He steadied himself, standing even taller, then spoke the words that sealed their fate. “Veni, geminus.”

The candle went out, and everything became darkness.

Leo held himself still as the scent of burnt paper filled the hallway, acrid and brittle. And then there was another shadow in the corridor, standing just behind Anne. It held his shape, his size.

Immediately, Leo placed himself between Anne and the geminus. For that’s what it was. He did not need light to identify the creature. He recognized it now with the same certainty as he knew his own handprint.

“’Tis past the time of negotiation,” the geminus spat. “My master does not look kindly upon the slaughter of his minions.”

“Then he shouldn’t have sent them to be slaughtered,” answered Leo. His eyes grew adjusted to the dark, and saw the hazy echo of his own face twisted in a sneer.

“A poor strategy on your part, summoning me,” said the creature. “We know where you are now. At this moment, hordes of demons approach. There shan’t be enough of your carcasses remaining for the night soil collector to gather.”

“We have reinforcements,” Anne said.

Leo’s heart swelled to hear the strength in her voice, no trace of the fear she surely felt.

The geminus chuckled. “A mortal man stripped of his power and a Gypsy girl with a mountebank’s skill hardly amount to reinforcements.”

An unearthly shriek echoed through the house. The windows rattled. The ground shook. It sounded as though dozens of knives were being sharpened, then Leo realized it was the scrape of talons upon stone.

Demons. Approaching.

The geminus laughed again. “For a man given the gift of prophecy, you’ve shown remarkably inferior planning.”

“There is one ally you have not considered,” said Leo.

“The other Hellraisers are not your friends.”

“Not the Hellraisers.”

“Who, then?”

“Me,” said Valeria Livia Corva.

Light exploded, filling the corridor with radiance. The Roman woman emerged from a brilliant nimbus, hands upraised and ready, hair wild, and she fixed the geminus with a hard, unrelenting stare.

Radiance from Livia threw everything into high relief. The creature recoiled, and it unsettled Leo deeply to see a look of naked hatred upon his double’s face—as though Leo himself shrank back in fearful loathing.

“We’ve more than enough power to face you,” said Leo, “and whatever else comes crawling up from Hell.”

Snarling, the geminus lifted up its hands, preparing to work its own magic. Yet whatever it attempted to do, the effort failed. It glared at Livia.

“No retreat for you,” she said. “This mortal home is your trap, until I decide otherwise.”

The geminus sneered. “You cannot harm me. Unless you seek to hurt him.” It flicked its gaze toward Leo. As it did so, it drew a poniard from inside its coat. Before Leo could stop it, the creature jabbed the point of the blade into its own left hand.

Anne cried out as Leo hissed in pain, gripping his now-bleeding hand. He moved quickly, knocking the poniard hard from the geminus’s grip so that it stuck in the wall. Even this small blow resonated in his body, the force of his own strike against the creature echoing in his hand.

Despite the loss of its weapon, the geminus chuckled. “Threaten as much as you please. The mortal and I are joined. He is my hostage.”

Much as Leo wanted to plow his fist into the creature’s smirking face, he restrained himself. Anne looked equally murderous. Yet the next move had to be Livia’s.

“You are not so protected as you believe.” The ghost moved closer to the geminus, which glowered defiantly at her approach. “To the Dark One, you are nothing but a puppet. We shall make appropriate use of you.”

Latin words streamed from her mouth, and with her hands she made complicated patterns in the air. The geminus seemed to understand her intent, for it tried to dart past Leo, but he grabbed the creature before it could flee down the hallway. He ignored the sharp pain in his own arm as he held fast to the struggling geminus. Livia had to finish her spell before the creature could be set free.

He felt the change, an echo of her magic threading through his body, but the geminus felt it even more strongly. Its movements grew stiff, mechanical. In slow increments, its struggles against Leo’s hold quieted. It stared down at its body as if it were a strange, phantom limb.

“What iniquity is this?” it cried.

“A taste of your own poison,” answered Livia. “During my living years, I learned my own share of dark magic. You and your master seek to command others against their will. Now you share the same experience.” She nodded at Leo. “Release it.”

Leo uncurled his fingers from around the geminus’s arm, careful to stay close lest the thing make another attempt to flee. But it did not run. Instead, limbs moving with sharp jerks, it turned to the study door. Its hand curled around the doorknob.

“Reconsider,” it said over its shoulder, words growing thin with panic. “All is not yet lost. There is still time—”

“We know already how trustworthy your master is,” Leo spat, hating to hear the geminus using his own voice to bleat like a coward. “Do as you’re commanded.”

The geminus made another sound of protest, but it opened the door to the study. Yet the room that lay just across the threshold was not Leo’s study. It was a stonewalled chamber with a high, vaulted ceiling. The books were gone; his desk was gone. In their place were rows and rows of heavy wooden shelves, and trestle tables running the length of the long chamber. On the shelves and the tabletops were objects the size of oranges. They each cast light, some more brilliantly than others.

Leo knew without being told that what he saw were souls. Human souls. All of them held captive in this chamber. The cold stone walls formed a grim prison, pitilessly enclosing the radiance of the souls’ humanity. Yet as Leo looked upon them, greed stirred. Shimmering and precious, the souls were rare prizes that inspired covetousness—even within him.

Leo had been one of the reckless. Somewhere in that impossible room, his own soul waited.

Anne stared, hardly believing what she saw. Here was the vault of souls that Lord Whitney had described. The souls themselves were beautiful and shimmering, far lovelier than any gem torn from deep within the ground. Even standing some distance from them, she could feel their power and potential radiating outward, sending flickers of energy through her body.

The sight of so many souls trapped within the gloomy, oppressive chamber made her heart wilt. Already, a few of the souls faded, their light dimming. She did not know what would happen when their brilliance disappeared entirely, but it must certainly mean disaster.

“How did you come by so many?” she could not help asking the geminus.

It forgot its momentary horror, and looked smug. “Mortals are such fallible, gullible things. I learned this well during my profitable visits to the Exchange. They throw their souls away for mere trifles. Money, power. Love.”

She stared at the shelves and shelves of souls, fighting despair. If this was the handiwork of a single geminus in only a few short months, imagine what many more of the things it could do in the span of a year. Hardly a person would walk the earth who still possessed their soul. And if the Devil could harness the power of all of these souls, power that Anne herself could feel ... no wonder he must be stopped.

Leo strode toward the door to the vault, but could not move into it. He seemed to face an invisible barrier; his hand pressed empty air as though pushing against glass. Curling his hand into a fist, he threw a punch. The blow simply glanced away.

The geminus laughed. “Another excellent scheme. The vault is there, but what of it? You cannot go inside.”