“Mr. Singing-Chutney.”

“Mr. Stinky-Cheesecake.”

There is a phrase sometimes used about people who are very angry: “he was incandescent with rage.” An incandescent light, as I’m sure you know, is one with a filament that glows white hot when heated. It does not, of course, mean that someone really glows white hot when annoyed, or it didn’t until Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley came along. As they watched, Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley’s eyes turned bright red, and then changed from red to burning white before bursting into flames. He opened his mouth, and smoke and fire jetted from between his lips. His whole body shook as smoke poured from his sleeves, and the ends of his trousers, and the neck of his shirt.

“It’s—” he roared, but he got no further. His suit ignited and his body exploded, but there was no blood or flesh, only bits of plastic. Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley was simply a showroom dummy in a cheap suit brought to life, and now that existence was at an end. His head, which had soared high into the air with the force of the blast, landed with a thud and rolled across the nearly unseen floor, where Angry stopped it with his foot.

The white light was fading from Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley’s eyes, and his skin was assuming the hardness of plastic. The dark force that had animated him was leaving, but there was a little wretched life left in him yet.

“It’s—” he began again, but Mumbles interrupted him.

“Sinjin-Chumley,” Mumbles said, pronouncing it perfectly.

“We knew all along,” said Angry. “Serves you right for being unpleasant.”

Mr. St. John-Cholmondeley found the strength to make his eyes glow an angry orange one last time before the light vanished from them and all that remained was a plastic head. Two thin streams of pure darkness poured from his ears and flowed beneath the walls of Santa’s Grotto, and that darkness seemed to be mirrored above their heads. More stars were snuffed out, swallowed by swirling clouds like thick black ink. Eyeless faces appeared in the void, but their very blindness made them more threatening. Long grasping fingers stretched out toward the Earth, and black tongues licked at lipless mouths, as though already tasting the planet’s light and life before consuming it. But the barrier between the Shadows and the universe held, for now. The Shadows flattened themselves against it, but they could not penetrate. It would not hold for much longer, though. Already cracks were visible, shining red like streams of lava.

Nurd appeared at Samuel’s right hand.

“All of this because of us,” said Nurd, and he sounded both amazed and terribly, terribly sad. “She will sacrifice whole universes to the Shadows in order to avenge herself.”

“What if we just offered ourselves to her?” said Samuel softly, and if Nurd had been astonished by the lengths to which Mrs. Abernathy was prepared to go to have her revenge, he was more astonished still at the boy’s words, and he felt honored that he could call such a person his friend. Billions of years in age separated them. One was human, the other demon. Yet in all his long life, Nurd had never felt closer to another being than he did to Samuel. The Multiverse had brought them together, and they had both been changed utterly by the meeting. Samuel had crossed dimensions, and now understood something of the true nature of existence. He had confronted the greatest of evils, but he had also been saved by a demon.