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fear.
    Magnus’s warlock’s mark was his eyes, the pupils slit, the color lucent and green-gold at the wrong angles, but these features had not developed immediately. He had not been born with Catarina’s blue or Ragnor’s green skin, had been born a seemingly human baby with unusual amber eyes. Magnus’s mother had not realized his father was a demon for some time, not until she had gone to the cradle one morning and seen her child staring back at her with the eyes of a cat.
    She knew, then, what had happened, that whatever had come to her in the night in the shape of her husband had not been her husband. When she had realized that, she had not wanted to go on living.
    And she hadn’t.
    Magnus did not know if she had been a hero or not. He had not been old enough to know about her life, or fully comprehend her pain. He could not be sure in the way Ragnor and Catarina looked sure. He did not know if, when his mother knew the truth, she had still loved him or if all love had been blotted out by darkness. A darkness greater than the one known by his friends’ mothers, for Magnus’s father was no ordinary demon.
    “And I saw Satan fall,” Magnus murmured into his drink, “like lightning from Heaven.”
    Catarina turned to him. “What was that?”
    “Rejoice that your names are written in Heaven, my dear,” said Magnus. “I am so touched that I laugh and have another drink so that I may not weep.”
    After that he took another walk outside.
    He remembered now why he had told them, on that dark drunken night, that he wanted to go to Moquegua. Magnus had been to that town only once before, and had not stayed long.
    Moquegua meant “quiet place” in Quechua, and that was exactly what the town was, and exactly why Magnus had felt uneasy there. The peaceful cobbled streets, the plaza with its wrought-iron fountain where children played, were not for him.
    Magnus’s life philosophy was to keep moving, and in places like Moquegua he understood why it was necessary to keep moving. If he did not, someone might see him as he really was. Not that he thought he was so very dreadful, but there was still that voice in his head like a warning: Keep in bright constant motion, or the whole illusion will collapse in on itself.
    Magnus remembered lying in the silver sand of the night desert and thinking of quiet places where he did not belong, and how sometimes he believed, as he believed in the passage of time and the joy of living and the absolute merciless unfairness of fate, that there was no quiet place in the world for him, and never would be. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
    Nor was it wise to tempt angels, even of the fallen sort.
    He shook the memory off. Even if that were true, there would always be another adventure.
    You might think that Magnus’s spectacular night of drunken debauchery and countless crimes must be the reason he was banned from Peru, but that is not in fact the case. Amazingly, Magnus was allowed back into Peru. Many years later he went back, this time alone, and he did indeed find another adventure.

1962
    Magnus was strolling through the streets of Cuzco, past the convent of La Merced and down the Calle Mantas, when he heard the man’s voice. The first thing he noticed was how nasal said voice was. The next thing he noticed was that he was speaking English.
    “I don’t care what you say, Kitty. I maintain that we could have gotten a bus to Machu Picchu.”
    “Geoffrey, there are no buses to Machu Picchu from New York.”
    “Well, really,” said Geoffrey after a pause. “If the National Geographic Society is going to put the wretched place in their paper, they might at least have arranged a bus.”
    Magnus was able to spot them then, wending their way through the arches that lined the street once you were past the bell tower. Geoffrey had the nose of a man who never shut up. It was peeling in the hot sun and arid air, and the once-crisp edges of his white trousers were wilting like a