouls, and he and Alraune had probed the ancient relics and the mysterious sealed coffin solely as a favor to their friends.

And Adam at least had paid a price for the service – a brief but near-fatal possession by the arcane spirit of Winter, or perhaps only a touch of madness induced by the ancient coffin. Now to be called graverobbers by a supercilious guard was intolerable! Adam had felt the flash of anger, uncontrollable and hot, and he told the Captain they needed no help, no one to watch the Salon while they toured with the Carnival.

For much of the next week, he and Alraune would be staying here in Skara Brae, making late night plans in the tavern or the Counselor’s Hall, sporting with Summer and the other performers, drinking and eating well, heedless of any Knights of Blood.

Or so he hoped.

Fate so often made other plans.

Finished for now, the note’s implied threat already fading from his thoughts, Adam headed toward the tavern where Alraune waited.

What were his chances, he wondered, of finding Tammy and getting another cake?