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Stillthere was Kane The ware, the courage to go to hell and back--for ht Hag wanted to destroy all that, to strip away everything thatbut a shattered, empty shell

It al, to wrest Kane frohts had circled in that endless loop: Dadthe propheciesKane Over and over again I thought I’d have ti, and I still didn’t see any way out of this mess

It didn’t help that Dad had made me swear to keep his return a secret I hadn’t told a soul, not even Kane Not even Mab,Mab knew I’d brought the white falcon out of the Darklands, but she didn’t know Dad had co the coffee table for popcorn kernels, perched on the back of the sofa and preened his feathers

"Have you told Mo out atout the suburban neighborhood of my sister, Gwen Mom had left her retirement condo in Florida toGwen’s daughter, Maria, adjust to the shapeshifting abilities she was starting to manifest Moe white falcon nesting in the area But my promise to Dad kept me silent As far as I could tell, Juliet was the only one besidesto do with her willingness tofor the right ht , it’s bound to be a shock When that bird says, ‘Hi, honey, I’e"

"I don’t see what’s so strange about a talking bird Parrots talk"

"But they don’t have conversations Anyway, you’re not a parrot"

"Daing for a cracker" He eyed the eh"

"If I’d known you were here, I’d have brought you one" The white falcon had a o anywhere he wanted--locked doors and walls be da ahead

Besides hanging out, getting fed, and watching TV, there was another reason my father spent time in my apartment I asked about it now "Dad, have you looked at the book recently?"

I didn’t have to name the title He knehich book I meant: The Book of Utter Darkness, an ancient volue of Hell, which outlined the history of the conflict between demons and the Cerddorion--from the demons’ point of view It contained prophecies of how that conflict would end, prophecies that were now coht It was this book that mentioned the white falcon

The book and I had a history For years, it had fascinated me on Mab’s library shelf, the only book I was forbidden to read When I was eighteen and considered hly trained deh, conjured a deuess my intention was to show there was no demon I couldn’t take down The demon that answered the call was Difethwr, the Hellion that marked ain, and for years I didn’t, but the times it prophesied were now upon us At Mab’s insistence, I went fro it We needed to find out as coht counter it But the book was full of tricks You couldn’t read it the way you’d read a normal book; you had to stare at the unfatho took shape in yourdidn’t come Sometimes it came in riddles--riddles that tried to trip up and fool the reader into believing whatever

Lately, whenever I looked into the book, one of two things happened: Either I stared at its pages until I went cross-eyed, getting nothing, or else the book hit me hard with a vision of destruction so terrible and all-enco, then, that I was back to avoiding The Book of Utter Darkness Since Dad illing to spend time with it, I was happy to hand it over to him He’d perch on the back of a kitchen chair, the book open before him on the table For hours at a ti pages with his beak

"I looked at it for a little while," he said now, "beforenew?"

"Hard to tell The book doesn’t speak to oes straight to the falcon part of my brain" Mab said the book referred to the white falcon, but in alllandscape terrorized by deery," Dad continued, "but they’re filtered through the falcon’s perception, so it’s hard to knohat they ery?"

"Darkness, mostly But it’s not the kind of darkness that uess that rows thicker and thinner, that burns s"