And she had to find him on her own.

She had seen the look on the inspector’s face. She had seen that look before in her dealings with the police. She had seen even worse looks than that sometimes; she knew Iago had his minions on the force. She could not trust the police to help her. She could not trust anyone. She had no clue to go on, no direction to follow, no spot to search in the wide world that seemed more likely to her than any other. Her enemies were legion, and she was only three. She had nowhere to turn, no one to turn to.

The time had come for her to catch the current of the Uncanny.

That was why she was here, really, she supposed. Shopping in the open market for inspiration. Peering down the aisles between the clothing racks. Running her eyes over the heads of lettuce. Watching the faces of the shoppers, the bopping rhythms of their youthful strides. She was seeking for coincidence, the pawprint of her adversary.

A little place off the Edgware Road. That’s what Iago had said to her. On the wad to Damascus, he’d said. That was where he had had his own inspiration twenty years ago. Whatever had happened then, somewhere near here, it had started him down the trail of stories. From “Black Annie” to the Belham Chronicle. Everything that had followed radiated from that one instant. Ann Endering’s suicide. The hunt for the Rhinehart triptych. Even, perhaps, Richard Storm’s arrival. From Iago’s instant of revelation off the Edgware Road had come everything that had led them to this hour.

So she pushed through the crowds in the Edgware market. Her eyes moving. The anxiety gnawing away. Searching, she supposed, for the mystic spark that would put her inside Iago’s mind. That would lead her to Bernard.

Her chance of making such a connection, in ordinary terms, was almost nil. And in one sense, ordinary terms were all she had. There is no life but life, she knew. There is no world but this one. If the Uncanny operates at all, it does not operate above the laws of nature but through them. The unseen moves forever in the manifest, the spirit speaks in the language of material; the soul lives in the interplay of neurons; and God, if He is anywhere, is in the details. Even coincidence—the spoor she was seeking—could be shown to exist within the rules of probability. But it did exist, the hidden tides and patterns of it. The trick was to find them when you needed them most.

And the trick to that—as always—was to believe nothing. To believe nothing lest the pattern of your beliefs be imposed upon the pattern of events. To believe nothing, and keep your eyes open. In wise passivity, to strive, to seek … and not to yield …