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message was only two words, but as he read it I saw his eyes go wide in astonishment.
    â€œHoly crap,” he muttered.
    Rita’s back,
itsaid.

2
    S HADOWCREST
    V IRGINIA P RIME
    I SAAC
    T HE ELEVATOR’S CAGE carried Isaac smoothly down into the earth, its lamp revealing rough-hewn rock walls pressing in on every side. Two years ago Isaac might have found the closeness unsettling, but compared to the dank, lightless tunnels of the Warrens, he now found it downright inviting.
    Besides, he had bigger things to worry about.
    He practiced breathing steadily as the elevator passed through level after level of Shadowcrest’s underground complex, offering fleeting glimpses of the floors where the Guild’s most secretive business took place. He tried not to fidget. Real Shadows didn’t fidget. They didn’t shift their weight nervously from foot to foot, or pace from one side of the steel cage to the other, working off their nervous energy. They certainly didn’t crush a letter from their father in sweaty hands until it looked more like a crumpled wad of toilet paper than a meaningful communication.
    Swallowing dryly, Isaac unwadded the short note and read it one last time. It offered no more insight into his father’s intentions than the last ten readings.
    Well of Souls
    Midnight
    Lord Leonid Antonin, Umbra Maja
    He hadn’t even known that his father was back in Virginia Prime until that note arrived. The elder Antonin had been attending to business in another sphere for the last few weeks—some kind of probability survey in the Sauran Cluster—and Isaac had been stuck in limbo, waiting for his judgment. Oh, his mother had welcomed him home right away, and had championed his cause among the other Antonin elders, encouraging them to accept him back into the fold despite the fact that he’d run away for two years. But she was still alive, an
umbra mina,
so her influence among the Shadows was limited. Not until his father returned would Isaac’s fate be decided.
    And now there was this note. With no explanation.
    Isaac had no clue what to expect from his father. The days when human affection might have impacted the Shadowlord’s actions were long past, and whatever undead emotions coursed through his heart now were shadowy and mysterious things, beyond the understanding of a mere teenager. Leonid Antonin had accepted First Communion—the transformative Shadow ritual—soon after Isaac’s birth, so his son had no memory of him that didn’t involve moaning soul shards and eerie whispers from other worlds. Not exactly the kind of father it was easy to bond with.
    And then of course there were all the other souls that gazed out at him from his father’s eyes. One never got used to that.
    With a sigh Isaac shoved the crumpled note back into his pocket and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans to dry them. At least he was alone in the elevator. Displaying this much agitation in front of an
umbra maja
would have reflected poorly on his entire family and probably doomed any chance of earning his father’s approval. Assuming that was still possible.
    The Well of Souls was a level of Shadowcrest that apprentices usually didn’t enter, so Isaac had no clue why his father wanted to meethim there. It was where the darkest and most secretive rituals of the Guild were performed and, normally neophytes were not privy to such things. If he’d been just a little more paranoid, or a little more ignorant, he might have feared that his father intended to force him to submit to First Communion. But any schoolchild knew that one had to submit willingly to the transformation for there to be any hope of success.
    Isaac drew in a deep breath as the elevator finally slowed and stopped; a section of steel grate moved aside to reveal a large, dimly lit chamber. As he stepped out, he saw that everything in the place was black. Black floor, black walls, black pillars supporting a