Phin. He is so much like my son who I lost a long time ago . . . And I thought he was dead."
"Now you know he lives?" Samuel asked.
"In fire or in death," Jesse said, understanding it before any of the rest of us did. "That's what the fairy queen said. That if she killed Mercy, or if they burned it, it would reveal itself. But if it still belongs to Phin . . ."
"If they had killed him, the Silver Borne would have revealed itself to them," Ariana agreed. "They wouldn't still be looking for it."
"Why did you make it that way?" asked Jesse.
Ariana smiled at her. "I didn't. But things of power . . . evolve around the limits they are given. That's why, even though I thought it did nothing, I kept it with me. Because even unfinished, it was a thing of power."
"How did you figure out that it . . . Oh." There was comprehension in Jesse's voice.
"Right. It's a very old thing, and many of its owners have died in various ways. The fire thing came later." Her face grew contemplative. "And quite spectacularly."
"Aren't you its owner?" Jesse asked.
"Not if I want to keep my magic - I'm only its maker. That's why it's called the Silver Borne."
"Ariana means silver in Welsh." Samuel sat down on the floor and leaned against the end of the nearest metal shelving unit. He'd had a rough couple of days, too - but I hoped that Ariana's obvious fear of him wouldn't send him sliding back into despair.
"Jesse," I said. "Ask her how we find Gabriel."
"What did you bring me that belongs to this young man?" Jesse handed her a white plastic bag. "It's a sweater he loaned me when I was cold."
"Phin told me that his magic was that he could sometimes feel things from objects," I said. "Things like how old an object is. Psychometry."
"Something he inherited from me." Ariana pulled the sweater out and put it against her face. "Oh dear. This won't work."
"Why not?" Samuel asked. "It is his. I can smell his scent on it from here."
"I don't work off scents," she told him, her eyes on the sweater. "I work off ties, the threads that bind us to those things that are ours." She looked at Jesse. "This sweater means far more to you, as a gift of love, than it did to him when he wore it. So I can use it to find you, but not him." She hesitated. "Does he feel the same way about you?"
Jesse blushed and shook her head. "I don't know."
"Give me your hand," said the fae woman.
Jesse reached out and Ariana held it - and smiled like a wolf scenting her prey. "Oh yes, you are a lodestone." She turned to look at Zee. "With her I can find him. He is that way." She pointed toward the back of the garage.
* * *
WE LOADED INTO ADAM'S TRUCK BECAUSE ZEE'S TRUCK wouldn't hold us all - and Zee drove. Ariana sat in the front and Samuel sat behind Zee, as far as he could get from her in the big truck.
The sound of the big engine brought a smile to Zee's face; he appreciates modern technology more than I do.
"Adam has good taste," was all he said.
Looking for Gabriel was frustrating because it took us a while to figure out that we had to cross the river, and the roads didn't always lead where she was pointing. Adam had a map in his jockey box, and Samuel used it to figure out how to work our way around to the most likely destinations.
We ended up in an empty, flat meadow up a winding dirt road (not marked on Adam's map) that might have been an hour's drive from the Tri-Cities if we'd known where we were going in the first place. There was a fence around the field we'd all had to climb over. Maybe ten years ago it might have held in livestock, but the barbwire drooped and T posts were tipped over. Near where we'd parked the car were the remnants of someone's old cabin.
Ariana, looking out of place in her cardigan and stretch-knit pants, stopped in the middle of the field between a thatch of bunchgrass and a couple of sagebrush.
"Here," she said, sounding worried.
"Here?" Jesse said incredulously.
I took advantage of our halt to start picking cheatgrass out of my socks. If I'd realized we'd be running around out there, I'd