The pies weren’t quite the fare Bram was accustomed to, but he’d eaten meat laced with maggots during a long siege in the Colonies. Suspect pie hardly bothered him.

“You’re my first customer today, my lord,” the pieman said. “Thinking of closing up shop after you.”

“Not a soul?” Bram asked.

The shopkeeper shook his head. “Hardly anyone out these days. Been an ill feeling in the city for a long while, but it gets worse by the hour.”

Bram muttered something inconsequential to the shopkeeper and set a handful of coins down on the counter. After buying a flagon of cider from a nearly empty tavern, he hurried back to the vacant house. Possibly John had eyes throughout the city, keeping watch, and Bram didn’t want to risk being seen in public.

In the bare parlor, he ate his meal quickly, crouched on the floor like a scavenger. Livia made troubled circles as she drifted around the chamber.

“John’s power grows,” she said, voice taut. “I feel it like a web spreading over the city, and beyond. The barrier between the underworld and this realm weakens. He’ll open the gate, and soon.”

His food consumed, Bram crumpled the grease-stained papers and threw them into the corner. A rat emerged from a hole in the baseboard, sniffing, then grabbed the paper and scuttled back into its den.

“We tried to find him at Wimbledon, but he sent his minions instead. Perhaps a more direct assault is necessary. I’ll go to his home.” Bram rose to standing. “Persuade my way inside. Then put this”—he gripped the hilt of his sword—“into his heart.”

Livia drifted close, her lips pressed tight. “We saw what John sent to dispatch his rivals. Imagine what guards his own home. Should you make it past his front steps, a host of demons will bar you further entrance. Your own gift won’t work against them.” She clenched her hands into fists. “Our joined magic isn’t reliable enough to take on someone as strong as John.”

“If you were flesh—”

“I’m not and never will be again.”

“But if you were,” he pressed, “would you have enough power to break John’s curse, bring the other Hellraisers to London? You had the power to raise the Devil when you were flesh—this should be nothing to you.”

“My magic draws its strength from living energy. Of which I have none.” She growled in frustration. “These are meaningless pursuits, these hypothetical questions. My body is lost to me, and so is the full strength of my magic. There’s nothing to be done. The task is impossible.”

“A dangerous word to say to me, impossible.” He stalked the chamber, keeping pace with his racing thoughts. “Where is your physical body?”

“Long since turned to dust.”

He wheeled back to face her. “I saw your memories. When you imprisoned the Devil, you stepped on the other side of the door to close it. You didn’t leave behind a corpse. The only bones the Hellraisers found in the temple belonged to a Roman soldier. But your body is out there, trapped somewhere. Between the realm of the living and the dead.”

“A place beyond the Ambitus,” she said, “making it irretrievable.”

“You don’t know that for certain.”

“I know that one cannot jaunt back and forth between this mortal world and the underworld. To regain my body, to bring it back—that is hopeless.”

A thought had begun to grow, spreading its roots through his mind, his heart. The very idea of it whetted him to a knife’s point. He felt sharp and thin as a blade, but expansive as imagination itself.

“There’s no hope for our fight if you stay this way.” He waved at the translucency of her form.

“We might battle,” she admitted with a scowl, “but never win.”

“And the world would go up in flames.”

Tense, silent, she nodded.

He understood now. What had been the smallest granules of possibility became tempered steel. He thought he might feel fear, or doubt. Yet the more he considered it, the more he understood its rightness.

This was who he had been before going to war. When he’d had purpose, and a belief in something larger than himself. Only now, he had lost his infantile optimism. He knew the world, now. It was a merciless place. Only savagery thrived.

He could be brutal. Brutality was part of him—he embraced it now.

Calm and purpose enveloped him. He felt a peace hitherto unknown.

Everything in his life had been leading him to this point. “I can secure our victory.” He took several steps back. His gaze never leaving hers, he said, “Veni, geminus.”

“You cannot,” Livia cried, but she spoke too late. The words had been said.

The smell of burning paper thickened the air. The light within the derelict chamber dimmed, as though a bank of clouds obscured the sun. Shadows congealed and then—

There stood the geminus. Bram’s double.

“What a hideous bastard,” Bram said.

The geminus glowered at him. “My master is displeased by your perfidy.”

“I don’t care,” Bram answered.

The creature opened its mouth to speak, then espied Livia. Its features tightened, fearful and angry. “Her. She has poisoned you, turned you against us.”

“Leave the ghost out of this,” said Bram before Livia could snap back a reply. “Disappear if you want, go slinking back to your master with tales of my whereabouts. But, stay, only a moment. I’ve a theory I want to test.”

In a movement too quick to see, Bram drew his sword and cut it across the geminus’s face.

The creature shouted, bringing its hand up to cover its wounded cheek. At the same time, Bram gave a small hiss. A slash of red had appeared on his face, precisely where he’d injured the geminus.

“It’s true, then,” Bram said with a grim smile. “Any wound you sustain also injures me.”

The geminus sneered. “Your Hellraiser friends learned the same. There is no harm that befalls me that will not also hurt you. A scratch, a bruise. To wound me is to wound yourself, whilst my master possesses your soul. Which he most assuredly does.”

“Excellent,” said Bram, baring his teeth.

He plunged his sword right into the geminus’s heart. Livia stared in horror. No sound came from her mouth. She could not move, could do nothing but look on, appalled and terror-struck, as Bram sank his blade deeper into the geminus’s chest. The moment his sword had pierced the creature’s flesh, both he and the geminus gasped aloud. A wound immediately appeared on Bram’s chest, directly over his heart. It spread crimson and dark, staining the velvet of his waistcoat.

The creature gaped at the sword deep in its breast. It turned wide, stunned eyes up at Bram. “What . . . ? But you . . .”

“Yes,” said Bram tightly.

He hissed as he withdrew his sword from the geminus. Blood seeped faster, both from him and his double. Ashen, the geminus stumbled, then sank to its knees. It pressed its hands to its chest. More blood oozed from between its fingers. A mortal wound.

Bram swayed on his feet. His chest was bathed in scarlet, yet he wore a fierce look of triumph.

Livia rushed to him and tried to place her hands against the wound, but they passed right through him. She fought to locate her magic, seeking its radiance within that she might work some spell, any spell, to help. Yet the more she searched, the less she found, only a growing darkness. Fear unlike any she had ever known shredded her.

“Gods, what have you done?” she cried.

“What I . . . had to.” His face white, he listed, then went down hard on one knee.

Rage against her phantom stage threatened to choke her. She could do nothing, not even hold him up or touch him, comfort him. All she could do was watch as his leg gave out beneath him, and he toppled to the ground.

Dimly, she heard the geminus collapse onto the bare floorboards, as well. Yet her attention, and terror, held fast to Bram. She sank down, stroking her spectral hands over his pale forehead. His gaze never left her face.