Kat stared at me for a moment, tears in her eyes, and then ran to Megan and flung herself against her mother. That drove Joey and Tamara into motion, and they both squirmed out of Yardly’s arms and ran to their mother.

“Thank you,” Megan said. She freed one hand from her children long enough to touch my arm. “Wizard. Thank you.”

I felt a little bit sick. But I gave her my best, modest smile.

I finished the recounting for the young Wardens and let the silence fall.

“What was my mistake?” I asked.

No one said anything.

“I trusted the process too much,” I said. “I thought I had already analyzed the whole situation. Found the problem. Identified the source of the danger. But I was wrong. You all know what I did. What happened?”

No one said anything.

“The boggart I’d identified wasn’t the source of the attacks. It was just feeding on the fear they generated in the kids. It hadn’t needed to expend any energy at all to generate nightmares and fear in them. All it had to do was feed. That’s why it was so large.

“The source of the attacks wasn’t an attack at all,” I said. “Ben Yardly’s job had exposed him to some pretty bad things-memories and images that wouldn’t go away. Some of you who fought in the war know what I’m talking about.”

McKenzie, Ilyana, and a few others gave me sober nods.

“Kat Yardly was the eldest daughter of her mother, a fairly gifted sensitive. She was twelve years old.”

“Damn,” McKenzie said, his eyes widening in realization.

“Yes, of course,” Ilyana said. The other students turned to look at her. “The eldest daughter was a sensitive, too-perhaps a skilled one. She had picked up on those images in her uncle’s mind and was having nightmares about them.”

“What about the little girl?” I asked.

McKenzie took over. “Kat must have been a pusher, too,” he said, using the slang for someone who could broadcast thoughts or emotions to others. “She was old enough to be a surrogate mother to the younger daughter. They were probably linked somehow.”