She and Jorge stepped away to murmur together. Storm approached the book, stood over it. Gripped the lectern by its edges like a preacher. Bowed his head over the open page. He traced the illegible script through the darkness, made out that it was in some foreign language. Found the translation printed more neatly beside it. And read:

Anna had lain in the moldering family vault this long year past, and her bereaved husband Conrad would not be consoled …

2

There was a man standing on the corner outside The Sign of the Crane, and Harper didn’t like the look of him one bit. Big he was, and hunch-shouldered. With piggy eyes under a brutally cut forelock of tawny hair. Plus he had a scar on one side of his mouth that gave him a permanent sneer. He hung back, out of the glare of the streetlight. Nursed his cigarette in his cupped hand to hide the glow. It was almost nine-thirty now, so he’d been standing there like that for more than twenty minutes. Ever since Harper and Storm had entered the pub, in fact.

Harper remained at the window, eyed him. Gnawed on her pipestem. Stroked the jaw of the meerschaum skull with her tobacco-blackened thumb. She would not have thought so jaded, so scarred a heart as hers still capable of such flutterings, such mixed emotions. But there they were. Fear. Weariness: she felt much older than she was. And excitement too. She had to confess it. Adrenaline tuning her nerves, making her pulse tympanic. Was it possible, after all the blind alleyways, after a quarter-century of faint clues and faded trails—could it really be possible that the hunt was finally beginning in earnest, that she had smoked her adversary out at last?

If so, then Bernard was right—it was Storm who somehow had made it happen. His coming here. Reading that ghost story. Somehow that was what set the whole thing into motion. And this also was a burden to her, a weight of dread and sadness.

She adjusted her vision. The man outside on the streetcorner blurred. Storm, his image reflected on the window, came into focus.