He and Amelia had some sage left. He had a book of matches in his back pocket, but they’d gotten damp, so no fire. No candles, no amulets…

  Intention, not details. We want to go home.

  At least with the sun out they could tell which way was which. Amelia took over his body. Starting in the east, she used a stick to draw a rune in the dirt and chanted the words of protection she’d used back at Judi and Frida’s circle. Then south, west, north. They remembered what had happened when Grant interrupted, what it had sounded like, what it had smelled like—

  A summoning. He’d cast a summoning. She did the same now, maybe not using his exact words. Intention, intention…

  A cloud passed over the sun, and a low growl of thunder echoed over the mountain.

  Well, that sounded familiar.

  She repeated the summoning, Cormac’s voice booming.

  Shouting and the thud of running feet approached from the Land Otter People’s village. He recognized Brother and Sister’s voices, calling to him in English. They had good food, warm blankets, he must stop what he was doing, they needed him— Sister screamed suddenly.

  Amelia risked a glance. Brother and Sister recoiled when they came within sight of his impromptu circle. They drew back from it as if it were made of fire, and then they fled in what seemed to be terror.

  So, Cormac and Amelia were either doing something right, or something very, very wrong.

  The mist that had burned off through the morning returned, thicker than ever, and the ground shook with a new round of thunder. The next light that cut through the gloom came from a pair of amber eyes. Thunder growled with an unmistakable voice.

  Dimitrova’s stone had gotten hot. He put his hand on it, intending to pull it out and look. But a blazing light burst over him, white and searing. It might have been lightning but it lingered, grew, and the amber eyes widened, light overpowering everything—

  He was thrown into a press of people, a whole churning crowd of stinking, shouting people. The exact opposite of the vast, clean spruce forests of the Pacific Northwest.

  They hardly seemed to notice that he came out of thin air to land in the middle of them. A young man shoved him hard, so that he stumbled into the next person over, who shoved him back. “Hey there, where’d you come from then?” he called in a thick, drawling accent, some flavor of English.

  Cormac felt profound relief that he understood him. He braced, feet apart, elbows up, so no one else could displace him. The crowd settled.

  After that, he was pressed with the rest of them toward what looked like…a stage. A wooden platform raised about four or five feet off the dirt and lit with torches at the corners. Walls rose up on all sides, in a ring; the boxes and seats along it were also filled with people, restless, murmuring. There were no seats here on the floor; the audience was all standing, a crowd jostling to get closer. The space was open to the sky, which was blue with dusk.

  This was a theater. A lone actor stood on stage. He seemed to have paused during whatever disturbance had just happened.

  What astonished Cormac and Amelia more than anything else about this whole situation: they recognized him.

  It was Edward Alleyn.

  One of the great actors of Elizabethan theater, Edward Alleyn performed in the first productions of works by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. But Cormac and Amelia had met him four hundred years after this, when he was the Master vampire of London.

  They never got the whole story of how he had gone from celebrated actor to the ancient creature that they’d met in modern London. Seeing him here, like this, was doubly shocking. Shocking, that they recognized him. And shocking, that because of him they knew when and where they were, and that was somehow worse than not knowing. How were they supposed to get home from 1600 London?

  At least, that was what Cormac was thinking. Amelia was awestruck. Do you realize what this is? What we’re witnessing? This…it’s astonishing!

  Cormac was still confused. And tired.

  Ned Alleyn, quite a bit younger and much more alive than when they’d met him, had resumed the play and was giving a speech.

  “Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damned, and canst thou not be saved. What boots it, then, to think of God or heaven? Away with such vain fancies, and despair; Despair in God, and trust in Beelzebub. Now go not backward; no, Faustus, be resolute: Why waverest thou?”

  Amelia raved. Good Lord, it’s Marlowe’s Faustus! He’s performing Faust! This is extraordinary!

  This meant something, this was an important cultural moment. Cormac could understand it, but he didn’t feel it. Mostly, he was looking around, trying to figure out where the exits were and how to get there if this crowd got surly. Even more surly, rather.

  Cormac, you really should pay attention—

  Alleyn, playing Faust, wore a black doublet trimmed in silver that flashed in the torchlight. The crowd had somehow fallen dead quiet, not even rustling, their attention captured by the blasphemies being openly declaimed in front of them.

  Alleyn’s hands moved in a nervous tic, full of anxiety. His body wavered, almost pacing, then hesitating.

  “O, something soundeth in mine ears. ‘Abjure this magic, turn to God again!’ Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again. To God? He loves thee not; the god thou servest is thine own appetite, wherein is fixed the love of Beelzebub: to him I’ll build an altar and a church, and offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes.”

  His eyes gleamed with the ferocity of this image, lips curling back from teeth. This wasn’t Ned Alleyn anymore; he embodied the character, the doomed magician.

  Two more actors appeared, figures gliding downstage from a door in the back. One was dressed in gleaming white, with wings made of goose feathers attached to a harness hooked to his shoulders. The other wore a black cloak and painted red horns on a band tied around his head.

  They moved to stand on either side of Faust. The angel pleaded with him. “Sweet Faustus, leave that execrable art!”

  Faust tilted his head. “Contrition, prayer, repentance—what of them?”

  The angel answered: “O, they are means to bring thee unto heaven!”

  The devil stepped up to Faust’s other side, his grin gaunt and sneering. “Rather illusions, fruits of lunacy, that make men foolish that do trust them most.”

  Cormac gaped and vented at Amelia: Wait a minute, are you telling me the whole angel and devil on the shoulder thing started with this?

  Yes. Now be quiet and watch!

  The angel begged, “Sweet Faustus, think of heaven and heavenly things.”

  The devil countered, “No, Faustus; think of honor and of wealth.”

  It was such a cliché, but to this audience, it was new. It was brilliant.

  Faust stepped away from them both, while the figures fled through opposite doorways. “Of wealth! Why, the signiory of Embden shall be mine. When Mephistophilis shall stand by me, what god can hurt thee, Faustus? Thou art safe. Cast no more doubts. Come, Mephistophilis, And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer; Is’t not midnight? Come, Mephistophilis, Veni, veni, Mephistophile!”

  Oh, this was going to end badly, wasn’t it?

  A new player entered, a tall and serene noble gentleman, perfectly turned out and polished like a painting, with a doublet and hose of rich red brocade, embroidered with gold. His gaze looked down on Faust contemptuously.

  Cormac’s heart started racing in spite of himself.

  Faust shook his fist at this figure, demanding, “Now tell me what says Lucifer, thy lord?”

  Mephistopheles spoke carefully, precisely. “That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives, so he will buy my service with his soul.”

  Some in the audience gasped, crying out in denial.

  Faust said, “Already Faustus hath hazarded that for thee.”

  “But, Faustus, thou must bequeath it solemnly, and write a deed of gift with thine own blood; for that security craves great Lucifer. If thou deny it, I will back to hell.”

  Mephistopheles raised his arms, revealing that he held a scroll of parchment and an ostentatious quill pen, dripping blood. Probably just paint, but the effect was riveting.

  Cormac and Amelia had never summoned demons, but they’d sent a few back to wherever they’d come from, be it hell or some adjacent dimension. This kind of magic, this literal deal with the devil, was real, it happened, but they stayed far away from it. It was too tricky, the consequences of failure too dire. Already, Cormac caught the snag in what this demon offered—whilst he lives. Which, given how these things usually went, wouldn’t be for too much longer.

  Kitty had once been offered a deal with the devil by Lucifer himself. She’d refused.

  The silence on the stage drew on. The actor playing Mephistopheles fidgeted, glaring nervously at Alleyn. The audience picked up the restlessness, shifting and murmuring, aware that something was wrong.

  The other actor said, “What say you to this our bargain? Faustus?” Ad-libbing.

  Alleyn stared out, frozen mid-gesture.

  A voice whispered from behind the stage, presumably the next line, that Alleyn seemed to have forgotten.

  Cormac followed the line of his sight to find what he stared at. His gaze had been caught by a man sitting in one of the boxes. Somehow, despite the crowd, he had a space around him; he was the only one on the bench. He was plainly but elegantly dressed, all in black, his velvet cap decorated with jewels and a plume. Jeweled rings adorned his fingers, which he held steepled against a neatly trimmed goatee. The man was pale, ghostly pale, and a chill seemed to radiate from him. Maybe that was how he got the bench to himself. He was preternaturally self-possessed, and obsessively focused on Ned Alleyn, who seemed hypnotized.

  The man in the box seat was a vampire. He studied Alleyn with a possessive, calculating air. And Alleyn seemed to know it.

  “Ned!” the actor playing Mephistopheles hissed and punched Alleyn’s shoulder, and this seemed to wake him up. But instead of continuing with the play, he backed up, his eyes widening in panic. Abruptly, he turned and fled out the upstage door.

  Some of the audience started shouting. The other actor spread his arms and announced, “It seems our Faustus has repented of his bargain? Hold, I’ll draw him back so he can tell us—” He fled, too, and a moment later a pair of gaudily-dressed actors, ribbons and bells stitched to their doublets and pantaloons, came out, juggling balls and shouting insults at each other. The crowd seemed only partly placated.

  The vampire in the box seat fled, too. Going after his prey.

  Cormac went after them both, shoving through the crowd, relentlessly shouldering them aside even as they cursed and shouted after him. Elizabethan theatergoers could swear very creatively, it turned out. Someone grabbed his shirt, as if intending to haul him back, and Cormac just out and punched his face. The man tumbled back, and the whole theater let out a roar. Fists and kicks flew from all sides now, and Cormac ducked, blocked, and dodged, taking a couple of glancing blows and shaking them off as he continued battling to the stage. The jugglers had left off juggling a while ago, but stuck around to shout insults at the crowd, which shouted them right back.

  If theater were like this in the twenty-first century, Cormac might actually be convinced to go. In the back of his mind, Amelia was grumbling in frustration. Cormac was sure he would hear about it later when he wasn’t so busy.

  He hauled himself up on stage. The jugglers lunged at him, clearly intent on throwing him back to the crowd, but Cormac was ready. He rolled out of their reach, then ran for the door leading backstage. They followed right behind him.

  The narrow, crowded room at the back of the stage—the tiring house, Amelia supplied distractingly—was in even more of an uproar than the audience. The place barely had any room to move, stuffed to bursting with clothing, swords, pikes, banners, garlands of flowers made from cloth, a whole bucket full of tin crowns, and another bucket full of boots. A crowd of men in various states of undress shouted at each other—and they all seemed to have loud, booming voices, used to projecting from the stage. A couple of young boys in the mix wore sumptuous gowns, to play women characters. Their voices were lighter, but just as loud.

  “Hey, you there! Stop!” one of the jugglers called out.

  Cormac kept on, shoving and knocking actors down as he went.

  Someone stepped in front of him holding a sword, and he wondered if it was real or a prop. It looked real, and sharp.

  Before its wielder could use it, Cormac demanded, “Ned Alleyn, where is he? Where’d he go?”

  “What? Why?” The would-be swordsman furrowed his brow.

  “Where!”

  The guy glanced over his shoulder. “He went out—”

  Cormac ran to the doorway in the back of the room and emerged in a muddy alley, where a lantern hanging on a hook by the door gave off what seemed like the smallest possible circle of light.

  “I will not go with you!” Alleyn pressed himself against the wall.

  The vampire stood at the end of the alley, blocking his escape. “You are a treasure, Master Alleyn. I only wish to preserve your talent.”

  Alleyn laughed sharply. “I’ve played Faustus for a decade; I would hope I’ve learned in that time not to make such foolish bargains as he.”

  Trash and other debris had been left out in the alley, propped up by the wall. This included a stack of broken poles that might once have played the parts of pikes or flagpoles. Cormac grabbed one with a good, sharp end to it.

  “Get back inside,” he told Alleyn, standing between him and the vampire, holding up the wicked-looking stake. Alleyn disappeared through the door without question. Like weird shit happened to him all the time, and maybe it did.

  The vampire stood his ground, eyeing the ragged point of wood with a sly smile. “Well. You know what I am.”

  Cormac assessed. Vampires were too fast and strong to take out in a straight-up fight, even with all the wooden stakes in the world. Normally, Cormac liked to destroy them by surprise. Right through the back. No chance for that here, but he could at least keep the guy from going after Alleyn. He kept his back to the wall, his stance at the ready.

  “There’s something odd about you, isn’t there?” the vampire murmured, setting Cormac’s hair on end even more than it already was. The vampire sniffed, as if he could smell him.

  The statement seemed obvious. Cormac was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, boots, all stiff with mud and sweat from his adventures over the last…he didn’t even know how long he’d been at this. He didn’t fit in, he didn’t belong. He could understand the speech, but the accent was strange—nothing like old English accents in the movies. His own accent was harsh, in comparison.

  “It’s the two auras thing, isn’t it?” Cormac said, trying to distract him.

  The vampire tilted his head, narrowed his gaze. “I know someone who should meet you.”

  “Not interested.”

  The vampire chuckled in that arrogant, condescending way that most vampires seemed to perfect immediately on being turned. He raised a hand, flicked a finger, and two thugs appeared from the shadows to charge at Cormac. He hadn’t even known they were there. He was seriously off his game.

  They moved fast. Supernaturally fast. The scrappy one, all bone and muscle on wiry limbs, was a lycanthrope, maybe a werewolf. He had a certain gleam in his eyes; his fingers bent, the shadow of claws. Dressed in a loose shirt and short trousers, sleeves rolled up and legs bared, he loped down the alley in just a couple of strides. From the other side came a big man, bearded and growling, pale and cold. Another vampire, all his power coming through his physical presence rather than subtle intrigue.

  All the protective charms and amulets in the world couldn’t help him with this.

  Cormac ducked and ran; the big guy blocked his path and lunged, and Cormac swung the broken staff—scraped the guy’s arm, but it wasn’t the stab through the ribcage he’d need to stop him. Meanwhile, the scrappy lycanthrope crashed into his back and tried to grab his arms. Cormac held tight to his weapon and threw his body sideways, trying to twist out of his grip.

  They had him penned in, blocking both ways out of the alley, and their vampire handler stood by, grinning.

  The big one grabbed the stick, the scrappy one got an arm around his middle. On the edge of panic, Cormac thrashed.

  Amelia knew better than to try to talk to him during a fight. Now, though, she was being soothing. Oddly confident. They don’t want to kill us. Let them catch us. Let’s see what this is about.

  Out of breath, he sagged, at a loss. They’d wear him down in minutes, he was just about out of options—and Amelia was right. Without more than a broken stick, three against one was more than he could handle.

  He let go of the staff; the burly vampire tossed it away to thud against the dirt. The lycanthrope yanked back his arms, putting them in a lock and forcing Cormac to his knees. He struggled against the pressure, just on principle.

  The first vampire, a picture of elegance against his shabbily-dressed thugs, strolled over, taking his time. This was the moment Cormac would find out if he was in big trouble, if the guy planned on biting him, draining him, turning him, whatever. Or if he’d get another chance to fight.

  Calm, love. Pay attention.

  He took a couple of deep breaths to get himself under control. Stop the blood from rushing so loudly in his ears. If he acted like he wasn’t worried, maybe it would throw the vampire off. He avoided meeting the vampire’s hypnotic gaze. Wished he had a cross or two stashed on him, but he hadn’t expected to run into vampires when he’d decided to help Odysseus Grant.

  That would teach him.

  The vampire stood before him and ran a finger along Cormac’s jaw, which was starting to get bristly with stubble—so that was a sign of how long he’d been at this. It was such a cliché villain move that Cormac almost laughed.

  “Who are you?” the vampire asked. “What are you?”

  “Just a guy,” he said. What are we watching for? he asked the back of his mind.

  Anything we can use.