"What, you can't convince any of your cult buddies-"

"There's nobody left, Jace. I've been to house after house. Empty. I don't know which side got them, either. Maybe they were eaten or drained, maybe the Gallowsman dragged them into the tunnels, maybe they're all hanging upside down in somebody's backyard shed waiting for nightfall. But I do know this: It all started with you. And that's how it's going to end, too."

I stare back, then nod slowly. "Yeah. You're right. Now here's a few things you don't know: First, we've got the alpha werewolf locked in the trunk of the car outside. Second, I know who the master vampire is."

"You do?" says Doctor Pete. He sounds surprised.

"Not only that, I know where he is." I pull out my phone, put it on the coffee table, and slide it over to Stoker. "Take a look."

He picks it up, studies the screen. "What am I looking at?"

"Figure it out for yourself."

He thinks for a second, then hits a few buttons. He's found the video file- There's a flash of white light.

Sucker.

Every induced-recall experience so far has had me playing the role of a woman from someone's memory, Doctor Pete's or Charlie's or Cassius's. Stoker's no different-except that this time, I seem to be almost completely passive. I'm lying down, I'm naked, and it's very hard to focus my thoughts. I realize I must be drugged, or maybe brain-damaged. My arms and legs are restrained-to keep me from hurting myself? There's an IV in each of my arms. I must be in a hospital.

But why am I in a box?

It's made out of glass, or maybe thick plastic. I can hear sounds, but they're so muffled that I'm not sure what's causing them. Machinery? People talking? I finally make out a few words, but I can't understand them; they're not in English. Something Asian?

There's a smudge on the glass ceiling of my box. I stare at the smudge for a few years, struggling to focus beyond it. When I finally manage to, all I see is a plain white surface a few feet above me. It's not nearly as interesting as the smudge, and to alleviate my disappointment I decide to embark on an ambitious, multistage project: turning my head.

Whew. It's a long road, filled with toil, heartbreak, unexpected surprises-I never saw that second smudge coming, for instance-and eventual success. I can't take all the credit, though; gravity did give me some assistance in the final phases, and it'll definitely receive a big thank-you in the acknowledgments.

There's another glass box beside me, with a man in it.

Stoker.

His head is shaved, and he looks younger. Just as massive, though: his muscular arms are pressed up against the sides of his container, as is the top of his skull. He's got twice as many tubes stuck in his arms as I do, and three of them are bright red. I guess he's getting a transfusion.

It takes a while for the facts to coalesce into a realization.

I'm not in a hospital. Those tubes aren't giving Stoker blood; they're taking it away.

I'm in a yakuza blood farm.

I should be horrified, but I don't seem to remember how. It's more than drugs, it's magic; the part of me that's still Jace remembers the blood farm Stoker and I took down in Stanley Park, where the victims had all had their brains wiped by sorcery.

That's not the case here, though. I can still think, still feel, however distantly. So can Stoker; he manages to turn his head to look back at me, and his dark eyes hold more than numb acceptance. They hold rage-rage suppressed, rage that's been smothered and chained but still glows with stubborn heat. It warms me, too, quickens my sluggish pulse, melts a few of the cobwebs wrapped around my brain. I struggle to say something, to tell him this, but the best I can do is to soundlessly move my lips.

He nods, ever so slightly. His own lips move while his fingers twitch, but he isn't speaking to me. He's reciting a spell.

His eyes clear. He glances to the side, studies the tubes draining his blood away, and leans forward as far as he can. He gets his teeth on one of the tubes and yanks it out with a twist of his head. Blood starts to leak from the end and pool on his stomach. He puts his head back down, stares blankly at the ceiling, and waits.

It doesn't take long. Somewhere, a little sensor tells a technician that valuable product is being wasted. Before very long, an Asian man in a white smock is peering into Stoker's cubicle. Stoker's face is as empty as a discarded wallet. The technician unlocks the lid and lifts it up, then leans in to reattach the tube.

Stoker clamps onto the technician's windpipe with his teeth, and rips it out with a yank of his head.

He must have silver or wood implanted in his teeth; it's the only way he could inflict a wound like that on a pire. Blood gushes everywhere, but only for a moment-it's a fatal wound, and as soon as the pire's body figures that out his immortality vanishes and he pays off his time debt to the universe all at once. Flesh and blood turn instantly to dust, and the technician's bones clatter down the stepladder he'd been standing on and onto the floor.

Stoker grits his teeth and starts yanking on the restraints. They're designed less to physically imprison than to keep arms and legs from thrashing about, and he manages to rip both his arms free in about thirty seconds. He unbuckles his legs, tears the other tubes from his arms, and leaps out of his cubicle.

That's the last I see of him for some time. I hear what might be shouting, somewhere.

I sort of drift away in the interim. I should feel relief, I suppose, but I don't. If I feel anything at all, it's a kind of regret.

Eventually Stoker comes back. He opens the lid to my own glass coffin and stares down at me. He's covered in gray and white dust, like he's been rooting through the remains of cold campfires. Even with the lid up, it's very quiet.

He stares down at me for a long time.

"I should just leave you here," he says finally. I feel no surprise at this, just a twinge of shame.

"I understand why you did it," he says. "I make a better martyr than a leader, and me dying in one of these places would make great propaganda for the Resistance."

He shakes his head. "But you fucked up. Even now, after all this time, you don't understand these bloodsuckers. You think they can be reasoned with, negotiated with. Maybe they can-but not by us. You don't negotiate with livestock. That's all we are to them, and that's why they stabbed you in the back and took you, too. Your little power play is over, and you lost. Me, I was prepared-an antihypnotic spell and silver crowns over my teeth, painted white."

I know I should say something in my defense, but I don't. Maybe I'm unable to speak, or maybe I just have nothing to offer.

"You did get one thing right. Us dying in service to our cause will be good for recruitment. So that's what's going to happen: from this moment on, both you and Aristotle Stoker are dead. I'm going underground, so deep no one will find me-but I'm not giving up. Oh, no."

He leans in, only inches from my face. "I had a revelation recently. In order to fight these monsters, you have to become a monster. Something as big and scary and inhuman as they are. That's what I'm going to do-reinvent myself as a creature even they'll be frightened of. I've even thought of a name: the Impaler. What do you think?"

I do my best to nod. He seems to understand.

"No one will know who I am, or where I came from. Not even the FHR. I will be invisible and lethal, a murdering ghost. And it will be their turn to be afraid."

Something touches the inside of my thigh, very quickly and lightly, and then warmth gushes down my leg. Femoral artery.

"Good-bye, Linda," he says softly. "You'll be remembered, and revered, and missed."

He stays with me until the end.

I'm grateful for that.

Azura and I had set up the trap beforehand. I knew that sooner or later I'd have to use the memory trick on the sheriff, and since Azura had already broken into prison to get access to Tair, it made sense to use the opportunity to swap this fake Stoker for the real thing. If, you know, your definition of sense is trading an officer of the law for a convicted serial killer and terrorist.

But then, by the time he wound up behind bars, Stoker wasn't quite the killer he used to be. In fact, I hadn't captured him; he'd turned himself in, claiming the mystic artifacts he'd been using had affected his sanity. He swore he was through with murder, and had a grandiose plan to save the remaining human population that didn't involve eliminating all the supernaturals on the planet.

I wasn't entirely convinced. But Stoker hadn't given us any trouble since surrendering, though he refused to volunteer information on his former associates in the FHR. His days of ruthless slaughter might actually be at an end....

Sigh. Just when I need a singleminded killing machine, he goes and reforms. I can hear the universe-several of them, in fact-sniggering behind my back. Real funny, guys.

I open my eyes. Stoker does the same. We stare at each other for a moment, and then he smiles and glances around. "Huh. Now this is what I call a jailbreak."

"Oh, you've just exchanged one cell for another," I say. "This one is slightly larger, but a lot more dangerous. Azura filled you in?"

Stoker nods. "Anything new since the last time you two spoke?"

I tell him about Athena, and the tunnels, and the Gallowsman. He takes it all in stride. I hate to say it, but I'm actually glad he's here; no matter how capable or competent this reality's Stoker is, he hasn't spent his entire life training to fight supernatural beings. Mine has.

He's examining his own arms critically as I talk, but I know he's paying attention. "Hmmm. Not in peak shape," he murmurs. "Fewer scars, as well. Guess it'll do. What's our plan?"

"We take down the master vampire," I say. "Then figure out a way to deal with the Gallowsman."

Charlie clears his throat. "You keep calling him that. The master vampire. Why don't you use his name? We know who it has to be, right?"

I hesistate. "Yes," I admit. "It's Cassius. I don't know how he ignored my cross-maybe it's because he's from a reality where religious symbols don't affect pires-but it has to be him."

But it isn't really Cassius, I want to say. It's a magnified, distorted version of him, warped by this reality's rules and Ahaseurus's magic. A Cassius with his ethics gutted, a centuries-old pire stripped of any morality or empathy and filled with a bottomless loathing for yours truly. Yeah, I have no trouble facing the truth of that at all.

"You know where he is?" Stoker asks.

"No. But I know where he'll be."

"Where?"

"Wherever I am. He knows I've got Ahaseurus's spell book, and Cassius is no slouch at magic himself. It's his shot at taking control. He's probably searched my place already."

"But it's not there?" asks Doctor Pete.

"No, I brought it with me and stashed it here."

"Maybe we should have a look at it ourselves," Doctor Pete suggests. "I may not be a high-level shaman, but I know my way around a book of spells."

"I know a few things myself," Stoker says, giving the Doc a curious glance.

"I'll get it," I say.

I hid the thing in Charlie's garage, under a stack of old motorcycle magazines. It's still there. I pull it out, then pause for a minute before going back into the house.

Something's not right.

Charlie's garage is neat, tools all hung in their places, floor swept, boxes on shelves properly labeled. But still, I have this sense of something being out of place.

I look around. It takes me a moment, because it's right under my nose; it's the stack of old magazines I used to hide the book. It's the only thing here that's not neatly organized-the magazines are just in a pile on a bench, not even properly aligned with one another. I frown, then look under the bench; there's an empty cardboard box there labeled MOTORCYCLE MAGS 199294.

I start looking through the pile. I find what I'm searching for in the middle, where the casual sloppiness of the magazines has been used to hide a slightly larger object. It wouldn't have meant anything to me a few days ago, but now I realize what I have in my hands ... and what it means.

I go back inside, holding it in one hand and the spell book in the other. I'm not sure if it's safe to let them touch.

"Jace?" Charlie says when I walk in. He can tell right away that something's up, without me saying a word.

"I thought there was only one book," Stoker says.

"So did I," I reply. "I was wrong. This is the missing piece of the puzzle. I know who killed Ahaseurus now, and I think I know why."

"Who?" Charlie asks.

"You," I tell him.

TWENTY-ONE.

"Well, ain't that a kick in the pants," Charlie mutters. "You wanna back that up and try again, or should I just let you slap on the cuffs?"

I hold up what I found in Charlie's garage. "See this? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I was giving Charlie a hard time about reading it at the bar."

"Yeah, that really clears things up," Charlie says. "I knew a guy once who went on a killing spree after an all-night binge of The Wind in the Willows."

"This isn't just a book, Charlie." I toss it on the coffee table. "It's an illustrated version, what's called a graphic novel. In other words, a comic book."

Comic books. Harmless hobby of kids and middle-aged geeks, right? On the world of my birth, sure ... but not on the version of Earth I call Thropirelem. There, shamans use comics' combination of words, images, and imagination to turn them into powerful mystic totems, so dangerous that they've been outlawed since the nineteen-fifties.

Doctor Pete leans down and picks it up. Studies the cover, but doesn't open it. "Yes. I can feel the mystic potential being routed through it. Is this what Longinus was killed for?"

"I think so-but that was only part of it. See, everything in this town was carefully manipulated to make my life a living hell ... but you can't really suffer pain unless you have a little pleasure first. In the end, it gives you even more to lose. That's why Charlie Allen-the Charlie of this reality-really was my friend. He was someone I could trust, someone who really and truly was on my side. That way, whatever horrible thing Longinus had planned for him was guaranteed to cause the maximum amount of anguish."

Stoker nods, his gaze on Charlie. "So he recreated Charlie as closely as he could, right down to his loyalty. Big mistake."

"Yeah," I say. "I should have suspected something when Charlie offered to help me get rid of the body so quickly. He had no idea I'd be the one to discover the corpse-and once I did, he figured the best solution to keep me from being locked up was to sanitize the crime scene."

Charlie looks thoughtful. "So this version of me figures out that Longinus is behind you having such a craptastic life. He goes to Longinus's house, confronts him, maybe catches him in the middle of some kind of ritual. He kills Longinus and steals the mystic artifact he was using, then stashes it while he tries to figure out what to do next, not wanting any of the other cult members to get their hands on it."

"Yeah. He leaves in a big hurry, then can't go back for fear of being discovered. Until I force his hand."

Doctor Pete is turning the graphic novel over in his hands, studying the back as well as the front. "So this is, what-the mystic center of all the spells woven through this place?"

I nod. "Has to be. Think about it: a girl, ripped out of her own world and thrown into another. When I first got my memory back, I compared my situation to Alice's in Through the Looking-Glass, but this place is a lot more like a warped version of Oz: I was taken from a supernatural world into a small town in Kansas. There's a storm that prevents me from going anywhere. The beasts are anything but cowardly, the tin man's heart is too large for his own good, and the guy with the big brain is an albino afraid of burning in the sun. I've even got a faithful dog, for Christ's sake."

"And at the middle of it all," Doctor Pete murmurs, "A genuine wizard who specializes in illusions. Yes, that's exactly the kind of resonant structure that would work with this kind of sorcery. Preestablished patterns waiting to be mystically energized..."

"Right down to the Yellow Brick Road," I say. "Once again, its purpose is inverted: it leads out, not in. The highway."

"And the Gallowsman?" Stoker asks. "Who does he represent?"

"He's the Wicked Witch," I say. "No flying monkeys, just a hangman's rope. Makes a backward kind of sense, I guess; you find both in trees, but one defies gravity while the other uses it to kill."