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intent on doing him harm, nor could he imagine how to defend himself against it. For eight centuries he had been at the top of the food chain, fearing nothing, because no other living thing had ever matched his powers.
    He could only assume that all these things were connected. One divine power had led him to Jex, to the notebook that might prove the key to his existence, but another had sent this demon to attack him, perhaps to destroy him. And he didn’t know how to fight it.
    The woman started towards him and immediately broke into a run. Will thought of the keys and scooped them up off the floor. She was almost on top of him when he clenched his hand around the larger key, the one for the side door of the church, and held it out directly in front of him like a dagger.
    She leapt for him, but he stood firm, even as he felt the force of her body crashing into his hand. He heard a tearing crunch, felt the shuddering impact, and then her face stopped at arm’s length from his, her expression still stubbornly blank.
    He looked down. The large black key was embedded up to his knuckles in her chest. No blood came from the wound, but around it the flesh appeared to be turning fluid, just as her entire body had turned fluid after hitting the pillar a minute before.
    Will looked back at her face. Slowly, her mouth opened, and then in a detached voice, like the echo of someone talking in another room, she said, “The cathedral’s closed, I’m afraid. From six o’clock on winter Tuesdays.”
    â€œWho are you?”
    She smiled and once more said, “The cathedral’s closed, I’m afraid. From six o’clock on winter Tuesdays.” But this time he could hear another voice whispering behind hers, and as she repeated the phrase yet again, he clearly made out the words, “Death to you, William of Mercia.”
    He didn’t have the chance to ask his question again. The woman’s form turned transparent, becoming some liquid element of darkness. Then, as silently as she’d first appeared, so she had gone, into the air itself, leaving the key clenched uselessly in his outstretched hand.
    Will spun around, immediately fearing that this was just the prelude to yet another attack, but there was nothing, no sound, nothing in the air. Whatever had attacked him had been destabilized enough to retreat, but he had a feeling this wouldn’t be the end of it.
    He gathered up the dropped candle and returned quickly to his lair. Even as he sealed the chamber door with the stone, he knew that it would be no protection from whatever demon had just shown itself to him in the church above.
    What defense could he have against something that had the ability to appear and disappear at will, to shift itself from one form to another, a demon that seemed to match him for strength? Its only weakness seemed to be an inability to hold its shape when a great enough violence was done to it.
    He wondered, too, why it had come to him in those forms, as a busybody old woman and a wiry black dog. Was it somehow reading his mind, making itself into the people and creatures he’d encountered in the recent past? Perhaps it would come to him next as Jex or the fireman or the girl by the river.
    He opened the chest that contained his library, a collection of just a hundred or so books, accumulated over the centuries, some of them taken from the library in the church above, some from the wider city. He’d read many thousands of books across the centuries, but had discarded most, even from his memory.
    This chest held all those Will considered important enough to treasure. He looked at them now, heavy volumes stacked upon each other, their ancient pages and covers, vellum and hide, protected from dust and time by the chest in which they were locked away.
    There were volumes in Latin and Greek, and many more in English, or rather in many varieties of English, charting the course of his language over all this