Storm opened his hands, opened his mouth. He found himself utterly at a loss for words. His heart was racing. His mind was racing. Was Sir Michael making some kind of mistake? Or did he know why Storm was here and mean exactly what he said? Storm didn’t know where to begin to answer him.

“Lookit …”

Hurried footsteps in the corridor stopped him, stopped them both. Sophia came back in. Pale, her lips working, she moved at once to Storm’s chair, put her hands firmly on his shoulders. Even in his confusion, he heard the pitiful urgency in her voice.

“Come on, Richard,” she said quickly. “While the coffee’s brewing. I’ll show you around the place before it rains.”

“Sophia …” he said.

“Come on!”

5

The open-air market on the Edgware Road was in full swing. Harper Albright threaded slowly through the crowd. The pavements were still wet with rain but the London skies were clearer. The people were out in force, filling the spaces between stalls and bazaars, paging through racks of tie-dyed and heavy-metal T-shirts, milling past open boxes of vegetables, tables of pottery, jewelery, antiques, junk. Loud, tuneless music blasted from speakers under the canvas that covered some of the stalls. The shouts of hawkers blasted back from their uncovered stands. “Cabbages! Lettuce! Tomatoes five a quid!” The tide of the crowd came on against her, but Harper pressed into it steadily. Her shoulders hunched, her stick jabbing at the concrete, her head uplifted grumpily and her quick eyes peering out from under her hatbrim, taking in the scene.

She took in everything. A young man pierced and bedizened at the ears and nose and eyebrows. A young woman holding a baby under one arm, examining a Grateful Dead shirt with the other. A John Bull toby mug on a table. A Chelsea football strip fluttering from a hook in the wind …

She took in everything. But what exactly she was looking for, she did not know. She didn’t even know exactly why she had come. She supposed it was enough at this point that a nagging instinct summoned her. She supposed it had to be enough; it was all there was.

And Bernard was out there—still alive. Captive, but still alive, she was certain of it. She could feel that much, she could feel him living. Feel it in the termites of anxiety gnawing steadily at her innards. Iago had no reason to kill the lad yet. Not yet. It wasn’t his life he wanted. He wanted his blood. An endless supply of it. And for that, he would need to win over the factotum’s will. He would have to poison his mind, gain his complicity. In other words, he would have to steal his soul.

And that would take some time. Bernard’s soul was strong. It would take some time, but it would not take forever. She had to find him—soon.