“Hard to believe someone coldhearted enough to kill two girls would be open to the idea of visions,” Stephen said.

Annie hadn’t eaten much. She never did anymore. “And Waaboo was barely mentioned in the news story,” she pointed out. “And nothing about the vision he had.”

“Maybe it was someone monitoring the chatter on a police scanner,” Rainy suggested. “That’s how Greta Hanover knew.”

“It’s possible,” Cork said. “That’s why Waaboo is with Henry and Prophet. I think that from now on, we never leave anyone here alone. Until all this is settled, we run in packs. We are, after all, Wolf Clan.”

Rainy, Stephen, and Belle left first for Spirit Crossing. Cork got the call from Daniel shortly after that, and he and Annie and Maria headed to Paavola’s cabin.

They arrived before the others. Cork got out of his Expedition and smelled the fresh scent of the pine in the morning air. If he didn’t know the truth of Paavola’s land and all that it had hidden, he would have thought it was just another part of the Northwoods, of the beautiful place he called home. He didn’t have Waaboo’s gift. He couldn’t sense the maji-manidoog, the devils. He had to rely on his all-too-human brain to sort out evil.

Annie and Maria left the Expedition and stood with him.

“Except for the yellow police tape, it just looks like any old cabin,” Annie said.

“It’s more than just any old cabin. It was going to be Paavola’s sanctuary come the apocalypse,” Cork said.

“He died alone here?” Maria asked. “This Paavola?”

“He did,” Cork told her. “It was weeks before his body was discovered. He kept a post office box in town. When he hadn’t picked up his mail for a while, our postmaster let the sheriff’s office know, and a deputy came out to check.”

“To die alone,” Maria said. “That is so sad.”

Which rang a dark bell in Cork, and he glanced at Annie.

She saw his look and she took Maria’s hand. “I won’t die alone, Dad.”

The ATV with Meloux and Prophet came up the overgrown dirt lane, followed by Daniel in his crew cab pickup with Jenny and Waaboo. Last to arrive was Monte Bonhomme. They all gathered and eyed the cabin.

“Has this always been a bad place, Mishomis?” Waaboo asked.

“Everything is born in innocence and beauty, Little Rabbit. But the spirit of a place, just like the spirit of a human being, can be poisoned.”

“Are you ready?” Daniel asked his son.

Waaboo gave a brave nod.

They walked in silence along the path to the blueberry patch. Cork noted that they all surrounded Waaboo as if to protect him. When they came to the clearing, Waaboo paused, and the others did as well.

“Are you okay?” Jenny asked, resting her hand on her little boy’s shoulder. “We don’t have to do this.”

“I’m okay,” Waaboo said and began to walk slowly ahead.

They followed him to the place where Fawn Blacksmith’s body had been buried, then Waaboo paused. The others stayed a few feet back, as if to give him room to reach out with his unusual sensibility.

“Do you feel anything?” Daniel asked.

Waaboo closed his eyes for a long moment, and slowly turned, then his face scrunched up as if in pain. “Something bad is here. But it’s not her. Bad… and… alive,” he said.

“Alive?” Daniel said.

Waaboo’s eyes were still closed, his face twisted. “Mad… angry… kill…”

“Stop, Waaboo!” Jenny said.

She crossed the few feet that separated her from her beloved son, reached out, and drew him against her. In that same instant, the shot came. The bullet kicked up dirt where Waaboo had just been standing, and the report of the firearm followed almost immediately.

Daniel knocked Jenny and Waaboo to the ground and covered them with his body. Annie and Maria dropped to the ground, too. Cork, Bonhomme, and Prophet all spun toward the tree line from which the sound of the gunshot had come. Prophet leapt in that direction, sprinting through the sparse undergrowth of the clearing. Cork and Bonhomme followed, but Prophet was faster and reached the trees long before they did, vanishing among the pines.

When Cork and Bonhomme arrived at the place where Prophet had disappeared, they stopped, looking for signs of where he’d gone. “There,” Cork said, pointing at a vague deer path that led through the trees and up the slope. They ran along the deer path a quarter mile, until it came out on the main road a couple of hundred yards from the lane to Paavola’s cabin. Prophet knelt there, looking at the imprint of tires in the dirt shoulder of the road.

“I heard his vehicle leave, but he was gone before I got here,” Prophet said.

“Did you see him at all?” Cork asked.

Prophet shook his head, then held out his hand, in which he gripped a ball cap, pale green and with an image in black that Cork recognized immediately. Under it was printed a single word: ANIMIKII.

“Found it over there.” Prophet pointed toward where the deer trail broke from the trees. “Looks pretty new. I figure the lowest branch of that birch sapling must’ve caught the bill and flipped it off his head. He was in too big a hurry to stop and pick it up.”

“Animikii,” Cork said. “Anishinaabe for Thunderbird.” He looked at Bonhomme, then at Prophet, feeling bewildered and betrayed in the common ancestry they all shared. “Jesus, Monte, is this guy Shinnob?”

“Let’s give it to BCA,” Bonhomme said. “If they can pull DNA from it, maybe we’ll know for sure.”

Cork called Daniel on his cell phone and they arranged to rendezvous back at Paavola’s cabin. Everyone except Prophet, who told them he wanted to check the deer path to see if he could find anything more the shooter might have left behind or abandoned.

Waaboo looked shaken when he arrived, but less so than his mother. Jenny gripped Waaboo’s hand, and Cork could feel the anger coming off her like bolts of lightning.

“I didn’t want him here,” she told them all. “I knew something bad would happen.”

Meloux said quietly, “You also have the gift of second sight?”

“Don’t joke with me, Henry.”

“It is not a joke. I mean only that no one, not even our little rabbit, could see this coming. We cannot hide him on Crow Point forever. If he touched the spirit of this young woman again, and in this, helped to find the evil at the heart of all that has happened, would that not have been a good thing?”

“But he didn’t touch her spirit,” Jenny said. Then she looked at her son. “Did you?”

Waaboo furrowed his little brow, thinking. “For a moment. Then all I felt was the devil. He kind of blocked out everything else.”

“And in that moment?” Meloux asked.

“She seemed…” He thought a moment more, then smiled at Meloux. “Not so sad.”

“Because we’re trying to help her?” Daniel offered.

“Don’t put words in his mouth,” Jenny snapped. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. They know about him.”

Which, Cork figured, was hard to argue with.