“I just like to blame him for things,” Matthew said a bit sheepishly.

“None of this makes any sense anyway,” said Cordelia. “If someone murdered Basil Pounceby for revenge, or love, or any such thing like that, why would they also murder Amos Gladstone? And we would be foolish to assume the deaths are not connected.”

“I believe they are connected,” James said. He looked tightly drawn; he seemed to be steeling himself, as if to deliver bad news. “I had a dream last night,” he added abruptly. “A ghastly awful dream that felt so real—”

“Real like—like traveling into the shadow realm?” Lucie looked alarmed. Matthew and the others were exchanging worried glances as well.

“Not at all like falling into shadow,” James said. “I was very much here, in London. I saw the murder.”

“You saw it?” echoed Matthew. “What do you mean?”

“It was a dream, but not at all like an ordinary dream,” said James. “I was there—I felt the cold of the air, the cobblestones under my feet. I recognized Threadneedle Street. I saw a knife—I saw a body falling—and I saw hands. Hands covered in blood. They were—human hands.”

“The murderer’s hands?” Thomas said.

“I don’t know,” James said, “but I felt such hate, hate like I’ve only felt before in Belial’s realm. It did not seem like a human hate.”

“Who was it that you hated?” Cordelia whispered. “In the dream?”

His eyes fixed on hers. His voice was a whisper. “Everyone.”

“So you witnessed the murder in your sleep,” Lucie said, worry etched on her face. “But here, in London, not in the shadow realm, or through it. If you understand what I mean.”

“Not the shadow realm,” agreed James. “This was London, not some blasted landscape of hellish death and destruction.”

“Unless you are talking about Piccadilly Circus when the traffic’s bad,” said Matthew.

“I am going to ignore that comment,” said James, “as it is not helpful. All I can say is that I do not believe Pounceby was killed by a demon—or by a jealous husband, or a vampire, or a vampire’s jealous husband. I cannot say, but what I do believe is that the same entity that killed Amos Gladstone killed Pounceby, too.”

“Did you dream about that as well?” Cordelia asked. “But that was only a night or so before last, wasn’t it?”

“I had what I assumed was a nightmare,” said James. “Nothing like as clear and detailed as the dream I had last night. But I recall a suffocating sense of horror. It simply didn’t occur to me that there was any connection to what happened to Gladstone—not until I dreamed of Pounceby’s death last night.”