“I’ll be damned,” Storm said softly. “So what you’re saying, you think maybe Sophia was trying to throw me off the trail? But why would she do that?” And then he answered his own question at once: “Because maybe ‘Black Annie’ and the painting and ‘The Alchemist’s Castle’ are all somehow related to the ghost out at Sophia’s house. And maybe that’s why Sophia dropped her glass when I read the story.”

“Ah,” said Harper.

“All of which is supposed to have something to do with this cult guy, this Saint Iago.”

“I must say your grasp of the implications is admirable.”

“My grasp of the … Hey, listen, I love it when you talk like that,” said Storm with a forlorn laugh. “Only what I’m grasping here is that you think Sophia’s in trouble with a dead cult leader who may never have existed and somebody in a cowl going tick-tick who’s over two hundred years old.”

“Well, it’s a ghost you were after,” Harper Albright said grimly. “It was a ghost you came here to find.” And now she did turn, she did face him. Left the thug on the corner to fend for himself, left her fear and excitement in abeyance, and faced him squarely.

Storm had dropped back against his seat, had stopped nursing his arm. He had started to spread his hands in a comical gesture of confusion. But when their eyes met, when he saw what Harper was thinking, his hands sank down again, and he dropped the comedy.

“Hey,” he said.

“You’re dying, aren’t you, young Richard?” asked Harper Albright.

She felt her spirit grow heavy, felt it fall heavily inside her, as the air rushed out of him, as his hands came to rest on the tabletop and he sagged towards them. “Yeah, pilgrim, yeah,” he told her. “It sure looks thataway.”

Harper had left her dragon stick leaning in a corner by the fireplace. So she had to hold on to the back of a nearby chair. The old, weary weight of pity again. She had felt it often in her life.

“And this is, I presume, a certainty?” she asked gruffly.

“Yup.” Storm winked at her. “It’s that old devil brain. Being eaten away apparently. Listen, in my business, it isn’t even a liability.”

“There’s nothing they can do.”