Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(140)

Shale examined the body with clinical precision and some disdain. Then the Keeper kissed the form of stone, and poured out through his lips. Red crystal grew in the grooves Tara carved.

The Keeper staggered back, and looked up for the first time in several thousand years at the stars.

Shale collapsed. Tara ran to him, professionalism be damned.

His eyes were green again.

“I came back,” she said.

He held out his hand, and she helped him rise.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing this book felt like coming home—and homecomings take work. You have to hang crepe paper, bribe the band, roll out the carpets, sneak up on the fatted calf … Well, anyway. Profuse thanks to my editor, Marco Palmieri, and to Irene Gallo and Chris McGrath, for a cover I can make star eyes at (though I didn’t mind the Spock-riding-a-unicorn mock-up, either). Gratitude and praise also to the usual band of readers, friends, and rock stars, including but in no respects limited to Alana Abbott, Vladimir Barash, John Chu, Amy Eastment, and Stephanie Neely. And, as I brooded on the manuscript, Amal El-Mohtar swung in through a window like Robin Hood to suggest a critical last-minute fix. Totally worth the broken glass on the carpet.

Every time I think I have charted the full bestness of Steph, I find whole other unmapped continents of best. If this goes on, um, well, I’d be totally fine with that.

David Hartwell published Three Parts Dead, and read every one of my novels after, and offered advice on each of them—and on each publication day, I sent him a nice bottle of whiskey. This year I have one fewer friend to send whiskey. I feel the loss.