But she had to admit, she felt it too. The only word she could think of to describe this magic was grave. There was nothing light or playful about it: it was dead fucking sober magic. Serious as a heart attack. Where was the line between a spell and a miracle? Turning moonlight into silver coins wasn’t exactly parting the Red Sea, but the effortlessness with which it was accomplished spoke of much larger possibilities. It was a minor effect running off an enormous power source.

The next morning Asmodeus was at breakfast. Real breakfast, not her usual lunch-breakfast. She was practically vibrating with excitement. She refused any food.

“I found him,” she said, with finality.

“Who?” Julia said. It was a little early for Asmodeus in her maximum-intensity mode. “Whom did you find?”

“The hermit. The tarasque’s holy man. He’s a saint. Or not a saint, exactly, not in the strictly Christian sense. But he calls himself one.”

“Explain,” Pouncy said around a hunk of the almost penitentially coarse bread they’d been eating.

“Well,” and here Asmodeus shook off her manic fatigue for a minute and entered her business mode, “as close as I can figure out, this guy is about two thousand years old. Right? He calls himself Amadour—says he used to be a saint, but they defrocked him.

“I found him living in a cave. Red hair, beard down to here. Says he serves the goddess, the old one, the one we’re always hearing about. He wouldn’t name her, but it has to be her. Our Lady, O.L.U. For a while he passed as a Christian saint, he told me, saying he worshipped the Virgin Mary, but eventually he got outed as a pagan and they tried to crucify him. He’s been living in a cave ever since.

“And at first I was all, sure, buddy, saint or crazy homeless guy, it’s a fine line. But he showed me things. Weird things, guys, things we don’t know how to do. He can shape rock with his hands. He heals animals. He knew things about me, things nobody knows. He—he healed a scar I have. Had. He made it go away.”

Her voice faltered. Julia had never seen Asmodeus look so serious. She glared at them, angry that she’d let a secret slip. Julia had never seen Asmodeus’s scar. She wondered if she meant a physical one or something else.

“Can you take us to him?” Pouncy’s voice was gentle. He seemed to sense how close to the edge she was.

She shook her head quickly, trying to recover herself and not succeeding.

“You only see him once,” she said. “You could go find him yourself, maybe, but I can’t tell you where the cave was. I mean, I remember, but I can’t tell you. Literally—I tried just now.” She shrugged helplessly. “Nothing comes out.”