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They didn’t make it into the house. Just as they arrived, the Brotherhood filed out of the grand double doors one by one. Collectively, they were wearing enough weapons to qualify as a full-on militia.

Wrath pegged him and Qhuinn with a hard stare through his wraparounds. “You two. In the Escalade with Rhage and Blay. Unless you need more ammo?”

When they both shook their heads, the king dematerialized along with Vishous, Butch, and Zsadist.

When they got into the SUV, with Blay riding shotgun, John signed, What’s going on?

Rhage stomped on the gas. As the Escalade roared and they shot out of the courtyard, the Brother said dryly, “Visit from an old frenemy. The kind you wish you never saw again.”

Well, wasn’t that the theme for the evening.

Chapter Forty-eight

THE DREAM ... hallucination ... the whatever-it-was felt real. Totally and completely real.

Standing in the overgrown garden of his family’s house in the Old Country, beneath a brilliant full moon, Phury reached up to the face of the third-stage statue and pulled the ivy vines free of the eyes and nose and mouth of the male who so proudly bore his own young in his arms.

By now, Phury was an old pro at the cutting, and after he’d worked the shears’ magic, he tossed another green tangle to the tarp that lay on the ground at his feet.

“There he is,” he whispered. “There . . . he is. . . .”

The statue had long hair just like him, and deep-set eyes just like him, but the radiant happiness on its face was not his. Nor was the young cradled in his arms. Still, there was liberation to be had as Phury continued to strip off the ivy’s messy layers of overgrowth.

When he was finished, the marble underneath was streaked with the green tears of the weeds’ demise, but the majesty of the form was undeniable.

A male in his prime with his young in his arms.

Phury looked over his shoulder. “What do you think?”

Cormia’s voice was all around him, in stereo, even though she stood right next to him. “I think he is beautiful.”

Phury smiled at her, seeing in her face all the love he had for her in his heart. “One more.”

She swept her hand around. “But look, the last one’s already done.”

And so the final statue was; its weeds gone, along with any stains of neglect. The male was old now, seated with a staff in his hands. His face was still handsome, though it was wisdom, not the bloom of youth, that made it so. Standing behind him, tall and strong, was the young he had once cradled in his arms.

The cycle was complete.

And the weeds were no more.

Phury glanced back at the third stage. It too was magically clean, and so were the youth and the infant statues as well.

In fact, the entire garden had been righted and now rested beneath the warm, dulcet night in full, healthy bloom. The fruit trees beside the statues were heavy with pears and apples, and the walkways were bordered with neat boxwood hedges. Inside the beds, the flowers thrived in graceful disorder, as all fine English gardens did.

He turned to the house. The shutters that had hung cockeyed from their hinges were righted, and the holes in the tile roof were no more. The stucco was smooth, its cracks having disappeared, and every glass pane was intact. The terrace was free of leaf debris, and the sinking spots that had gathered rain were level again. Potted arrangements of thriving geraniums and petunias sprinkled white and red among woven wicker chairs and tables.

Through the living room window, he saw something move—could it be? Yes, it was.

His mother. His father.

The pair came into view, and they were as the statues had become: resurrected. His mother with her yellow eyes and her blond hair and her perfect face . . . His father with his dark hair and his clear stare and his kind smile.

They were . . . impossibly beautiful to him, his holy grail.

“Go to them,” Cormia said.

Phury walked up onto the terrace, his white robing clean in spite of all the work he had done. He approached his parents slowly, afraid of displacing the vision.

“Mahmen?” he murmured.

His mother put her fingertips