Rupert had brought bodyguards along. They made short work of the gate, and he stalked through the overgrown debris-strewn drive to find a stove-in front door and shattered windows. Disgusting, he thought. What on Earth is she doing here? The only clue he could see was parked just around the corner—his Aston Martin. Obviously the Bond had come here, then Eve had followed him for some reason of her own …
“Sir, I’d recommend that we check the building for squatters before you enter?” one of his guards advised.
Rupert smiled tightly and shook his head. “I’ll be perfectly fine,” he told the man. “You fellows can stand guard outside. I don’t expect I’ll run into any trouble.” At least, not into any kind of trouble that might pose a threat to a High Priest of the Mute Poet. Rings of power dug into the fleshy skin at the base of his fingers, and he wore a ward under his shirt collar. His waistcoat lining was spun from the silk of a venomous spider, embroidered with fell runes and a powerful grid to absorb incoming imprecatory energies. It would take more than merely human malice (or bullets) to wound him.
He’d entered with flashlight in hand, only to find chaos. Tables overturned, paper strewn everywhere, a lingering sickly stench. One of his rings pulsed luminous blue. Poison, he realized, startled, then commanded the ring to decontaminate the entire building. What kind of squatter throws poisonous substances around his own digs? Curious and curiouser.
Of course he’d brought along a copy of the rather odd diagram Eve had printed before she nipped round to visit her brother. Looking at the diagram, it made more sense now. It was a map of sorts, and it started out right here. In fact, now he thought about it, this must be the document Eve had tried to buy at auction. He chuckled quietly. So the lost concordance to the Book of Dead Names had been in her family’s custody all along, but she hadn’t known? Such irony!
It would be interesting to hear what Eve had to say for herself before he dropped the hammer on her.
By the time he made it to the top floor Rupert was breathing stertorously and sweating like a pig. His opinion of Eve’s brother, low to start with, was now at rock bottom. How could anyone stand to live in such a shithole? Obviously he was an even worse wastrel than the reports had indicated, back when he had a PI looking into Eve’s background.
But now Rupert found something promising: a door, wedged ajar where no door should be—a door between two rooms, and it was the source of the occult power he’d felt flowing through the building like effluent from an overflowing sewer. Well then.
Rupert strode forward into the corridor behind the impossible door. He’d read of such interstitial spaces: he knew the hazards. This one was long-term stable—it had to be, anchored as it was by the Starkey family’s magical pact (never call it a curse, for it brought such wonders into the world). Eve had undoubtedly come this way. So in all probability had the Bond.
He had just arrived at a curious sight—a dead hedge maze in a glass-walled penthouse, a roof garden or conservatory of sorts dotted with markers like graveyard headstones—when he heard footsteps. A door at the other side of the conservatory opened and a familiar figure stepped onto the path through the skeletal bushes. He drew himself up. “Miss Starkey!” he called, smiling widely. “Good to see you at last! Have you found the book?”
She gave no sign of hearing him, but as she drew closer he registered that something was not quite right. Her gait was tired and her eyes dull. She wore a coat over a long dress that dragged on the footpath, its hem filthy and soaked in mud or some other noisome liquid.
“Miss Starkey!” he called again, peremptory. “Pay attention!”
Eve finally looked up. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if she was mumbling something. Rupert tensed and readied his rings of power, swollen with mana and charged with the blood of innocents. To confront an oneiromancer in the dream palace of her family, where every room represented an inherited spell, was dangerous even for him, even though his control over her was unassailable.
“Where. Is. It?” he demanded, enunciating each word clearly and distinctly.
“What?” She shook her head and saw him, as if for the first time. “What? Mr. de Montfort Bigge? What are you doing here?”
“It’s been eight hours, Miss Starkey! You’ve been gone from the office since yesterday afternoon. Did you find the book?”
She looked down—not at his feet, as he expected, but at one of the stones protruding from the maze. “Oh yeah, he’s here.” She rested a hand companionably on top of the stone before engaging with him: “Do you know what this is?” she asked.
“Do I care?” he asked, not unironically.
“Life … can be defined as the set of natural processes that copy information into the future. Power comes from the destruction of information, by computational or other means, you know.” She patted the headstone. “Our power—yours, mine—comes from death, doesn’t it? The Book of Dead Names, the so-called Necronomicon. Or the bodies in the sub-subbasement, the altar in the chapel in Castle Skaro.” She shrugged: “They all tap into the same source of energy.” She patted the headstone again, looking thoughtful. “Only the personal cost varies.”
“Where is the book?” Rupert repeated, a hint of steel creeping into
