Cian sat in his room at Zeph’s house. He had an unlit cigarette between his teeth. He’d chewed it halfway to pulp and he was ready to finish the job. He was sulking, but he’d ring the bell of anyone who said so.

A knock at the door, and then Sam stepped inside. “Freddy wants to see you.”

Cian made a face.

“He says it’s important.”

“The last time he said that, we almost got burned up by a giant lizard.”

“Salamander.”

“What?”

“Freddy said that’s what it was. A salamander.”

Cian made another face.

“Any sign of Harry?”

Sam shook his head.

“Damn him.”

“What about Freddy?”

“Damn him too.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “What does it take to get a big mick moving? Some more booze?”

Cian spat out the ruined cigarette and threw it on the floor.

“All right,” Sam said, holding up his hands. “Geez, it was just a joke. What’s the matter with you?”

Without an answer, Cian got to his feet. It hurt—hell, everything still hurt—but not as much as it had the day before. He got his jacket and his overcoat and hat. He even put on a tie. He crossed to the connecting door to Irene’s room and tapped on it.

“Yes?” she asked.

He opened the door. She lay on her bed, wrapped in a lavender nightgown, her hair in a white kerchief. She was sweating and pale and looked like she needed a wash and a dry. When she saw him, she smiled.

“Before you ask,” she said, “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine. The basin was still next to her bed, and she’d been sick to her stomach all day.

“I want to see your leg,” Cian said. “I bet Harry did a shit job. You need to see a doctor.”

“Trust me, Cian, it’s not my leg.”

“Let’s see it.”

Irene pulled the nightgown tighter and raised an eyebrow. “You saw plenty while they were fixing me up.”

“I’m not joking, Irene.”

“Will you please trust me, Cian? It’s not my leg. It’s . . . it’s a womanly thing.”

The words landed like a mortar round.

“Oh.”

“Exactly.”

“I didn’t,” Cian tried and then stopped. “If you had—”

“Mr. Shea?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Right.”

“Was there anything else?”

“Sam said Freddy wants to see me. I’m going to go, if you’re all right here.”

“Fine. Pearl’s down the hall.”

“If you want me to stay—”

“If you stay, I think I’ll go crazy. See how Freddy’s doing.”

“All right.” He turned to go.

“Cian?”

“Yes?”

“Any word about Harry? Or Oliver?”

He shook his head.

“Be safe,” she said.

He started to leave. Then he went back and kissed her. She smiled, straightened his tie, and patted his chest.

He passed back through his room, gathering Sam as he went. Sam had a face every younger brother has worn: a mixture of glee, self-satisfaction, and slightly confused superiority.

“Not a word, Sam. Not a word.”

Sam didn’t say anything. He did, however, still have that damn look on his face.

They took a cab to Freddy’s apartment. Freddy met them at the door. He was dressed in one of his black suits, but pain and injury had eaten away at him. It had left him thin, his face full of hollows, with darkness pooling around his eyes. He leaned on his walking stick as he let them into the sitting room. He didn’t look like a dark sorcerer anymore. He looked like an old man who’d had a bad fall and might not make it through winter.

This time, he didn’t ask if they wanted to drink. He mixed them each a highball. Cian worked his, but all he tasted was bad news.

“Harry?” Freddy asked as he eased himself into a chair.

“Gone,” Cian said. “He took off sometime yesterday. No one is sure when.”

“He dug you out, Freddy,” Sam said.

“And then ran off after Oliver,” Cian said.

“I’m just saying, if Harry had wanted to betray us, he had a pretty good chance. He could have left Freddy for dead. He could have left Cian and me for dead—he saved our asses, Cian, you have to admit.”

“From the salamander,” Freddy said.

Cian nodded. “He did. And Oliver dragged me out of the wreckage before that. I’m not saying I don’t owe them. Hell, I owe Harry for more times than that. But.” He shrugged and drank again.

“But they’re gone,” Freddy said.

“They’re gone, and somehow Oliver knew what was coming,” Cian said. “He split as fast as he could.”

Sam frowned and stuck his tongue in the gap in his teeth. He shook his head. “It looks bad. I’ll give you that. But we’ve seen Harry turn on us before. If he’d wanted us dead, we’d be dead. That salamander would have gotten us, or he would have cut us down, or hell, Freddy, he’d have just left you there.”

Cian blinked. “Are you defending Harry Witte?”

With a grin, Sam said, “The world’s upside-down, my friend.”

“Freddy,” Cian said. “There’s something you don’t know. We went to see Marie-Thérèse. She had the mask.”

“What?”

“And she was wearing it.”

“The mask,” Freddy said. “So that’s where it’s been.” He looked at Sam. “And you didn’t know?”

“The last I knew, the damn thing was buried in that mine. I don’t know how the ghost found it.”

“Because she’s Marie-Thérèse,” Cian said. “She’s been after that thing for a long time, I’d guess. And now she has it.”

“Why?” Freddy said.

“Why what?” Sam said.

“Why does she have it? Harry had already used it to wake Dagon. He’s . . . connected, I suppose, to the mask. That much seems obvious.”

“On account of that fellow who looks exactly like him,” Sam said.

Freddy nodded. “So why does Marie-Thérèse want the mask?”

“I don’t know if she did,” Cian said. “Does that thing still have power? Could it have used her? The way it was using Harry?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’d put a hundred dollars to one that it does. See, that thing, the thing that looks like Harry, it was there too. At the Old Cathedral. Marie-Thérèse was there, and she put on the mask, and she said—”

“What? What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Help me.’”

“Help me?”

“She sounded like she meant it, too.”

Freddy swore. The highball shivered in his hand.

“Well,” Cian said after a moment, “she put on the mask, and she asked for help, and then that thing was there. It ran straight at her. It grabbed her too, as though she were as solid as you or I. And then the old ghost looked right at me and Irene. Just for a second, but I could see her eyes. Could see—could see that she was frightened. Scared spitless, if she had any spit left.

“What happened?” Sam said.

“She said something about a throne.”

“What?” Freddy asked. “What exactly did she say?”

Cian’s throat was tight. He wet his lips with a drink of the highball, but the whiskey and soda floated in his mouth, marooning the words. He swallowed a hard, vicious swallow and he didn’t know why he was afraid. But he was seeing Marie-Thérèse’s eyes, and her fear had crawled up inside him.

“He seeks the river throne.”

Silence from Freddy. A prickly, protracted silence. The stem of the rose without the blossom.

“Well what does it mean?” Sam asked.

“I have no idea,” Freddy. “How in the world should I know?”

“Because you always know.”

Freddy snapped his teeth together.

“It’s bad,” Cian said. “Whatever it is, it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s bad,” Sam said. “It’s Marie-Thérèse. The old girl hasn’t done anything but cause us trouble from the start.”

“How’s she tied up in all this?” Cian said. “Is it—does it have something to do with Irene? Marie-Thérèse has always been strange about Irene, and ever since what happened with the Derbys, I—”

“Ever since what happened?” Freddy asked.

Cian put the brakes on hard. “You know, the shooting, and learning that the Derbys were Children of Dagon.”

“And what happened?”

“That’s all,” Cian said. “I was just wondering.”

Freddy didn’t answer. He was watching Cian’s face. Curiosity awoke in his dark eyes.

But Sam spoke next. “So now we have to worry about Marie-Thérèse and the mask, on top of all the rest of it?”

“I suppose so,” Cian said.

The three of them sat in silence. Only Sam had finished his drink. Cian didn’t know if he could take another swallow. He wanted the booze. He didn’t trust his throat.

“It’s worse than all that,” Freddy said after a moment. He set his drink down. He hadn’t touched it. “The crown. The piece that Lee had. It’s gone.”

“What do you mean?” Cian said.

“Gone. When I woke up, I went through every inch of my clothing. It was gone.”

“Harry took it.”

“And then he disappeared.”

Cian looked at Sam. “Well?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m not his attorney. Yeah, it sounds like he took it and then split. Maybe it slipped out of your pocket when you fell, Freddy, but it seems damn unlikely.”

“So what now?” Cian asked.

“If Harry’s turned,” Freddy said, “I won’t be able to stop him. Not like this.”

“Then we get Pearl,” Cian said. “She can do whatever it was she did last time.”

“That’s a start,” Freddy said. “But if Harry’s connected to that thing we saw at the warehouse, and it seems that he is, then we have to assume that it already has two pieces of the crown. We have to find the final piece before Harry does.”

“And you know where it is,” Sam said with a smile.

Parched humor touched the corners of Freddy’s mouth. “I don’t. But I do have a starting place.”

“Well,” Cian said. “Let’s get started.”

Freddy pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. He handed it to Sam.

Sam opened the paper. He read it. Cian knew the moment that the words landed. Sam’s face went pale. Then red. Red all the way past his collar. He crumpled the paper, tossed it onto the table, and left the apartment.

Freddy sighed. Now he took a drink. It didn’t look like it helped.

With a flash of pain along his side, Cian stretched to snag the piece of paper. He smoothed it out on the coffee table. There was writing. Plenty of writing. Neat, type-written letters.

But it was the name at the bottom that caught his eyes. Written in a watchmaker’s hand that must have been Freddy’s.

Minnie Varner.