Still breathless, Harper moved slowly away from the crypt. Scanning the ruined headstones, the changing shadows, peering eagerly through the mist, which gathered and thickened and dispersed again with each fresh rising of the wind. The lights of the Grange seemed far away behind her. The lights of a town shone distant in the hills. Here, the tendrils and sheets of fog closed and curled around her with their own strange glow and their own strange darkness. Harper moved through them cautiously, edged cautiously around the slanting stones. Scanning the churchyard, peering through the fog.

She flinched as the moisture gathered on her glasses. Made a sound of exasperation. Looked through. There was no sign of him. Which frightened her. Because she could feel him there, watching her, watching her as she moved uncertainly among the graves.

And yet, except for the wind and the chatter of dead leaves against the stones, the place was still. So still, as she stepped closer and closer to the louring wall. So still she almost convinced herself that her sense of Iago’s presence was imaginary. That he was there only within her mind, lodged there as he had been for ages, impossible to discover wholly, impossible to dispel.

A broken stele on the ground. She stepped over it. The moon went in behind a cloud, and the mist grew heavy and gray. The shadow of the chapel wall upon the earth faded into other shadows, which rushed and clustered to it like living things.

Harper moved closer to the wall, and closer. The wind whispered round her. She bent forward slightly, peering round the edge. There, too, the field seemed still and empty.

She straightened. She turned around. The wind rose with a hollow sigh. The clouds blew on.

The moonlight stabbed down into the earth and there stood Iago.

Harper let out a cry of surprise. He was standing a foot from her, towering over her. The smoky depths of his eyes had captured the silver light and gleamed with it, swirled with it. His grin showed gray in the swirling darkness.

She only had time to clutch the dragon’s head tighter, to lift the end of the stick from the ground.

Then he pulled one green-gloved hand up across himself as if to slap her down. She jerked her head back instinctively, waiting for the blow.

But he held his hand there, there it hung. And slowly, grinning, with the flourish of a conjurer, he lifted his other hand to it. He tugged at the fingers of his glove. Quickly, gracefully, he slipped the glove off.

Even as the clouds closed upon the moon again, Harper had light enough to see his naked hand. To see the thin, pulsing line of gangrenous decay that ran down from the base of his knuckles to his wrist.

She stared at it, fascinated. She was startled to hear his voice.