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and stepped light-footed up the stone staircase to the upper library.
    He unlocked the door, using his robed body to mute the sound of the tumbler. He had sprayed its hinges with WD-40 earlier that day, and it opened silently. He slipped through, leaving the door ajar, and hurried down the aisle of bookshelves, the chant fading to a low murmur behind him, the intoxicating smells of old leather and parchment stoking his lust.
    The library was built around a large, square spiral staircase lined with tomes and boxed manuscripts ascending to the top of the tower. By day it was illuminated by the ambient light from the stained glass windows, but at this hour little moonlight or urban street glare penetrated those thick, dark panes depicting stellar and oceanic dreamscapes, standing stones and cyclopean mountain ranges. The tower was dark, and Darius didn’t dare switch on the electric chandelier—a wrought-iron octopus with glass globes at the ends of its tentacles.
    He took the smartphone from his back pocket, dexterously swiping and tapping on the glass to turn on the camera and activate the flash. He quickened the pace of his climb, the little illuminated screen swinging at his side, casting a cold glow on the stairs. At the penultimate level, with the chandelier hovering over his shoulder, the bulbous green glass eyes glaring down on his crime, he slid a worn, brown leather volume from the shelf and laid it open in the crook of his arm: Liber Nocte Coccineae.
     
    The Book of Scarlet Night.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Across the street from the church, a homeless man reclined in a narrow alleyway, his rotting tennis shoes propped against the brick wall of an apartment building, his head resting against the graffiti-ridden plaster of a liquor store. As he tilted his head to drain the last two ounces of his 40, he considered seeking cover: the sky was flashing lightning. But before the last drop ran down his throat, he saw that the lightning wasn’t in the sky.
    It was in the stained glass of the stone church tower.
     

 
Chapter 4
     
    If you’re commuting out of the city tonight, you’re gonna want to avoid the 93/Route 1 junction by the Tobin Bridge. A mini-twister caused a sandstorm there this afternoon at the Boston Sand and Gravel quarry. That’s right, I said, “mini-twister.” As if hurricane flooding wasn’t bad enough, now we have sandstorms in Boston. Cue the plague of locusts. Anyway, there’s sand all over the roads there. Enough to stop traffic while they sweep it off. So if you aren’t already jammed in it, try to find another route out of town. Next up, I’ve got some Billy Moon for you. I’m Adam 12 and you’re listening to Radio BDC.
     
    The Black Pharaoh walked the winding paths of the Emerald Necklace. He followed the Muddy River north through the fens, past the war memorials and the Japanese temple bell, past the playground at Mother’s Rest, through swamps turned to gardens. He walked in the dying light of a September evening, his scarlet robes burning in the last rays of the sun, and everywhere he passed, joggers and commuters, mothers and children, should have turned their heads to stare in awe at those radiant robes and the wild swamp animals that flocked at his feet, sniffing the air in his wake and leaping to lap at his long-fingered hands: rats and opossums and foxes. But no one looked in the direction of that dark man. If some rare soul had tried to focus on his face, it would have seemed indistinct and out of focus, as if glimpsed through a glass darkly. But none did. All averted their eyes as he passed like a cloud across the sun, leaving a deep chill that they would take with them to their beds when they turned in for a night of strange and restless dreams.
    Walking under the Charlesgate overpass, he removed the robe and tossed it over the brownstone railing into the shallow creek where it melted and marbled the dirty water with tatters of rich blood. He emerged onto Beacon Street