He shifted to lift her head onto his thigh. He kissed her hair and stroked it. She shivered in his arms a long time, and the room slowly grew darker.

Finally, she began to be quiet. And after another while, as he held her, he heard her breathing grow deep and even.

He leaned down to press a kiss into her hair. He closed his eyes. He wondered if Sir Michael was heading upstairs with a gun.

And what, he wondered, is going to happen now?

14

The long, slow hours brought the night down on all of them. On Sophia as she slept, and Storm as he held her. On Sir Michael, slumped in a chair in the sitting room below. On Bernard, shivering in his coffin. And on the mansion in World’s End, where Harper Albright sat at the draftsman’s table examining an obscure tome. Over Belham and over London, the winter’s day died.

And after a time, Storm lay Sophia tenderly on her pillow and rose. He moved to the window. Looked out into the dark. The rain had passed on, and a mist was rising from the grass of the field, rising and twining around the abbey wall, around the headstones. Storm watched it rise, his own reflection faint upon the pane.

Sir Michael climbed heavily to his feet. Moved, with his head bowed, across the room and out into the corridor. He went down the unlit passage into his study. He shut the door and moved to his desk. Sank into his leather chair. Pulled opened a drawer with one finger.

For a long time, he sat there, looking down at the studded leather box that held the Havana cigars and the sterling lighter, and the loaded .38.

Bernard shivered and moaned. Murmured to himself, half-conscious. Roamed in his mind under blue skies, over green pastures. Wondered distantly if this was death, if he was dying.

And Harper Albright sat and read, sat and read. The fire wasn’t on and the office of Bizarre! grew cold, but she sat and read. Only the lamp clamped to the edge of the table was burning. It glared on the white pages and hurt her eyes, but she sat and read. Ten years ago, she reflected in frustration, ten or eleven years, she had decoded the Gothic runes scratched on a potsherd found near Avesbury. Her rendering—dismissed as occult guesswork by all accepted authorities—had inspired an entire offshoot of Wicca, centered on the incantation to the mother goddess she believed she had uncovered. The work had been slow, painstaking, backbreaking. It had taken her six months to complete the translation. It was nothing, she thought bitterly, on this.