Darius busied himself with a hide pouch packed with tobacco and a pipe. Ellen let herself taste the other meaning of accelerate a life – speed it toward its end. Hadn’t that been what had happened with Safra? Static noise roared through Ellen’s mind, and she struggled to beat it back, to empty her brain and fill it with light. She had not caused the fire. Not even her neglect had caused the fire. The fire, some said, had been an Act of God. A freak of nature. His fault. Her fault. Safer, Ellen believed, to live in a place of no blame or rather a place that levelled all blame at forces of darkness that might wend their way into even the most vigilant lives.
Accelerate meant to quicken. Was that what Darius Horn, the man who sat across from her tamping tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, lo
