Diavla stared at Tom's belt, terrified that he had already been possessed, destroyed while a monster walked around with his skin, his smile... What if he's dead? What if he's gone forever?

Her gaze wandered to the small human girl, who was currently staring at her as if she felt the same pain. That expression did not belong on a small girl, ever. It brought her out of her terror and back to her soul.

You have a quick soul, Diavla. Use it. Use it and save Tom.

She cleared her throat, making sure her voice was steady before she spoke. "Eubexa. You've read the book. Tell me how to save Tom."

The veiled elf's reply was prompt. "Get him to the Temple, and get him to walk in through the wards, before the demon takes him over completely."

"He's tough, Diavla," Kervan tried to reassure her.

It's not tough I'm worried about. It's anger. Rage. Hate. I'm not blind to the way he would quietly get furious on my behalf, our behalf, for all that he did his best to hide it. His very caring for me might push him over the edge, too quickly for him even to realize what's happening until it's too late.

Stop, Di. Think about the others. They don't need to see you panicking. She took a deep breath and stood up. "You're right. Tom is tough. There's still time to save him."

"Could we manage to get past the guards at the Guardhouse?" Kervan questioned.

"Maybe a diversion to draw most of them out?" Arven suggested, his voice still slurring slightly from his injuries. "I could be bait."

"No," Eubexa replied with a shake of her head. "You'd be attacked before you even got into position. None of us can go out there. That's why we sent Piper in the first place."

Diavla noticed that the girl reacted to her name. Actually, the girl was looking back and forth quickly at all of them, listening intently. Diavla clutched Tom's belt, and bowed her head to the child. "Thank you, Piper. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Are the tokens actually still in the belt?" Kervan asked worriedly.

Diavla glanced at Piper a moment, then handed the belt to him. "Go in the other room and check." The blond elf nodded and hurried off.

Eubexa turned and crouched down a bit in front of the little girl. "Piper, first, good (something.) Thank you." The blond head nodded. "Second, did our Master say anything about a wand?"

Diavla startled. Oh, no, that's right. Piper just saved eight of us, but Eubexa's still in danger from her necklace, and worse danger even than the rest of us faced.

Piper nodded again. "Yes. He gave it to me."

Diavla breathed a sigh of relief.

"Where is it, Piper?"

The child hesitated, then starting wringing her little hands. "I (something) lost it." Diavla nearly choked on her sigh.

"What?"

"Only (something!) I know where it is!" the human insisted.

"Where?"

"I was (something something) guard, so I (something) it on (something)."

"What?"

"I'm sorry! If he (something) me with it, he (something) killed me! It has (something) on it!"

"Piper, can you get it back?"

"Of course I can! I (something) need to (something something) first."

Eubexa pressed her veil against her head for a few moments. "Apparently, a guard started chasing her, and she wasn't sure she could make it here without getting caught, so she threw the control wand for my necklace up on a roof." Eubexa took a deep breath. "She says she can get up there and get it back, but she has to figure out how to do it without a guard spotting her."

"There's a third problem," Kervan announced, walking back into the room.

"The tokens?" Diavla asked quickly. If the tokens had been taken out of the belt—

"No, they're there."

"All of them?"

"Yes, I counted, all nine of them are in there."

Diavla let out a breath tentatively, grateful, but still braced for bad news. "Then what?"

"It's close to sunset. Orvan and Varga and the others might be walking up to the town gate expecting a civil greeting pretty soon."

"Demon shit." Reflexively Diavla glanced at Piper, then remembered that the child didn't know Elvish.

"She can't be in three places at once, even if she could cope with the guards. Either we go out...or we need to get more help."

"Charlie," Arven half-whispered. "Charlie might be able to head them off, if they approach the same way Rillik did the last time."

"Good idea," Kervan said. "Better than nothing."

"What should we have her, have him, tell them?"

"Great, we're playing Signal Tower with two small human children in the middle," Kervan muttered.

"We'll tell them to go around the town to the west, then hide on the south side of the road a mile or two away from the town," Diavla decided. "We can pick them up on our way to Middleton, once we get out of this demon-infested nightmare."

"So, if Piper gets Charlie to help warn off the others, and she goes to get the wand back, then who do we get to break Tom out of jail?" Kervan wondered.

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"We need someone like Edge in Rivermarch," Diavla commented, thinking.

"Edge? Rivermarch?" Piper spoke up abruptly.

Eubexa and Piper started talking to each other in Western, too quickly for Diavla to get what they were saying. She, Kervan, and Arven waited, curious, while the child chattered eagerly in response to Eubexa's questions. Finally, Eubexa turned to look at them.

"Piper says that Summer Daring at the Wandering Ax might help."

"How does she know?"

"She says she sweeps there sometimes and heard her complain about Edge."

"Would she be willing to put us in touch with...people who are happy to do things the guard might not like?"

"I asked her, and she just said, 'Miss Daring knows everybody.' I suggest we hire this woman to find us someone to break Tom out of jail."

"All right. Let's offer her a half-gold coin to find someone, and a gold coin to the rescuer."

"Don't forget to pay Piper."

"Right." Diavla fished out the coins. "Offer her ten silver total, Eubexa."

Eubexa went back to translating and explaining the jobs. Piper wrenched her gaze away from the coins on the table with a visible effort. They went back and forth for a minute.

"She says she needs to go find Charlie first because that's the biggest rush. Then she will go to the Wandering Ax, and after that she'll try to find the wand." Eubexa sounded tense.

"Are you all right with that, Eubexa?" Diavla asked her.

"Do I have a choice?" the veiled elf replied bitterly. "It is what it is. She's right."

Diavla slid the large silver and the half-gold piece across the table to the little girl.

"Thank you," Piper replied—in Elvish. Diavla blinked.

"Arven, did you teach her to say thank you?"

"No," Piper answered for him, then shrugged. "I listened."

All the elves looked at each other.

"I'd better hurry," Piper said awkwardly into the silence. She crouched down a moment, then got up and stamped her feet. She waited by the door until Kervan opened it for her, peered outside a few moments, then darted off. Kervan shut the door promptly without showing himself to the outside.

"That's a smart kid," he observed. "I wonder if she has a graven soul like mine? Do humans get those?"

"I don't see why they wouldn't," Diavla said absently.

"She put the half-gold inside her shoe," Eubexa commented. "So if someone robs her, they'll only take the large silver."

"If the boy Charlie is half as reliable, we've got a decent chance," Kervan said.

"What's the girl's situation? Does anyone know?"

"Her father's dead, and her mother abandoned her, sounds like. I'm not sure how long ago," Eubexa reported.

"She's very quick," Arven put in. "She almost managed to pickpocket me when I came to town. If anyone can survive as a street squirrel, it's her."

"What a tragic waste." Diavla shook her head. These things happened, all too often, but it was still sad. If we were in better circumstances, I'd try to do something for her, but we're all but on the run ourselves, plus we have demons to deal with.

"So, what's our plan?" Kervan asked. "Assuming everything goes right, do we run out of town the minute we're all back together? Tonight?"

"I'm in favor," Eubexa said at once. "There are worse things to fear than driving on a road at night. If that demon gets their hands on my control wand..." She shivered.

"What do we do if Tom...isn't Tom any more?"

"Well, if the rescuers want their gold, they'll drag him to the Temple," Diavla said fiercely. "The Wise Ones will know what they're dealing with." She felt faint. Human wisdom said that anyone possessed needed to be killed. If Tom couldn't be saved—if he was already gone...that would be mercy. If he could be saved, they would be best equipped to help.

I'll go to them and beg if need be. Offer them gold, my service—anything, if it saves him.

"There's too many things that can go wrong," Kervan fretted. "We should have given Piper a couple of the amulets before she left."

Diavla winced. "You're right. Who knows what the people breaking Tom out will face? But we only have..." Diavla paused, and looked in the box next to her. She frowned, counting again, and then her jaw dropped. "That little squirrel."

"What?"

Diavla looked up at the others. "I think she nipped one of the amulets! There are supposed to be seven in here. There are only six. Unless one of you...?" The others all shook their heads. Diavla gave a little laugh and leaned back. "That little thief."

"You don't suppose...?" Kervan began, then trailed off.

"What?"

"No, never mind. Nobody is that clever."

"What? Do you think she knows about the demons somehow?"

"Of course not. But we're all wearing amulets. She might have noticed, and guessed that it was for protection from something."

"Smart kid," Arven muttered again.

"Kervan's right, though, we need more plans," Diavla decided. "All right, we aren't leaving town until the others arrive. Hopefully that will be tonight, but they might arrive tomorrow night instead if something delayed them. We need to rescue Tom and get him to the Temple as soon as possible. If he..." Diavla's throat got tight and she couldn't continue for a moment.

"I think we just need to wait and see what happens tonight," Eubexa suggested.

"Can you read through the book again, Eubexa? See if maybe there's something you missed, something we can use to save Tom?"

"Of course. Kervan, if you would bring me the book from my room, please?"

Kervan nodded and headed upstairs. Diavla tried not to fret, and failed miserably. She almost didn't notice when he returned and set the book in front of the sickly elf. But then, Kervan got her attention, and asked, "Diavla? Can I speak to you alone for a minute?"

"Of course." The two of them went upstairs and Kervan led her all the way to the back of the house. They went into one of the unused rooms and shut the door. Even then, Kervan kept his voice quiet.

"We have another problem." His voice was tense; he almost looked frightened.

Oh, come on! Diavla cried silently. "What now?"

"We may have a demon in this house."

Diavla froze, staring at Kervan for several moments. "Explain."

"I'd show you the evidence, but I didn't want to tip my hand."

"What evidence?"

"You remember the anonymous note the Temple got? The one Tom showed us?"

"The one with Quazulin's name on it. Yes, I remember. What about it?"

"Did you notice how the bottom edge of the paper was torn?"

"No...?"

"Trust me, it was. Just now, when I went to get the book for Eubexa, I noticed the bookmark she was using."

"And?"

"And it's the other half of the paper the note was written on."

Diavla felt her brow furrow. "What?"

"The jagged edges match."

"Are you sure?"

Kervan simply stared at her expectantly. Diavla sighed and nodded.

"All right, you're sure. So, the person who wrote the note tore a piece of paper and the other half is here. So, someone here wrote the note, is that what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"Could it have been Eubexa? Maybe she copied out something from the book. The other half was a bookmark, you said."

"But then why keep it a secret? Why not just tell us?"

Diavla frowned. "She's skittish? You know what she's been through..."

"It doesn't add up. But I don't think it's Eubexa."

"Oh?"

Kervan looked as if he had tasted something sour. "Who's the only one in this house who hasn't been tested for possession?"

Diavla stared at him. "Arven? But Sheema tested him."

"We don't know that. We only have his word on it. Besides, she didn't actually test him for possession, did she? She didn't know about the demons at that point."

Diavla nodded slowly. "You're right. But why draw attention to it? Why give the story about almost getting possessed when he actually was?"

Kervan shrugged. "Misdirection? Maybe to cover up oddities in his behavior? I don't know. Maybe the demon didn't have control of him yet and he didn't realize that he'd actually been possessed, even after we told him about the demons."

"When was the note found?" Diavla wondered.

"It must have been Fiveday or early Sixday, since the Temple had it by the time Tom went to meet the dwarf."

"So Arven had time to write it..." Diavla mulled it over and shook her head. "I don't know. I haven't gotten any strange intuitions about him. Aside from social awkwardness around me, he's been the same Arven we've always known."

"Could the demon have jumped from one of us to another, during the testing?"

Diavla shook her head. "There's no path. They would have been looking for that; we were inside Temple wards and they were testing us one by one. There's no path where they would have been that sloppy. You saw how seriously they were taking it in the Rivermarch Temple."

"True enough. But that means it has to be Arven."

"But...wait, you put an amulet on him, right when he arrived. And he's been wearing one."

"The amulet doesn't work if the person's already fully possessed, Eubexa said. It's only for prevention and early cure."

Diavla tried to think of alternatives, but couldn't come up with anything. "So, what do we do about it?"

Kervan shrugged. "Can a demon cross the Temple wards?"

"No. The book expressly said that that was impossible."

Kervan nodded grimly. "Then we have to make Arven try to go into the Oak Mill Temple."

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