“It has to think. It has to pray. God will tell it what to do.” Smyler revealed the hand that he had kept hidden since he entered the gray space. It looked no different from the other, until first his fingertips began to glow, then the fingers themselves, then his palm too, until I could see his bones through the skin as though they were made of blazing phosphorus. His hand was so bright it was hard to look directly at it.

“What . . . ?” I blinked. If I could have raised my hands in front of my eyes I would have, but I was still helpless below the neck. “What are you doing?”

“Hand of Glory. Kephas gave it the Hand. To do God’s work.” Smyler swiped the glow at the gray nothing that surrounded us. The nothingness tore, leaving a ragged, smoldering edge and more nothingness beyond. Then Smyler climbed through the hole.

“Wait!” I cried. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me . . . !”

But it was no use. He was gone. The gleaming wound healed over in an instant and vanished. The gray was empty once more and I was alone.

thirty-five

hounds

WHEN THE gray finally dissolved, I found myself back in the conference room. There weren’t any donuts this time, just the moldy ruin of the box in the middle of the table where it might have sat for years. The coffeepot lay on its side, shrouded in cobwebs and covered with a thick film of dust. The table and carpet were filthy with dust, too. It was a bluff, I felt sure. Well, fairly sure.

Eligor had changed his outfit. Instead of his Count Richelieu drag, he’d opted for something a bit more like a male Victoria’s Secret model, if you can imagine such a thing: blue jeans, bare chest and bare feet, and beautiful, spreading white wings.

“I was an angel once, remember,” he said when he saw my expression. He was still wearing the Vald face. “And a bit higher up the ladder than you are.”

“Yeah, but I heard you got downsized.”

For a moment I saw a little of the white-hot anger beneath his achingly handsome, golden-haired disguise; a ripple through his entire being as though a stone had dropped into a pond. “I fell.”

He’s not hurting you at the moment, Bobby, I reminded myself. So why don’t you shut the fuck up and stop making him angry?

I stayed silent while he stared at me. He stared for a long time, as though I’d grown several new and interesting features since our last meeting. At last he extended his hand and an instant later Doctor Teddy was standing beside him, no taller than Eligor’s waist and cute as a wind-up abortion doll.

“I have a proposition for you, Doloriel,” said the grand duke.

“I’m listening.”