By the time they reached London—her, skinny and hollow-eyed; him, hale and hardy as if the trip hadn’t lasted for months—Olanna of Nri spoke English and George Mathers loved her, but forbade himself from touching her. The members of the Order were waiting for them in London, and they seemed disappointed when they saw Olanna disembark from the Vauxhall. They had imagined, George would say later, a tall, thin woman, more like the ones in photographs from East Africa, with their long necks; they didn’t expect this slight girl with her round head and a face marked by scars. But they treated her with reverence. She seemed astonished at the city, but in no way overwhelmed. I want to see the train that goes under the ground, she told George. And he went with her to ride the Underground, to walk through Hyde Park, to admire Kensington. Olanna was very tired when she reached the Palace, and she was cold; he covered her with his jacket and had the urge to carry her to his father’s house in St. John’s Wood.

Christopher Mathers—George’s father and the leader of the Order at the time—and the cult’s senior members were all waiting in the main hall of the house, on the red sofas under the chandelier. Olanna blinked as she looked at the decorations, and George studied his mother’s rigid demeanor, and the envy in all the women’s eyes and in his younger brother’s. He realized he was not going to be able to save Olanna, and he understood: the Order comes first. They had endured years of frustration, and although their practices had made them rich and powerful, they needed something more. My father always believed that the Order and its rituals aid in maintaining riches, but that one must help them along with inheritance or good business. He’s right. I’ve read Ramon Llull, and he says exactly the same thing about alchemy: to make gold, you must first have gold. You can’t make something from nothing. Riches, in those years, were no longer enough for them. They wanted to evade death, and they thought the Darkness was going to grant them that gift. It’s the same thing we believe now, of course. Christopher Mathers knew that in order to build a faith, an incalculable promise was required.

George’s mother decided to hold the Ceremonial. She was a bitter woman, he wrote, who spent hours in front of the fireplace crying with rage because she had lost her favorite son, her eldest, in that Great War she considered stupid and unnecessary. Her beautiful son who had died in a trench from typhus, and who had gone to that massacre voluntarily, in defiance of her and of the Order. He was the only one in the family, as well, who had the gift. Not a considerable one, but more than the nullity possessed by George and Charles—young, ambitious Charles, who studied eight hours a day and could spend ages explaining the meaning of the Sefirot, but was incapable of the smallest glimmer of natural magic. More than the incapacity of George, who preferred to travel and take notes, but always ended up as the captivated recipient of the magic of others.