I reached inside my jacket, fisted a flashlight in each hand, and yanked the door open again.

One of my flashlights wouldn’t turn on. Dead batteries. When it rains, it pours. I tossed it and grabbed a second from my waistband. Two more came out with it, crashed to the ground, clattered down the steps and spun out into the alley, unlit, wasted.

I had two left. This was ridiculous. I needed a better way to keep myself safe than toting unwieldy flashlights with me everywhere I went.

I turned on another, and ordered myself to step out onto the pavement.

My feet didn’t obey.

I aimed one of my flashlights directly at it. The inky wall recoiled and a hole exploded in it the exact diameter of the beam. I could see it was barely an inch thick.

I heaved a sigh of relief. It still couldn’t tolerate direct light.

I studied it. I wasn’t completely barred from getting to the bookstore. I could walk down to the left, parallel to the towering, dark cloud until I reached the end of the building, where the lights of the greengrocer next door prevented it from spreading further, then go around to the front door and let myself in.

Problem was I wasn’t sure I had the nerve, and I wasn’t entirely sure it would be smart. What if, when I was nearly to the end of the Shade-wall, the light on the grocer’s building burned out? Normally, I’d relegate the odds of that happening to the realm of the absurd, but if there was one thing I’d learned over the past few months, it was that absurd really meant “more likely to happen to MacKayla Lane.” I wasn’t about to risk it. I had my flashlights, but I couldn’t shine them on every part of my body at once, and I certainly couldn’t shine them on all of it.

I could call V’lane. He’d helped me get rid of Shades once before. Of course with V’lane there was always a price, and I would have to let him embed his name in my tongue again.

I considered my cell phone. It had three numbers programmed in: Barrons, IYCGM and IYD.

IYCGM, which was Barrons’ not-so-subtle shorthand for If You Can’t Get Me, would be answered by the mysterious Ryodan who—although Barrons contended he talked too much—hadn’t confided anything useful to me in our recent, brief phone conversation. I had no desire to lure anyone else close to the overly aggressive Shade. I wanted a few days reprieve between deaths on my conscience.

IYD was If You’re Dying, and I wasn’t.

I was sick of depending on others to save me. I wanted to take care of myself. It was only a few hours until dawn. The Shade could stay out there all night for all I cared.

I stepped back into the garage, closed and locked the door, flipped on the brightest tier of interior lights, considered the collection a moment, then crawled into the Maybach to sleep.

It occurred to me, as I drifted off, that my feelings about the car had certainly changed. I no longer cared that it had formerly belonged to the Irish mobster Rocky O’Bannion, from whom I’d stolen my spear and whom I was indirectly responsible for killing, along with fifteen of his henchmen, in the very alley where the monster Shade now lurked. I was just grateful it was comfortable to sleep in.

We expect Evil to announce itself.

Evil is supposed to adhere to certain conventions. It’s supposed to cause a chill of foreboding in the intended recipient of its visit; it should be instantly recognizable; and it’s supposed to be hideous. Evil should glide out of the night in a black hearse, fog streaming from its dark flanks, or dismount from a skeletal Harley, leather-clad, wearing a necklace of freshly scalped skulls and crossbones.

“Barrons Books and Baubles,” I answered the phone brightly. “You want it, we’ve got it, and if we don’t, we’ll find it.” I take my job very seriously. After snatching six hours of sleep in the garage, I’d made my way across the alley to the bookstore, showered, and opened shop, business as usual.

“I’m certain of that. You finding it, that is, or I wouldn’t have phoned.”

I froze, hand on the receiver. Was this a joke? He was phoning me? Of all the possible confrontations with Evil I’d imagined, this was not one of them. “Who is this?” I demanded, unable to believe it.

“You know who I am. Say it.”

Though I’d heard the voice only twice before—the afternoon in the Dark Zone when I’d almost died, and more recently in Mallucé’s lair—I would never forget it. Contrary to what Evil was supposed to be, it was a seductive, beautiful voice, mirroring the physical beauty of its owner.

It was the voice of my sister’s lover—and murderer.

I knew his name, and I’d die before I’d call him Lord Master. “You bastard.”