Belladonna

child, you can do this," Michael said as he set the basket on the sand in the box. "You brought Caitlin's hair to Aurora to help her, remember? This is the same thing. We just want you to take this basket to Belladonna. Just leave it where she'll find it. It's important. You can do this. We know you can." Michael looked over his shoulder and made a circling "say something"
    gesture.
    "If you could do this, it would mean a lot to the people who love her," Sebastian said. He didn't sound confident, even though this had been his idea, but at least the Justice Maker wasn't trying to fool the world with false heartiness.
    Stepping back, Michael tucked himself under the umbrella Sebastian held and gave the other man a minute to unfurl the power of the incubus. Then he pulled out his whistle and began to play.

    *
There was a basket on the ground by the fountain, and a resonance flowing through the currents of this old garden.
    She moved cautiously toward the basket, expecting some kind of trap, obscenely angry that anything would dare enter her lair.
    But there was nothing in the basket except a bowl, a spoon, and a jar of ... soup.
    Something prickled the edges of her memory, a painful tingle like a limb waking up. And that resonance. She felt it hook into the scar in her chest, felt it dig in and set. And from that hook the thinnest thread of Light flowed out to someplace beyond her landscapes. She should pull it out. Would pull it out. Except the thread flowed with that resonance.
    She looked at the jar of food — and her belly growled, so she poured some of the soup into the bowl, then sealed up the jar before she picked up the spoon and took a taste.
    The sound of chattering birds coming from the room beside the kitchen. Two boys at the table. Her brother Lee and ...
    So watchful, so wary, so wanting to belong. She felt a connection between his heart and hers, knew this now-stranger would resonate through her life.
    Sebastian.
    Watching him eat the soup her mother had made. Watching him savor the taste of it, the sensuality of soup and bread eaten at a table where love was served along with the food.
    Lee. Sebastian. Nadia.
    She flung the bowl away from her. Tried to fling the memory with it. But the memory was more tenacious, had already hooked into the scarred part of her.
    "Mother."
    Nadia wasn't here. Couldn't be here. Nor Lee. Nor Sebastian. But the basket ...
    She heard it then. The music that matched the resonance of a boy who had sunk a hook into her heart so many years ago. Too late now. Too late. She had managed to tear that resonance out of her heart once before, but she couldn't do it again. Not again.
    In that moment, suspended between the Dark she could feel and that resonance called Sebastian that made her yearn for something, another resonance rippled through her. The faintest whisper, the merest tug.
    A promise.

Chapter Thirty-five
    T he next morning, Michael stepped outside and looked at the two men waiting for him.
    "You here already?" he asked.
    Teaser grinned. "You are a lollygagger, a layabout, and a ... What was the other word?" He raised his eyebrows at Sebastian.
    "I think Michael gets the idea," Sebastian said. "We've been here long enough for the ladies to have made an assessment of people's gardening skills." He handed Michael a rake. "They have taken the sensible men and are working in the walled garden.
    We—"
    "The garden idiots," Teaser said gleefully.
    "— get to rake the leaves around the house and do the weeding in the flower beds where our efforts will cause the least harm,"
    Sebastian finished. "Unsupervised."
    Michael looked at the two incubi, who looked extraordinarily pleased about this arrangement. And he was beginning to understand the gleam in Sebastian's eyes. "Well, I guess that tells us our place in the pecking order, doesn't it?"
    "You do some luck-wishing for us this morning, Magician?" Sebastian asked.
    Maybe a little." Michael grinned. "Maybe just a little."

    *
She shivered in the chilly air. Because being cold and unhappy made her vengeful, the deserts within her landscape baked under a merciless sun, and the surviving bonelovers couldn't cross the burning sand. The river in the death rollers' landscape got so hot fish cooked in the water — and even the death rollers were driven out of the water by the heat. But fog shrouded the plateau where the Wizards' Hall stood, and fog filled the corridors, brushing against the Dark Guides' skins like damp, clingy