“I think he’s in trouble,” she said.

Toys smiled. “Oh, honey, he’s always in trouble. That man could get into trouble alone in an empty room.”

But Junie shook her head, and her ashen skin went paler still.

“No … I mean in real trouble. I mean … I’m not talking him being in physical danger. He lives for that stuff. No, Toys, I think Joe is in real trouble.”

As she said that, her fingers brushed her forehead and then fell down to touch the spot on her chest over her heart.

CHAPTER 12

NOWHERE

He sat in near-total darkness. A single votive candle burned, and it cast a circle of pale, trembling light. None of that light touched the man who sat cross-legged on the floor. He was naked, his pale body veined with twisted lines of black and red, as if every part of him was rife with disease, and those diseases warred within him. That was unseen—always—by any eyes but his own and the few unfortunate women who made the mistake of falling for his smile and his charm. Women whose bodies were seldom recovered, and never whole.

The room was quiet except for the faint buzz of insect wings. Flies crawled across the floor and around the rim of the hammered copper bowl. One snuck down into the bowl and lapped at the stinking red liquid. It had been left to rot in this room, and that excited the flies. They, like the man, found the smell to be quite exquisitely exciting.

The man picked up a box of Lucifer matches and struck one, enjoying the flare of heat. He was always cold. Always.

He let the match burn for a moment, then picked up the photograph and studied it.

It was a picture of a man printed from surveillance camera footage. Good quality, though a bit blurred since the man was in motion. A tall, powerful, fierce man with pale eyes and paler hair.

He did not hate this man. He only hated one person on earth, but that one was beyond the reach of a ceremony like this. No, he rather loved this blond man with the icy blue killer’s eyes. A man like this was a child of chaos, and every child of chaos was the conjurer’s brother. He loved them all.

The light of the match brightened the room, allowing the yellow glow to reach as far as the clothes and jewelry and skin he had removed.

Then he touched the flame to the corner of the photograph and watched as the golden fingers reached up the face, blackening the paper, charring the grim countenance of the killer. When only the small corner he held was unburnt, he dropped it into the bowl of putrefying blood and strands of hair.

It flashed and flared and burned with such lovely colors. Green and brown in all their baser shades.