“It’s worse,” I said. “But I can’t think of any other precautions to take yet.”

“What would have happened if I’d touched it?”

“The Fallen inside the coin would have invaded your consciousness,” I said. “It would offer you power. Temptation. Once you gave in enough, it would own you.”

“I’ve resisted temptation before, Harry.”

“Not like this.” I turned a frank gaze to him. “It’s a Fallen angel, man. Thousands and thousands of years old. It knows how people think. It knows how to exploit them.”

His voice sharpened a little. “I come from a family where everyone’s an incubus or a succubus. I think I know a little something about temptation.”

“Then you should know how they’d get you.” I lowered my voice and said gently, “It could give Justine back to you, Thomas. Let you touch her again.”

He stared at me for a second, a flicker of wild longing somewhere far back in his eyes. Then he turned his head slowly back to the road, his expression slipping into a neutral mask. “Oh,” he said quietly. After a moment he said, “We should probably get rid of the thing.”

“We will,” I said. “The Church has been up against the Denarians for a couple of thousand years. There are measures they can take.”

Thomas glanced down at the ashtray for a second, then dragged his eyes away and glowered at the dented hood of his Hummer. “They couldn’t have shown up six months ago. When I was driving a Buick.”

I snorted. “As long as you’ve got your priorities in order.”

“I just met them, but already I hate these guys,” Thomas said. “But why are they here? Why now?”

“Offhand? I’d say that they were out to wax Marcone and prove to the other members of the Accords that vanilla mortals have no place among us weirdos—I mean, superhumans.”

“They’re members of the Accords?”

“I’d have to look it up,” I said. “I doubt they’re signed on as the ‘Order of Demon-possessed Psychotics.’ But from the way Mantis Girl was talking, yeah.”

Thomas shook his head. “So what do they get out of it? What does taking Marcone prove?”

I shrugged. I had already asked myself the same questions and hadn’t been able to come up with any answers. “No clue,” I said. “But they’ve got what it takes to have torn that building apart, and to get around or go through the kind of muscle Marcone keeps around him.”

“And what the hell are the Faerie Queens doing getting involved?” Thomas asked.

I shrugged again. I’d already asked myself that, too. I hate it when I have to answer my own questions like that.

We went the rest of the way to Michael’s place in grey-and-white silence.

His street was on one of the routes being kept plowed, and we had no trouble rolling right up into his driveway. Michael himself was there with his two tallest sons, each of them wielding a snow shovel as they labored to clear the driveway and the sidewalk and the porch of the ongoing snow.