‘‘I’ll be damned,’’ I said a few minutes later as I looked at the card Aisling had given me. One side of it had her address in London, and on the back, she’d written the location of Kostya’s lair.

It was the same address the blackmailer had given me.

An hour and a half later I slipped out of the back door of Gabriel’s house, casting an eye upward to the window of the room Cyrene had claimed. A faint light flickered through a gap in the curtains, indicating Cyrene was happily tucked into bed, yakking on the phone to one or another local naiad while she watched late-night TV. I hadn’t told her my plans lest she wish to accompany me . . . and where I was going, she definitely couldn’t follow.

Why was the blackmailer trying to steal something from a dragon? No wonder he didn’t want to tell me whom I was supposed to steal from—no one in their right mind would ever try to get something out of a dragon’s lair.

‘‘More intriguingly, who is he working for?’’ I murmured aloud to myself. ‘‘And does this have anything to do with that phylactery Gabriel wants?’’

‘‘What’s that?’’

I came to myself with a start as the taxi driver pulled up outside a dark and rather grimy warehouse. ‘‘Sorry, just talking to myself. Is this it?’’

‘‘It is. That’ll be five pounds.’’

I paid the man, hesitating for a moment as I glanced at the warehouse. I wasn’t normally a fearful person, but I had to admit there was something about the hulking black building that left me feeling a bit twitchy. ‘‘I don’t suppose you’d like to wait for me?’’

‘‘Here?’’ He shoved my change in my hands. ‘‘Not for five times that. Good luck.’’

He sped off into the darkness without even a backward glance. ‘‘Talk about your foreshadowing,’’ I muttered as I slipped into the shadows.

The lock on the door to the warehouse posed no problem to me. I smiled as I laid my fingers across the front, gently urging the tumblers within it to turn until the lock obligingly clicked open. I’ve never been sure why, exactly, doppelgangers had the inherent ability to open locks, but it was such a useful talent, I figured it was best not to question it. As the door opened, I shadowed and made my way cautiously into the lower level of the empty warehouse. A small amount of dim light from the buildings on either side filtered through the high, grimy windows, giving me enough light to make out a couple of large boxes in an otherwise empty room.

‘‘Kostya lives in an abandoned building near Greenwich,’’ Aisling had told me earlier in the day, when Gabriel and Drake were off looking for the two missing bodyguards.