There are more books in here than I’ve ever seen before outside a public library or a bookstore. Fat, leather-bound volumes fill the shelves from one end to another. The shelves themselves cover the walls, floor to ceiling, with library ladders on rails to reach the higher ones. The only breaks are the door through which we’ve entered and two bay windows that look out on to the garden at the rear of the house. An immense desk stands in one half of the room. Two fat club chairs share a marble-based reading lamp and side table in the other half. The floor’s polished wood, the ceiling’s high, and my nostrils fill with the pleasant, if slightly musty, smell of old books.

After a quick view of the room, I turn back to the door, expecting Raven to be following us in. Chloë touches my arm and directs my attention to one of the two bay windows. I blink when I see the vast bulk of a man standing in front of it, then realize that Raven has the gift of so many cousins: that trick of not being noticed until you want to be. I’m good at it, but not this good. I’d looked right at the window and hadn’t noticed a thing, which, given his presence now that I do see him, impresses me even more.

Raven’s the biggest and blackest man I’d ever seen. He’s tall and rounded like an enormous Buddha, bald and dressed in a simple dark suit, with a gaze so dark and bottomless it makes Chloe’s midnight eyes appear like pale twilight.

He places his broad right hand over his heart and offers me a nod of welcome that’s almost imperceptible in its movement.

“Wisskatjon,” he says. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, though I do wish it were under better circumstances.”

I start at the use of my true name and almost say You know of me?, but then I realize, of course, he would. I’d married his goddaughter. Everybody knew that, it seems, except for Odawa and me.

“People just call me Grey,” I say.

He nods. “And I prefer Lucius. Come. Sit down. You have a story to tell me.”

He crosses the room to shake my hand, then directs me to one of the club chairs. I wait until he sits down—holding my breath to see if the chair can actually take his weight—before I take the other chair. Chloë leans against the front of the desk, facing us, her arms folded.

“I don’t think we have time for stories right now,” I say. “Or at least, not long ones. Not if we want to stop a war.”

“Then keep it short,” he says.