“That’s not actually the quote. And it doesn’t mean that gods are real, Pouncy. It means you need to go back and check your work, because you screwed it up somewhere.”

“We checked it.”

“Then maybe you should give up,” Julia said.

“But I don’t give up,” Pouncy said. His eyes had a wintry, sleety gray to them that was distinctly un–Abercrombie & Fitch. “And neither do they.” He indicated the others sitting around the table. “And neither do you. Do you, Julia.”

Julia blinked and held his gaze to indicate that she would keep listening, but that she made no promises. Pouncy went on.

“We’re not talking about monotheism. Or at least not in its latter-day form. We’re talking about old-time religion. Paganism, or more precisely polytheism.

“Forget everything you ordinarily associate with religious study. Strip away all the reverence and the awe and the art and the philosophy of it. Treat the subject coldly. Imagine yourself to be a theologist, but a special kind of theologist, one who studies gods the way an entomologist studies insects. Take as your dataset the entirety of world mythology and treat it as a collection of field observations and statistics pertaining to a hypothetical species: the god. Proceed from there.”

Fastidiously at first, with rubber gloves and tweezers and haughty distaste, as if they were handling the intellectual equivalent of medical waste, Pouncy and the others took up the study of comparative religion. Much as Julia had done with magic back in her apartment above the bagel store, they began combing the world’s religious narratives and traditions for practical information. They called it Project Ganymede.

“What the hell were you hoping to find?” Julia said.

“I wanted to learn their techniques. I wanted to be able to do what gods did. I don’t see any real distinction between religion and magic, or for that matter between gods and magicians. I think divine power is just another form of magical praxis. You know what Arthur C. Clarke said about technology and magic, right? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Turn it around. What is advanced magic indistinguishable from? Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from the miraculous.”

“The fire of the gods,” Failstaff rumbled. Jesus, he was a true believer too.

But despite herself—and she took care not to show it—Julia felt her curiosity stirring. She reminded herself that she knew these people well. They were as smart as she was, and they were at least as big intellectual snobs as she was. She probably wasn’t going to come up with a lot of objections that they hadn’t already thought of.