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from a blog that documented supernatural phenomena. Those who’d witnessed it burning said they had heard terrible screaming, eerie roars, and manic howling from inside the house as the fire raged. But it was an abandoned home—no one was supposed to be living there—and after the fire had consumed everything, the police had found no human remains, no proof that anyone had even been in the house when it burned.
    The fire had been written off as an accident—the electric company had forgotten to turn off the power and a utility cable had sparked during a blackout. That was all.
    Maybe the police were right. Maybe nothing had happened here. Maybe there was nothing to see, nothing here that would lead them to the hounds.
    But Blisskept staring at the door that was still standing, that hadn’t burned. It was impossible that an entire house could burn down leaving just the one door. She could imagine it only if there had been some sort of spell, some kind of protection over the house that the fire had managed to extinguish, but only in part.
    She shone her flashlight on the scarred face of the door, and up close she could see faint traces of writing on the burned wood. Runes of some kind, perhaps. Across the dark lot Jane sneezed from the dust. “Hamlet’s ghost,” she muttered, blowing her nose.
    An accident, the official reports had concluded. Maybe the whole incident had been just a hoax. That was another possibility. There was no way to know for sure. No way to know, unless …
    Bliss kept her light fixed on the door, slowly sweeping it down to the ground. She pushed some splintered wood off to the side with the edge of her sneaker.
    There. She saw something.
    She moved closer and shone her light directly on it, her heart beating in excitement at the heady rush of discovery.
    “Aunt Jane!” she called. “Here!”
    In the middle of the burned wood, half-buried in the ashes, was a black pebble that shone as bright as a glittering diamond. Bliss knew what it was immediately. The Heart of Stone—it was a remnant of the Black Fire of Hell.
    Bliss clickedoff her flashlight with some satisfaction. They were right. The hounds had been here.

E IGHT
     
    T he former firechief lived in a tidy house in a pleasant suburb, and as Bliss walked up the driveway she was struck by a feeling of homesickness so deep that she had to stop and catch her breath for a moment. The house was just an ordinary one-story home, a little cottage with pretty Christmas lights. She had grown up in a sprawling, elegant mansion in Houston and then a three-story penthouse in New York, but after traveling and then going on the road, she found something appealing about a home that was so orderly and neatly kept.
Home. Where is home now?
Bliss did not belong anywhere. She no longer had a home.
    “It’s all right,” Jane said, squeezing her forearm. Her aunt always seemed to know what Bliss was thinking.
    Bliss sighed as she rang the doorbell, steeling herself for what lay ahead. “He knows we’re coming, right?” she asked.
    “Ispoke to him just this morning,” Jane said. “He didn’t seem to want to meet with us, but I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”
    Bliss smiled. She knew that without Jane she would have given up long before. As she rang the doorbell again, Bliss wondered what would happen if she did end up finding the hounds. Would they even give her a chance to speak? Would she have to strike a bargain of her own? Why had her mother sent her to them? And how would she ever get them to join their cause?
    “Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand,” Jane murmured.
    Bliss frowned. “Shakespeare?”
    “No, just something I read on the Internet the other day.” Her aunt laughed. “A reminder to remain vigilant against our enemies.”
    Finally, a friendly older woman in a white apron opened the door. “So sorry—we were out back and didn’t hear the bell. Come on in.”
    The former chief of the fire department had