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want to open the door no matter who was on the other side.
    Or because of who was on the other side.
    “He must be out,” Remy said to Marlowe.
    The dog looked at him. “Smell him,” he growled.
    “Of course you do. It’s his apartment.” Remy turned and headed for the stairs as Marlowe continued to sniff beneath the door. “C’mon, buddy. We’ll come back another time.”
    Marlowe offered one more pathetic-sounding bark.
    But still the door did not open.
    The Labrador started down the stairs as Remy momentarily paused. He looked at the paper bag that held the bottle of fifteen-year-old Scotch and returned to the apartment door.
    “A peace offering,” he said, placing the bag with the bottle in front of the door before following Marlowe downstairs and back out into the night.
    Steven Mulvehill sat perfectly still, waiting for his friend to leave.
    He’d known it would be only a matter of time before Remy showed up; Steven had lost count of how many times Remy had called since—
    The images flooded his mind again: a beast whose flesh shifted and changed like smoke that had shown him the dangers of a hidden world.
    Of monsters and angels.
    The physical injuries Steven had sustained in his encounter with the Shaitan were healing well. But the mental ones were deep and still ragged, so much so that he was surprised when he actually had the courage to get out of bed these days.
    Seeing Remy Chandler right now wasn’t in the cards. As much as Steven hated to blame him, Remy was, after all, responsible for exposing him to things he never should have known about.
    A Boston homicide cop for more than fifteen years, and he’d never known this kind of fear before. He was reminded of his early childhood and how he’d gone through a phase when he’d been terrified to go to bed at night.
    And now he understood what he had known in those early years: that there really were good reasons to be afraid of the dark.
    The Catskill Mountains
In a Subterranean Chamber Beneath the Deacon Estate
    August 6, 1945
    And to think, I wasn’t going to attend Konrad’s little soiree, Algernon Stearns thought as he watched one of Deacon’s golem servants finish attaching the last of the numerous coils and wires to a heavy metal harness the sorcerer wore on his naked body.
    The artificial man tugged on the vest to be sure it was secure and accidently pinched Stearns’ left nipple.
    “Damn you!” Stearns hissed. Supernatural energies that could easily have reduced the being to dust danced at his fingertips.
    “Is everything all right, Algernon?” Deacon asked as he checked the connections on his own vest.
    Stearns managed to suppress his anger, offering a tight smile. “Everything is fine, Deacon. Just a little pinch is all.”
    “Well, if everything goes according to plan, you’ll be experiencing far more than a pinch shortly,” Deacon warned. “But what you will gain from this temporary discomfort…”
    “Is power,” Stearns finished.
    He glanced around at the other four members of the cabal. They were all there: Daphene Molaar, Robert Desplat, Eugene Montecello, and Angus Heath—some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful magick users. And they all appeared nervous, their eyes darting about the room.
    They stood in a circle in a subterranean room beneath Deacon’s estate, all naked except for the same metal vest that Stearns and Deacon wore. Cables trailed across the cold stone floor, connecting the vests to a series of complex machines that, in turn, were attached to an impressively large device that had been erected in the room’s center. Stearns understood that the device was a kind of antenna—an antenna that would attract vast amounts of life energies and distribute the raw power among those who wore the vests. If Deacon was right, his machine would transform the cabal forever.
    Konrad Deacon, the hero of the day.
    Stearns knew what the man was up to. Deacon coveted his position as leader of the cabal, and