“Sure,” Clay said. “We’ll show up on his doorstep and say, ‘Excuse me, we’re the ones who stole your letter last night, and it’s giving us some trouble. Can we ask you a few questions about it?’ ”

“Let me think about it,” Jeremy murmured. “Just start driving over there.”

Routine

LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, WE WERE BACK WHERE IT ALL started, at Patrick Shanahan’s house. His street looked different in daylight. You could see the houses through the trees, and they looked dead. Empty driveways, drawn blinds, blackened windows, a lawn-care crew the only sign of life. If you lived in an upscale neighborhood like this, you worked-both spouses, all day, every day.

A “wrong number” call to Shanahan’s house on the way had confirmed that the sorcerer was home, either working from there or taking the day off to inventory his collection, making sure nothing besides the letter had been stolen.

At just past 4 p.m., Jeremy and Clay were striding up Shanahan’s driveway. I got to eavesdrop at a window. As Clay said, I did have another option. I could wait in the car and let them fill me in later. So, eavesdropping it was.

As I waited around the corner, I heard Jeremy ring the bell. A moment later, the door opened.

“Are you Patrick Shanahan?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes…”

“Owner of a historical document once residing in the London Metropolitan Police files?”

“Do you have it?”

“You don’t?” Jeremy glanced over his shoulder at Clay and they exchanged a tight-lipped look, then Jeremy turned back to Shanahan. “Mr. Shanahan, are you aware of certain occurrences in Toronto in the last twenty-four hours? Occurrences our employer believes are related to the document previously in your possession?”

In the silence that followed, I knew Shanahan was taking a second, longer look at the two men on his doorsteps, seeing them not as associates of whomever stole his letter, hoping to “sell” it back, but as supernatural agents, most likely dispatched from a sorcerer Cabal. While one could argue that the Cabals needed policing more than anyone outside their infrastructure, they often played the role of law enforcement in the supernatural world, if only to protect their own interests.

Shanahan let them inside.

As they moved through the house, I could catch only Shanahan’s boom of a voice as he complained about the heat, the humidity, the smog-the kind of chatter that fills space and says nothing.

He didn’t ask how Jeremy knew he’d owned the From Hell letter. As Xavier had said, it was common knowledge among a certain subset of supernatural society, and Cabals had plenty of access to that subset. Nor did he ask which Cabal his visitors were with, or even confirm that they were from one. When dealing with Cabals, curiosity couldsound dangerously close to challenge.

They stopped in the living room. As they sat, I moved around to that window. It was closed, of course, as they all were to keep the air-conditioning inside, but with werewolf hearing I could make out enough to follow the conversation.

Jeremy explained the events taking place in downtown Toronto. Shanahan expressed surprise, which seemed genuine enough-blown transformers and missing senior citizens weren’t the sort of news tidbits a man like Shanahan would follow, not while the stock exchange was still open.

“I’m not sure I understand what that has to do with my letter.”

“It was the combination with a third event that caught my employer’s interest. There were reports of a man and a woman, both dressed in Victorian garb, seen in the area of the power outage and the disappearance. Our experts detected signs of a dimensional disturbance-a recently opened portal.”

“P-portal?” A too-hearty laugh. “I’d never own a letter that contained a portal. Dangerous things, you know. Very dangerous. And damned near impossible to make. Way outside my very limited magical abilities.” A self-deprecating chuckle. “I can pick a stock a lot better than I can cast a spell, let me tell you. Ask anyone.”

“Presumably the portal was already within the letter before it came into your possession. Otherwise, it wouldn’t contain people from the nineteenth century.”

“Oh, er, of course.” Shanahan paused. “Listen, I’m a man of great practicality-particularly when it comes to money. If I’d inherited a letter containing an active portal, I would have put it on the market immediately. I know how much a Cabal would pay for such a thing. If that letter held a portal, which-no offense to your employers, but I doubt-I knew nothing about it.”

I could smell the bullshit in every word, yet Jeremy was stuck. As much as Shanahan claimed to be a weak spellcaster, our experience with sorcerers had left us wary enough to know they could be formidable opponents. And Shanahan, already nervous, would be expecting attack.

Jeremy let Shanahan think he believed him, and promised that, if the letter was recovered, his employers would indeed want it and would pay a fair price to Shanahan, the rightful owner. As he and Clay left, Shanahan was handing out business cards, scribbling his home number on the back, and asking to be kept in the loop.

I met them by the road.

“He’s lying,” Clay said.

“I know,” Jeremy replied, and kept walking.

Clay looked from me to the house, and I knew it killed him to leave it at that.

“We’re going back, aren’t we?” I asked. “When we can catch him off guard.”

Jeremy nodded. “Tonight.”