Now it was the Alaska Range, an entire horizon filled with sharp, unfriendly peaks, and no place that he could see to land safely. But there was for a miracle little turbulence, and the smooth ride and the drone of the engines eventually dulled him into an unexpected, uneasy doze, where his subconscious, that sly, slick bastard, was lurking, loitering with intent, just waiting to raise his viperous head and hiss a reminder that Liam had yet to call his soul his own. A jumbled mass of images fast-forwarded in front of him: laughing, loving Jenny with the light brown hair, his father's implacable eyes, Charlie's gap-toothed grin. Alfred and Rose, faces dull with grief and despair. That old black Ford sedan stuck on the Denali Highway, the bodies huddled together in the backseat for a warmth that failed them in the end. The disappointment and determination on John Barton's face. Dyson groveling on his knees, begging for his life.

She was there, too, of course, the brown-eyed, blond-haired witch. Once again she turned and walked away, down the street, around a corner, and out of his life, and once again the grief of parting jerked him up in his seat with a jolt, heart pounding, palms sweaty, the loss as sharply felt as if he had suffered it yesterday. They were descending, and the clouds had closed back in and brought turbulence with them. Liam looked out the window, where a thin line of frost was forming on the leading edge of the wing, and he welcomed the distraction the terror of the sight brought him.

He watched the line of frost attentively, until they came out of the clouds at seven thousand feet and it vanished and the Nushagak River and Bristol Bay came into view. To Liam it looked like the approach to heaven, an image enhanced by the golden rim of sunshine shining through the gap between the clouds and the vast expanse of gray water that took up the whole southern horizon.