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nose in the unattractive way Mrs. Stanton so frequently commented upon. But the nose scrunching—which, Mrs. Stanton said, made her look as though she were climbing over a trench of raw sewage—was not an expression of distaste. Rather, it was a physical representation of her evergreen astonishment that someone like her would have ended up falling in love with someone like him. The New York Warlock was extraordinarily provoking. Annoying, even. And Emily was oftensurprised that falling in love with him had done nothing to mitigate that opinion. It was as if annoyance had moved aside to allow a larger emotion to sit beside it, like a fat woman in stays squeezing in next to a wiry sister.
    The adventures that had thrown them together—adventures in which magical pieces of glowing rock, blood sorcery, and the ancient consciousness that dwelled far beneath the earth’s surface featured prominently—had been written up in pulp novels and dispatched into the hot greedy hands of every man, woman, and child who could read at a third-grade level and had a dime to spare.
    Emily let the fingers of her living hand trail over the smooth ivory of her prosthetic hand—the hand that replaced the one cut off by a U.S. Army blood sorcerer named Caul.
    For his part in the adventures, Stanton had been offered the directorship of the Institute—the most prestigious seat of credomantic education in the country, if not the entire world—and the great and powerful title of Sophos to go with it. For
her
part, she had ended up with one less hand, in a hot parlor, subjected to more Wordsworth than anyone should be required to endure, and envying the gilt cherubs their nakedness. Somehow, it didn’t seem quite
fair
.
    Her thoughts were disturbed by a soft knock on the door. The butler, a tall and distinguished-looking man with graying temples, entered silently, carrying a large silver tray with tea and refreshments. His name, Emily recalled, was Broward. On her first visit to the Stanton house, Emily had assumed he was one of Stanton’s relatives. She’d been quickly and curtly disabused of that notion.
    His arrival filled Emily with relief. At least the tea would provide some distraction. But as she watched him move quietly across the carpeted floor, a strange feeling came over her—slight nausea mingled with anticipation and dread. Everything took on a peculiar clarity. Broward was suddenly moving very slowly, and Hortense’s voice, describing the “thrice-welcome darling of the spring” had become a molasses-thick garble.
    Oh no
, Emily thought.
Not now
. She leaned forwardslightly, pressing her hand against her corseted stomach. This was no time for a Cassandra.
    She could not take her eyes off the silver tray in Broward’s hands. It gleamed, smooth and polished. Steam curled up from the spout of the bone china teapot, and as Broward’s small movements made the vapor swirl, it formed two small words.
    Go home
.
    Emily shuddered, a cat-walking-on-her-grave chill tickling her back. The steam twisted like a living thing, sinuous and sinister.
    Go home …
    And then the vision took her, knife pains in her belly and the bitter taste of gall in her mouth. She felt the ground shaking beneath her, rumbling her from side to side. There was the sound of far-off screaming and something thundering and slavering. Then a terrible chomping noise. And there was a horrible smell. Fresh blood, and hair smoke, and something else—something rotten and black, greasy and sticky. It was the unmistakable smell of earth’s toxic poison, Black Exunge—the foul sorcerous waste that destroyed and disfigured any living thing it touched. She knew that smell.
    The steam curled around Broward’s hands as he bent, excruciatingly slowly, to place the tea tray on the table before Mrs. Stanton. Emily squeezed her eyes shut, but she could not block the images flashing behind her eyes, brilliant and sharp.
Fire. Black crushing maws. Earth cracked and sundered
.
    She