“We don’t need to go to Greece,” Julia said. “We don’t need to go anywhere. All this stuff has to be connected at the roots. Everybody came through Provence: the Celts were here, the Romans, the Basques. The Buddhists sent missionaries. The Egyptians had colonies, and so did the Greeks, Pouncy, if you absolutely need the Greeks to get you hard. They even had Jews. Sure, it all got covered over with Christianity, but the mythology goes all the way down. If we can’t find a god in all that, there are no gods to be found.”

“So what are you saying?” Pouncy regarded her skeptically, not pleased by her display of disloyalty. “We should drop all the world religion stuff and just do local folk and myth?”

“That’s what I’m saying. That’s where our sources are. Let’s bear down on those and see what they get us.”

Pouncy pursed his lips, considering. Everyone looked at him.

“All right.” He threw up his hands. “All right! Fine. Let’s do a month just on Provençal stuff and see what it gets us.” He glared around the table. “But no more dicking around with leprechauns. Take us up the food chain, Asmo. I want to know who runs this area. Find out who all these small players are afraid of and then get that guy’s number. That’s who we want to talk to.”

Asmodeus heaved a sigh. She looked years older than she had in June.

“I’ll try,” she said. “I really will, Pouncy. But you don’t know what you’re asking.”

You’d never hear Pouncy cop to it, but Julia turned out to be right. When they narrowed their focus to the local mythology only, Project Ganymede began to get traction. Once they started looking at just one corner of the puzzle—and stuck all the rest of the pieces back in the box—everything started to fit together.

Poring through Gregory of Tours and other, nameless medieval chroniclers, Julia began to get a feel for the local magic. Like wine, Provençal magic had its own distinctive terroir. It was rich and chaotic and romantic. It was a night-magic, confabulated out of moons and silver, wine and blood, knights and fairies, wind and rivers and forests. It concerned itself with good and evil but also with the vast intermediate realm in between, the realm of mischief.