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the apparition, wasn’t—
    When I looked up again, I was curled into a ball on the ground, muscles aching from cramping so tight. People were walking wide around me, giving me nervous sidelong glances. I felt so weak that I wasn’t sure I could stand.
    I needed help.
    I looked up at the street signs on the nearest corner and stared at them until my cudgeled brain finally worked out where I was standing.
    I rose, forced to lean on my staff to stay upright, and hobbled forward as quickly as I could. I started calculating prime numbers as I walked, focusing on the process as intently as I would any spell.
    “One,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen . . .”
    And I staggered through the night, literally too terrified to think about what might be coming after me.

Chapter Five
    B y the time I’d reached twenty-two hundred and thirty-nine, I’d arrived at Billy and Georgia’s place.
    Life had changed for the young werewolves since Billy had graduated and started pulling in serious money as an engineer, but they hadn’t moved out of the apartment they’d had in college. Georgia was still in school, learning something psychological, and they were saving for a house. Good thing for me. I wouldn’t have been able to walk to the suburbs.
    Georgia answered the door. She was a tall woman, lean and willowy, and in a T-shirt and loose, long shorts, she looked smarter than she did pretty.
    “My God,” she said, when she saw me. “Harry.”
    “Hey, Georgia,” I said. “Twenty-two hundred and . . . uh. Forty-three. I need a dark, quiet room.”
    She blinked at me. “What?”
    “Twenty-two hundred and fifty-one,” I responded, seriously. “And send up the wolf-signal. You want the gang here. Twenty-two hundred and, uh . . . sixty . . . seven.”
    She stepped back from the door, holding the door open for me. “Harry, what are you talking about?”
    I came inside. “Twenty-two hundred and sixty . . . not divisible by three, sixty-nine. I need a dark room. Quiet. Protection.”
    “Is something after you?” Georgia said.
    Even with the help of Eratosthenes, when Georgia asked the question and my brain answered it, I couldn’t keep the image of that thing from invading my thoughts, and it drove me to my knees and would have sent me all the way to the floor—except that Billy caught me before I could get there. He was a short guy, maybe five six, but he had the upper body of a professional wrestler and moved with the speed and precision of a predator.
    “Dark room,” I gasped. “Call in the gang. Hurry.”
    “Do it,” Georgia said, her voice low and urgent. She shut the door and locked it, then slammed down a heavy wooden beam the size of a picnic table’s bench that they had installed themselves. “Get him into our room. I’ll make the calls.”
    “Got it,” Billy said. He picked me up the way you’d carry a child, barely grunting as he did. He carried me down the hall and into a dark bedroom. He laid me down on a bed, then crossed to the window—and pulled and locked a heavy steel security curtain over it, evidently another customization that he and Georgia had installed.
    “What do you need, Harry?” Billy asked.
    “Dark. Quiet. Explain it later.”
    He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Right.” Then he padded out of the room and shut the door.
    It left me in the dark with my thoughts—which is where I needed to be.
    “Come on, Harry,” I muttered to myself. “Get used to the idea.”
    And I thought about the thing I’d Seen.
    It hurt. But when I came back to myself, I did it again. And again. And again.
    Yes, I’d Seen something horrible. Yes, it was a hideous terror. But I’d Seen other things, too.
    I called up those memories, too, all of them just as sharp and fresh as the horror pressing upon me. I’d Seen good people screaming in madness under the influence of black magic. I’d Seen the true selves of men and women, good and bad, Seen people