It happens fast. They have been after Callahan for a long time now, but they waste little time gloating. The doors slam shut behind them, much too loudly and hard enough to shiver in their frames. Executive assistants who drag down eighteen thousand a year to start with close doors a certain way— with respect for money and power— and this isn’t it. This is the way angry drunks and addicts on the jones close doors. Also crazy people, of course. Crazy people are ace doorslammers.

Callahan’s alarm systems are fully engaged now, not pinging buthowling, and when he looks around the executive conference room, dominated at the far end by a large window giving a terrific view of Lake Michigan, he sees there’s good reason for this and has time to think Dear Christ—Mary, mother of God—how could I have been so foolish? He can see thirteen people in the room. Three are low men, and this is his first good look at their heavy, unhealthy-looking faces, red-glinting eyes, and full, womanish lips. All three are smoking. Nine are Type Three vampires. The thirteenth person in the conference room is wearing a loud shirt and clashing tie, low-men attire for certain, but his face has a lean and foxy look, full of intelligence and dark humor. On his brow is a red circle of blood that seems neither to ooze nor to clot.

There is a bitter crackling sound. Callahan wheels and sees Al and Ward drop to the floor. Standing to either side of the door through which they entered are numbers fourteen and fifteen, a low man and a low woman, both of them holding electrical stunners.

“Your friends will be all right, Father Callahan.”

He whirls around again. It’s the man with the blood-spot on his forehead. He looks about sixty, but it’s hard to tell. He’s wearing a garish yellow shirt and a red tie. When his thin lips part in a smile, they reveal teeth that come to points.It’s Sayre, Callahan thinks. Sayre, or whoever signed that letter. Whoever thought this little sting up.

“You, however, won’t,” he continues.

The low men look at him with a kind of dull avidity: here he is, finally, their lost pooch with the burned paw and the scarred forehead. The vampires are more interested. They almost thrum within their blue auras. And all at once Callahan can hear the chimes. They’re faint, somehow damped down, but they’re there. Calling him.