“I’m depressed, Rowan, I’m not stupid.”

My voice softened. “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“Aye, you haven’t been sleeping, have you?” She wasn’t really asking, she was telling.

It was obvious that my powers of deception were more than a bit anemic lately, but then, according to my wife they always were. I decided not to even make an attempt at denying the observation.

“Not enough,” I admitted. “But, like I said, you don’t need to worry about me. You need to worry about you.”

“Worrying about you is part of what makes me who I am.”

“Same here,” I told her. “But you need to concentrate on feeling better. I’m responsible for getting you into this, and I’ll get you out of it.”

“How do you figure that you’re responsible, then?”

I closed my eyes and gave my head a slight shake. I knew immediately that I had said the wrong thing, but there was no way to take it back.

“That’s not important right now,” I told her.

“Aye, it is to me.”

I let out a cautious breath as I tried to choose my words. “Let’s just say that if I had never become involved in Ariel Tanner’s murder investigation all those years back, we’d probably be having a much more normal life. Maybe all this wouldn’t be happening.”

This wasn’t a new thought for me. It was simply one that I usually kept to myself. But, it had weighed on me for quite some time. Had I never opened the door to that other realm by insinuating myself so deeply into that first investigation, maybe the dead would be speaking to someone else instead of me. And, if that were the case, Felicity wouldn’t be sitting in the psychiatric wing of a hospital because an out of control Lwa was using her as a horse.

“Aye, Caorthann,” my wife soothed. “You had no choice. Ariel was your friend.”

“I’m supposed to be cheering you up,” I finally muttered.