the layers of Titus’s clothes to enclose him in their bitter embrace. “I thought so.”
“It was not a happy dream, and I woke up hoping it would fade from memory—occasionally I have nightmares, just like everyone else. An ordinary dream disappears in time, but a prophetic dream only grows in clarity and detail.” Kashkari scraped the bottom of his boot against the short turf underfoot. “This one did not fade.”
So cold—and growing colder by the second. “You dreamed of someone’s death, did you not?” Titus heard himself ask.
Kashkari was taken aback. “How did you guess?”
Instead of the fog, Titus saw the campus of the Conservatory of Magical Arts and Sciences. The students on University Avenue. The bell towers. The open expanse of the great lawn. He saw Fairfax sitting on a blanket under the starflower tree. The tree was in bloom, full of petals of the faintest pink. Whenever a breeze blew, tiny flowers would glide down onto her blanket, her shoulders, her hair.
He would never sit there with her. They would never share a picnic basket from Mrs. Hinderstone’s. And he would never know what she would look like in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time.
“That death has long been prophesied,” he said. “And the person in question has known it for years.”
Kashkari looked both incredulous—and relieved. “Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“But—but I listened to Fairfax speak to her guardian just now, and it didn’t sound as if she had the slightest idea.”
For the longest time, Kashkari’s words drifted between them, not making any sense at all. Then all at once Titus had his hands on Kashkari’s lapels, almost lifting the latter off the ground. “What did you say? What do you mean, Fairfax did not have the slightest idea? What does she have to do with prophetic dreams about death and dying?”
Kashkari stared at him. “I thought you said she knew.”
Titus stumbled back a step. Then another. “You saw Fairfax? Fairfax?”
“Where? Where was she?” Titus was shouting, but only so he could hear himself over the uproar in his head.
“She was lying across a marble floor with inlays of the Atlantean whirlpool design.”
“How do you know she was dead? She could just be unconscious.”
“You were in my dream too. You were shaking your head, with tears in your eyes.”
Titus could not breathe. In his mind he saw the Conservatory again. The students, the bell towers, the great lawn, the lovely starflower tree in bloom. But now the blanket under the tree was empty.
Kashkari was still speaking—or at least his lips were moving. But Titus heard nothing.
All he wanted was for her to come through unscathed—to have a wonderful life, surrounded by love and laughter. All he wanted was a single hope to light his way, when all ambition and courage had failed.
He held up a hand. Kashkari’s lips stopped moving. He gazed at Titus, his eyes dark with sorrow.
But he was only losing a friend. Titus was losing everything.
The heavy door of the inn opened. The proprietor leaned out, a basket in his hand. “I be off to bed now. Anything else you need, gentlemen?”
Titus took the basket and shook his head. The proprietor disappeared back into the warm interior of his establishment, to his peaceful, orderly existence.
“Is there anything I can do?” asked Kashkari, his voice barely audible.
Besides cowering, what could anyone do when the boot heel of fate descended?
Titus vaulted away without another word.
He rematerialized on Cape Wrath and stood in the fog, shivering.
The tang of the sea burned his lungs with every breath. The unseen Atlantic crashed against the headlands, wave upon unceasing wave. Overhead the beacons of the lighthouse cut ghostly trails through the thick vapor, a stern warning to maritime vessels to keep away from the treacherous cliffs.
His entire life he had been headed to just such treacherous cliffs. But somehow he had managed to delude himself that she would avoid that fatal crash, would spread wings in time to save herself and soar above.
He had endowed her with all the immortality he wished he could possess. But she was only flesh and blood. She could all too easily stumble and fall, her eyes blank, her limbs lifeless.
And she would.
He wanted desperately to hold her in his arms, to feel the beat of her heart and the warmth of her skin. But he could not make his feet move, even though he was chilled to the bone, scarcely able to feel the fingers clutched around the handle of