The boy shook his head, said nothing.
"Your friends told me where to find you," Logan continued. "Owl said you had come here to meet Tessa. I guess that meeting didn't work out."
The boy made no response, watching Logan closely.
"Your name is Hawk?"
The boy nodded.
"I'm looking for someone. I think you might be him." He waited, and then gestured at the floor. "Sit down with me. I'll show you something interesting."
He sat cross–legged on the floor, and after a moment or two, the boy joined him. Logan placed the light to one side, its beam directed across the floor in front of them so that the pale wash illuminated them both. Then he lay down the black staff, reached into his pocket, and extracted the black cloth and finger bones of Nest Freemark. He spread the cloth on the floor carefully, smoothed out the wrinkles, and looked at the boy.
"This is how I found you," he said.
He tossed the finger bones onto the cloth, and they scattered like bleached sticks. For a moment, they lay where they had fallen. Then they began to move, forming up into fingers and a thumb, taking shape as Nest Freemark's right hand. Logan saw the boy start in shock, then settle back to watch, wonder mirrored on his lean face.
The bones came together, a slow connecting of joints, a fitting together of pieces until the entire hand was in place.
The index finger extended, pointing at the boy.
Logan took a deep breath and held it, waited a moment to be sure, then moved the cloth so that the finger was pointing away. As soon as he did so, the bones shuddered and began to move again, readjusting so that they were pointing at the boy once more.
Logan exhaled softly. "There you are," he whispered.
Hawk looked at him, uncomprehending. Leaving the bones where they were, Logan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Let me tell you a story, Hawk," he said.
IN THE HALLWAY outside, the guard stationed on watch was pressed against the door, his ear at the crack between door and jam, listening. Ethan Cole had told him to do so, to try to learn what this man wanted with the street boy.
Ethan didn't trust him, even though he had agreed to let him come inside the compound. Ethan didn't trust any outsiders, which was probably what had helped keep the residents of the compound safe. Best not to trust anyone you didn't know; the guard knew that much about the world. When it came to outsiders, you could never be sure.
He listened hard in the near silence, but all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. The steel door was too thick; it muffled all sound from within. It would have been better if they had left it open a crack. Then he might have been able to hear something. But Ethan would never agree to take a chance like that. The door had been opened to let the man in and it would be opened to let him out again, and those were the only times it would be opened until sunset.
The guard shivered as he thought about what would happen to the boy and the girl when the sun dropped. He thought about how they would be taken to the highest walls of the compound and pushed off into the fading light. He thought about how they would scream helplessly as they fell. He thought about the sounds they would make when they struck the concrete at the base of the walls. He had seen and heard it all before, and he had hoped not to have to do so again.
He waited a moment longer, and then stepped back impatiently. Trying to listen was a waste of time. He walked a few yards down the corridor to where his folding chair waited and sat down.
WHEN LOGAN HAD finished his story, the boy said, "Are you telling me I'm not human?"
Logan hesitated. "I really don't know what you are. You were born to a woman, so I guess that makes you human. But you were something else first, a creature of magic, and she was always gifted with magic of the same sort." He shrugged. "What difference does it make? What matters is what you're supposed to be now."
The boy looked at him a moment, and then shook his head. "I don't believe any of this. I guess you do or you wouldn't have come this far. But those bones could be telling me anything."
Logan nodded. "Maybe, but I don't think so."
Hawk was silent a moment. "Didn't you say I was supposed to know what to do after the bones found me? If I'm this … whatever it is."
"Gypsy morph."
"Gypsy morph. But I don't know anything more now than I did before. I don't have any idea at all what it is I'm supposed to do. Or what everyone thinks I'm supposed to do."
"You have visions. Candle said so. You have dreams about the boy and his children. Maybe that's some of it."
Hawk sat motionless, staring off into space, his thoughts unspoken. He was working it through, trying it on for size, but not finding anything that fit.
Logan could see it in his face, in the shifting of his eyes. He was a boy sitting in a cell waiting to die, and this latest madness was too much for him.
Why he didn't seem to know who he was or what he was supposed to do surprised Logan. He thought it would all be made clear once he found the morph. Logan wondered suddenly if there was something he had forgotten.
Then, abruptly, he remembered. He gathered up the bones and held them out.
"Take these. If you are the morph, they belong to you. They are your mother's bones. They might help you remember."
Hawk looked at the bones, then at him, and shook his head. "I don't want any part of them. I just want you to take them away."
"If I do that, what will happen to you then? They're going to kill you."
Logan kept his hand outstretched. "And Tessa. What about her?"
The boy said nothing for a long time, sitting back, looking at nothing.
"She told the judges that she was carrying my child," he said finally. He looked up again, meeting Logan's gaze. "I don't know if it's true or not." He shook his head slowly. "Doesn't matter, I suppose. None of it matters. Even if I am who you say, even if the bones are my mother's, it doesn't change what's going to happen to me or to Tessa."
"Or to the Ghosts?" Logan asked. "They seem to believe in you. The boy and his children. They mentioned that right away when I told them I was looking for the gypsy morph and what the morph was expected to do. They say you are a family. What happens to them?"
"I don't think I can do anything for them." Hawk's words were laced with bitterness. "I can't save them or Tessa or anyone. I can't even save myself from this."
He looked at the floor again. "Or my child, if there is one."
Logan gave him a minute, and then said, "Take the bones. Hold them. Let's see if they give you any answers."
"No," Hawk repeated. Then his eyes lifted and met Logan's. They stared at each other for a long time. "All right," the boy said finally. "Give them to me."
Logan leaned forward and dumped the bones gently into the boy's palm. Hawk looked at them, a glimmer of whiteness against the dirt–streaked flesh of his hand. Then slowly he closed his fingers over them.
Logan waited expectantly.
"Nothing," Hawk said finally. "It's all a …"
Then his eyes snapped wide, his mouth fell open in shock, and his slender body went rigid, his muscles cording, straining against what was happening to him. Logan started to intervene, then checked himself. Better to let this play out. The boy was shaking now, his body jerking in whiplash fashion. He was trying to say something, but the words came out as small whimpers. He clasped the fist that held the finger bones to his breast, hunched over as if to find a way to absorb the bones into his body, and began to rock forward and back.
"Hawk?" Logan whispered to him.
A white light bloomed from the center of the boy's body, a small blossom at first, and then a bright cloud that all but enveloped him. Logan backed away despite himself, edging toward the darkness, not understanding why, but feeling that his presence was invasive and perhaps even dangerous. He watched the light steady and then begin to pulse in a rhythm that matched the rocking of the boy.