Black was seated on a red leather lounge chair with his long legs stretched out and his boots up on an ottoman, a low table at his side bearing a glass of red wine. Overhead, six candles burned in a brass chandelier of intricate design. Black had told the two guards to leave and close the door behind them, and then Matthew waited for Black to take his time in filling a clay pipe with tobacco, fire up a tinderbox, touch flame to the bowl and start puffing out blue clouds that slowly changed shape as they drifted toward Matthew’s face. Matthew thought it was quite ironic that Cardinal Black’s pipe of choice was called a churchwarden for its long curved stem, but he decided against pointing it out.

Matthew had not made a move to sit in any of the other two chairs, nor had Black suggested it. After Black had made the single statement, eyes that seemed to hold centers of scarlet in the long-jawed, pallid face fixed upon Matthew as if regarding another feast. He smoked in silence.

“It interests me,” said Matthew at last, “that you chose to have this presumed discussion in the library. A certain book on your mind, is it?”

“Of course.”

“And what would you do with that book if you had it? It’s not one for bedtime reading.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Black, with a thin little smile.

“I’ve looked through a copy. Several copies, in fact. One in New York, one on Fell’s island and the one you wanted in the village.”

“You must know that Fell has bought up every copy in existence. At least, I’ve been unable to secure one … and you can be sure I have shaken the trees.”

“Unfortunate that one didn’t tumble down and knock your brains out,” said Matthew. He walked past Black to the hearth to warm himself. Any fireplace implements here, poker or tongs? No … likely recently removed just for this meeting. He held his hands out before the fire. His bravado toward Black was both a shield and a valve to relieve pressure, for standing here he could put himself back in an instant among the dead Broodies, their faces eyeless, their eyeballs having been plucked out and put into an empty White Velvet bottle down in the warehouse’s cellar, their throats slashed and upon their foreheads the bloody Devil’s Cross courtesy of the monster who sat across the room from him, smoking a churchwarden pipe and puffing small exclamations of smoke like the scrawls of a secret language.

“The reason you interest me,” Black went on after a short pause in which Matthew heard the wind shrilling and whining beyond the glass, “is that you are here. I can understand Devane being sent by Fell to get the book … but sending you? Whatever was he thinking?”

“That I could get the book back, I suppose.”