Odessa looked at him. Was he relating it to an orgasm? That was a question she did not want to ask.

Blackwood said, “I need to find and capture the fourth before it can realize its objective. They crave chaos above all, and the ultimate chaos would come from inhabiting a human being of great power and prestige.”

Odessa said, “You want me to help you catch one of those things.”

“It is not a matter of want,” he said. “It is a matter of great necessity. We need to trace back everyone that went in and out of your crime scene in the half hour after your partner was shot.”

Again, he was delicate enough not to make her the active shooter in the sentence.

“Half an hour?” Odessa said. “Why the time limit?”

“The fourth one had already jumped bodies. Its time in the open would have been reduced to that, or less.”

She couldn’t believe that she was even considering this. “I need to know things. If you want my help, I need to know who you are…who all these people are. And how you know these things…”

“All in time.”

“The time is now,” she said.

Blackwood tipped his head slightly to one side. “Yes, of course,” he said, to her surprise. “You need to know everything there is to know about the Hollow Ones. Starting with how these elemental beings were released into this world…”

“And who did it,” said Odessa.

“Oh, that one is easy,” said Blackwood. “I’m afraid it was me.”

Chapter

1582. Mortlake, Greater London.

In the days following the séance inside John Dee’s library, strange occurrences began happening in and around barrister Hugo Blackwood’s home.

The plantings shriveled and died, leaves crumbling like rust, as though all the water in the soil had been turned into bad iron. Holes appeared in the turf as though dug by small animals, except that the soil was piled as though something had dug its way out of the underground, rather than in.

Scratching on the wall. Shrieks in the night, waking him, baying cries from the direction of the Thames. Blackwood had a dream where a shadow on the wall assumed form, dropping down onto the floor of his bedchamber, slithering onto his bed next to him, feeling cold and wet. He woke without breath, falling to the floor until, at once, his throat opened with a great, groaning gasp, and he breathed.