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their weaving could defeat them. Friar has power an adept would envy. He does not yet have the experience to wield it in a godlike way. That’s one advantage for us. The other—”
    “The Shadow Unit,” she said wearily. “You’re going to tell me it’s needed to catch Friar.”
    “No, I’m going to tell you that Ruben is needed to run that Unit. There are two Gifts that can confound a patterner. One is ours. Sensitives can’t be affected by the patterner’s manipulations, which makes us the large rock in their artificial stream.”
    Rule spoke for the first time since admitting he’d deceived her. “As are lupi, at least as far as Friar is concerned.”
    Fagin nodded agreeably. “So you stipulate. Your fiancé,” he added to Lily, “says that lupi are immune to her magic. Since we believe Friar’s Gift comes from her, they would likewise be barriers to his patterning. You and I and the lupi form, ah . . . call us dead spots in his manipulations. He can mobilize events that affect us, but it takes more power because his magic can’t touch us. But there’s only one Gift that can truly act against a strong patterner. Precognition.”
    Lily frowned. “Because that’s like patterning? A precog is sensing patterns, I guess, when he gets a hunch.” Or sees visions of the Apocalypse.
    Ruben shifted slightly in his chair. “I don’t think so.”
    “No?”
    “Fagin and I have discussed this.” A smile flickered over Ruben’s thin face. “At length. He would prefer to believe that my Gift picks up patterns from the future, much as a patterner senses patterns in the present. My input is subjective, of course, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I’ve discussed this with that young woman you sent me for training.”
    “Anna Sjorensen.” The other patterner Lily had met.
    “Yes. Her Gift is quite weak, so she doesn’t sense patterns directly. This means her experience of her Gift should correspond to what I experience with my hunches if I’m also receiving patterns. Based on our conversation, this doesn’t seem to be the case.”
    Fagin snorted. “Which could mean that the future’s patterns are experienced differently than those from the present. Or that you’re two different people and your minds interpret things differently.”
    Ruben’s smile returned. “It could. But patterns are a space-time construct. I have a strong feeling that the information my Gift provides is not so bounded—that it comes from elsewhere and elsewhen, a state for which words are unsuited because it lies beyond space-time.”
    Rule spoke very politely. “I imagine Sam would enjoy discussing your ideas about time and precognition.”
    That widened Ruben’s smile. “I’ve strayed from the topic, haven’t I? Thank you for the reminder. Lily, the point is that I can act as a fulcrum, a way to leverage events away from the path Friar is establishing. To do so, I need the resources and cooperation of a great many people. Hence my leadership of the Shadow Unit.”
    She sat with that in silence for a long moment. “Earlier, you said ‘the surviving lupi.’ When you talked about your vision, you said that in one scenario the surviving lupi retreat to their clanhomes. What did you mean?”
    Ruben answered carefully, like a man picking his way through a minefield where he knew the location of some—and only some—of the explosives. “There are elements I can’t speak of at this time, but the greatest variation in the scenarios I saw involves the lupi. I believe that variation means that their very existence impedes her power. She has to destroy them to succeed.”
    No one moved. No one spoke. It was so quiet Lily could hear her own pulse in her ears, kind of like listening to the sea in a conch shell. Something chinked toward the back of the house. Maybe Deborah was washing dishes.
    “All right,” she said at last. “I’m willing to promise my silence about all this. I understand why you’re doing it. I’m