“Are you all right?” she asked in a loud whisper.

When he stood up, his hands were shaking. He deliberately avoided Lucie’s gaze as he caught at the rope. “I told you,” he said. “New boots.”

Lucie began to climb the rope again. James had reached the window: balanced on the lintel, he glanced around and kicked the window in; the whole thing collapsed inward, sash, glass, and all. He vanished inside, followed by Cordelia. Lucie and Matthew climbed in after them.

The flat was dim and filled with a stench as of rotting waste. There was brown wallpaper, smeared with grease. Pictures torn from magazines were stuck to the walls. There was very little light, though Lucie could see a humped old sofa and a stained Turkish rug. A tall bookshelf was lined with shabby-looking tomes; James eyed them curiously.

“I think Ragnor was right,” he said. “There’s a real concentration on the study of dimensional magic here.”

“No stealing the books and bringing them back to the Devil Tavern,” said Matthew. “It would not be the first time your book kleptomania has gotten us in trouble.”

James held his hands up innocently and went to search beneath some of the furniture. Cordelia followed his lead and peeked behind the cheap wooden frame of a small oil painting showing Queen Elizabeth, all scarlet hair and white powder, making a most unpleasant face.

“Look at these.” There was dust in James’s hair, and he was frowning. “I wonder if they’re some kind of weapon?”

He indicated what looked like a heap of broken pieces of wood, scattered over the floor behind the sofa. “They’re awfully dusty,” said Cordelia. “As if no one’s touched them in ages.”

James bent to pick one up, frowning, just as Matthew glanced over. He’d been searching a small, shabby desk covered with loose papers. He held up a messy sketch. “James, look here.”

James squinted. “It’s a box. Surrounded by scrawls.”

“It’s not a box,” Matthew told him helpfully. “It’s a drawing of a box.”

“Thank you, Matthew,” James said dryly. He tilted his head to the side. “There’s something familiar about it.”

“Does it remind you of boxes you have been acquainted with before?” said Matthew. “Look at the scrawls a bit more closely. Don’t they remind you of runes?”

James took the paper from his parabatai. “Yes,” he said, sounding a bit surprised, “very much so—not runes that we use, but still awfully close—”

Cordelia, who had knelt down to look at the shards of wood, said, “These do have runes carved into them—our kind of runes—but they also look as if they’ve been part-eaten by a sort of acid.”

“And look at those scratches on the wood,” said James, joining her. He glanced at Gast’s sketch, and then back at the shards. “It’s as if—”