diff --git "a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzrlce" "b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzrlce" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzrlce" @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ +{"text":"VOL. 153, NOV 21, 1917 ***\n\n\nE-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Andy Jewell, and the Project Gutenberg\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n file which includes the original illustrations.\n See 11619-h.htm or 11619-h.zip:\n (http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/gutenberg\/1\/1\/6\/1\/11619\/11619-h\/11619-h.htm)\n or\n (http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/gutenberg\/1\/1\/6\/1\/11619\/11619-h.zip)\n\n\n\n\n\nPUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI\n\nVOL. 153\n\nNOVEMBER 21, 1917\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHARIVARIA.\n\nMore than a million pounds of concealed sugar have been discovered in\nNew York. It is suspected that this was intended as the nucleus of a\nhoard.\n\n ***\n\nA contemporary recently stated that LENIN claims to stand for the\nleadership of Russia. But surely they do not stand for leadership in\nRussia. They rush for it with revolvers.\n\n ***\n\n\"This is a time for action, not for talk,\" said Colonel HOUSE on\nhis arrival in England. A stinging rejoinder is expected from the\nFOOD-CONTROLLER'S Department.\n\n ***\n\nIt is rumoured that the restaurant keepers have agreed among\nthemselves that to avoid confusion the price of all beefsteaks shall\nbe stamped clearly on the sole.\n\n ***\n\nThe Meat Order will probably be amended to make meat-stalls rank as\nshops. At present of course they suffer under the stigma of being\nmerely places where you can purchase meat.\n\n ***\n\nWe understand that, in order to avoid confusion and undue alarm,\nGerman prisoners in this country will in future be expected to give\ntwelve hours' notice of their intention to escape.\n\n ***\n\nSugar is to be omitted from a number of medical preparations from\nDecember 1st, and children are complaining that the decision has quite\nspoilt their Christmas prospects.\n\n ***\n\nCounsel, in a prosecution for selling a tobacco substitute, has stated\nthat there is nothing in the Act to prevent a man from smoking what he\nlikes. In the trade this is generally regarded as a nasty underhand\njab at the British cigar industry.\n\n ***\n\nLord RHONDDA, in announcing his new rationing scheme, differentiates\nbetween brain workers and manual workers. It will be interesting to\nsee to which category certain Government officials will be assigned.\n\n ***\n\n\"The bamboo,\" according to a weekly paper, \"holds the record among\nplants for rapid growth, having been known to grow two feet in\ntwelve hours.\" The silence of allotment holders on this subject is\nsignificant.\n\n ***\n\nMr. SYDNEY G. GAMBLE, second in command of the London Fire Brigade, is\nabout to retire. There is some talk of arranging a farewell fire.\n\n ***\n\nWe understand, by the way, that retirement from the London Fire\nBrigade always carries with it the privilege of wearing the uniform at\none's own fires.\n\n ***\n\nA theatrical paper advertises for a \"Male impersonator\" for pantomime.\nNo conscientious objector need apply.\n\n ***\n\nA news message to the _Politiken_ states that the people of Iceland\nare making demands for their own flag or separation. The movement\nseems to be an isolated one and not likely to spread. Anyhow, there is\nno cause for alarm at Tooting, where the authorities are not expecting\nany trouble of this kind.\n\n ***\n\nA Cranford dairyman has been selling milk at threepence per quart. In\ntrade circles it is supposed that he is doing it for a wager.\n\n ***\n\nAccording to _The Evening News_, Councillor WILLIAM SHEARRING, the new\nMayor of Bermondsey, started life as a van boy. This gave him a pull\nover most of us, who started life as infants.\n\n ***\n\nAfter December 17th, parcels for neutral countries may not be sent\nwithout a permit. Cement and other articles intended for enemy\nconsumption can only be forwarded by special arrangement with the\nMinistry of Blockade.\n\n ***\n\nThe average man, says a correspondent of _The Daily Mail_, does not\nknow how to invest five pounds in War Loan. Yet all he has to do is to\npay his little fiver across the counter just as if he were buying a\npound of tea.\n\n ***\n\nThe LORD MAYOR'S Coachman has retired after twenty-eight years'\nservice. He was a splendid fellow, taking him all round.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _Sociable Escort (to Bosch prisoner, after several\nineffectual attempts to start a conversation)_. \"AHEM!--ER--NO TROUBLE\nAT HOME, I HOPE?\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nAn official memo from the Front:--\n\n \"A complaint has been received from the Provost Corps that two\n horses, apparently ridden by grooms, committed a civil offence in\n ----, in that they crashed into a motor car, which at the time was\n stationary, damaging same. On being questioned where they came\n from, they replied, 'From Australia,' and after paying a few more\n like compliments disappeared at the gallop.\"\n\nIt is supposed that these intelligent animals had been reading a\nrecent article by \"Patlander.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"The R.F.C. on the same day bombed the junction. There was a large\n numtity of rolling stock in the station, on which, and on the\n station building, several direct hits were observed to cause\n considerable damage.\"--_The Times_.\n\n\"Numtity\" is doubtless a dodge of the CENSOR to prevent us knowing too\nmuch. We suspect that \"quanber\" was what the writer really wanted to\nsay.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"Mr. Drucker (for the trustees of the Testator) said the late Lord\n Blythswood had made 51 oleograph codicils to his will, and the\n difficulty arose over two of them.\"--_Evening Paper_.\n\nIt rather looks as if the two were not genuine oleographs but only\ncolourable imitations.\n\n * * * * *\n \"American eggs arriving at Manchester yesterday were quoted from\n 27s. 6d. to 28s. per 120, which caused Irish eggs to be reduced\n from sixpence to a shilling.\"--_Daily Paper_.\n\nVery Irish eggs.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"12 Feet Corsets at a ridiculous price of Re. 1 each, all\n sizes.\"--_Advt. in \"Advocate of India.\"_\n\n\"A ridiculous price,\" says the advertiser, but \"an absurd figure\"\nwould have been even better.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"The Examiners appointed by the Board of the Faculty of Natural\n Science give notice that Wilfrid Dyson Hambly, Jesus College,\n having submitted a dissertation on 'Tattooing and other forms of\n body-marking among primitive peoples,' will be publicly examined\n on Monday, November 12, at 2.30 p.m., in the Department of Social\n Anthropology, Barnett House.\"--_Oxford University Gazette_.\n\nWe trust he showed, and obtained, full marks.\n\n * * * * *\n\nTO ATTILA'S UNDERSTUDY.\n\n [Reuter reports that a British prisoner has been sentenced to a\n year's imprisonment for calling Germans \"Huns.\"]\n\n The choice was yours, we understood.\n We thought that, when you wished to cater\n For China's spiritual good,\n This name received your imprimatur;\n \"Go forth,\" you said, \"my sons!\n Go and behave exactly like the Huns!\"\n\n Though under any other name,\n However alien to their nature,\n Your people would have smelt the same,\n We let you choose their nomenclature,\n And studiously respected\n The one that in your wisdom you selected.\n\n And now, when someone, clearly set\n On flattering you by imitation,\n Applies that chosen epithet\n To certain units of your nation,\n It seems a little odd\n That you should go and clap him into quod.\n\n Perhaps you've come to hold the view\n That when you claimed to touch their level\n You were unfair to heathens who\n Candidly called their god a devil;\n Who fought some barbarous fights,\n But fought at least according to their lights.\n\n So Huns are off. Who takes their place?\n Well, since no beast on earth would stick it\n If after him we named your race,\n We'll call you Germans--there's your ticket;\n Just Germans--that's a style\n Which can't offend the other vermin's bile.\n\nO. S.\n\n * * * * *\n\nNIGHTMARES.\n\nII.\n\nOF A T.B.D. CAPTAIN, WHO DREAMS THAT HE HAS FOUND HIS LOG BOOK MADE UP\nBY MR. PH*L*P G*BBS.\n\n_Time:--7.30 A.M._--Once more we set out on our never-ending mission,\nour ceaseless vigil of the seas. The ruddy weather-stained coxswain\nswung the wheel this way and that--his eyes were of the blue that only\nthe sea can give--in obedience to, or rather in accord with, the curt,\nmystic, seaman-like orders of the young officer of the watch. \"Hard\na-port! Midships! Hard a-starboard! Port 20! Steady as she goes!\" And\nceaselessly the engine-room telegraph tinkled, and the handy little\ncraft, with death and terror written in her workmanlike lines for\nthe seaman, for all her slim insignificance to the landlubber on the\ntowering decks of the great liner, swung smartly through the crowded\nwater-way out to the perils lurking 'neath the seeming smile of the\nopen sea: the guardian angel of our commerce it went, to meet--what\nHeaven alone could foretell!\n\n_Course_.--S. 70 deg. E. Towards the rising sun and our brethren in khaki,\ntoiling in the wet mud as we toil on the wet waters!\n\n_Deviation_.--1 deg. E. Wonderful the accuracy of the little instrument\nwhereon men's lives do hang, wise in the lore of the firmament!\n\n_Patent Log_.--O. Nothing--as yet! What will it register ere the day\nbe done? Or will its speckless copper lie rusting in the grey chill of\nthe sea's dank depths?\n\n_Revs_.--I don't know, but the propellers swirl faithfully and\nunceasingly.\n\n_Wind_.--W. by E. Bearing a message across the vast Atlantic of hope\nand present succour from our new great Ally, the mighty Republic of\nthe West. America, ah America! But we of the sea are men of few words,\nand this is not the place.\n\n_Force_.--3. A balmy zephyr, yet with the sharp salt tang of the sea\nthat a sailor loves.\n\n_Sea_.--2. Softly undulating is the swell, scarce perceptible to\ninexperienced eyes, such as those of the land-lubbers on the towering\ndecks of the great liners; gleaming dead copper and blue in the\nmorning sun, flecked with spectral white in the distance--the easy\nroll of untrammelled waters!\n\n_Weather_.--C. Detached clouds. Almost had I written \"B,\" seeing the\nperfect filmy blue all around the horizon; but a seaman's scrutiny\nshowed me faint fluffy wisps o'erhead, luminous and marged with\npalest gold; and ever must a sailor be suspicious of the treacherous\nweather-god.\n\n_Thermometer_.--42 deg. Not yet is Winter here, but its threat\napproaches.\n\n_Barometer_.--30.01. Will it stay there?\n\n_Remarks_.--Once more we set out on our ceaseless vigil, our\n * * * * *\n_Remarks_.--(7.30 P.M.).--Another day has passed, another day's duty\nhas been done. Nothing _apparently_ has happened outside the ordinary\nroutine of the ship. One keen-eyed young officer has succeeded another\non the bridge, with tired lines on a face grey beneath the great brown\nhood of his duffle--a face so youthful, yet with the knowledge of\nthe command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have swirled\nfaithfully and unceasingly; the good ship in consequence has cleft the\npassive waves. But who knows what hideous lurking peril of mine or\ntorpedo we have not survived, what baleful eye has not glowered at us,\nitself unseen, and retired again to its foul underworld, baulked of\nits thirsted prey?\n\nIII.\n\nOF THE EDITOR OF _THE DAILY YAP_, ON OBSERVING THAT HIS SPECIAL\nCORRESPONDENT IS A RETIRED LIEUT., R.N., WHO SENDS HIM THE FOLLOWING\nACCOUNT OF A PUSH:--\n\nTime: 6.0 A.M. Course: (approx.) E. Distance run: 1-1\/2 m. Wind: S.W.\nForce: 6. State of land: 5 (rough, owing to craters). Weather: R.\nTherm.: 35 deg. Bar.: 28.89. Remarks: Objectives attained. Observation\nhampered by weather.\n\n * * * * *\n\nBIG GAME SHOOTING.\n\n \"Angus Bowser, the popular feed merchant of Dartmouth, shot his\n mouse on Thanksgiving Day. With a couple of friends he left in\n auto about 1 o'clock Monday afternoon for Bowser's Station. The\n party was in the woods for about two hours when the mouse was\n sighted.\"--_Canadian Paper_.\n\nWe hope Mr. ROOSEVELT will not be jealous.\n\n * * * * *\n\nExtracts from a recent novel:--\n\n \"He stepped out at Fernhurst Station, and walked up past the\n Grey Abbey that watched as a sentinel over the dreamy Derbyshire\n town.... So it was the system that was at fault, not Fernhurst.\n Fairly contentedly he went back by the 3.30 from Waterloo.\"\n\nThe train system which sent him to the Midlands by the South-Western\nwas doubtless deranged by military exigencies.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"Although Lord Warwick is the most sympathetic and attentive of\n listeners, he has not remembered more than one good story,\n and that has now been quoted in all the papers; we mean Lord\n Beaconsfield story is said to be unprintable; then why tantalise\n Lord Rosslyn, on account of the possible effect of his language\n on the pack, compensated by the Commissionership of the Kirk of\n Scotland. The other Beaconsfield story is said to be unprintable,\n then why tantalise us?\"--_Saturday Review_.\n\nWhy, indeed?\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: THE GREAT UNCONTROLLED.\n\nLORD RHONDDA. \"LOOK HERE, JOHN, ARE YOU GOING TO TIGHTEN THAT BELT, OR\nMUST I DO IT FOR YOU?\"\n\nJOHN BULL. \"YOU DO IT FOR ME. THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE THERE FOR.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _Farmer_. \"WHY DO THEY LET THAT CLOCK CHIME? AREN'T\nTHEY AFRAID THE HUNS MIGHT HEAR IT?\"\n\n_Yokel_. \"BLESS YOU, THAT'S TO DECEIVE 'EM. IT'S 'ALF-A-HOUR FAST.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nHOW TO BECOME A TOWN-MAJOR.\n\nThrough large and luminous glasses Second-Lieut. St. John regards this\nWar and its problems. He is a man of infinite jobs. There are few\nvillages in France of which he has not been Town Major. Between\ntimes he has been Intelligence Officer, Divisional Burial Officer,\nDivisional Disbursing Officer, Salvage Officer, Claims, Baths,\nSoda-water and Canteens Officer.\n\nHe was once appointed Town-Major of some brick-dust, a rafter and two\nempty bully-beef tins--all of which in combination bore the name of a\nvillage. He assumed his duties with a bland Pickwickian zest, which\ndid good to the heart. He had boards painted.\n\n\n _______________________\n| |\n| THIS IS BLANK VILLAGE |\n|_______________________|\n\n\nsaid one aggressively, and\n\n ____________________________\n| |\n| TO THE TOWN-MAJOR OF BLANK |\n| ==> |\n|____________________________|\n\n\nsaid another. A third read,\n\n ____________________\n| |\n| TO THE INCINERATOR |\n| <== |\n|____________________|\n\n\nthough there was nothing there to incinerate and (incidentally) no\nincinerator. \"HORSES,\" shouted another didactically, \"MUST NOT TROT\nTHROUGH THE MAIN STREET.\" That there was no street there at all did\nnot detract from the splendour of his notices, on which he spent much\npaint and happiness.\n\nWith the slightest encouragement he would have placarded that\narid wilderness with \"NO SMOKING IN THE LIFTS,\" and \"BEWARE OF\nPICKPOCKETS,\" but he had small encouragement, and so he contented\nhimself with a final placard which warned the troops against riding\nthrough standing crops and occupying the houses of civilians without\npermission from the Town-Major.\n\nStill, no one becomes a Town-Major without some sort of claim to the\npost.\n\nSecond-Lieut. St. John's first appearance in Armageddon took place\nduring \"peace-time warfare.\" An unpleasant and quite unnecessary\nlittle bulge in the trench-line, known as the Toadstool, was manned\nby the platoon of which he found himself second-in-command. It is\nrumoured that a Hun patrol, crawling to the edge of our parapet,\nsaw in the ghastly glare of a Verey light the benign and spectacled\ncountenance of Second-Lieut. St. John staring amiably across No Man's\nLand, and came to the hasty conclusion that they had made a mistake as\nto direction, since here was obviously one of their own officers of\nthe Herr Professor type. Rumour adds that they retired to their own\nlines and were promptly shot for cowardice.\n\nCertain it is that on that particular night Second-Lieut. St. John did\na thing the full details of which are now revealed to the Intelligence\nCorps for the first time. He fired a Verey light. It pleased him\nenormously. The sense that he, and he alone, was the cause of all\nthose sliding shadows and that flood of greenish light in No Man's\nLand went to his head like strong drink. He fired another and another\nand another.... The Hun was puzzled at this departure from routine,\nand opened a morose machine-gun fire which skimmed the top of the\nparapet and covered Second-Lieut. St. John with earth from shattered\nsandbags. He went on firing Verey lights in a sort of bland ecstasy\ntill his supply ran out, when he went to his Company Commander's\ndug-out for more. He filled his pockets with fresh ammunition, went\nback to his post, and began firing again. The first light was mauve.\nHe almost clapped his hands at it, and fired the second. It was pink.\nThe third was yellow, the fourth scarlet, and the fifth emerald green.\n\n\"The Crystal Palace,\" said Second-Lieut. St. John, \"isn't in it.\" And\nthen, because his watch had ended, he handed over to another yawning\nsubaltern and went to bed.\n\nOver miles and miles of country wild-eyed gunners were glaring into\nthe night and asking each other blasphemous questions. What did it\nmean?\n\n\"It must be Huns,\" said the British gunners; \"they're coming over.\"\n\n\"That is without doubt an English signal,\" said the enemy. \"We will\nprepare for an attack.\"\n\nThen the Hun gunners suddenly made up their minds to be on the safe\nside, and they put down a tremendous barrage on to No Man's Land.\n\n\"Told you so; they're on to our front line,\" said we, and put down a\ntremendous barrage on to No Man's Land.\n\nA Hun sentry, waking with a start, sounded the gas alarm. It was taken\nup all along the German line and overheard by a vigilant British\nsentry, who promptly set himself to make all possible noise with every\npossible means.\n\nOld French ladies in villages twenty miles back from the line lay\nall that night hideous in respirators. Anxious Staffs rang up other\nanxious Staffs. Gunners questioned the infantry. The infantry desired\ninformation from the gunners. All along the line the private soldier\nwas jolted from that kind of trance which he calls \"getting down to\nit,\" and was bidden to stand to till morning.\n\nAnd our Mr. St. John, who was a new and superfluous officer and liable\nto be overlooked, slept through it all with a fat smile.\n * * * * *\nIt was after that that they made him a Town-Major.\n\n * * * * *\n\nOUR PAMPERED \"CONCHIES.\"\n\n \"There was a long and interesting debate on the imprisonment of\n conscientious objectors in the House of Lords.\"--_The Times_.\n\nThis beats Donington Hall to a frazzle.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"Teachers will welcome the resolution deploring 'the omission\n from the Bill of any limitation upon the size of\n classics.'\"--_Teacher's World_.\n\nTheir pupils are believed to hold a diametrically opposite opinion.\n\n * * * * *\n\nAfter the Guildhall Banquet:--\n\n \"Some had black leather bags, some had aprons. Others had nothing\n at all and staggered off with a conglomeration of beef, pie, and\n turtle soup tucked up under their arms.\"--_Weekly Dispatch_.\n\nThe menu said \"Clear Soup,\" but this must have been a bit thick.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _Sandy (on departure of peace-crank, who has been\nholding forth)_. \"MAN, HE'S A QUEER CARD, THAT. THINK YE HE'S A'\nTHERE, DONALD?\"\n\n_Donald_. \"DOD, SANDY, IF WHAT'S NO THERE IS LIKE WHAT IS THERE, IT'S\nJUST AS WEEL HE'S NO A' THERE.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\n LEGAL INTELLIGENCE.\n\n DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, described as Prime Minister, was charged,\n on the information of HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH, with exceeding the\n speech limit while on tour. Mr. BONAR LAW, who appeared for the\n defendant, asked for an adjournment and invited the Court to \"wait\n and see.\" Upon hearing those words prosecutor broke down and had\n to be assisted out of the court.\n\n * * * * *\n\n HORATIO BOTTOMLEY pleaded \"Not guilty\" to a charge of\n fortune-telling. It appears that the defendant had stated that the\n War would be over by Christmas. For the defence it was stated that\n the defendant had not specified which Christmas, and even so if he\n had said so it was so. Defendant asked for a remand to enable him\n to dispense with legal assistance.\n\n * * * * *\n\n RESULT OF THE FOOD SHORTAGE?\n\n \"Exchange new gold full plate, seven teeth, for good brown skin\n hearthrug.\"--_The Lady_.\n\n * * * * *\n\nFrom the police-notice _re_ air-raid warnings:--\n\n \"When the car has two occupants one might concentrate on whistling\n and calling out 'Take Cover.'\"\n\nAs his own won't be enough he should borrow the other occupant's\nmouth.\n\n * * * * *\n\nTHE NEW MRS. MARKHAM.\n\nv.\n\nCONVERSATION ON CHAPTER LXXIII.\n\n_Mary_. There were two things in your last chapter that I did not\nquite understand--the National Debt and the Flappers.\n\n_Mrs. M_. About the National Debt, my dear child, I think you must\nwait until your papa comes home to tea, but perhaps I can satisfy\nyour curiosity about the Flappers, who were indeed amongst the most\nsingular and formidable products of the age we have been discussing.\nThe origin of the term is obscure, some authorities connecting it with\nthe term \"flap-doodle,\" others with the motion of a bird's wings, and\nI remember a verse in an old song which ran as follows:--\n\n \"Place me somewhere east of Suez\n On a lone and rocky shore,\n Where the Britons cease from Britling\n And the flappers flap no more.\"\n\nThis, however, does not throw much light on the subject. Perhaps\nthe term Flapper may best be defined as meaning a twentieth-century\nhoyden, and was applied to a type of girl from the age of thirteen to\nseventeen, whose extravagances in speech, manner and dress caused deep\ndismay among the more serious members of the community. In particular\nthe learned Dr. SHADWELL denounced them with great severity in a\nleading review, but with little result. They bedizened themselves with\nfrippery, shrieked like parrots on all occasions and interpreted the\nmotto of the time, \"Carry On,\" in a sense deplorably remote from its\nhigher significance.\n\n_George_. I think it seems, Mamma, as if the young girls of those\ntimes must have tried to make themselves as unpleasant as possible.\nHow thankful I am that Mary is not a Flapper!\n\n_Mrs. M_. You may well be. But allowance must be made for the\nmisapplied energy of our ancestors. If the Flappers excite our\ndisgust, their subsequent treatment moves our commiseration, since the\nSumptuary and Disciplinary Laws passed by the House of Ladies dealt in\ndrastic fashion with the offences which I have described. As a matter\nof fact many Flappers grew up into excellent and patriotic women. I\nremember my grandmother saying to me once, \"When I was sixteen I had a\nvoice like a cockatoo and the manners of a monkey,\" but nothing could\nhave been more discreet or sedate than her deportment in old age.\n\n_Richard_. Did the Flappers speak English?\n\n_Mrs. M_. Presumably; but, judging from the records of their dialect\nwhich have come down to us, their speech was made up of a succession\nof squeals rather than of articulate words, and has so far defied\nthe efforts of modern philologists. Indeed speech seems to have been\nalmost at a discount, owing to the immense popularity of the moving\npicture play, then in its infancy and as yet unaccompanied by\nmechanical reproduction of the voices of the actors. Indeed at one\ntime it was said that there were only three adjectives in use in\nFlapper society--\"ripping,\" \"rotten\" and \"top-hole,\" I think they\nwere.\n\n_George_. What stupid words! I wish they could have heard some of\npapa's adjectives.\n\n_Mrs. M_. Your father, my dear, has a copious and picturesque\nvocabulary, but phrases which are pardonable in moments of expansion\nin a person of mature years are not always suitable for juveniles.\n\n * * * * *\n\nTHE TRANSGRESSOR.\n\nI was walking painfully along a lonely road towing my\nthree-thousand-guinea ten-cylinder twelve-seater. According to\nRegulation 777 X, both brakes were on. My overcoat collar was turned\nup to protect my sensitive skin from a blasting easterly gale, and\nthrough the twilight I was able to see but a few yards ahead. I had\na blister on my heel. Somewhere, many miles to the eastward, lay my\ndestination. Suddenly two gigantic forms emerged from the hedgerow\nand laid each a gigantic paw upon my shoulders. A gruff voice barked\naccusingly in my ear.\n\n\"You are the owner of a motorcar?\"\n\nWas it any use denying the fact? I thought not.\n\n\"Yes,\" I replied humbly, \"I am.\"\n\n\"Have you the permit which allows you to possess this?\" He waved\ntowards the stagnant 'bus.\n\n\"I have.\"\n\n\"Have you the licence which allows you to take it upon the high road?\"\n\nWith frozen fingers I held it out to him. He moved to the back of the\ncar, unscrewed the entrance to the petrol tank and applied his nose\nto the aperture. After three official sniffs he turned upon me\naggressively.\n\n\"There is an undeniable odour of petroleum. How do you account for\nthat?\"\n\n\"Sir,\" I replied, \"last week my little son had his knockabout suit\ndry-cleaned in Perthshire by the petrol-substitute process. This\nmorning he climbed upon the back of the car to see whether his Silver\nCampine had laid an egg in the hood.\"\n\nHe glared at me.\n\n\"Ah! Have you the necessary extension which allows you to use a\nmotorcar as a habitation for hens?\"\n\nI gave it to him.\n\nThen, frustrated with fury, he thundered at me successively: \"Have you\na towing permit? Have you a dog licence? Can you produce a boot and\nshoe grant? Do you hold any rubber shares? Have you been inoculated\nfor premature decay? What did you do in the Great War?\"\n\nI gave him the necessary documents in perfect order. For a moment\nhe was nonplussed. Then he asked with sly intention, \"Have you\nthe champagne and chicken sandwich ration which is apportioned to\nsuper-inspectors?\"\n\nI handed it to him with a table-napkin (unused) and a pair of\nwire-cutters thrown in. For some minutes he remained silent, except in\nthe gustatory sense, then he turned upon me and, handing back an empty\nbottle, said triumphantly, \"You must now produce, under Clause 5005\nGerrard, framed this morning at 11-30 o'clock, one pint of old ale\nand six ounces of bread and cheese for the sustentation of the\nsub-inspector.\"\n\nI regarded him stonily and leant against the cold, cold bonnet of the\ncar. Alas! I had it not.\n\n\"Sir,\" I pleaded, \"I did not know ... give me time. The next inn is\nbut a few miles. If you and your companion will take a seat I will\nbring you to the inn door and all will be well.\"\n\nHe laughed in my face.\n\n\"Algernon Brocklebank Smith,\" he said sternly, \"you have betrayed\nyourself into our hands.\" He turned to his myrmidon: \"Get a move on\nyou, Herbert; it's a bit parky standing about here.\"\n\nAfter all he was but a coarse fellow.\n\nHerbert, galvanised into action, produced a small oblong object from\nhis pocket, lighted the end of it with the glowing butt of one of my\nCorona Coronas, and placed it underneath the car. In a few moments all\nthat remained of my three-thousand-guinea ten--cylinder twelve-seater\nwas one small nut, which was immediately impounded.\n\nI raised the collar of my overcoat (second reef), shifted my face to\nthe eastward, and, notwithstanding the blister on my heel, turned my\nsteps towards my destination.\n\nI uttered no plaint. I had transgressed against the immutable law.\n\n * * * * *\n\n IS THE RACE LOSING ITS NERVE?\n\n \"A sensation has been caused by the announcement that Miss Teddie\n Gerard is leaving 'Bubbly' to play the leading part in 'Cheep' at\n the Vaudeville Theatre.\"--_Daily Mirror_.\n\n * * * * *\n\nTHE \"WAR LEADER\" AND TWO SENSITIVE SOULS.\n\n[Illustration: \"THE ENTIRE GERMAN ECONOMIC STRUCTURE IS ON THE VERGE\nOF COLLAPSE,\"]\n\nBUT\n\n[Illustration: \"WE SHOULD BE MAD IF WE BLINDED OUR EYES TO THE FACT\nTHAT THEY CAN HOLD OUT FOR YEARS YET.\"]\n\n[Illustration: \"THE SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN HAS BEEN AN UTTER FAILURE. NO\nSHORTAGE OF FOOD EXISTS OR WILL EXIST\"]\n\nIF\n\n[Illustration: \"WE ONE AND ALL DETERMINE NOT TO CONSUME AN OUNCE MORE\nFOOD THAN IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO KEEP BODY AND SOUL TOGETHER.\"]\n\n[Illustration: \"THE WAR IS, TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, ALREADY WON,\"]\n\nPROVIDED\n\n[Illustration: \"THAT IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS THE WHOLE NATION MAKES\nSUCH A STUPENDOUS EFFORT AS WE HAVE NOT AS YET DREAMED OF,\" ETC.,\nETC.]\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _Bookmaker (with long experience of the Turf but none\nof Coursing)_. \"I'M GIVIN' YOU SIX TO FOUR AGAINST THE FAWN, SIR. NOW\nI'LL GIVE ANYONE SIX TO FOUR AGAINST THE BLACK.\"\n\n_Friend (hurriedly)_. \"BUT YOU CAN'T GIVE THOSE ODDS WITH ONLY TWO\nRUNNERS.\"\n\n_Bookmaker_. \"WHY? AIN'T THE BLOOMIN' RABBIT GOT A CHANCE?\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nNEW MEN AND OLD FACES.\n\n [According to a writer in _The Daily Chronicle_, Lord Morley's\n face \"in conformation gets more and more like Goethe's.\"]\n\n VISCOUNT, better known as plain JOHN MORLEY,\n As I gather from a chatty screed,\n Ever daily grows exteriorly\n (Pray forgive a rhymer's urgent need)\n More like GOETHE--please pronounce it \"Gertie\"--\n Who expired soon after eighteen-thirty.\n\n But this instance is not isolated,\n As a survey of our statesmen shows;\n WINSTON now suggests a long post-dated\n DAN O'CONNELL in his mouth and nose;\n NORTHCLIFFE's growing more Napoleonic\n Than the Corsican, though less laconic.\n\n In the noble lineaments of BILLING\n Shrewd observers (like myself) can trace\n Wonderful, inspiring, vivid, thrilling\n Memories of JULIUS CAESAR'S face,\n With a hint of something far more regal,\n More suggestive of the soaring eagle.\n\n I admit GEORGE MOORE is not yet showing\n Marked resemblance to his namesake, TOM;\n But great CHESTERTON is hourly growing\n Almost indistinguishable from\n Dr. JOHNSON; daily grows more plain\n SHAKSPEARE'S facial forecast of HALL CAINE.\n\n HALDANE and his spiritual brother,\n SCHOPENHAUER, that dyspeptic sage,\n Monthly grow so very like each other,\n As portrayed in MAXSE'S lurid page,\n That it passes MAXSE'S Christian charity\n To detect the least dissimilarity.\n\n BELLOC is approximating closely\n To the massive mien of CHARLES JAMES FOX;\n BUCHAN plagiarizes very grossly\n From the rapt expression of JOHN KNOX;\n And the LAUREATE, if his hair grew scanty\n Or he shaved his beard, might look like DANTE.\n\n CLARA BUTT, the eminent musician,\n Vividly resembles PERICLES;\n SARGENT and the late lamented TITIAN\n Are as like each other as two peas;\n LOREBURN, known to cronies as \"Bob\" Reid,\n Duplicates the Venerable BEDE.\n\n But enough of this identifying\n Instances of the recurrent face;\n Rather let us foster an undying\n Resolution in the British race\n Evermore and evermore to shun\n Any imitation of the Hun.\n\n * * * * *\n\n\nA POSER FROM THE BENCH.\n\nFrom the report of a collision case:--\n\n \"Mr. Justice ----: 'Which car hit the other first?' 'I cannot\n say.'\"--_Freeman's Journal_.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"OUR SWEEP IN THE HOLY LAND.\"--_Daily News_.\n\n_Ours_ is in Mesopotamia.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: HOW IT STRIKES A SOLDIER.\n\nTHE KAISER. \"WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THIS LLOYD GEORGE AFFAIR?\"\n\nMARSHAL VON HINDENBURG. \"I'VE NO TIME TO READ POLITICAL SPEECHES,\nSIRE. THIS FELLOW HAIG KEEPS ME TOO BUSY.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.\n\n_Monday, November 12th_.--An old Parliamentarian, when asked by a\nfriend to what party the PRIME MINISTER now belonged, sententiously\nreplied, \"He used to be a Radical; he will some day be a Conservative;\nand at present he is the leader of the Improvisatories.\"\n\nThe latest example of his inventive capacity does not meet with\nunmitigated approval. Members were very curious to know exactly how\nthe new Allied Council was going to work, and what would be the\nrelations between the Council's Military advisers and the existing\nGeneral Staffs of the countries concerned. Mr. BONAR LAW assured the\nHouse that the responsibility for strategy would remain where it is\nnow, but did not altogether succeed in explaining why in that case the\nCouncil required other military advisers.\n\nThe SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND is about the mildest-mannered man that ever\nsat upon the Treasury Bench. But even he can be \"_tres mechant_\" at a\npinch. When Mr. WATT renewed his complaint that sheriffs-principal in\nScotland had very little to do for the high salaries they received,\nMr. MUNRO replied that \"it would just be as unsafe to measure the\nactivities of the sheriff-principal by the number of appeals he hears\nas to measure the political activities of my hon. friend by the number\nof questions he puts.\"\n\nThe Pensions Department at Chelsea is to be reorganised. Mr. HODGE\nexcused the delays by pointing out that an average of thirty-three\nthousand letters a day is despatched, but, as he added that there is a\nstaff of four thousand five hundred persons to do it, it hardly looks\nas if they were overworked.\n\n_Tuesday, November 13th_.--The House of Lords was to have discussed\nthe state of Ireland, but, owing to the absence of its LEADER,\nfell back upon the less exciting but more practical topics of\nsugar-substitutes for jam, and barley for beer. It was cheering to\nlearn from the Duke of MARLBOROUGH that the jam-manufacturers gave\ngreat care to exclude arsenic from their glucose, and from Lord\nRHONDDA that there would be plenty of barley for both cakes and ale.\n\nMr. WARDLE is the latest example of the poacher turned gamekeeper.\nA few months ago, as leader of the Labour Party, he was instant in\ncriticism of the ineptitutes of Government officials. This afternoon,\nupon his old friend, Mr. TYSON WILSON, venturing to refer to the\n\"stupid decisions\" of the Board of Trade, Mr. WARDLE was down on him\nin a moment. With the air of one who had been born and brought up in\nWhitehall Gardens, he replied, \"Stupid decisions are not made by the\nBoard of Trade.\"\n\nThe Pacifists had rather a mixed day.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: PENSIONS.\n\nMR. HODGE.]\n\n * * * * *\n\nThey were visibly relieved when Mr. BONAR LAW (supported by Mr.\nASQUITH) declined to admit into the Bill for extending the life of\nthis Parliament a provision enabling constituencies to get rid of\nMembers who had ceased to represent them. But they did not like his\ncontemptuous reference to their argumentative powers. Mr. TREVELYAN,\nwho regards himself as the representative (by literary descent) of\nCHARLES JAMES FOX, was particularly annoyed.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _IN RE_ ADMIRAL JELLICOE.\n\nMR. LYNCH. DR. MACNAMARA.]\n\n * * * * *\n\nAs party-funds are rather under a cloud just now the Government\nthought they might justify their existence by drawing on them for\nthe campaign against enemy propaganda. But their custodians thought\notherwise. The Tory Whip was prepared to make a small contribution;\nthe Liberal would give nothing, on the ground that the total required\nwas extravagantly large. So the country will have to foot the bill.\n\n_Wednesday, November 14th_.--The knowledge that Mr. ASQUITH was to\n\"interpellate\" the PRIME MINISTER regarding his recent speech in\nParis, and the Allied War Council therein described, brought a\ncrowd of Members to the House, and filled the Peers' Gallery with\nex-Ministers scenting a first-class crisis.\n\nThe protagonists on entering the arena were loudly cheered by their\nrespective adherents, but the expected duel did not come off. Mr.\nASQUITH'S questions were searching enough, but not provocative. Mr.\nLLOYD GEORGE'S reply was comprehensive and conciliatory, and ended\nwith the promise of a day for discussion. Instead of a fight there was\nonly an armistice, usually a preliminary to a definite peace.\n\nA little disappointed, perhaps, the Peers betook themselves to their\nown Chamber, there to hear Lord PARMOOR discourse upon the woes\nof conscientious objectors. Many of them, he thought, had been\nvindictively punished for their peculiar opinions. Nobody, in a\nsomewhat cloudy discussion, made it quite clear whether the Tribunals\nor the Army authorities or the Home Office were most at fault; and\nLord CURZON'S suggestion that persons who refused not merely to fight\nbut to render any kind of service to their country in its time of need\nwere not wholly free from blame had almost the air of novelty.\n\nThe Air-Force Bill passed through Committee in one sitting. The credit\nfor this achievement may be divided equally between Major BAIRD, who\nproved himself once more a skilful pilot, and Mr. BILLING, who spoke\nso often that other intending critics got little chance. Counting\nspeeches and interruptions, I find from the official reports that he\naddressed the House exactly one hundred times; and it is therefore\nworth noticing that his last words were, \"This is what you call\nmuzzling the House of Commons.\"\n\n_Thursday, November 15th_.--Lord WIMBORNE did his best to-night to\ndefend the inaction of the Irish Executive in the face of the Sinn\nFein menace. But he would have been wiser not to have adduced the\nargument that Ireland was a _terra incognita_. If there is one subject\nthat the Peers think they know all about it is the sister-island. Lord\nCURZON thought it would be a mistake, by enforcing \"a superficial\nquiet,\" to check the wholesome influences brought into being by the\nConvention. He did not go so far as to say that Mr. DE VALERA was one\nof them.\n\nAt last the Government have decided to take short order with the\npernicious literature of the Pacifists. In future all such documents\nare to be submitted to the Press Bureau before publication. A howl of\nderisive laughter greeted the HOME SECRETARY'S announcement, but when\nMr. SNOWDEN essayed to move the adjournment, although he and his\nfriends were joined by some of the Scotch and Irish malcontents, the\ntotal muster was only thirty-three, and the motion accordingly came to\nearth with a thud.\n\nBy a large majority the House refused to reinstate the Livery\nfranchise in the City of London. In any case this ancient privilege\ncould not long have survived the curtailment of the Lord Mayor's\nFeast.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _The Colonel_. \"I'D TAKE ALL THOSE MUTINOUS HOUNDS AND\nPUT 'EM AGAINST THE WALL.\"\n\n_Aunt Jane_. \"BUT, MY DEAR, THE AWFUL THING IS THAT IT HAS SPREAD TO\nOUR OWN ARMY. I HEARD TWO SOLDIERS IN THE TRAIN TO-DAY TALKING ABOUT\nTHEIR SERGEANT-MAJOR IN A DREADFUL WAY.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nBOON FOR BUSY BRIDEGROOMS.\n\nIn these days of military hustle, when a soldier comes home, falls in\nlove, gets engaged, marries, sets up a home, and returns to the Front\nin less than a week, there is little time for the ordinary courtesies\nof matrimonial procedure. It is felt, therefore, that the appended\nprinted form of thanks for wedding presents--based on the model of the\nField Service Postcard--will prove a great boon to all soldiers who\nmeditate matrimony during short leave. It will be found sufficient\nmerely to strike out inappropriate words in the printed form, which is\nas follows:--\n\n\"Captain and Mrs. ---- beg to return thanks for your\n _\n Beautiful |\n Charming |\n Generous |\n Very generous |\n Useful | Gift\n Very Useful |- Cheque\n More than useful | Letter.\"\n Unexpected |\n Totally unexpected |\n Remarkable |\n Artistic |\n _|\n\n_Examples_.--(1) To a rich and miserly uncle, who has come down with\nan astonishingly handsome sum--strike out everything except \"Very\ngenerous--more than useful--totally unexpected cheque.\"\n\n(2) To an eccentric former admirer of the bride, who has sent a\nforty-stanza poem, entitled \"Sunset in the White-chapel Road: Thoughts\nThereon\"--strike out everything except \"Remarkable gift.\"\n\n(3) To an enormously wealthy female relative, who disapproves of the\nbride and has sent a second-hand plated sugar-sifter--strike out\neverything except \"Gift.\"\n\n(4) To anyone of whom much was expected, but who neither gave a\npresent nor wrote--strike out everything on the postcard.\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"Strange Story of a Wedding in the Divorce Court.\"--_Daily News_.\n\nIt seems a rather unfortunate choice of _locale_.\n\n * * * * *\n\nExtract from an Indian begging-letter:--\n\n \"My mother is a widow, poor chap, and has a postmortem son.\"\n\n * * * * *\n\n \"AMATEUR GENT., experienced, wanted, for week at Xmas. All\n expenses paid.\" _Daily Telegraph_.\n\nWhy not have a professional one and do the thing handsomely?\n\n * * * * *\n\nONCE UPON A TIME.\n\nTHE LETTER.\n\nOnce upon a time, not so very long ago, an illustrious man of\naffairs--soldier and statesman too--visited our shores, and by his\nwise counsels so captured the imagination of his hearers and readers\nthat one of the greatest of all compliments was paid to him, and\nanyone with a black cocker spaniel to name named it after him; and he\nhad a name rather peculiarly adapted to such ends too.\n\nIt chanced that among the puppies thus made illustrious was one which\na young soldier before leaving for France to win the War gave to his\nsister, and when writing to him, as, being a good girl, she regularly\nand abundantly did, she never omitted to give tidings as to how the\nlittle creature was developing; and I need hardly say that in the\nwhole history of dogs, from TOBIT'S faithful trotting companion\nonwards, there never was a dog so packed with intelligence and\nfidelity as this. Most girls' dogs are perfect, but this one was more\nremarkable still.\n\nNow it happened that the gallant brother, in the course of his duties\nas a war-winner, was moved from place to place so often that he\ngradually lost definition, as the photographers say, and the result\nwas that one of her recent letters failed to catch up with him. That\nwas a pity, because it was a better letter than usual. It gave all the\nnews that he would most want to hear. It said what picture her father\nwas working on at the moment, and told, without spoiling them, his two\nlast jokes. It said whom her mother had called on and who had called\non her mother and how something must be done to stop her smoking too\nmany cigarettes. It said that their young brother, having sprained his\nankle at hockey, had become a wolf for jig-saw puzzles. It said where\ntheir parents had dined recently and where they were going to dine and\nwho was coming next week. It said what she had seen at the theatre\nlast Saturday and what book she was reading. It said which of the\nother V.A.D.'s had become engaged. It said what an awful time they had\nhad trying to buy some tea, and how scarce butter had become, and\nwhat a cold she had caught in the last raid, and how Uncle Jim had\ninfluenza and couldn't go on being a special, and how Aunt Sibyl had\nbeen introduced to one of the GEDDESES and talked to him as though it\nwas the other, and how she herself had met Evelyn in the street\nthe other day and Evelyn had asked \"with suspicious interest after\nyou\"--and a thousand other things such as a good sister, even though\nbusy at a hospital, finds time to write to a brother over there, all\namong the mud and the shells, winning the War. And not being in the\nhabit of signing her name, when writing in this familiar way, she\nfinished up with a reference to the darlingest of all dogs by sending\nits love at the very end: \"Love from ----\" and so forth.\n\nWell, the letter, as I have said, could not be delivered. The postal\npeople at the Front, and behind the Front, are astonishingly good, but\nthey could not get in touch with the brother this time, and therefore\nthey opened the letter and looked at the foot of it for the name of\nthe writer and found that of the dog, and at the head of it for\nthe street and town where the writer lived, and sent it back as\n\"insufficiently addressed.\"\n\nAnd that is why in a certain house in Chelsea a treasured possession\nis a returned letter for General SMUTS.\n\n * * * * *\n\nFrom an article entitled \"Is it Safe for Cousins to marry?\":--\n\n \"It is just as well, however, to pick out somebody besides your\n cousin for your wife.\" _The Family Doctor_.\n\nBefore acting on this advice, however, it might be safer to consult\nThe Family Lawyer.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: AFTER A DAY ON THE ALLOTMENT.\n\n\"SUDDENLY SHE REALISED THAT HER IDOL HAD FEET OF CLAY.\"--_Extract from\npopular novel_.]\n\n * * * * *\n\nTHE VERY GLAD EYE.\n\nMother put down the key of the hen-house and took up the letters that\nlay beside her plate.\n\n\"If only Joan would write larger,\" she sighed, turning over an\nenvelope across which an ant seemed to have walked and left an inky\ntrail. \"I've mislaid my glass too, and shan't be able to read a word.\nWhere could I have put the miserable thing?\" she asked, peering again\nat the ridiculous little script.\n\nFather put down his paper and said these hunts for Aunt Matilda were\ngetting monotonous. Only yesterday he had rescued her from some dried\nbulbs in the greenhouse, and didn't Mother think it time she saw a\ngood oculist and had proper spectacles, instead of using the old lens\nin that carved gold bauble belonging once to his grandmother's aunt.\n\n\"Perhaps it's just a bad habit,\" she answered with a smile, \"or my\neyes are getting lazy. But really I can see _so_ well through it, and\nif they would print the newspapers better--\"\n\n\"No one we know in this morning's list,\" said Father shortly, as he\nturned a sheet; \"and we should be hearing from those rascals now that\nthe push is over,\" he added, glancing at Mother who began to sip her\ncoffee hurriedly.\n\n\"They might even get leave together,\" ventured Margery. \"It's five\nmonths since Dick came home, and as for Christopher--\"\n\n\"What swank for old Margots, now her hair is up,\" piped Archie. \"Two\nbrothers from the trenches to--\"\n\n\"If you'd make a little less noise, my son,\" said Father in a strange\nvoice, \"I might be able to take in what I'm reading. There's something\nhere about Christopher.\"\n\n\"What?\" cried Mother, springing from her chair.\n\n\"Yes, it's Christopher plain enough,\" he repeated with shining eyes.\n\"Christopher Charles Bentley, and--God bless my soul!--the boy has\nbeen splendid! It's all down here, and---\n\n\"Read, read!\" we clamoured, as his voice grew husky and indistinct.\n\n\"Read!\" again we shouted, as Mother came and took the paper gently\nfrom him.\n\n\"When you're all quiet, children,\" she began, devouring the words\nbefore her.\n\n_Quiet!_ Even the canary held its breath while Mother read that\nwonderful paragraph.\n\nIt was a long one, and every word of it a tribute to our magnificent\nChris, who had organised a small volunteer party, attacked a strong\npoint, and captured fifteen of the enemy and a machine-gun, for which\ngallant act he had been awarded the M.C.\n\nWith lingering pride she went through it a second time, and only then\ndid we see that she was staring at the paper, proudly and fiercely,\nthrough the handle of the hen-house key!\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _First A.B. (indicating old tramp steamer in ballast)_.\n\"THANK 'EAVENS WE AIN'T GOT PROPELLERS WHAT STICK OUT LIKE THAT ON\nTHIS 'ERE JUNK, BILL.\"\n\n_Second A.B._ \"WHAT ARE YOU GROUSING ABOUT NOW?\"\n\n_First A.B._ \"WHY, THE BLOOMIN' FIRST-LOOTENANT WOULD MAKE US POLISH\nTHE BLINKIN' THING.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nTHE MUSICAL CRITIC'S ORDEAL.\n\n [Mr. CYRIL SCOTT, the musical composer, in his recently published\n volume on _The Philosophy of Modernism in its connection with\n Music_, states that the criterion of lofty music, the method of\n gauging the spiritual value of art, \"is only possible to him who\n has awakened the latent faculties of the pineal gland and the\n pituitary body.\"]\n\n Lately I've been reading CYRIL SCOTT'S\n Book on Music, modern and unmuzzled,\n And, though solving many toughish knots,\n By one statement I am sadly puzzled,\n Namely, that if we would understand\n What divides the noble from the shoddy\n We must cultivate \"the pineal gland,\"\n Also \"the pituitary body.\"\n\n But unfortunately SCOTT refrains\n (Hence my present painful agitation)\n From elucidating how one gains\n This desiderated consummation.\n Must I fly to silken Samarcand,\n Or explore the distant Irrawaddy\n For the culture of my pineal gland\n And of my pituitary body?\n\n Is the object gained by force of will\n Or some drastic vegetarian diet?\n Does it mean a compound radium pill\n Causing vast upheaval and disquiet?\n Do I need some special \"Hidden Hand,\"\n Or the very strongest whisky toddy\n To arouse my dormant pineal gland,\n My unused pituitary body?\n\n Should I read the works of Mr. YEATS,\n Or the lays of WILCOX (ELLA WHEELER)?\n Must I visit the United States\n And consult the newest occult \"healer\"?\n Is the tragedy of IBSEN'S _Brand_\n Or the humour of _Poor Pillycoddy_\n Better feeding for my pineal gland\n And for my pituitary body?\n\n Vain the subtle art of HENRY JAMES,\n Vain the wealth of ROTHSCHILDS or of MORGANS,\n If I fail to satisfy the claims\n Of these mystic and momentous organs;\n I'm no better than a grain of sand\n Or a simple common polypody,\n With an undeveloped pineal gland,\n An inert pituitary body.\n\n Blindly seeking for a helpful clue,\n Welcoming no matter what suggestion,\n I have lately sounded one or two\n Leading doctors on this vital question;\n But they think I'll have to be trepanned\n If I wish effectively to modify\n the structure of my pineal gland\n Or of my pituitary body.\n\n MORAL.\n\n _'Gin pituitary bodies,\n With awakened eye,\n Meet with humble hoddy-doddies--\n Smaller human fry--\n Cries and kissing both are missing\n When they're passing by,\n And the astral demi-god is\n Comin' thro' the rye_.\n\n * * * * *\n\n OUR COLLOQUIAL CONTEMPORARIES.\n\n \"Repeated charges by Turkish cavalry resulted in only a slight\n gain of ground at the expense of heavy osses.\"--_Daily News_.\n\n * * * * *\n\n FREE FOODERS.\n\n \"ROSYTH WORKERS AND THE COST OF LIVING.\n\n \"Mr. Douglas moved that they demand a reduction in the cost of\n living of 200 per cent. by abolishing profiteering and securing\n national control of food supplies. It was subsequently agreed to\n demand 100 per cent. decrease in the cost of food.\"--_Glasgow\n Herald_.\n\n * * * * *\n\nTHE COMPLETE PLASHER.\n\n\"Francesca,\" I said, \"listen to this.\"\n\n\"I will,\" she said, \"if it's worth listening to.\"\n\n\"You can't tell that till you've heard it, can you?\"\n\n\"Well, what is it, anyhow?\"\n\n\"It's a letter,\" I said, \"from Harry Penruddock.\"\n\n\"That doesn't sound very exciting.\"\n\n\"Ah, but wait a bit.\"\n\n\"Well, get a move on. I've got to see the cook.\"\n\n\"He sends me,\" I said, \"a notice which has been served upon him about\nhis cottage at Smoltham. He wants to have my opinion about it.\"\n\n\"Very well, give him your opinion, and let's get on with the War.\"\n\n\"Francesca,\" I said, \"are you not more than a little peevish this\nmorning?\"\n\n\"I have no patience,\" she said, \"with notices that have to be served.\nIt's always done by sanitary inspectors and rate collectors, and\npeople of that sort. Why can't they just post them and have done with\nit?\"\n\n\"Who are you,\" I said, \"that you should fly in the face of Providence\nin this way? Can't you see that if a notice is 'served,' it\nimmediately becomes twice as important?\"\n\n\"Oh, if it adds to the dignity of an inspector, well and good; but for\nmy part I should have posted it.\"\n\n\"You are not a sanitary inspector, and cannot realise the feelings of\none.\"\n\n\"They have no feelings, and that's why they're made inspectors.\"\n\n\"Hush!\" I said, and began to read:--\n\n\"'In pursuance of the directions given in an Act passed in the fifth\nand sixth years of the reign of King William the Fourth, entitled \"An\nAct to consolidate and amend the Laws relating to Highways in that\npart of Great Britain called England,\" I, T. Bradish, of the Town\nHall, Smoltham, do hereby give you notice forthwith to cut, prune,\nplash or lop certain Trees and Hedges overhanging the highway\nimmediately adjoining your premises, No. 15, East Gate, in the Parish\nof Smoltham, and which are causing an obstruction and annoyance to\nthe said highway, so that the obstructions caused to the said highway\nshall be removed.\n\n\"'Dated this 19th day of October, 1917.'\"\n\n\"Isn't it priceless?\" I said.\n\n\"It is,\" said Francesca. \"I never knew before that a road could be\nannoyed.\"\n\n\"Even a road has its feelings.\"\n\n\"Yes, perhaps it's a short lane, and everybody tramples on it, and it\nturns at last.\"\n\n\"So do borough engineers and surveyors, it seems.\"\n\n\"I bet this one's a Tartar.\"\n\n\"How can you tell that?\"\n\n\"I can tell it by his style, which is very severe and uncompromising.\"\n\n\"His style,\" I said, \"is as the statute made it, and mustn't be\nimpugned by us.\"\n\n\"I particularly like that bit about plashing the trees. How in the\nname of all that's English do you plash a tree?\"\n\n\"If,\" I said, \"you were a fountain and wanted to be poetical, you\nwould plash, instead of splashing.\"\n\n\"That's nonsense,\" she said.\n\n\"No,\" I said, \"it's poetry.\"\n\n\"But you don't pour poetry on overhanging trees. It must mean\nsomething else.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you what; we'll get a dictionary.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"you get it. I'm no good at dictionaries. I always\nfind such a lot of fascinating words that I never get to the one I\nwant.\"\n\n\"I'm rather like that myself,\" I said. \"However I'll exercise\nself-restraint. Here you are: Packthread, Pastime, Pin--there's a lot\nabout Pin--Plash. Got it! It means 'to bend down and interweave the\nbranches or twigs of.'\"\n\n\"Now,\" she said, \"we know what Mr. Bradish wants.\"\n\n\"He's a very arbitrary man,\" I said. \"How can he expect Harry\nPenruddock to bend down and interweave the branches or twigs of?\"\n\n\"Anyway, Harry's got to do it, whether he understands it or not.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"borough surveyors take no denials. And now that you've\nhad your lesson in English, you can go and see the cook.\"\n\n\"Half a mo',\" she said; \"I'm acquiring a lot of useful information\nabout 'Plaster.' I never knew--\"\n\n\"Hurry up,\" I said, \"or we shan't get any lunch.\"\n\nR.C.L.\n\n * * * * *\n\nDERELICT.\n\n_(Notices to Mariners. North Atlantic Ocean. Derelict reported.)_\n\n \"We left 'er 'eaded for Lord knows where, in latitude forty-nine,\n With a cargo o' deals from Puget Sound, an' 'er bows blown out by a mine;\n I seen 'er just as the dark come down--I seen 'er floatin' still,\n An' I 'ope them deals'd let her sink afore so long,\" said Bill.\n\n \"It warn't no use to stand by 'er--she could neither sail nor steer--\n With the biggest part of a thousand mile between 'er and Cape Clear;\n The sea was up to 'er waterways an' gainin' fast below,\n But I'd like to know she went to 'er rest as a ship's a right to go.\n\n \"For it's bitter 'ard on a decent ship, look at it 'ow you may,\n That's worked her traverse an' stood 'er trick an' done 'er best in 'er day,\n To be driftin' around like a nine-days-drowned on the Western Ocean swell,\n With never a hand to reef an' furl an' steer an' strike the bell.\n\n \"No one to tend 'er binnacle lamps an' light 'er masthead light,\n Or scour 'er plankin' or scrape 'er seams when the days are sunny an' bright;\n No one to sit on the hatch an' yarn an' smoke when work is done,\n An' say, 'That gear wants reevin' new some fine dogwatch, my son.'\n\n \"No one to stand by tack an' sheet when it's comin' on to blow;\n Never the roar of 'Rio Grande' to the watch's stamp-an'-go;\n An' the seagulls settin' along the rail an' callin' the long day through,\n Like the souls of old dead sailor-men as used to be 'er crew.\n\n \"Never a port of all 'er ports for 'er to fetch again,\n Nothin' only the sea an' the sky, the sun, the wind an' the rain;\n It's cruel 'ard on a decent ship, an' so I tell you true,\n An' I wish I knew she 'ad gone to 'er rest as a good ship ought to do.\"\n\nC.F.S.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: _Mabel_. \"WHAT SORT OF A DANCE WAS IT LAST NIGHT? HOW\nDID YOU GET ON?\"\n\n_Gladys_. \"OH, ALL RIGHT. I WAS UP TO MY KNEES IN BOYS ALL THE\nEVENING.\"]\n\n * * * * *\n\nOUR BOOKING-OFFICE.\n\n_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_\n\nGenerally speaking, stories left unfinished because of the death\nof the writer in mid course can only be at best an uncomfortable,\nexasperating legacy to his admirers. But by a thrice happy chance this\nis not the case with the two novels upon which the late HENRY JAMES\nwas engaged at the time of his fatal illness. This good fortune comes\nfrom the fact that it was the writer's habit \"to test and explore,\" in\na written or dictated sketch, the possible developments of any theme\nbefore embarking upon its treatment in detail. I get the phrase \"test\nand explore,\" than which there could be no better, from the brief\npreface to the volume now before me, _The Ivory Tower_ (COLLINS). It\nexactly suggests the method of this preliminary study, doubly precious\nnow, both as supplying the key by which we can understand the fragment\nthat has been worked out, and as in itself giving us a glimpse,\nwonderfully fascinating, of its evolution. _The Ivory Tower_ (called\nso characteristically after an object whose bearing upon the intrigue\nis of the slightest) is a study of wealth in its effect upon the\nmutual relations of a small group of persons belonging to the\nplutocracy of pre-war America. Its special motive was to be a\ndevelopment of situation as between a young legatee, in whom the\nbusiness instinct is entirely wanting, and his friend and adviser,\nwhom he was presently to detect in dishonest dealing, yet refrain from\nany act of challenge that would mean exposure. \"Refrain\"--does this\nnot give you in one word the whole secret of what would have been a\nstudy in character and emotion obviously to the taste of the writer?\nFor itself, and still more for the glimpse of what it was to become,\n_The Ivory Tower_ must have a place in every collection where the\nunmatchable wit of HENRY JAMES is honoured as it should be.\n\n * * * * *\n\nSomething less successful perhaps for itself, though even more\nabsorbing technically, is the volume containing the unfinished\nfragment of another HENRY JAMES novel, to be called _The Sense of the\nPast_ (COLLINS). Here especially it is the preliminary study that\nfurnishes the chief interest; the spectacle of this so-skilled\ncraftsman struggling to master an idea that might well, I think, have\nbeen found later too unsubstantial, too subtly fantastic, for working\nout. Very briefly, the theme is to treat of a young American, in whom\nthis \"Sense of the Past\" is all-powerful; whom the gift of an old\nLondon house and its furnishings enables to transport himself bodily\ninto the life of 1820. More than this, he lives that life (and it\nis here that one suspects the idea of becoming unmanageable) in the\nperson of an actual youth of that time, in whom a corresponding Sense\nof the Future has been so strong that he has answered the curiosity of\nhis descendant by an exchange of personalities. Of course the dangers\nand confusions of the plan, a kind of psychological version of one\noften used in farce (except that it precisely wasn't to be any manner\nof dream), are such as might well alarm any writer--and, one might\nadd, any reader also. It is a further misfortune that the style of\nwhat is actually written should be in the master's most remote and\nobscure manner, so much so that one is forced to wonder whether,\nwithout the notes as guide, it would be in any sort clear what the\nwhole thing was about. The transition, for example, from the actual to\nthe supernatural event is so abrupt that it might well have left the\nuninformed helplessly befogged. But this very fact again, as supposing\nsome further treatment only now to be guessed at, helps to make the\nunique fascination of the book as revealing the difficulties and\nrewards of letters.\n\n * * * * *\n\nWhatever Mr. ERNEST THOMPSON SETON cares to write I am glad to read,\nbut there were moments in _The Preacher of Cedar Mountain_ (HODDER AND\nSTOUGHTON) when the great moral lesson of the story was as much as I\ncould bear. The tale reveals the spiritual and moral development of\n_Jim Hartigan_. The author assures us that most of the characters are\ndrawn from life, and that some of the main events are historical. All\nwhich I can easily believe, for Mr. SETON'S blunt method of describing\n_Jim Hartigan's_ evolution from an unhallowed stable-boy to a muscular\nChristian continually suggests reality. It is not a stylish method,\nbut it gets home, and in a tale of this kind that is the main, if not\nthe only, matter of importance. _Jim's_ besetting weaknesses were\ndrink and an overwhelming love for horses. The former he conquered\nfairly soon, but the latter tripped him up more than once, and if he\nhad not been guided by the wisest woman who ever came from the\nWest his end would have been chaotic. The races at Fort Ryan are\nexcellently described, and as a picture of the West of America some\nforty years ago you will find this story of _Jim's_ conversion both\ninstructive and intriguing. All the same Mr. SETON has so often\ndelighted me by his tales of the animal world that I hope this\nexcursion is merely a holiday from the work for which he has a real\ngenius.\n\n * * * * *\n\n[Illustration: THE ABOVE GENTLEMAN IS SUPERSTITIOUS ON THE SUBJECT OF\nWALKING UNDER LADDERS.]\n\n * * * * *\n\nUp to the present time the crop of German spy-stories has been\ndistinguished by quantity rather than by quality. Possibly the\nauthors, realising that the wildest flights of their highly-trained\nfancies could never match the actual machinations of the German Secret\nService as revealed in the official news, have not put their hearts\ninto the work. In _The Lost Naval Papers_ and other stories (MURRAY)\nMr. BENNET COPPLESTONE has shown unusual boldness in connecting the\nactivities of his super-policeman, _Dawson_, with the more prominent\nevents of the War. Indeed, I am not sure that the terror he professes\nto feel in the presence of the Scotland Yard official (for he tells\nhis stories _in propria persona_) is not to some extent justified.\n\"Dora\" is very sensitive and six months ago would never have permitted\nMr. COPPLESTONE to reveal to our enemies either the bumptious egoism\nof a nameless First Lord or the platitudinous vacillations of an\nanonymous Premier, even in the interests of popular fiction. Though\nwe concede his audacity in allowing his superlative sleuth to stop a\ngeneral strike of engineers by threatening them with martial law and\nto tempt the German fleet to come out by sending it false news of our\nbattleship strength, or to enable the battle of the Falkland Islands\nto be won by piling dummy battle cruisers up outside Plymouth harbour,\nthe merit of Mr. COPPLESTONE'S book does not lie in the complexity or\nvitality of his plots. It lies in a keen sense of humour and clever\ncharacter suggestion, and the recognition that the thing written about\nis of less importance than the manner of writing. We earnestly desire\nthat Mr. COPPLESTONE should devote another volume--a whole one--to the\ninimitable _Madame Guilbert_; but whatever he writes about will be\nwelcome, provided it be written in the vein of the volume before us.\n\n * * * * *\n\nOut of such workaday elements as the hypnotic fascinations of a\nsleek music-master, the follies of a runaway schoolgirl and the\nwell-disciplined affections of a most superior young gentleman, Mr.\nW.E. NORRIS has contrived to create yet another new story, without\ninfringement of his own or anyone else's copyright. Thanks to the\nincidence of War and the author's skilful manipulation of Europe's\ndistresses (for once the KAISER'S intrusion into the middle of a\npeaceful--almost too peaceful--narrative is not unwelcome), the second\nhalf of _The Fond Fugitives_ (HUTCHINSON) is better than the first.\nNot, indeed, that such a wary hand as the writer has been so\nill-advised as to follow his hero to Flanders, or even to let his\nheroine do so; but his wounded soldier, come home with sympathy\nand understanding grown big enough to realise that a girl, though\nindiscreet once, may yet be adorable ever after, is certainly more\nto one's taste than the philanderer about town, admiring other men's\nwives, in July, 1914. And so the story, slight though it is, ends on a\nstrong note and with fair hope of happiness for two wiser and not much\nsadder people. Some of the minor characters are quite capitally drawn,\nparticularly the old father and mother in pathetic flight before the\nshadow of their daughter's disgrace; but it is the freshness of the\nheroine herself, outraging all tradition by refusing, though without\nbravado, to remain for ever in the gloom of a childish error, that one\nlikes to remember. Altogether, the author's friends will find this\nbook not at all below the level of his best work.\n\n * * * * *\n\n_Small Craft_ (ELKIN MATTHEWS), by Miss C. FOX SMITH, contains several\npoems that have appeared in Punch over the initials \"C.F.S.\" They\nshould receive a fresh welcome from all who share her understanding\nof the ways of seafaring men, and from the larger public that is\nbeginning to appreciate the gallantry and devotion of our Merchant\nService.\n\n * * * * *\n\nExtract from a letter in _The Saturday Review_:--\n\n \"But posterity ought to share the burden, as it has always done in\n the past.\"\n\nA tardy but complete answer to the old question, \"What has posterity\ndone to deserve our consideration?\"\n\n\n\n***","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\n\nGEORGE JOHNSON\n\nMiss Leavitt's \nStars\n\nThe Untold Story of\n\nthe Woman Who Discovered\n\nHow to Measure the Universe\n\nATLAS BOOKS\n\nW.W.NORTON & COMPANY\n\nNEW YORK \u2022 LONDON\nDedication\n\nFor my mother, Dorris M. Johnson\nEpigraph\n\nHer columns grew longer, and if she squinted at them, the confetti of inklings began to resemble a skyful of stars. She had time to let her mind wander. The Magi's search for Bethlehem; the music of Milton's crystal spheres . . . they could all be reduced to these numbers. There was actually no need to squint and pretend that the digits were the stars. They were, by themselves, wildly alive, fact and symbol of the vast, cool distances in which one located the light of different worlds.\n\n\u2014THOMAS MALLON, _Two Moons_\n\nThen, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together from the earth to Uranus, and the mysterious outskirts of the solar system; from the solar system to a star in the Swan, the nearest fixed star in the northern sky; from the star in the Swan to remoter stars; thence to the remotest visible; till the ghastly chasm which they had bridged by a fragile line of sight was realized. . . .\n\n\u2014THOMAS HARDY, _Two on a Tower_\nContents\n\nCover\n\nTitle Page\n\nDedication\n\nEpigraph\n\nPreface\n\nPROLOGUEThe Village in the Canyon\n\nCHAPTER1Black Stars,White Nights\n\nCHAPTER2Hunting for Variables\n\nCHAPTER3Henrietta's Law\n\nCHAPTER4Triangles\n\nCHAPTER5Shapley's Ants\n\nCHAPTER6The Late, Great Milky Way\n\nCHAPTER7In the Realm of the Nebulae\n\nCHAPTER8The Mysterious K\n\nCHAPTER9The Cosmic Stampede\n\nCHAPTER10Ghost Stories\n\nEPILOGUEFire on the Mountain\n\nNotes\n\nSelected Bibliography\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nIndex\n\nCopyright\n\nOther Works\nPreface\n\nHenrietta Swan Leavitt deserves a proper biography. She will probably never get one, so faint is the trail she left behind. No personal diaries, no boxes of letters, no scientific memoirs\u2014she wasn't one to brag. She rates no more than a few paragraphs in the biographical reference books, the _Who's Who_ of this or that, a footnote or a boxed sidebar in the Astronomy 101 texts.\n\nI had intended to use her as nothing more than a device, a way to get into the story of how, in the 1920s, people learned that there is more to the universe than just the Milky Way. The discovery she made in her menial position at the Harvard Observatory was the turning point. I figured I would make that turn in the first chapter and then move on.\n\nBut Henrietta Leavitt refused to exit on cue from the story. I couldn't get this woman out of my mind. Why, given the remarkable, completely unexpected nature of her observation, didn't she push beyond it, working shoulder to shoulder with the great Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble, as they grabbed onto Henrietta's law and ran with it light-years across the sky?\n\nAnd so, just when I thought the book was almost done, I found myself going back to the beginning, searching her genealogy, scouring the records as they had apparently not been scoured before. Scrap by scrap, the apparition in the canned biographical sketches was replaced by a human being\u2014not solid enough, perhaps, to star in her own biography but someone with a story to tell.\nPROLOGUE\n\nThe Village in the Canyon\n\nThe village was hidden at the bottom of a deep chasm with sides so steep and slick that no one had ever climbed them. All that could be seen overhead was a narrow band of sky.\n\nLooking down the canyon, one could spot a hill in the distance. How distant no one knew, for it was separated from the village by an impassable expanse. Beyond the hill, and even more inaccessible, was a faraway mountain, the edge of the knowable world.\n\nThe villagers had noticed that when they walked the width of their canyon, from one wall to the other, the top of the hill appeared to shift ever so slightly against the backdrop of the mountain, moving from one side of the peak to the other. No one believed the hill really moved, but they enjoyed the illusion.\n\nOne day a particularly observant citizen noticed an interesting subtlety. When he wandered up the canyon a ways, and then traversed its width from wall to wall, the hilltop still appeared to move, but much more slowly. And if he walked even farther and repeated the experiment, the movement was smaller still. Venture far enough, he discovered, and there was no perceptible shift at all.\n\nHe made an entry in his notebook: The amount the hill moves depends on its distance from the observer. He had discovered the phenomenon called parallax.\n\nReturning to the village, where the hill was closest and the effect was most pronounced, he measured the separation between the canyon walls and began to sketch out a picture:\n\nThe width of the canyon and the line of sight from each canyon wall to the center of the hilltop formed an imaginary triangle. Using a surveying instrument, he could measure the two angles at the triangle's base. Then, using what he had learned in school about the rules of trigonometry, he calculated the height of the triangle\u2014the distance from the center of the baseline to the apex, from the village straight across the impassable badlands to the hilltop. By this measure, it was ten canyon widths away. It was still impossible to walk there, but it was comforting to know the distance. The world seemed a little tamer.\n\n_Triangulating a Mountain_\n\nIn coming years, the villagers began to build stone lookout towers, climbing high enough to observe that beyond the hill was another one. Using the same measuring technique, they showed that the second hill was fifteen canyon widths away. Behind it was a third hill at twenty-five canyon widths. But beyond that the method failed. The hills were so far that they couldn't be made to shift at all. The villagers' canyon was not wide enough, their triangles were too small.\n\nMost tantalizing of all was the dark immovable mountain on the horizon. It seemed to lie at infinity, a distance so great as to be immeasurable. A few villagers imagined launching an expedition, traversing the dangerous badlands between the village and the first hill and then forging beyond that, walking day after day until they had reached the mountain. But none was so foolish or so brave. The more imaginative citizens could envision what it might be like to rise up out of the canyon, where they would be free to move so far left and right that the mountain itself would shift against some even more distant backdrop. Then they could determine how long the journey would be. But that was just fantasy.\n\nIn theory, there was another way of indirectly determining the mountain's distance: things looked smaller the farther away they were. Something twice as distant would appear half as high. If this rule applied outside the immediate area of the village\u2014and why would it not?\u2014there would be a means of measuring to the mountain.\n\nOne very clear day, an observer standing on the highest tower decided to try this technique. She had noticed long ago that there was vegetation on the nearest hilltop\u2014appearing in the distance like miniature versions of the local flora, the spiny green bushes that covered the canyon floor. On this day she noticed that if she squinted her eyes, she could also make out, just barely, the tiniest fringe of green along the mountaintop, comforting evidence that this far-off land might not be unlike her own.\n\nIt took only a few moments for her to appreciate the larger implication. Working carefully, she measured the apparent height of the shrunken shrubs on the nearest hill. The even tinier fringe of green on the mountain appeared to be some ten times smaller. And so, it seemed, the mountain itself must be ten times farther than the hilltop\u2014a full one hundred canyon widths away.\n\nThat was far but not infinite. Walking there might take a week or two\u2014if someone could find a way to cross the impassable divide. Encouraged by her discovery, a party of volunteers set out for the mountain. From the highest towers the citizens watched as the explorers eventually found a way across the badlands, to the first hilltop and on past the second and the third, until in a few days they were out of sight.\n\nAfter a week had passed, the villagers went back to the towers to watch for the expedition's return. Two weeks later they looked again. Months went by, then a year before they stopped waiting.\n\nFinally one day, a single member of the party staggered back home. The vegetation on the mountaintop, he reported, was very different from anything in the canyon. Towering trees rose ten times higher than any plant he had ever seen. He had climbed to the top of one of these behemoths and thought he could barely make out the tiny twinkling lights back home. He knew by then that while the logic of the measurement had been sound, the villagers had been misled by the limits of their imagination. Since the strange trees were ten times higher than the familiar bushes, the mountain was another ten times farther than had been reckoned, a full one thousand canyon widths away....\n\n**2**\n\nIn Robert Heinlein's novel _Time for the Stars_ , a charitable organization called the Long Range Foundation recruits pairs of identical twins for a mission to colonize space. The Earth, buckling under an exploding population, has already spilled over to all the planets of the solar system. Now it must look farther, to planets orbiting stars so distant that news of their discovery, traveling at light-speed, would take years to reach home.\n\nThat is where the twins come in. Scientists, according to the story, have discovered that many twins are telepathic, and that the signals they mentally exchange are not weighed down by the restrictions imposed on electromagnetic waves. The communication is instantaneous\u2014faster than light\u2014no matter how far apart the twins may be. With one twin on a spaceship and the other on Earth, they can converse instantly across light-years.\n\nI read this story, now out of print, in junior high school and had forgotten all but the bare bones of the plot, which revolves around the relativistic effects of traveling near light-speed. Time slows down so Tom, the twin on the starship, ages only a fraction as quickly as Pat, his counterpart back home. He is an old man when Tom returns and marries Pat's granddaughter, with whom he has been flirting telepathically.\n\nWhat stuck in my mind all those years was not the rather obvious Einsteinian plot contrivances but a brilliant scene toward the end of the book: Tom is looking at the sky from a hospitable planet orbiting Tau Ceti, a star system eleven light-years from Earth. The constellations he sees are recognizable but slightly distorted from how they appear back home. He can make out the Big Dipper, \"looking a little more battered than it does from Earth,\" and he finds Orion, the great hunter, though his dog, Sirius, is stretched out of whack. The understated climax comes when Tom discovers, from where he now stands, that the constellation Bo\u00f6tes has acquired a new star, yellow-white and of about the second magnitude. It takes him a moment to realize that he is looking back at the sun.\n\nI don't know why that scene threw me for a loop. Maybe it should have been obvious even for an eighth grader how arbitrary the constellations are, not just the names taken from classical mythology (does anyone really think Ursa Major looks like a giant bear?) but the actual shapes. They are an accident of how the stars happen to line up from one among an infinity of possible points of view. Though Orion's dog appears to follow faithfully at his heels, the constellation's principal star, Sirius, 8.6 light-years from Earth, is nowhere near the hunter's belt, whose stars are approximately 1,500 light-years away.\n\nFor that matter Orion's belt is nowhere near his shoulders and the shoulders nowhere near his knees. Even the belt is an accident of perspective. From other parts of space these three stars would form a triangle or their order would be reversed. Viewed from just the proper angle, all three of them would merge into a single light, an illusory triple star. Travel to the center of the space the three stars enclose and each would appear in a far-flung corner of the sky.\n\n**3**\n\nFor anyone raised on science fiction or the enthusiastic promises of the Kennedy era, the space program has turned out to be a dud. Who would have guessed that several decades later, after a few trips to the moon (about 250,000 miles or fifty round trips between Los Angeles and New York), our species would abandon human space exploration altogether, our leaders contenting themselves with the ridiculous space shuttle, which ventures about as far from Earth as Baltimore is from New York? The feeble broadcasts of the unmanned space probes\u2014the oldest recently passed beyond the edge of the solar system\u2014stir the imagination. But for the most part people have been content to sit at home and wait for the cosmic news to arrive in the form of light from other stars.\n\nWe are celestial couch potatoes. Yet what we lack in exploratory will we make up for in other ways. We don't travel with our bodies. We travel with our minds.\n\nHaving never left home, the astronomers can say with some confidence that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is more than 100,000 light-years from end to end and that Andromeda, the galaxy across the street, is 2 million light-years away. These and several other galaxies form our \"Local Group.\" The neighborhood. Just across town are other conglomerations of galaxies like the Sculptor group and the Maffei group, nearly 10 million light-years in distance. A little farther are the Virgo and Fornax clusters, lying some 50 million light-years from the Milky Way. Even if these were miles, the numbers would be staggering. A single light-year is almost 6 trillion miles.\n\nWe still haven't left our hometown \"supercluster,\" a galaxy of galaxies a full 200 million light-years across. Beyond it lie more superclusters, stretching to the edge of the visible universe, 10 billion or so light-years from home.\n\nFaced with so grandiose a vision, it is a little surprising to learn that as recently as the 1920s many astronomers thought the Milky Way _was_ the universe. Whether there was anything beyond it was a matter of scholarly debate. What are now taken to be vast galaxies similar to our own were dismissed as small nearby gas clouds, insignificant smudges of light.\n\nWe were like the villagers in the canyon. Then we discovered a new way to measure.\nCHAPTER 1\n\nBlack Stars, White Nights\n\nWe work from morn till night,\n\nComputing is our duty,\n\nWe're faithful and polite,\n\nAnd our record book's a beauty.\n\n_\u2014From_ The Observatory Pinafore\n\nIt is only with great difficulty that one can imagine what it was like to be a computer at Harvard Observatory a hundred years ago, not a soulless machine of wire and silicon but a living, breathing young woman. Her name was Henrietta Swan Leavitt and her job was counting stars.\n\nToday this kind of work is done by machine. Arrays of electronic sensors grab images of the sky, long streams of digits for computers to analyze. In the late 1880s, when Harvard embarked on a marathon project to catalog the position, brightness, and color of every star in the sky, the closest things to a modern digital computer were clunky mechanical calculators like the Felt & Tarrant Comptometer or the Burroughs Arithometer, with their rows of clacking buttons, stiff hand-pulled levers, and ringing bells. And there was the human brain. Diligent souls like Miss Leavitt\u2014they actually were called computers\u2014were paid 25 cents an hour (10 cents more than a cotton mill worker) to examine blizzards of tiny dots, photographs of the night sky. They would measure and calculate, recording their observations in a ledger book.\n\n_Observatory Hill, 1851_ (Harvard College Observatory)\n\nImagine a sky with the colors reversed, cold black stars sprayed against a firmament of white. These photographic negatives were produced when a telescope was trained at the heavens, its light focused onto a large glass plate coated on one side with light-sensitive emulsion\u2014a forerunner to photographic film. Today, half a million of these fragile plates are stored in a brick building adjacent to the one where Miss Leavitt and the other computers worked. Fearing an earthquake might shatter this database of glass\u2014the astronomical equivalent of the burning of the library of Alexandria\u2014Harvard built the repository as two nested structures. Physically isolated from the building's exterior shell, an internal matrix of steel beams and flooring rests, the story goes, on an apparatus of leaf springs, like those in a wagon or an old pickup truck.\n\nThe result is an invaluable archive of how the sky looked on different nights since the first surveys were done in the 1880s. Among the most precious items in the collection are pictures of the Magellanic Clouds. We know them now as neighboring galaxies, companions to our Milky Way. Back then no one was quite sure what they were. Hunched over the plates in an observatory workroom, Miss Leavitt found the pattern that eventually led to the answer. She discovered a way to measure beyond the galaxy and begin mapping the universe.\n\nToday nearly every scientifically literate person knows, or thinks he knows, that our planet circles an unremarkable star lost among galaxies of galaxies extending billions of light-years in every direction. One can almost hear Carl Sagan intoning the words on public TV. We've learned to revel in our insignificance. As far as most astronomers are concerned, only small details are still in dispute: Is the universe 13.9 billion light-years in radius or just 13.8 billion? So much confidence exudes from these discussions that a spectator may forget to ponder the most basic question: How can anyone know for sure?\n\nSuppose two stars seemingly of equal brightness are shining side by side against the dark dome of night. Knowing nothing else about them, one might conclude that they are equally far away. But that would be true only if the stars happened to be emitting, from their nuclear furnaces, the same amount of light. More likely one star is more powerful than the other yet shining from farther away. How much more powerful and how much farther? Barring a breakthrough in interstellar space travel, there seemed to be no way to find out.\n\nThe same uncertainty applied to the faint hazes called nebulae, clouds of light. Were they sprawling galaxies, \"island universes\" shrunken by their great distance? Or were they little gas clouds right here in the Milky Way? With no means of measuring the universe, the question was almost theological. How many angels can dance on a pinhead? How far away are the stars in the sky?\n\nTODAY A VISITOR to Observatory Hill, a low rise on Garden Street about a fifteen-minute walk northwest of Harvard Square, looks in vain for a sign that anything cosmic happened there. Dwarfed by the giant mountaintop observatories at Palomar, Wilson, Cerro Tololo, and Mauna Kea and blinded by the light of the Boston glare, the Harvard telescope, called the Great Refractor, is now in retirement. But when it saw first light in 1847 it was one of the most powerful in the world.\n\nIt had arrived, some liked to say, on the tail of a comet\u2014the March Comet of 1843, which burned so bright that it was visible in broad daylight, a signal to some that the Day of Reckoning was at hand. (A group called the Millerites had used biblical passages to predict that Jesus would make his Second Coming sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. The comet was right on schedule.) Those with a scientific bent felt a deeper kind of awe. Where did the comet come from and when might it return? For answers they could turn to the observatories at Cincinnati or at Yale or Williams colleges. But Harvard didn't have a good enough telescope to properly study the phenomenon. Even the Philadelphia High School was better equipped.\n\nIt was an embarrassment Bostonians vowed to correct. Twelve acres called Summer House Hill had recently been purchased by Harvard as an eventual site for a large telescope, but little progress had been made. Now the project began in earnest. Well-to-do citizens took out \"subscriptions,\" some $25,000 worth, to build the best observatory in the world. To ensure as stable a platform as possible, the building was constructed around a massive granite pier rooted 26 feet into the ground and rising from the bedrock to the observatory floor. Beneath a 30-foot dome was placed the Great Refractor. The mahogany-veneer tube was outfitted with a lens, 15 inches across, that had been ground by master craftsmen Merz and Mahler of Munich, who were told to make it at least as powerful as the one the Russians had recently purchased for the Imperial Observatory. The space race had begun.\n\n_The Great Refractor_ (Harvard College Observatory)\n\nThe first astronomer to peer through the glass was rendered nearly speechless: \"It is delightful,\" he wrote, \"to see the stars brought out which have been hid in mysterious light from the human eye, since the creation. There is grandeur, an almost overpowering sublimity in the scene that no language can fully express.\"\n\nWith this new tool, astronomers quickly discovered the inner ring of Saturn and, outfitting the telescope with a photographic plate, took the first picture of a star.\n\n**2**\n\nOn a clear night high in the mountains when the air is cold and dry, the brightest stars shine some two hundred and fifty times brighter than the faintest ones, those that can barely be discerned with the naked eye. The ancient Greeks divided this stellar multitude into six categories. The brightest lights were said to be of the first magnitude while the dimmest were of the sixth.\n\nThis rough gauge has been refined over the centuries so that each step now means an increase in brightness of about two and a half times. The actual figure is closer to 2.512, conveniently making a fifth magnitude star 2.512 \u00d7 2.512 \u00d7 2.512 \u00d7 2.512 \u00d7 2.512 or 100 times dimmer than a star of the first magnitude. A sixth magnitude star is about 250 times dimmer than that, and a seventh magnitude star about 600 times dimmer. (In the original, rather roughshod system, all the brightest stars had been bunched into magnitude one. Measured more precisely, some of them have ended up with magnitudes of less than one, and the brightest with magnitudes of less than 0. Blazing Sirius is about \u20131.4.)\n\nCenturies ago, with his simple spyglass, Galileo had amplified his vision enough to see stars as faint as the eighth magnitude. The Great Refractor extended the reach to the fourteenth magnitude, resolving images some 400,000 times dimmer than what could be seen from Earth with 20-20 eyes.\n\nWith the ability to see farther than ever before, Harvard embarked, in the late 1870s, on the kind of exhaustive search that would become its hallmark, precisely cataloging the brightness of every star in the sky. The observatory was now being run by a young physicist named Edward Charles Pickering, who had made his mark as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by establishing the first curriculum in the country where students could confront the ideas of physics head-on\u2014in laboratory experiments, poking at nature and carefully recording the results. He got an early taste of astronomy when he served on two government expeditions to observe total eclipses of the sun. When he was hired in 1876 to take over the observatory, he was thirty years old.\n\nUntil this time astronomy had focused on trying to establish two primary details about every star: its position and its motion through space. Pickering was struck by how very little good data had been gathered on two equally important characteristics: a star's precise brightness, a clue to its distance, and color, a clue to what chemicals it contained. Pickering was a fastidious measurer. He occupied himself on hikes in New Hampshire's White Mountains by measuring out the terrain, using an instrument he had fabricated himself. His mission, he decided, and that of the observatory, would be to amass mountains of data, about which others could theorize.\n\nGood old-fashioned astronomy is what he wanted. No big bangs, no black holes, no dark matter\u2014this was way before all that. Space was still flat and of no more than three dimensions. Understanding the universe meant charting little lights as they moved across the sky.\n\nHe started with stellar brightness. In the past, astronomers had made some progress along these lines with a German instrument, the Z\u00f6llner astrophotometer, which compared a star's brightness to the glow of a kerosene lamp. Focused through a pinhole and reflected by a mirror into the visual field of a telescope, the dot of lamplight appeared as a tiny sun hovering beside a star. The observer adjusted the instrument, stepping down the brightness of the artificial star until, in his judgment, it matched its companion. Then its magnitude could be recorded. (Some of these demanding measurements had been carried out by an observatory employee named Charles Sanders Peirce, who came to be known as one of the most brilliant and eccentric philosophers of all time.)\n\nPickering felt that a definitive survey should rely on a standard more universal than the brightness of lamplight. He devised an instrument with an arrangement of lenses and mirrors that would allow any star within view to be lined up side by side for comparison with the North Star, which was set, somewhat arbitrarily, at magnitude 2.1. Once astronomers learned how to use the new device, they could knock off as many as one star a minute. Eventually Harvard measured and cataloged forty-five thousand of them.\n\nThat was barely a beginning. Within the gaps between stars there were surely many more, so dim and far that they did not register on the retina of an eye, even one fitted with such powerful lenses. To see farther, light from these faint sources would have to be gathered during a time exposure, accumulated on a photographic plate attached to the end of a telescope. Mounted on a rotating platform and driven by mechanical clockworks, the telescope could track a star as it arced across the sky, pooling its light photon by photon, chemically etching an impression.\n\nThe astronomical leverage this provided was stunning. From Earth the Pleiades appear as a subtle glow engulfing seven bright points of light\u2014the \"Seven Sisters\" of Greek mythology, pursued by Orion. Galileo had already seen through his telescope that the sisters were joined by dozens more. A three-hour time exposure, taken in Paris, revealed that the constellation included more than 1,400 stars.\n\nMore stars still could be unveiled by mounting telescope and camera as far above sea level as possible, cutting through miles of atmospheric distortion. After unsuccessful attempts to establish stations at Pikes Peak in the Colorado Rockies and Mount Wilson in Southern California, Pickering decided to try the high reaches of Peru. He dispatched an expedition led by a trusted colleague, Solon I. Bailey, who established a temporary post atop a peak that, it was decided, would now be called Mount Harvard. Bailey hadn't reckoned on the length of the annual rainy season and was forced by the clouds to find a clearer site, finally settling in a remote town called Arequipa. This time the location seemed perfect. Pickering arranged to have an observing station sent piece by piece, from Boston Harbor around the tip of South America. Included among the cargo were the components of the 24-inch Bruce Telescope (named for the heiress who paid for its construction, Catherine Wolfe Bruce).\n\nFor all Pickering's hopes, the project got off to a bad start. His brother William, as headstrong and arrogant as Edward was modest and reserved, was placed in charge of Arequipa, mismanaging the operation and scandalizing the world astronomical community when he began dispatching outlandish scientific reports to that great academic journal the _New York Herald_. Ignoring his assignment to study the stars, he trained the telescope on Mars, enthusiastically describing huge mountain ranges rising above giant rivers and lakes extending hundreds of square miles\u2014a geography that remained stubbornly invisible to any eyes but his own.\n\nWhile Edward Pickering concentrated on damage control at home, Bailey was sent back to Peru to retake the observatory. Before long, the Arequipa station was shipping crate after crate of photographic plates north to Cambridge, the first pieces of what would become a mosaic of the entire southern sky.\n\nWith so much new information to digest, astronomers were soon overwhelmed. They were faced with an embarrassment of riches now familiar throughout science, a burgeoning glut of undigested data begging to be categorized. That is where the computers came in.\n\n**3**\n\n\"A great observatory should be as carefully organized and administered as a railroad,\" Pickering once observed. \"Every expenditure should be watched, every real improvement introduced, advice from experts welcomed, and if good, followed, and every care taken to secure the greatest possible output for every dollar expenditure. A great savings may be effectuated by employing unskilled and therefore inexpensive labor, of course under careful supervision.\"\n\n_Edward Pickering_ (Harvard \nUniversity Portrait Collection)\n\nImagine trying to find people to do such precise work for 25 cents an hour\u2014what amounted to the minimum wage. Today the job would probably have to be farmed out to star-counting sweatshops in Asia. For the late nineteenth century, computing wasn't such a bad deal. Seven hours a day, six days a week, the job paid $10.50 a week and included a month's vacation. Not many men were interested in the tedious work, so the positions went mostly to women. (The tradition was a long time in passing. As recently as the early 1960s, Brookhaven National Laboratory hired Long Island housewives to pore over the tangled images of subatomic particles, looking for patterns that might foretell a new physics.)\n\nRecognizing that his housekeeper, Williamina Paton Fleming, was overqualified for mopping floors, Pickering hired her as one of his first computers. (Abandoned by her husband after emigrating from Scotland, she was grateful enough to name her son, born that year, Edward Pickering Fleming.) She eventually became curator of the collection of photographic plates, doubling her salary, and was in charge of classifying stars according to their spectra, the colors revealed when their light was refracted through a prism. This was another of the observatory's ambitious efforts, resulting in a monumental work called the Henry Draper Catalogue, named for an accomplished and wealthy amateur astronomer who had taken the first photograph of a nebula. Funded by Draper's widow, the compendium provided employment for two other computers, Annie Jump Cannon and Antonia Caetana Maury.\n\nThis women's work sometimes resembled bookkeeping more than scientific research. Pickering tried to make it reasonably stimulating and treated his computers with respect. But he was intent on the observatory's getting its money's worth.\n\n\"He seems to think that no work is too much or too hard for me no matter what the responsibility or how long the hours,\" Mrs. Fleming complained in a diary. \"But let me raise the question of salary and I am immediately told that I receive an excellent salary as women's salaries stand.\"\n\nIf he would only take some step to find out how much he is mistaken in regard to this he would learn a few facts that would open his eyes and set him thinking. Sometimes I feel tempted to give up and let him try some one else, or some of the men to do my work, in order to have him find out what he is getting for $1,500 a year from me, compared with $2,500 from some of the other assistants.\n\nDoes he ever think that I have a home to keep and a family to take care of as well as the men? But I suppose a woman has no claim to such comforts. And this is considered an enlightened age!... I feel almost on the verge of breaking down.\n\nWhen she asked him for a raise, Pickering agreed to pass on the request to the university president. Money was always tight. This was before the era of government-funded big science, and observatories were dependent on the charity of rich benefactors, and on people with a monastic dedication to the craft. Pickering worked as hard as any of them, administering by day, stargazing by night. When the sky was cloudy he would do calculations late into the evening, sometimes with an assistant reading to him for entertainment (Shakespeare was a favorite). Considering the long hours, his $3,400 annual salary came to much less than two dollars an hour. (He and his family also got to live in the less-than-luxurious director's residence on Observatory Hill.) No one was in this for the money.\n\n\"An astronomer is a sorry soul,\" began a chorus in _The Observatory Pinafore_, a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta _H.M.S. Pinafore_ written by one of Pickering's assistants.\n\n_He must open the dome and turn the wheel,_\n\n_And watch the stars with untiring zeal,_\n\n_He must toil at night though cold it be,_\n\n_And he never should expect a decent salaree._\n\nMost of the time, the computers seemed to enjoy their jobs, making light of the low pay and somewhat Dickensian working conditions. In _The Observatory Pinafore_ , one of them, \"Josephine,\" sings of her toil in the \"dark and dingy place, all cluttered up and smelling strong of oil,\" apparently from the furnace that had recently replaced fireplaces for taking the edge off the New England cold. At another point in the story, a whole chorus of computers breaks out in song:\n\n_The Observatory Pinafore_ (Harvard College Observatory)\n\n_We work from morn till night,_\n\n_Computing is our duty,_\n\n_We're faithful and polite,_\n\n_And our record book's a beauty._\n\nIt is tempting to imagine Henrietta Swan Leavitt joining in the song. But that couldn't be. Though written in 1879 the musical was not actually performed until New Year's Eve 1929. By then she had already died.\nCHAPTER 2\n\nHunting for Variables\n\nMy friends say, and I recognize the truth of it, that my hearing is not nearly as good when absorbed in astronomical work.\n\n_\u2014Henrietta Leavitt in a letter to Edward Pickering_\n\nAlthough unmarked by a plaque, the second-floor room where Miss Leavitt and the other computers probably worked is still intact. The university, always pressed for space, hasn't been as diligent about preserving the old observatory buildings as it has the collection of photographic plates. The wooden ceiling beams have been painted over in institutional white enamel. Fluorescent lights have been retrofitted where chandeliers once hung and an air conditioner mounted in one of the old sash windows. The place has all the charm of a room in a state hospital. Nearby a dumbwaiter, which shuttled the glass plates up from below, now holds a computer printer. A closet is crammed full of abandoned IBM Selectric typewriters, another archeological layer of cast-off technologies.\n\nHaul off the junk, restore the late-nineteenth-century decor, and imagine Miss Leavitt, as she would have expected to be called, in a long frilled dress buttoned to the neck, her dark hair pulled tightly into a bun (we are extrapolating here from one of the only existing photographs). She is sitting at a table before a wooden viewing frame that supports a large glass plate\u2014one of those black-on-white reversals of the night sky. At the base of the frame is a mirror, reflecting light in from a nearby window to illuminate the image from behind. Around her sit other computers, similarly occupied, and occasionally Edward Pickering drops by to see how the calculations are going.\n\n_Henrietta Swann Leavitt_ (Harvard College Observatory)\n\nShe was twenty-five when she arrived at the observatory in 1893 as a volunteer. Her goal was to learn astronomy, and apparently she was of somewhat independent means. The daughter of a Congregationalist minister, George Roswell Leavitt, Henrietta had been born on the Fourth of July 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts, to what once was called \"good Puritan stock.\" Her ancestry can be traced back to Josiah Leavitt of Plymouth, and to four centuries of Leavitts in Yorkshire, England.\n\nAt the time of the 1880 census the family was living in one half of a large double house, 9 Warland Street in Cambridge, near Pilgrim Congregational Church, at the corner of Magazine and Cottage streets. Reverend Leavitt served as pastor. The neighborhood was solidly middle to upper-middle class. The Leavitts' neighbors included a piano tuner, a clerk, a police captain, a grammar school teacher, and a civil engineer, as well as a soda and mineral water manufacturer, a carriage manufacturer, and the owner of a plumbing company.\n\nWhen he dropped in to take the census, the enumerator found Mrs. Leavitt, also named Henrietta Swan (her maiden name was Kendrick), tending to three of her children, George, Caroline, and two-year-old Mira. (It was the last year of her life. A few months later Mira was dead.) Eleven-year-old Henrietta, the eldest, and another sister, Martha, were away at school. Another brother, Roswell, had died in 1873, when he was fifteen months old; the youngest, Darwin, would be born two years later.\n\nThe household must have felt crowded. Henrietta's aunt, Mary Kendrick, also lived there, as did a servant girl. Next door, in No. 11, her grandfather, Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, lived with his wife and a thirty-year-old daughter (the census taker noted that she had a spinal injury). They too employed a live-in servant.\n\nThe family valued scholarship. Henrietta's father had graduated from Williams College and earned a doctorate in divinity from the Andover Theological Seminary. Like her grandfather, an uncle (Reverend Leavitt's brother) was named Erasmus Darwin, perhaps after the renowned eighteenth-century physician and naturalist, the grandfather of Charles Darwin. The younger Erasmus, the second president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, would gain national prominence for his design of the Leavitt pumping engine at the Boston Water Works' Chestnut Hill station. He was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\n\nA few years later the Leavitts moved to Cleveland, and in 1885 Henrietta enrolled at Oberlin College, taking a preparatory course followed by two years of undergraduate work. Returning to Cambridge in 1888, she entered Radcliffe, then called the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women. (One of her cousins, a daughter of Erasmus Leavitt, was in the same freshman class.)\n\nThe entrance requirements were strict. Every young woman was expected to prove her familiarity with a list of classics\u2014 Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_ and _As You Like It_ ; Samuel Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_ , William Makepeace Thackeray's _English Humorists_ ; Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_ ; Thomas Gray's poem \"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard\"; Jane Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_ ; and Sir Walter Scott's _Rob Roy_ and \"Marmion\"\u2014 by writing, on the spot, a short composition. There were also tests on language (\"Translation on sight of simple [in the case of Latin, Greek, and German] or ordinary [in the case of French] prose\"), on history (\"Either [1] History of Greece and Rome; or [2] History of the U.S. and of England\"), mathematics (algebra through quadratic equations and plane geometry), and physics and astronomy. In addition to these examinations on \"elementary studies,\" students had to demonstrate more advanced knowledge in two subjects\u2014mathematics, for example, and Greek. The catalog noted reassuringly, \"A candidate may be admitted in spite of deficiencies in some of these studies; but such deficiencies must be made up during her course.\"\n\nThe only deficiency listed on Henrietta's transcript was in history, which she had corrected by her junior year. Along the way she also took courses in Latin, Greek, the humanities, English, and modern European languages\u2014German (her only C), French, and Italian\u2014and in fine arts and philosophy. She didn't take, nor was offered, much science: just natural history, an introductory physics class (she got a B) and a course in analytic geometry and differential calculus (an A). It was only in her fourth year that she enrolled in astronomy, earning an A\u2013. Observatory Hill is just up Garden Street from Radcliffe, and some of the Harvard astronomers, supervised by Edward Pickering, taught classes there.\n\nIn 1892, shortly before her twenty-fourth birthday, Henrietta graduated with a certificate stating that she had completed a curriculum equivalent to what, had she been a man, would have earned her a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard. She stayed in Cambridge and the next year was spending her days at the observatory, earning graduate credits and working for free. Maybe her uncle Erasmus had pulled some strings for her. She stayed there two years.\n\nNo diary has been found recording what it was about the stars that moved her. One of history's small players, her story has been allowed to slip through the cracks. She never married and died young, and it is only upon her death that we find, in an obituary written by her senior colleague Solon Bailey, testimony to what she might have been like as a woman:\n\nMiss Leavitt inherited, in a somewhat chastened form, the stern virtues of her puritan ancestors. She took life seriously. Her sense of duty, justice and loyalty was strong. For light amusements she appeared to care little. She was a devoted member of her intimate family circle, unselfishly considerate in her friendships, steadfastly loyal to her principles, and deeply conscientious and sincere in her attachment to her religion and church. She had the happy faculty of appreciating all that was worthy and lovable in others, and was possessed of a nature so full of sunshine that, to her, all of life became beautiful and full of meaning.\n\nAlthough the obituary didn't say so, she was also deaf, although apparently not from birth. In her second year at Oberlin she had enrolled as a student in its conservatory of music. For her new calling, eyes were more important than ears, and perhaps deafness was an occupational advantage in a job requiring such intense powers of concentration.\n\n**2**\n\nPickering, always happy to have a motivated volunteer, put her to work recording the magnitude of stars, a craft called stellar photometry. During a time exposure, brighter stars leave larger spots on a photographic plate, chemically darkening more grains in the emulsion. Size therefore is an indicator of brightness. Looking through an eyepiece, Miss Leavitt would compare each pinpoint against stars whose magnitudes were already known. Sometimes this information was displayed on a small palette marked with spots arranged and labeled according to magnitude. Shaped like a miniature flyswatter, the tool was called a \"fly spanker.\" When she was satisfied that she had gauged the brightness correctly, she would record the information in neat tiny writing on a sequentially numbered pink-and-blue-striped page in a ledger book initialed \"HSL.\"\n\nEarly on she was asked to look for \"variables,\" stars that waxed and waned in brightness like slow-motion beacons. (A few of the more interesting were to be found in a constellation she might have considered her namesake, Cygnus, the Swan.) Some of the variables completed a cycle every few days, others took weeks or months. Her job was not to speculate why. For a while it was thought that each variable actually consisted of two stars orbiting about a common point, periodically eclipsing each other's light. More recent evidence indicated that the temperature (judged by the color of the starlight) rose and fell along with the brightness. That suggested that these variables were probably single stars that periodically flared and dimmed. The reasons for the pulsation remained obscure. This was before anyone knew what powered the stars, much less why the flame might not burn steadily.\n\nIn any case, the rhythms were imperceptibly slow and subtle. (Astronomers were surprised to learn later that Polaris, the North Star, which they had been using as their touchstone for measuring brightness, regularly varied in magnitude.) Only by measuring stars at various intervals through the year could one detect the variations.\n\nPhotography made that possible. With dense swarms of stars on every plate, it was impossible to check each one. To find likely prospects, a researcher would take two plates of the same region exposed at different times and line them up, sandwich style, one on top of the other. One image was the standard black-star negative produced by the camera. The other was a positive. Align them just so and they would cancel each other\u2014 except for the stars that had changed in brightness. They would look subtly different. A black dot surrounded by a white halo would mean, for example, that a star had brightened, its image on the plate expanding in size. If a star seemed particularly promising, more plates would be compared. (If necessary Pickering would order new ones from the astronomers.) Plate by plate, the computers would measure a dot as it swelled and receded, writing tiny numbers on the glass in india ink.\n\nHenrietta Leavitt spent day after day doing this painstaking work, absorbing herself in the data with what one colleague later called \"an almost religious zeal.\" She wrote up a draft of her findings, then sailed for Europe in 1896, where she traveled for two years. We don't know where or with whom.\n\nShe hadn't forgotten about astronomy. When she landed back in Boston, she conferred briefly with Pickering, who suggested some revisions to her work. Then, taking the manuscript with her, she left for Beloit, Wisconsin, where her father was now the minister of another church. Because of personal problems, never really explained, she remained there more than two years, working as an art assistant at Beloit College. She must have found the work unsatisfying, for on May 13, 1902, she wrote to Pickering, apologizing for letting her research languish and for being out of touch for so long. She hoped he would let her resume her projects from Wisconsin.\n\n\"The winter after my return,\" she explained, \"was occupied with unexpected cares. When, at last, I had leisure to take up the work, my eyes troubled me so seriously as to prevent my using them so closely.\" Her eyes were strong now, she assured him, and her interest in astronomy had not waned. She asked whether he might send her the notebooks she needed to complete her manuscript. \"I am more sorry than I can tell you that the work I undertook with such delight, and carried to a certain point, with such keen pleasure, should be left uncompleted. I apologize most sincerely for not writing concerning the matter long ago.\"\n\nShe also mentioned having some trouble with her hearing, worrying, a little oddly, that stargazing might make it worse. \"My friends say, and I recognize the truth of it, that my hearing is not nearly as good when absorbed in astronomical work.\" Cold weather seemed to aggravate her condition. \"It is evident that I cannot teach astronomy in any school or college where I should have to be out with classes on cold winter nights. My aurist forbids any such exposure.\n\n\"Do you think it likely that I could find employment either in an observatory or in a school where there is a mild winter climate? Is there anyone beside yourself to whom I might apply?\"\n\nIt seems from the letter that her hearing problems then were fairly mild\u2014the first ailment she mentions is with her eyes. Yet one of the standard reference books, _Dictionary of Scientific Biography_ , states that as early as Radcliffe she was extremely deaf\u2014a misapprehension that has been picked up and recycled again and again.\n\nShe must have been delighted with Pickering's response. Three days later, he offered her a full-time job. \"For this I should be willing to pay thirty cents an hour in view of the quality of your work, although our usual price, in such cases, is twenty five cents an hour,\" he wrote. If it was not possible for her to relocate, he would pay her fare for a short visit to Cambridge. She could get her work in order to take home to Beloit.\n\n\"I do not know of any observatory in a warm climate, where you could be employed on similar work,\" he continued, \"and it would be difficult to furnish you with a large amount of work that you could carry on elsewhere.\" In any case, he noted, \"I should doubt if Astronomy had anything to do with the condition of your hearing, unless you have been assured that this is the case by a good aurist.\"\n\nShe gratefully accepted his proposal for a working visit to Observatory Hill. \"My dear Prof. Pickering,\" she replied, a few days later. \"It has proved possible for me to arrange my affairs here so that I can go to Cambridge next month and remain until the work is completed. Your very liberal offer of thirty cents an hour will enable me to do this.\" She planned to arrive around the time of Harvard commencement and to take up her job before the first of July.\n\nEn route to the observatory, she stopped in Ohio to visit relatives, encountering another of the family problems that seemed to punctuate her life. \"The illness of a relative with whom I stopped to visit on my way to Cambridge is likely to detain me for some time,\" she wrote to Pickering, adding that she might be waylaid for several weeks. \"I am sorry for the delay, which seems to be unavoidable, but my face is set toward Cambridge and I hope it may not be very long before I can report at the Observatory.\"\n\nFinally, on August 25, she contacted him again from an address in Brookline, Massachusetts, where she was temporarily staying, announcing her arrival.\n\n\"It has been a disappointment to me that I have had to defer the beginning of my work for so long,\" she wrote. \"At last I find myself free to take it up, and expect to go to the Observatory Wednesday afternoon, arriving there between half-past two and three. If there is a time which will suit you better, will you please let me know either by letter or by telephone?\" At first she could work only about four hours a day, but was hopeful that she would soon be able to give him her full attention. \"I hope that this long delay has in no way inconvenienced you.\" Whether Pickering was beginning to find these plaints a bit wearing has gone unrecorded. In the coming years there would be many more.\n\nWorking through the fall semester, she took winter break again in Europe. A letter dated January 3, 1903, finds her aboard the S.S. _Commonwealth_ , a mail steamer for the Dominion Line, writing to Williamina Fleming about a misdirected paycheck. (Henrietta's younger brother, George, who was living in Cambridge with Uncle Erasmus, now a widower, helped straighten out the problem.) A year earlier the shipping line had initiated winter Boston-to-Mediterranean service; so perhaps she was off with a friend to Italy, or the South of France. It is nice to imagine her on deck at night, bundled up to keep her aurist happy, looking up at the stars.\nCHAPTER 3\n\nHenrietta's Law\n\nWhat a variable-star \"fiend\" Miss Leavitt is\u2014One can't keep up with the roll of the new discoveries.\n\n_\u2014A colleague in a letter to Edward Pickering_\n\nDuring the first circumnavigation of the Earth, Ferdinand Magellan's crew relied on \"certain shining white clouds\" to find its way. There is no South Star to navigate by down under but the Nubecula Major and Nubecula Minor\u2014the big and little clouds, as Magellan called them\u2014 helped one maintain a steady course. Invisible in most of the Northern Hemisphere, these impressive formations came into view as the fleet reached the latitude of what is now Brazil.\n\nMagnified by telescopes, the pair of luminous hazes dazzled the mind. \"In no other portion of the heavens are so many nebulous and stellar masses thronged together in an equally small space,\" wrote the astronomer John Herschel after observing them from the Cape of Good Hope in 1834. It was as though two pieces of the Milky Way had broken off and drifted. But that begged the question: Were these separate and distant galaxies or something smaller and nearby, suburbs of the Milky Way?\n\nThere was no reason to hope that the answer would be found in the images of the Magellanic Clouds that had been photographed at Harvard's station in Arequipa, Peru. Miss Leavitt was charged with nothing more than examining the plates for variable stars. Each time she spotted one, she would scrutinize it with a magnifying eyepiece, determine its coordinates on the photographic plate, and carefully compute its change in magnitude by comparing it with other stars.\n\n_The Large Magellanic Cloud_ (Harvard College Observatory)\n\nWhile she worked she might have remembered a story her father once told about Herschel himself. Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Missionary Association, Reverend Leavitt described how astronomers throughout Europe had greeted their colleague's great discoveries with disbelief: \"Men said to him, in angry letters, 'We do not see what you see.' \" Herschel, Reverend Leavitt continued, was ready with a response: \"Perhaps you do not take the care in your observations that I do.... [W]hen I observe on a winter night I place my glass on the lawn at Greenwich, and let it stand there until the instrument comes to be of the temperature of the air.' \" Moreover, the reverend said, Herschel ensured that his own body temperature would not affect the observations. \" 'Oftentimes,' he said, 'I have been out in the winter air for two hours before I would open my glass, because I must come to be of the same temperature as the instrument itself.' \"\n\nReverend Leavitt found a rather oblique spiritual message in the story, something about how a preacher must be of the same spiritual \"temperature\" as his \"instrument\" (God's word), and of the Bible and the heavens as well. Herschel's words might serve better as advice to a young astronomer: for all the excitement of discovering a new star or nebula, a good scientist was ultimately one who took care to consider the minutest of details, weighing each tiny component that made up an observation.\n\nHenrietta apparently found such meticulous work satisfying enough that she amended her original plan to take her work back to Wisconsin. After a voyage to the British Isles in the summer of 1903 on the H.M.S. _Ivernia_ , she took a quick train trip to Beloit to prepare for her relocation to Cambridge as a permanent member of the observatory staff.\n\nHer decision paid off. One spring day in 1904 she was comparing plates of the Small Magellanic Cloud, taken at different times, when she noticed in the stellar spray several dots that had swelled and then receded in size. Variables. Her interest piqued, she examined other images, finding dozens more.\n\nThat fall sixteen more plates of this nebula were served up by the astronomers at Arequipa and shipped north to Boston, arriving at the observatory in January. When Miss Leavitt began scrutinizing these new photographs, variables popped up one after another\u2014\"an extraordinary number,\" she later wrote. The results, published in the observatory's regular circulars, made an immediate impression.\n\n\"What a variable-star 'fiend' Miss Leavitt is,\" a Princeton astronomer wrote to Pickering. \"One can't keep up with the roll of the new discoveries.\" Even the newspapers took notice. A column of flippant news briefs in the _Washington Post_ noted, tongue in cheek: \"Henrietta S. Leavitt, of the Harvard Observatory, has discovered twenty-five new variable stars. Her record almost equals Frohman's.\" (Charles Frohman was a powerful theatrical producer and booking agent.)\n\nDay after day, she quantified the specks of pulsing starlight, filling in column after column of numbers. If there was anything noteworthy or unusual about a variable she would add a comment. The star with Harvard Number 1354 was \"the northern star of a close pair, in a group of five.\" Number 1391 was \"the southern star in a line of three.\" Number 1509 \"appears to be at the centre of an extremely small, faint cluster.\"\n\nEach star was an individual. Before long, she had discovered and cataloged hundreds of them in the two Magellanic Clouds, some of which flared no brighter than the fifteenth magnitude\u2014thousands of times dimmer than the faintest stars she might have seen on a particularly clear night in the New England countryside.\n\nShe was boarding with Uncle Erasmus in a large Italianate villa (now part of the Longy School of Music) recently built for him on Garden Street. The house was just a short walk from Observatory Hill, where, for the next few years, she continued her research. Piece by piece, her results appeared in brief progress reports sometimes given to Pickering or Bailey to read in her absence at the December meetings of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America, when she would be home in Beloit for Christmas. By 1908, six years after she had resumed her work,she published a full account,\"1777 Variables in the Magellanic Clouds,\" in the _Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College_. Twenty-one pages in length, the paper included two plates and fifteen pages of tables.\n\nThe sheer number of variables was surprising enough. But a reader with the patience to make it to the end of the paper would have found something even more remarkable. Almost as an afterthought, she had singled out sixteen of the stars, arranging them in a separate list showing both their periods and their magnitudes. \"It is worthy of notice,\" she observed, that \"the brighter variables have the longer periods.\"\n\nIn light of what astronomers know now, this is an understatement as magnificent as the one Watson and Crick made at the end of their famous 1953 paper on the double-helical structure of DNA: \"It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying method for the genetic material.\" This when they were telling their friends that they had discovered the secret of life.\n\nMiss Leavitt was not being coy. She just didn't want to over-interpret her data. Since the variables were all in the Magellanic Clouds, they must be roughly the same distance from Earth. If the correlation she glimpsed held true, you could judge a star's true brightness from the rhythm of its beat. Then you could compare that with its apparent brightness and estimate how far it was. This was too profound a conclusion to hang on just sixteen stars. More measurements would have to be made.\n\n**2**\n\nThat wasn't to happen anytime soon. The same year her results were published, Henrietta fell ill. On December 20, she wrote to Pickering from a Boston hospital, where she had been confined for the past week, thanking him for \"the beautiful pink roses\" and \"for the kind thought so beautifully expressed. It means much at a time like this to be made to realize that one is remembered by one's friends.\"\n\nTo convalesce, she returned to Wisconsin to stay with her parents and two unmarried brothers, George, now a missionary, and Darwin, another clergyman. After resting through the next spring and summer, she planned to resume work in the fall. But in September she reported to Pickering that a \"slight illness\" contracted after a visit to a lake near Beloit had \"proved unexpectedly obstinate, and I cannot tell when I shall be able to get away.\"\n\nIn October, after she had been absent for close to a year, Pickering wrote to inquire whether she would like him to send her some work. By early December, when she had not responded, he asked again,this time letting a glint of impatience show.\"My dear Miss Leavitt,\" he began. \"It is with much regret that I hear of your continued illness. I hope you will not undertake work here until you can safely do so. It may however relieve your mind if we can dispose of two or three questions....\"\n\nFirst he asked if she would send a letter at the beginning of each month stating whether she would be returning any time soon. Then he proposed that she issue a brief report (a socalled _Harvard College Observatory Circular_ ) describing the preliminary results of another study she had been engaged in, the North Polar Sequence, a Herculean effort to measure, more accurately than ever before, the magnitudes of ninety-six stars near Polaris. This was one of Pickering's pet projects, of a higher priority to him than her study of variables. He hoped the North Polar Sequence would become the gold standard for gauging the brightness of stars throughout the sky.\n\nShe replied three days later, apologizing for being too weak to answer his earlier letter. \"I thank you for expressing the desire that I wait for complete recovery before returning to Cambridge; it would make it even harder for me to be idle than it now is, if pressure were brought from without, especially from you. The thought of uncompleted work, particularly of the Standard Magnitudes, is one I have had to avoid as much as possible, as it has had a bad effect nervously.\" If she was just as anxious about her Magellanic variables, she didn't say.\n\nShe held out hope that her condition might improve enough for her to resume work after Christmas. \"Not the least of my trial in being ill is the knowledge of the annoyance it causes you.\"\n\nIn mid-January, Pickering wrote again, opening with the now familiar greeting and lament. \"My dear Miss Leavitt: It is with much regret that I hear that your illness will again require you to postpone your return to Cambridge. It occurs to me that, when you do return, you may be able to do much of your work in your room, and thus save yourself the walk to the Observatory.\"\n\nIn the meantime she had told Mrs. Fleming that she was ready to work from Beloit, and Pickering, emphasizing again the importance of the North Polar Sequence, described some photographs he planned to send her, including one from the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, where a new 60-inch telescope, the largest in existence, was recording stars of exceeding faintness. He outlined his thoughts on how she should proceed with her measurements. \"What do you think of this plan and can you suggest any improvements in it? ... I hope you will not let these matters trouble you, and that you will not undertake any of this work, except with the approval of your doctor.\"\n\nA few weeks later she received a box from Cambridge packed with photographic plates, paper prints, ledgers, a wooden viewing frame, and a 1\u00bd-inch eyepiece, allowing her to get back to gauging magnitudes. She responded with assurances that she was \"now strong enough to work for two or three hours a day, and am very glad indeed to have the means of employing the time to advantage.\" She hoped, as always, for an early return to Cambridge.\n\nFor the next three months, she continued her calculations, sending back detailed reports to Observatory Hill. Her health continued to improve but at a glacial pace both she and Pickering must have found exasperating. \"It is a great pity that my latest attempt to fix a time for returning to Cambridge should have failed like the others,\" she wrote to him in April, almost a year and a half since her absence began. This time, she assured him, her return really was imminent. \"My physician has not yet given his consent to my departure, wishing to be assured of the soundness of my recovery. I now expect to receive my dismissal from him any day and to be in a position to make definite plans for resuming work.\"\n\nBy May 14, 1910, she was finally back in Cambridge, or was at least on her way. Her name and that of her colleague Annie Cannon appear on a list of observatory employees requesting tickets to the annual Harvard Class Day commencement ceremonies.\n\nHer homecoming was short-lived. The following March her research was interrupted again when her father died, leaving his widow a modest estate that after probate costs and the settlement of debts was valued at just over $9,000. (He had kept the house on Warland Street, where Henrietta had been a girl, and owned a small amount of stock in a copper mining company that his brother Erasmus consulted for.) After thanking her colleagues for sending flowers, Henrietta departed for Beloit to console her mother.\n\nWhen she had not returned by June, Pickering sent her a box with seventy photographic plates and other material for the North Polar Sequence, but she wasn't able to concentrate on the work for long. Ten days later she wrote to inform him that she and her mother were departing \"rather unexpectedly\" to stay with some in-laws in Des Moines. She offered no explanation.\n\nShe took the plates to the Beloit College library for safekeeping. \"It is a new, fire-proof building,\" she assured him, \"and is to be open all summer. The plates are on a strong shelf in a corner of the librarian's private office, and are labeled with a request that no one shall touch them. Orders to that effect have been given to the janitor....It will be a disappointment to lose nearly a month in my work on the plates, but there will be a good deal of work with the papers I shall take with me.\"\n\nHer research wasn't entirely neglected. She even found time for her variable stars, sending a report for Pickering to read at a conference in Ottawa. After several more delays and apologetic letters, she returned that fall to her uncle's house on Garden Street.\n\nFinally given the luxury of a long stretch of uninterrupted time, she turned back to the strange matter of the Magellanic variables, plotting twenty-five of them on a graph with their brightness on one axis and their period on the other. Her results were published in 1912 in a _Harvard Circula_ r under the name of Edward Pickering: \"The following statement regarding the periods of 25 variable stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud has been prepared by Miss Leavitt.\"\n\nThe pattern now seemed clearer than ever. The stars lined up so neatly that she was moved almost to exclamation: \"A remarkable relation between the brightness of these variables and the length of their periods will be noticed.\" The brighter the star, the slower it blinked. Why she didn't know, and for now it didn't matter. \"Since the variables are probably at nearly the same distance from the Earth their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light.\"\n\nIn other words, you could determine how bright they really were. Without leaving Earth, you could count the beats of a star's rhythm, then use this to calculate its intrinsic magnitude. Compare that with its apparent magnitude and you would have its distance.\n\nThe universe had provided, for the especially keen observer, a hint of its grandeur. Imagine that you are standing on a back porch at night looking out over a dark field. Somewhere on the far edge is a mysterious array of electric lights. Some are brighter, some fainter, but since you don't know how bright they really are, you can't tell whether they are ten yards or ten miles away.\n\nNow suppose that the lights are blinking, and that it has been decreed by some international authority that bulbs be manufactured so that they flash according to their brightness. Fifty-watt bulbs blink faster than 100-watt bulbs. If two of the beacons are pulsing at the same frequency, you know they are equally bright. So if one appears, say, four times dimmer, it has to be farther away.\n\nTo be precise, it is two times farther. Light traveling through space spreads and diminishes according to the inverse square law. Square the difference in distance and you get the difference in brightness. All other things being equal (which they never quite are), a light that is nine times dimmer than another must be three times farther away.\n\nAlthough Miss Leavitt didn't use the term in her paper, the variables with this remarkable property are called Cepheids, for the first was discovered, in 1784, in the constellation Cepheus by an amateur English astronomer named John Goodricke. (He and Henrietta had more than astronomy in common: Goodricke was deaf and she was steadily becoming so.) The new law linking period and brightness would become known throughout astronomy as the Cepheid yardstick, a way to measure through great stretches of space.\n\nThere was just one problem: her Cepheids revealed only relative distances. You could say with some confidence that one star was twice as far away as another, and three times farther than another. But were they one, two, and three light-years from earth, or twenty, forty, and sixty? There was no way to know. To turn the ratios into actual distances, someone needed to discover how far the closest of the stars is from Earth.\n\nFor now, Miss Leavitt's new yardstick was one without numbers. The next step would be to calibrate it.\nCHAPTER 4\n\nTriangles\n\nI had not thought of making the very pretty use you make of Miss Leavitt's discovery about the relation between period and absolute brightness.\n\n_\u2014Henry Norris Russell, in a letter to Ejnar Hertzsprung_\n\nHold a finger a couple inches from your nose and alternately blink from left eye to right. The finger rapidly changes position, and the farther you move it from your face the smaller the displacement becomes. The window frame on the wall shifts even less and the telephone pole down the block hardly at all. The separation between the eyes\u2014 astronomers and surveyors call it the baseline\u2014is too small. We can sense the depth of the world close by, but the farther we look the flatter it appears. The distant mountains might as well be cut from cardboard.\n\nWired by nature to register this effect (remember it's called parallax), the brain carries out a kind of neurological trigonometry. The two eyes and the object before them form a triangle, and you unconsciously compute the distance from base to apex. Without even thinking about it, you triangulate.\n\nGet up now and walk from one side of the window frame to the other, a few feet away. The size of your baseline has increased, and now the telephone pole seems to shift against the building standing behind it. The effect is the same as having a very wide head, an eye at each side of the window looking out from two different angles. Measure the separation between the two observation points\u2014the base of the imaginary triangle and the angles formed by each window and the pole. You can do this with a surveyor's transit (think of it as a kind of protractor). With just this information and some high school trigonometry, you can calculate the altitude of the triangle\u2014the distance to the telephone pole. The calculation itself needn't concern us. Just know that the very nature of triangles ensures that they can be completely defined with only three scraps of information\u2014 two angles and one side or one angle and two sides. All the other dimensions follow from that.\n\nWith a wider baseline\u2014an eye on each side of the block\u2014 you could measure how far the building is. With a long enough stretch, even the mountains on the horizon will seem to move.\n\nThe history of astronomical measurement preceding Henrietta Leavitt's discovery can be compressed into a story of how people learned to use larger and larger triangles to point farther into the sky.\n\nSEND TWO OBSERVERS to different places on the Earth's surface and, if the separation is great enough, each will see the moon at a slightly different position against the backdrop of stars. Have them measure both angles simultaneously (they would need to synchronize their watches) and, if you know the length of the baseline, you can triangulate.\n\nIn a variation, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the second century B.C. used a solar eclipse as his timepiece. While the sun was blotted out completely at Hellespont, the strait in northwestern Turkey near the ancient city of Troy, the eclipse was only four-fifths full in Alexandria. If you could freeze time and hop back and forth between these two vantage points, the moon would seem to shift by an amount equal to one-fifth the size of the solar disk\u2014the Earth blinking its eyes. The sun occupies about half a degree of the arcing bowl of sky, making the parallax of the moon one-tenth of a degree.\n\n_Lunar Parallax_\n\nHad Hipparchus known the distance between Troy and Alexandria\u2014the size of the baseline\u2014he would have had his answer. Instead, using a more complex arrangement of triangles, he was able to calculate that the distance of the moon must be about thirty times greater than the diameter of the Earth. He got the ratio right. The planet has since been measured at about 8,000 miles across. Using that number, Hipparchus's method would put the moon 240,000 miles away. Two thousand years later, people learned to make the measurement by bouncing radar signals off the moon and measuring the delay of the echo. High-tech or low-tech, the figure comes out about the same.\n\nSkipping past the Dark Ages, dominated by Ptolemy's brilliantly wrong cosmology, with all the heavens looping around our planet like an amusement park ride, the next great leap didn't come until the sixteenth century. Copernicus restored the sun to the center of the solar system, then Kepler refined the model, flattening the planets' circular orbits into ellipses and showing how they must be arranged.\n\nOne of his laws is of particular interest to any would-be measurer of the universe: The farther a planet is from the sun, the longer it takes to complete its journey. From the length of the Martian year, one could deduce that the planet lies about one and a half times farther from the sun than Earth does. The same calculation could be done for Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn....Once you had all the ratios, you could use parallax to determine just one of the distances. The others would automatically follow.\n\nThe task was easier said than done. Measuring the tiny displacement of the moon, viewed from two spots on the Earth, had been difficult enough. For even the closest planets, the parallax was so small that the slightest mistake in gauging an angle or the length of a baseline caused the calculation to fail.\n\nThat didn't keep astronomers from trying. Coordinating their efforts with pendulum clocks, observers stationed in Paris and on the island of Cayenne in South America showed in 1672 that the position of Mars shifted by a mere 25 seconds of arc. Adopting the useful fiction that the heavens consist of a hemispherical dome arcing overhead, astronomers divide the sweep from horizon to horizon into 180 degrees, half a circle. Each degree is divided into 60 units called minutes, which can each be further subdivided into 60 seconds. Twenty-five arc-seconds is 1\/144 of a single degree, an exceedingly small piece of sky.\n\nThe Martian distance computed from this delicate operation came close to the mark, but the accuracy was accidental. There was so much uncertainty in the measurements that errors canceled out errors, dumb luck stumbling onto a pretty good answer. Before more reliable methods became possible, another hundred years would go by.\n\n**2**\n\nTwice a century, just a few years apart, Venus, the closest planet, passes between the Earth and the sun. The result is like an eclipse, except that Venus is so distant that it appears only as a tiny dot. No one would notice the event who wasn't deliberately watching. If observers in separate locations time how long it takes the planet to cross the solar disk, they can compare their different readings and triangulate. The result is Venus's distance and, plugging the number into Kepler's equations, the distances of every planet from the sun.\n\nEdmond Halley, the great British astronomer, had missed his chance to observe this rare phenomenon, called the transit of Venus. He lived inconveniently between the pair of events of 1631 and 1639 and the recurrence predicted for 1761 and 1769. He satisfied himself by issuing a challenge, calling on the next generation of astronomers to disperse themselves around the world and measure the Venusian parallax.\n\nThey took him up on the dare, setting out for Siberia, Hudson Bay, Baja California, India, the Cape of Good Hope, Tahiti. Some of the expeditions failed, and some of the data was suspect because of the difficulty of determining precisely when fuzzy-edged Venus, a planet swathed in chemical clouds, actually passed into the circle of the sun. But with eyes placed all over the planet (there were 150 observations), astronomers compiled enough good information to measure all the way to Venus. Then, carrying the calculation a step further, they concluded, via Kepler, that the distance to the sun was 91 million miles, just 2 million shy of the number schoolchildren learn today.\n\nIt was a hard act to follow. With one star down and a whole galaxy to go, the craft of triangulation was already becoming stretched to the limit. Even with an imaginary triangle whose base extended across the full width of the Earth, the parallax of the nearest planets was just barely measurable. How could anyone hope to gauge the distance of stars?\n\nAstronomers had made some rough estimates. If you pretend that all stars produce the same amount of light\u2014that they are equal in intrinsic brightness\u2014you can judge how much dimmer Sirius appears from Earth compared with our home star, the sun. Then with the inverse square law (something twice as far away shines a fourth as bright) you can estimate the distance. These rough calculations served to show that even the brightest stars must be hundreds of thousands of times farther than the sun, way beyond the reach of earthly parallax. Travel from one antipode to the other and you would not detect the slightest shift.\n\nIt seemed that measuring stellar distances would require leaving the planet, observing the position of a star from Earth and then from a point millions of miles away....Or you could stay on Earth and let it carry you between the far extremes of its orbit. This was the next advance. The radius of this great ellipse\u2014the distance from Earth to sun\u2014was now known with some precision. So just double the amount: every six months earthlings are looking at the sky from positions separated by 186 million miles. Draw a triangle with this as the baseline and you can measure the parallax of nearby stars.\n\n_Parallax using the diameter of Earth's orbit as a baseline_\n\nGalileo had suggested how such an experiment might be done. The sky is filled with double stars, some of which are presumably optical illusions: nowhere near each other in space, they just happen to line up because of the angle at which we see them. If one is actually much closer to us than the other, parallax will make them appear to come together and then move apart as we orbit the sun. (Think of two telephone poles, one behind the other, converging and then diverging as you drive by.)\n\nIt wasn't until the late 1700s that instruments were good enough to make the measurements. The astronomer William Herschel built a 20-foot-long telescope with a mirror 19 inches across. When that wasn't strong enough for him, he built a 40- foot scope with a 4-foot mirror\u2014so large that it weighed a ton. Working with his sister, Caroline, he discovered Uranus and some 2,000 star clusters and nebulae (which, he ventured, were not small, nearby gas clouds but galaxies so distant that the individual stars blurred together). He also found hundreds of the double stars Galileo had suggested might be used for measuring distance.\n\nIn the end the project failed. A statistical survey showed that it was actually very rare for two stars to line up and mimic a double. Most doubles really were doubles, adjacent stars orbiting each other\u2014too close together to exhibit any parallax.\n\nIt was with the next generation of astronomers that stellar triangulation came of age. Herschel's son John (the one we heard earlier rhapsodizing about the Magellanic Clouds) established an observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, near the southern tip of Africa. There astronomers determined that every six months the star Alpha Centauri changed in position by less than a second of arc\u20141\/10,000 of a single degree, a frustratingly tiny amount but enough to do some trigonometry. Calculating the height of this extremely skinny triangle led to the conclusion that the star was 25 trillion miles away\u2014so far that its light took more than four years to get here. And this was just the next sun over, the closest star.\n\nTwo other neighbors were also measured around this time, Vega and a star called 61 Cygni. A little later came Sirius and Procyon. All were a few light-years away in a universe now believed to be billions of light-years wide. By the early 1900s, when Henrietta Swan Leavitt arrived at Observatory Hill, nearly a hundred more stars had been triangulated. But most stars by far showed no parallax at all, even across so enormous a baseline. They were inconceivably and, it seemed, immeasurably far away.\n\n**3**\n\nHad just one of Miss Leavitt's blinking stars been within triangulating distance of home, astronomers could have leapt past the parallax barrier and begun measuring deep into space. Remember that two of her Cepheid variables pulsing at the same rate are, according to the relationship she discovered, of the same inherent brightness. If one appears to shine only a hundredth as brightly as the other, you know (because of the inverse square law) that it is ten times farther away. If you could use parallax to establish the distance of just one nearby Cepheid, you could infer the distance to the rest. By comparing Cepheid variables of various rhythms and intensities, you could leapfrog across the universe.\n\nNature, however, was not so obliging. The nearest known Cepheid, the North Star, was too far to show any shift in position, even when viewed from opposite ends of Earth's orbit. It is, by modern reckoning, some 400 light-years away. Parallax would get you only a fraction that far. The Cepheids used to devise Leavitt's law were many times farther still.\n\nThe best an astronomer could do was to say that a certain Cepheid was, as determined by its rhythm, one-tenth the distance of those in the Small Magellanic Cloud, while another was, perhaps, three times farther away. The universe could be portioned out in units called SMCs. But that begged the question: How far\u2014in miles or light-years\u2014was the Small Magellanic Cloud?\n\nBefore Miss Leavitt's stars could be turned into true yardsticks, some way had to be found to extend parallax far enough to reach a nearby Cepheid. That meant making observations across an even longer baseline than the full width of spaceship Earth's orbit around the sun. What was needed was a larger, faster craft. Unlikely as it seemed, one was at hand: the starship we call the sun.\n\nAccording to folklore, when Galileo was called before the Inquisition and forced to recant his Copernican views, he muttered under his breath, \"And yet it moves.\" The reference, of course, is to our planet. He might have been as surprised as his tormentors to learn that the sun moves as well, on a slow drift through the Milky Way, carrying its planets alongside.\n\nThe movement is barely perceptible. In the late 1700s the elder Herschel, William, discovered that stars in the direction of the constellation Hercules move according to a peculiar pattern: over the years, they appear to be fanning out from a distant point, as snowflakes seem to do when viewed in the headlights of a car speeding through the night. In the opposite direction, back toward the constellation Columba, the stars converge, like snowflakes seen from the rear window. Our solar system, he concluded, was leaving Columba and heading toward Hercules. Astronomers have since clocked the speed of this journey through the galaxy at about 12 miles per second, or more than 30 million miles a year. The parallax from the voyage causes the constellations to become stretched and squeezed over time. The ancient Greeks were looking at a slightly different sky.\n\nFor a measurer of the universe, riding along with the sun, closer stars will move faster than farther ones, while the most remote stars will not seem to move at all. Carefully note the position of a Cepheid, then measure it again years later, when the sun has dragged Earth and its astronomers to a new location in space. Calculate the length of this enormous baseline, and then triangulate. With the distance of one Cepheid established, you can calibrate Leavitt's yardstick and then measure the rest.\n\nThe first to attempt this was a Danish astronomer named Ejnar Hertzsprung. He used the motion of the sun to triangulate the distance to some Cepheids in the Milky Way. Then, correlating pulse rate with inherent brightness, he extrapolated outward, reporting in a journal called _Astronomische Nach_ _richten_ that the distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud was about 3,000 light-years.\n\nThis was enormous by the astronomical standards of the time. In fact it was a misprint. Maybe a journal copy editor had recoiled at the real number, inadvertently dropping a zero. According to Hertzsprung's calculations, the nebula was ten times farther, 30,000 light-years away.\n\nAround the same time the American astronomer Henry Norris Russell used a different method to come up with an even more astonishing distance of 80,000 light-years. \"I had not thought of making the very pretty use you make of Miss Leavitt's discovery about the relation between period and absolute brightness,\" he later wrote to Hertzsprung. \"There is of course a certain element of uncertainty about this, but I think it is a legitimate hypothesis.\"\n\nThe Cepheid yardstick still needed refinement, but astronomers finally had hope of leaping past the nearest stars, roughing out the shape and size of the galaxy... and what, if anything, lay beyond.\n\n**4**\n\nHenrietta Leavitt didn't get to pursue the matter herself. Pickering kept her tied down with other projects. He wasn't one to encourage theorizing, believing, as his colleague Solon Bailey put it, \"that the best service he could render to astronomy was the accumulation of facts.\" Beginning in August 1912, the year her discovery about the Cepheids was published, she documented her day-to-day routine, in language meaningful only to an astronomer, in a black-and-red leather-bound notebook:\n\n_October 8. Letter from Hertzsprung, dated Mount Wilson, Oct. 3, 1912. Subject, Method of transforming photographic to visual magnitudes by means of effective wavelengths. He finds that a change in the color index, using Dr. M\u00fcrch's photo_ _graphic magnitudes andHarvard photometric magnitudes, of one magnitude, corresponds to a change in effective wave_ _length (_ \u03bb _f_ _) of 200 Angstrom units...._\n\n_October 19. Tried superimposing Plates H 361, exp. 10m, lim_ _iting magn. 15.6 and H 385, isochromatic, limiting magnitude_ _14.9._ _The red stars appeared of nearly the same brightness on the two plates, white stars being brighter on H 361. The colors were assigned very easily._\n\n_October 22. Finished revision of 32 sequences north of_ + _75 degrees, and comparison with marked chart. Gave plates to Miss O'Reilly for identification._\n\nAnd so it went for the next four years, except for gaps, sometimes many months long, hints of recurring illness. In spring 1913 she was absent for three months recovering from stomach surgery. Only once in all those pages, on January 13, 1914, does she let some excitement show: \"Completed discussion of Prov. Photovisual Magn. of N.P. Seq., this completing H.A. 71, 3. !!! after many years.\"\n\nTranslation: She had finished, or so she believed, the measurements for her North Polar Sequence, ninety-six stars whose magnitude she had determined with such authority and care that they could be used as a standard for the rest of the sky. There were still revisions to be done. The work was finally published, three years later, in the _Annals of the Astro_ _nomical Observatory of Harvard College_ , volume 71, number 3\u2014all 184 pages of it. Perhaps she and her mother indulged in a split of champagne.\n\nDry as dust to the uninitiated, her report was a work of magnificence, combining data from 299 photographic plates taken by thirteen different telescopes. Every magnitude had to be meticulously checked and cross-checked, with a constant awareness of the difference between mere data and true phenomena. No matter how carefully measured, each number represented not the brightness of a star but rather the intensity of its image on a photographic plate. In a perfect world these two values would be the same. In reality, every telescope and every type of photographic plate had its own peculiarities\u2014responding more readily to some colors than to others. Images near the center of the plate were rendered more accurately than those to the side.\n\nPage after page, she described how she corrected for the various biases and uncertainties. There was a chain of reasoning behind every number. Each star was a project in itself.\n\nWhen she reached the end of the study, she knew it wasn't perfect. \"It is desirable that the standard scale should be investigated by different observers, using independent methods,\" she allowed. \"Discrepancies will inevitably appear in the results.\" But, as politely as possible, she warned future critics to proceed with caution.\n\n\"Too much weight may easily be assigned to results obtained from a single investigation, even if great precautions have been used.\" Which is why, she gently reminded, her measurements \"depend on many different methods, instruments, and observers.\"\n\nShe concluded, \"In view of these facts, it seems only reasonable that considerable time should be allowed to pass, and a large amount of varied material collected, before adopting definitive corrections to the scale here presented. For stars between the tenth and sixteenth magnitudes, such corrections are likely to be minute. For brighter and fainter stars, sensible changes may be made ultimately, but the scale is probably a close approximation to the true one.\"\n\nIt was work to take pride in. Ph.D.s have been awarded for less.\nCHAPTER 5\n\nShapley's Ants\n\nHer discovery of the relation of period to brightness is destined to be one of the most significant results of stellar astronomy, I believe. I am quite anxious to have her opinion as to the periods because of its bearing on some statistical work I am now bringing to a close.\n\n_\u2014Harlow Shapley, writing to Edward Pickering \nabout Henrietta Leavitt_\n\nBack in the eighteenth century, William Herschel had theorized that nebulae, like Andromeda, might be distant galaxies. The philosopher Immanuel Kant, called them \"island universes,\" arguing, \"It is much more natural and reasonable to assume that a nebula is not a unique and solitary sun, but a system of numerous suns.\" The universe, he wrote, may be filled with Milky Ways.\n\nOther astronomers, however, were swayed by a different philosopher, Pierre-Simon Laplace, who proposed that the spiral-shaped clouds like Andromeda were no more than \"proto solar systems\"\u2014a new sun and its orbiting planets in the process of congealing from a whirling cloud of gas. The theory seemed all the more plausible when in 1885 a new star, or \"nova,\" flared within the center of the hazy disk of Andromeda, as though a solar system was being born.\n\nTime exposures of the sky soon revealed some 100,000 of the luminous swirls and more were being found all the time. With spiral nebulae appearing everywhere, it seemed absurd to suppose that each could be a galaxy filled with millions of stars. \"No competent thinker, with the whole of the available evidence before him, can now, it is safe to say, maintain any single nebula to be a star system of coordinate rank with the Milky Way,\" Agnes Clerke, an astronomer and historian of science, wrote in 1890. \"A practical certainty has been attained that the entire contents, stellar and nebular, of the sphere belong to one mighty aggregation.\" The universe was just another name for the Milky Way.\n\nBut the issue was far from settled. For one thing, the Milky Way itself seemed to be shaped like a spiral. Viewed from afar it might appear little different than Andromeda or any other nebula. An even stronger argument for island universes came from analyzing a nebula's light with a prism, breaking it into its component colors. These spectroscopic patterns were believed to reveal which chemicals a celestial object was made from. Andromeda's rainbow looked very much like the one cast by the sun. Both seemed to consist of star stuff. The tests were less than conclusive. Other nebulae produced dull, simple spectra\u2014what one might expect from a homogeneous cloud of luminous gas. People tended to find in the data what they were already disposed to believe.\n\nThe impasse was broken in 1914 by Vesto Melvin Slipher at Lowell Observatory in northern Arizona, who had figured out how to estimate the speed at which a nebula was traveling through space. His technique was based on the Doppler effect. If a star is moving toward you, its light waves will be compressed. Thus the frequency\u2014the number of waves that strike the eye every second\u2014will increase. Brains interpret frequency as color, and so the starlight will shift toward the higher, bluer end of the spectrum. Conversely, if the star is moving away, its light will be stretched toward the lower-frequency reds.\n\nMeasuring the red and blue shifts of fifteen spiral nebulae, Slipher found them to be traveling at incredible velocities. Two of them appeared to be flying off at a dizzying 1,100 kilometers per second. That hardly seemed possible if they were simply small objects within the gravitational grip of the Milky Way. For many astronomers that settled the matter, in favor of island universes. (Slipher himself initially clung to the prevailing notion that a nebula was but a single star \"enveloped and beclouded by fragmentary and disintegrated matter.\")\n\nMore evidence arrived three years later when another nova suddenly appeared inside a spiral nebula called NGC 6946 (after its designation in the New General Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters). Heber Curtis of Lick Observatory, a California stronghold of the island universe theory, found novae inside other nebulae, and when astronomers reexamined old photographic plates they found still more.\n\nCurtis believed the novae might serve as standard candles. Astronomers had estimated that those in the Milky Way surged to an intrinsic magnitude of about \u20138. (Remember that the lower the magnitude, the brighter the star, making one with a negative value very bright indeed.) Curtis assumed that the novae in the distant nebulae were probably peaking at about the same intensity. Compare that number with how bright a nova appeared from Earth and you could use the inverse square law to get its distance. Measured this way, the nebulae appeared to be huge spinning galaxies many millions of light-years away.\n\nBy 1917 the consensus had shifted toward island universes. In addition to Curtis, and by now Slipher, supporters included such prominent astronomers as Arthur Eddington, James Jeans, Ejnar Hertzsprung, and a young researcher named Harlow Shapley, who had recently moved to Mount Wilson Observatory, the astronomical powerhouse perched high above Pasadena, California. Shapley however was about to change his mind. Using Leavitt's variable stars, he would spend the next few years calibrating the Cepheid yardstick and measuring the size and shape of the Milky Way. He was ultimately forced to conclude that it was far larger than anyone had dared imagine\u2014so large, he believed, that it must constitute the entire universe, nebulae and all.\n\n**2**\n\nShapley had a peculiar fixation with ants. When he wasn't looking upward at the stars, he liked to watch a colony of medium-size brownish black ants\u2014 _Liometopum apiculatum_ \u2014as they streamed along a concrete wall by Mount Wilson's maintenance shop. Shapley noticed that the ants slowed down when they reached the shade of some manzanita bushes and sped up again in the sun. Armed with various instruments, he studied the ants under different atmospheric conditions, even watching them with a flashlight at night. The correlation between running speed and temperature was so tight that he could use the ants as a thermometer, reading off the temperature within one degree. Returning to Mount Wilson thirty years later, he was annoyed to find that an assistant engineer was making a practice of burning off the ant trail with a blow torch\u2014\"genocide,\" Shapley called it. (\"Formicide\" would have been a better word.) But the resilient ants always came back.\n\nHe drew lessons from these tiny creatures. Asked to deliver a commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania, he chose the topic \"On Running in Trails,\" warning the students against the comfortable allure of conformity, of following the same narrow paths as their ancestors, afraid to break from the pack.\n\nWhen Shapley arrived in Pasadena in 1914, the common wisdom held that the Milky Way was a lens-shaped disk some 25,000 light-years long and about a fourth that wide, with the sun at almost dead center. This picture of the heavens was sometimes called the Kapteyn universe, after the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn, who had estimated its size. The methods he had used were far from exact. With the Cepheid variables and Mount Wilson's powerful 60-inch telescope at his command, Shapley decided to measure the galaxy for himself.\n\nSpread throughout the Milky Way were a hundred or so \"globular clusters,\" each consisting of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of stars. Shapley suspected that these huge concentrations formed a kind of framework or \"skeleton\" marking the extent and shape of the galaxy. By using Cepheids to determine the distances to these mileposts, he could map out the whole thing.\n\n_The Milky Way_\n\nShapley figured he knew something about variable stars. His Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton, under Henry Norris Russell, had focused on a type of variable called eclipsing binaries\u2014 two stars orbiting around a common point and periodically blocking each other's light. One of Shapley's first papers at Mount Wilson showed that the Cepheids did not belong to this class. Rather, they were single stars that expanded and contracted with a regular beat. For now, however, these details were unimportant. He knew from Henrietta Leavitt's research that Cepheids would serve as standard candles.\n\nHe also knew that most of the variables in the globular clusters were a little different from the ones she had discovered in the Magellanic Clouds. Shapley's stars\u2014called cluster variables\u2014blinked much faster, with cycles measured in hours, not days. Hertzsprung, in fact, thought his eager colleague was mixing apples and oranges. How could he be so sure that both kinds of stars showed the same connection between period and brightness?\n\nShapley was insistent. \"[T]his proposition scarcely needs proof,\" he wrote in a paper in the _Astrophysical Journal_. \"Practically all writers on the subject are more or less inclined to accept this view.\"\n\nUndeterred, he proceeded with his plan. For his early measurements, he relied on the fact that the farther something is from an observer, the more slowly it appears to move\u2014think of a tiny jet plane inching across a windowpane. The speed at which a star is heading directly toward or away from Earth, its \"radial velocity,\" can be clocked using redshift and blueshift. But it is the \"transverse velocity\"\u2014how fast the star is moving across the sky\u2014that hints at how far away it is. It seemed sensible that, on average, stars in a cluster would move at the same velocity, whatever the direction. Drawing on a method called statistical parallax, Shapley used Doppler shifts to estimate the average velocity of a sampling of stars and compared that figure with how fast the stars _appeared_ to be moving. That revealed their distance. Eleven of these were Cepheids, forming the anchor of what came to be called \"Shapley's curve.\"\n\nTaking a second leap, he extended the curve to include the far more common shorter-period variables. First he would find a cluster that had both types. The slow-paced Cepheids gave him an estimate of the cluster's distance, which he could then correlate with the period of the faster variables. Now the distance of clusters with only fast variables could be measured\u2014 provided that both kinds of stars really obeyed the same law.\n\nNew yardstick in hand, he gauged the distances to several of the nearest globular clusters. Then he ran into a wall. In most of the clusters, not a single blinking star could be found. He would have to extrapolate further, and that meant finding another kind of standard candle. It seemed sensible, he reasoned, that each cluster would consist of stars spanning the same range of magnitude. The brightest stars in cluster A, whose distance had been measured with his yardstick, would be about as intense as the brightest stars in cluster B, whose distance was unknown. If they appeared dimmer, it would be because they were farther. The inverse square law would reveal by just how much, extending the map a little more.\n\nMany clusters, however, were so distant and so blurry that not even Mount Wilson's telescope could pick out a single star. And so came the final leap: one could take a cluster whose distance had been established by these other indirect methods and use the whole thing as a standard candle. The farthest clusters, Shapley reasoned, were probably as intrinsically big and brilliant as the nearest ones. By measuring how much smaller and fainter they appeared, he could judge their distances, and reach to the farthest edges of the galaxy.\n\nAs he followed this artful chain of assumptions, Henrietta Leavitt was living alone in a Cambridge rooming house, where she had moved after the death of her uncle Erasmus in 1916. She was still working for the observatory and occasionally Shapley wrote to Edward Pickering inquiring about the latest developments with her variable stars.\n\nShapley had noticed some very faint variables in the Magellanic Clouds and wondered if these might be similar to the ones he was using to plot out the Milky Way. \"Does Miss Leavitt know if they have shorter periods, that is, are their periods shorter than one day, similar to cluster variables?\" he wrote on August 27, 1917. \"It may be her work has not progressed far enough to give a definite answer.\" He was hoping for some ammunition against those, like Hertzsprung, who continued to argue that the faster variables did not necessarily obey Leavitt's rule. He considered the matter \"of much importance.... In fact, the Magellanic clouds and their variables seem to me one of the most important outstanding problems of stellar photometry.\"\n\nPickering replied about three weeks later: \"Miss Leavitt is now absent on her vacation.\" (She was on Nantucket, visiting with Margaret Harwood, a fellow Harvard computer and astronomical assistant who had become director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory.) \"When she returns, she will investigate the matter of the Magellanic Clouds.\"\n\nOf the two men, Shapley was the quicker and more loquacious correspondent. Within a week he had fired off another letter, praising Leavitt's work and emphasizing how much he needed the information. \"Her discovery of the relation of period to brightness is destined to be one of the most significant results of stellar astronomy, I believe. I am quite anxious to have her opinion as to the periods because of its bearing on some statistical work I am now bringing to a close.\"\n\nNine months later Shapley was still waiting. On July 20, 1918, he checked in again, still heaping on the praise:\n\nI believe the most important photometric work that can be done on Cepheid variables at the present time is a study of the Harvard plates of the Magellanic clouds. Probably Miss Leavitt's many other problems have interrupted and delayed her work on the variables of the clouds for the interval of six or seven years since her preliminary work was published.... The theory of stellar variation, the laws of stellar luminosities, the arrangement of objects throughout the whole galactic system, the structure of the clouds\u2014all these problems will benefit directly or indirectly from a further knowledge of the Cepheid variables.\n\nIt took almost three weeks for Pickering to reply: \"A few days ago I talked with Miss Leavitt.... She has the material for about a third of the brighter variables, and photographs are now being taken with the Bruce 24-inch, which I hope will provide the remainder.\"\n\nThat is the last letter from Pickering in Shapley's files. Less than five months later, he died of pneumonia at age seventy-two.\n\n**3**\n\nShapley ultimately decided to run with his theory, using the Cepheids as the first step in his hopscotch across the galaxy. The results were astonishing. First of all the Milky Way, by Shapley's measure, was gargantuan in size\u2014300,000 light-years across. That was some ten times greater than Kapteyn's estimate\u2014so much larger that he felt he must abandon the notion of island universes. If one insisted on maintaining that the thousands upon thousands of spiral nebulae were galaxies each the size of the Milky Way, then Andromeda, judging from its apparent size, would have to lie at an enormous distance. That, in turn, would mean that its novae were absurdly bright. It must be a small gas cloud after all.\n\nTo Shapley there was now an even more damning argument against island universes. One of his colleagues, a Mount Wilson astronomer named Adriaan van Maanen, had recently announced that several of the great spirals, including the aptly named Whirlpool and Pinwheel nebulae, were gradually turning. Van Maanen made the measurements with an arrangement of lenses and mirrors called a blink comparator. With the device, an astronomer could mount two photographic plates taken months or years apart and, gazing through a binocular eyepiece, switch back and forth between them. Anything that had changed would appear to move or vary in size. Comparing plates of nebulae taken five years apart, van Maanen thought he saw a slight rotation.\n\nViewed from Earth the spin was minuscule\u20142\/100 of a single second of arc each year. A complete cycle would take about 100,000 years. The surprise was that the movement was visible at all. Few could doubt that spirals spun. Why else would they have their pinwheel shapes? But for the motion to be perceptible at all, these nebulae would have to be small and nearby. If the spirals were truly distant galaxies, van Maanen's data would mean they were spinning at impossibly high velocities\u2014faster than the speed of light.\n\nJust as unsettling as the Milky Way's enormous size was Shapley's conclusion about where we lived inside the galactic disk. Astronomers had noticed that the globular clusters are not distributed evenly through the sky but congregate in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. There, according to Shapley's measurements, they formed a roughly spherical shape, a cluster of clusters. That, he proposed, must be the center of the galaxy, the central bulge of the Milky Way. If we lived within this region, we would see the clusters spaced uniformly around us. The fact that we do not is because we lie in the galaxy's outskirts, tens of thousands of light-years from the core. We were not New York City but Pensacola or North Platte.\n\n\"So the center has shifted: egocentric, lococentric, geocentric, heliocentric,\" Shapley wrote to George Ellery Hale, Mount Wilson's director. Or, as he later put it: \"Man is not such a big chicken. If man had been found in the center, it would look sort of natural. We could say, 'Naturally we are in the center because we are God's children.' But here was an indication that we were perhaps incidental. We did not amount to so much.\" People were no more important than ants.\n\nThe center of the galaxy was in Sagittarius. And so the center of the universe must be there as well.\nCHAPTER 6\n\nThe Late, Great Milky Way\n\nThe spectrum of the average spiral nebula is indistinguishable from that given by a star cluster. It is such a spectrum as would be expected from a vast congeries of stars.\n\n_\u2014Heber Curtis_\n\nOn a spring day in 1920, Shapley found himself strolling along the train tracks somewhere in Alabama talking about flowers and classics and probably looking for ants. His companion was Heber Curtis, and they had agreed for now to avoid the touchy subject of astronomy. Each, unbeknownst to the other, had booked passage on the same train from California to Washington, D.C., where, in the halls of the National Academy of Sciences, they were scheduled to debate whether there was anything in the universe beyond the Milky Way.\n\nThe event had been arranged at the prompting of Shapley's boss, George Ellery Hale, one of the most revered astronomers of the time. Hale's father had made a fortune selling hydraulic elevators to the builders of Chicago's soaring skyscrapers. The son set his sights still higher, studying astronomy and exploiting his family's financial connections to fund the development of some of the best telescopes in the world. When the old man died, a series of lectures was endowed in his name. The younger Hale thought that the one in 1920, at the National Academy's annual meeting, should be devoted to a currently hot cosmological issue\u2014either relativity or island universes.\n\n_Harlow Shapley_\n\n(Harvard University Archives)\n\nThe first topic struck the academy's secretary as too esoteric. (He personally thought that Einstein's theory should be banished \"to some region of space beyond the fourth dimension, from whence it may never return to plague us.\") Nor was he keen on island universes, fearing that \"unless the speakers took pains to make the subject very engaging the thing would fall flat.\" He proposed instead a presentation on glaciers or \"some zoological or biological subject.\" In the end, Hale had the final word, and Shapley and Curtis were picked to present their opposing views on \"The Scale of the Universe,\" and, more pointedly, on whether it consisted of more than a single galaxy.\n\nWere such an event to take place today, it would be videotaped and perhaps transcribed. You could probably download it from the Web. The encounter between Shapley and Curtis can be pieced together only from scraps of evidence\u2014a typescript of Shapley's talk, annotated with his scribbles, some of Curtis's slides (he misplaced his script soon after the event), and letters the two exchanged before and after what came to be called the Great Debate, mostly by people who had not been there.\n\nCurtis himself was eager for a scrap. He imagined the two astronomers going after each other with \"hammer and tongs,\" then shaking hands like gentlemen. Shapley, however, was worried that he might lose. Not that he thought his theory was wrong. But persuading an audience of geologists, biologists, and scientists of other nonastronomical persuasions required the skills of an orator. Right or wrong, Curtis, thirteen years older and the more polished debater, might best Shapley at the podium.\n\nHe expected for example that Curtis would pick on the tiny handful of stars (\"my eleven miserable Cepheids,\" Shapley called them in a letter) from which he had extrapolated such enormous distances. What seemed to some like a brilliant analysis might strike others as a house of cards. Many astronomers were much less confident than Shapley about the usefulness of Henrietta Leavitt's yardstick. Curtis had made it clear that he thought Shapley's Milky Way was ten times too large. If he could shrink it back by an order of magnitude, the island universe theory might be easier to uphold.\n\nShapley also had an ulterior motive. He was certain he was being considered for the directorship of Harvard Observatory\u2014Edward Pickering had just died\u2014and he expected an emissary from Observatory Hill to be in the audience. He dreaded making a bad impression.\n\nFor weeks Shapley worked to bolster his evidence while maneuvering for a more advantageous position. Through sheer obstinacy, he managed to get the debate downgraded to a discussion\u2014\"two talks on the same subject from our different standpoints\"\u2014and the talks themselves reduced in length. While Curtis wanted forty-five minutes for each presentation, Shapley wanted thirty-five. They split the difference, settling on forty. To blunt the impact further, no time would be allowed for rebuttals, just a general discussion at the end. Finally Shapley made certain that Henry Norris Russell, his former teacher and ally, would be in the audience to support his position. He wasn't taking any chances.\n\n**2**\n\nThe evening began at an excruciating pace with awards followed by long testimonials. There was a tribute to the Prince of Monaco for oceanography, Shapley later remembered, and another to some \"noble human antique,\" honored for combating hookworm. Many years later in a memoir, Shapley recalled a bored Albert Einstein sitting in the audience, whispering to his companion that he now had a new theory of eternity. It made a good story, but actually Einstein was in Germany then, fending off the first stirrings of Nazi denunciations of his \"Jewish physics.\" He made his first visit to the United States the following year.\n\nOnce the main event finally began, Shapley went first, easing in slowly with a long introductory tutorial on astronomy. A third of the way through his allotted time, he had gotten only as far as the definition of a light-year. So far the presentation was pure popular science. One can imagine Curtis glancing at his watch, wondering when Shapley would say something he could dispute.\n\nThen he surprised Curtis again with a promise to spare the audience \"the dreary technicalities of the methods of determining the distance of globular clusters,\" the way stations he had used to map the galaxy. Maybe that was a sensible approach for an audience of nonspecialists. But Curtis, who was still itching for a fight, had prepared a meticulous pointby-point deconstruction of Shapley's every assumption and logical inference. There was still nothing for him to rebut.\n\nThe biggest surprise was still to come. Skipping over Cepheids entirely, Shapley described an entirely independent method of establishing the enormity of the galaxy (and by implication, undermining the case for island universes).\n\nAstronomers had uncovered what appeared to be a relationship between a star's temperature and its inherent brightness. (These had been plotted on a chart famous to astronomers as the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram after Henry Norris Russell and Ejnar Hertzsprung.) The result was another kind of measuring stick. A survey of nearby \"B-type stars,\" identified by their bluish sheen, had found them to be on average 200 times brighter than the sun. This suggested, to Shapley anyway, that these blue giants could be used as standard candles. No matter how much a B star's light is dimmed on the journey to Earth, it could be assumed, with a small leap of faith, to have the same intrinsic brightness as its cousins closer to home. And so the giant's distance could be calculated from the inverse square law. If it was nine times dimmer than a nearby B star, it must be three times farther away.\n\nShapley found what he took to be blue giants in the Milky Way cluster called Hercules. Exceedingly dim\u2014of the fifteenth magnitude\u2014the stars, he reckoned, would have to be 35,000 light-years away. Then he extrapolated further. Assuming that the smaller, dimmer clusters had the same overall brightness as Hercules, he circled around to his original conclusion: that they lie at the fringes of a galaxy 300,000 light-years in diameter, with the sun shoved off to one side.\n\nHe briefly mentioned how another kind of yardstick, stars called red giants, also supported his measurements. Then he tried to fend off any criticism of his \"miserable\" Cepheids by removing them from the debate: Professor Curtis, he said, \"may question the sufficiency of the data or the accuracy of the methods....But this fact remains: we could discard the Cepheids altogether, use instead the thousands of B-type stars upon which the most capable stellar astronomers have worked for years, and derive just the same distance for the Hercules cluster, and for the other clusters, and obtain consequently the same dimensions for the galactic system.\"\n\nBefore the debate the red and blue stars had been no more than footnotes to Shapley's argument\u2014secondary checks on his primary measuring tool, Henrietta Leavitt's Cepheid variables. Now figure and ground had been reversed, leaving Curtis to aim at a moving target and leading one to wonder who really was the wilier debater.\n\nAs for the nature of the spiral nebulae, the original focus of the discussion, Shapley dismissed them in a few sentences:\n\nI shall leave the description and discussion of this debatable question to Professor Curtis. We agree, I believe, that if the galactic system is as large as I maintain, the spiral nebulae can hardly be comparable galactic systems; if it is but one-tenth as large, there might be a good opportunity for the hypothesis that our galactic system is a spiral nebula, comparable in size with the other spiral nebulae, all of which would then be \"island\" universes of stars. On one other point I think we also agree, or at least we _should_ agree, and that is that we know relatively so little concerning the spiral nebulae... that it is professionally and scientifically unwise to take any very positive view in the matter just now.\n\nEven if the spiral nebulae were not firmly inside the boundaries of the Milky Way, he believed, they probably lay on the outskirts, small gas clouds encountered during the galaxy's drift through endless nothingness.\n\n**3**\n\nThere is no way to re-create the tone of Curtis's presentation from the skeletal talking points left behind on his typewritten slides. It is clear that, undeterred by Shapley, he marshaled a strong defense of island universes. As expected, he challenged the reliability of Shapley's calibration of the Cepheid yardstick, joining those who suspected that the more rapidly oscillating cluster variables used to measure out the Milky Way were different in nature from the slower ones Leavitt had found in the Magellanic Clouds. Why assume they had precisely the same relationship between period and inherent brightness, if there was indeed any such relationship at all? If Shapley's variables were actually much dimmer to begin with, then all the clusters would lie closer in. The perimeter of the galaxy would contract and the Milky Way would shrink from continent to island, one member of a great archipelago.\n\n_Herber Curtis_\n\n(Lick Observatory)\n\nCurtis was equally unimpressed with the giant blue stars, arguing that far too little was known to trust them as standard candles. He proposed what he considered a more reliable measuring device\u2014the yellow-white stars like the sun that seemed to make up most of the galaxy. It was reasonable, Curtis proposed, that the sunlike stars in the far reaches of the Milky Way shine, on average, with the same brightness as those nearby. Like Shapley, he was assuming the uniformity of nature, and his conclusion was that the galaxy can be only about 30,000 light-years across. For the clusters to be as distant as Shapley believed, these stars would have to be far brighter than those in our own neighborhood. A different physics would prevail. \"While it is not impossible that the clusters are exceptional regions of space [with] a unique concentration of giant stars, the hypothesis that cluster stars are, on the whole, like those of known distance seems inherently the more probable.\"\n\nWith the Milky Way knocked down in size, evidence for island universes seemed compelling. Curtis recalled the familiar argument that the color patterns produced by the spirals were indistinguishable from that of starlight. \"It is such a spectrum as would be expected from a vast congeries of stars.\" And the novae that appeared within them \"seem a natural consequence of their nature as galaxies, incubators of new stars.\" Used as standard candles the novae put Andromeda half a million light-years from Earth and other spirals 10 million or more light-years away. \"At such distances, these island universes would be of the order of size of our own Galaxy of stars.\"\n\nFinally he noted a curious phenomenon that had been puzzling astronomers for years: the spiral nebulae appeared to be concentrated at the two \"poles\" of the Milky Way\u2014the regions directly above and below the galaxy's central bulge. None was found in the galactic plane where most of the stars reside. If the spirals were small clouds within or near our galaxy, then why were they not evenly distributed? It was as though they were being repelled by some mysterious force.\n\nIt was far more plausible, Curtis argued, that this \"zone of avoidance\" was an illusion\u2014that the spirals lay far beyond the Milky Way, in every direction, with those along the galactic plane hidden from our view. Many spirals appeared to be surrounded by a thick ring of \"occulting\" matter, a halo of interstellar dust. The same might be true of the Milky Way. When astronomers aimed their telescopes directly into this dust storm, spirals in that direction were blocked from view. Of the millions of spirals, the only ones we could see were those that happened to lie above and below. Each, he proposed, was a world as vast and shining as our own.\n\n**4**\n\nEach man left the lecture hall certain that he had won. \"Debate went off fine in Washington,\" Curtis wrote to his family, \"and I have been assured that I came out considerably in front.\" Shapley, for his part, attributed any points Curtis may have scored to his rhetorical skills. \"Now I would know how to dodge things a little better,\" he said years later, a comment that seems strange since Shapley spoke first. Maybe he was referring to the discussion that followed the talks, during which his mentor Russell had, as planned, come forth with a strong endorsement of Shapley's Big Galaxy theory. The champions of island universes surely responded just as vigorously. \"Curtis did a moderately good job,\" Shapley recalled. \"Some of his science was wrong, but his delivery was all right.\"\n\nBoth men fleshed out their arguments in papers published the following year in the _Bulletin of the National Research Council_. (In some early historical accounts these published papers are treated as the actual substance of the debate.) The texts contain no fundamentally new arguments. Shapley bolstered his case with more data, whose certainty Curtis continued to question. What is most striking is how two of the world's smartest astronomers could take the same trove of astronomical observations and come up with two such very different pictures of the universe, a reminder that science lies not in the facts themselves but in their arrangement.\n\nFor Curtis, the zone of avoidance (it sounds like something from a Superman comic) was strong evidence for seeing the spirals as island galaxies. In Shapley's hands, the phenomenon seemed to support the argument that spirals are little wisps of stellar gas: they would have to be small and light to be repulsed somehow by the Milky Way. Also open to conflicting interpretations were the novae that appeared now and then inside the spirals. For Curtis their existence showed that spirals were indeed galaxies. Where else would one expect to observe stars being born? For Shapley each nova represented \"the engulfing of a star by [a] rapidly moving nebulosity.\"\n\nThe most memorable passage in either paper is a paragraph by Shapley on the perils of extrapolating too boldly from a limited set of data. He meant the statement as a criticism of Curtis's measurements involving the average magnitude of sunlike stars. But it could be taken just as easily as a humbling reminder about how much the entire enterprise of astronomical measurement rests on a few vulnerable assumptions. (It is also the inspiration for the story about the villagers in the canyon, which appears in the prologue of this book.)\n\n\"Suppose,\" Shapley began, \"that an observer, confined to a small area in a valley, attempts to measure the distances of surrounding mountain peaks.\" He can use parallax for the nearby hills, but since he cannot leave his narrow valley, his baseline is too small to triangulate any farther. He needs another kind of measuring stick. Seeing through his telescope that there is plant life on the mountaintop, he makes the simplifying assumption that it is approximately the same as the plant life on the valley floor\u2014averaging about a foot in height. Thus from the apparent size of the foliage, he can judge how far the mountain is.\n\nHis calculation would be wrong. \"If, however,\" Shapley noted, \"he had compared the foliage on the nearby, trigonometrically-measured hills with that on the remote peaks, or had used some method of distinguishing various floral types, he would not have mistaken pines for asters and obtained erroneous results for the distances of the surrounding mountains. All the principles involved in the botanical parallax of a mountain peak have their analogues in the photometric parallax of a globular cluster.\"\n\nMistaking pines for asters, and asters for pines. It was an occupational hazard that would plague Shapley as much as anyone.\nCHAPTER 7\n\nIn the Realm of the Nebulae\n\nOne of the few decent things I have done was to call on her on her death bed. It made life so much different, friends said, that the director came to see her.\n\n_\u2014HarlowShapley, writing about Henrietta Swan Leavitt_\n\nFor two boys hailing from rural Missouri, Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble didn't have much in common, except perhaps the size of their egos. Shapley had been born in 1885 on a hay farm near the Ozarks and dropped out of school to become a police beat reporter for a small-town newspaper. He had completed the equivalent of the fifth grade. Only a few years later did he earn a high school diploma and enroll at the University of Missouri. There he was diverted from journalism into astronomy, finally moving on to Princeton to study under Russell, who once told Edward Pickering, \"He is the best student I ever had.\" For all Shapley's self-assured swagger\u2014he was certain that he had mapped the length and breadth of the universe\u2014he never quite lost his rough country edge.\n\nFour years later, and about seventy miles east of the Shapley farm, Hubble was born. The family was more prosperous than the Shapleys (Mr. Hubble was an attorney turned insurance executive). A straight-A student and an athlete, Edwin won a scholarship to the University of Chicago and became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he studied law and picked up the fake British accent that would grate on some of his colleagues like a kid squeaking a balloon.\n\n_Edwin Hubble_ (Courtesy of the Archives, \nCalifornia Institute of Technology)\n\nHubble, like his father, didn't take to practicing law. After briefly working as a high school teacher in Indiana (appearing before his classes in knickers and a cape), he returned to Chicago to pursue a doctorate in astronomy. Then, after serving as an officer in World War I, he came to Mount Wilson, where he and Shapley found themselves working uncomfortably under the same dome-shaped roof. What, Shapley wondered, was a Missouri boy doing exclaiming, \"Bah Jove,\" or remarking that a plan had \"come a cropper\"? Taking note of Hubble's aristocratic and somewhat military bearing, some astronomers began referring to him as the Major.\n\nHubble, a rather reserved sort, found Shapley overbearing and erratic\u2014shooting off one wild idea after the other\u2014and he was particularly put off by Shapley's friend, the garrulous Dutch astronomer Adriaan van Maanen, whose love for dinner parties and socializing made him something of a standout in stodgy Pasadena. Van Maanen was also known as a meticulous astronomer\u2014his measurements of the rotational velocity of the spiral nebulae provided the strongest argument against island universes. Having rechecked and refined his data, he remained adamant: either the spirals were small and nearby or they were spinning at insanely high speeds. He believed, as his teacher Kapteyn had taught him, that there can be only one galaxy, the Milky Way.\n\nHubble himself leaned toward the island universe theory, but for now he wasn't involving himself in the controversy. He hadn't come to Mount Wilson to confer with mortals about their astronomical opinions. The answers would be found in the stars. Within weeks he was sitting through long nights beneath the observatory dome, consorting with the sky. He spent Christmas Eve 1919 with his eye to Mount Wilson's new 100-inch telescope, 40 inches greater in diameter than the one Shapley had used to map out his Big Galaxy. For the next three decades it would be the largest in the world. Hubble was looking particularly hard at nebulae and wondering, perhaps, when Harlow Shapley was going to get off his mountain.\n\n**2**\n\nBy now, Henrietta Leavitt and her widowed mother had taken up housekeeping in a recently built brick apartment building on Linnean Street and Massachusetts Avenue, several blocks from Harvard Observatory. Although she was largely occupied with more routine tasks, variable stars were still very much on her mind. In 1920 she wrote to Shapley seeking his advice. Where would he suggest she focus her research next? He replied, still hammering on an old theme, that it would be of \"enormous importance in the present discussion of the distances of globular clusters and the size of the galactic system\" if she would plot the periods of some of the dimmer variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud, those \"just fainter than the faintest already studied.\" This is what he had been pestering Pickering about until several months before his death.\n\nAnd perhaps she would see if her discovery about the Cepheids also held for those in the Large Magellanic Cloud. \"Does the period-luminosity law apply there?\" He was treating her almost like a colleague. Soon he would be her boss.\n\nShapley had been overestimating how badly Harvard wanted him. At first the university's president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, had considered him the obvious choice to succeed Edward Pickering as director. But after consulting with several astronomers, Lowell found himself leaning toward offering Shapley the number-two spot, with an older, more experienced astronomer like Henry Norris Russell running the show. Shapley struck some of his colleagues as young and immature, and perhaps too brash for Harvard. \"He is much more venturesome than other members of our staff,\" Shapley's boss, George Ellery Hale, confided to Lowell, \"and more willing to base far-reaching conclusions on rather slender data.\" And, as Shapley had feared, his lackluster performance at the Great Debate hadn't helped matters. Even Russell came away persuaded that his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 was not ready to run Harvard Observatory. \"Shapley couldn't swing the thing alone,\" Russell told Hale. \"I am convinced of that after trying to measure myself with the job, and observing Shapley in Washington. But he would make a bully second.\"\n\nIn the end Shapley, willful as ever, got what he wanted. Ultimately Russell turned down Harvard's offer and Shapley made it clear that he wouldn't settle for anything less than the directorship. Hale interceded on his behalf and Harvard agreed to try out the young astronomer on a one-year probation. In the spring of 1921 he moved to Cambridge to take over where Pickering had left off.\n\n\"MARCH 28, 1921:Dr.Shapley arrived!\"wrote Annie Cannon, who had become one of the most accomplished of the observatory's women assistants, in her diary. \"I like him. So young, so clean, so brilliant.\" Like Henrietta Leavitt, Cannon was deaf, though only partially so. The following week she and a friend invited Shapley over for dinner and they all went to the symphony.\n\nBy now Leavitt was the head of stellar photometry, and the ebullient Cannon was curator of the photographic plate collection and chief compiler and overseer of the Henry Draper Catalogue of stellar spectra. Ultimately it filled nine volumes with more than 225,000 stars classified according to their spectral type, from the hottest white-blue stars to the cooler yellow, orange, and red. (Cannon's categories were called, cryptically, O, B, A, F, G, K, and M, which astronomers, some of the men anyway, remember with this mnemonic: \"O Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me\").\n\nUnder Pickering, the status of the women computers had continued its slow climb. He even tried, with no success whatsoever, to persuade the president of Harvard to grant Cannon the prestige of an academic appointment, or at least to include her name in the school's catalog. Women were praised, a little condescendingly, for being good at detail work, the numerical needlepoint of analyzing astronomical imagery, but deeper matters were still reserved for the men. One of the more overqualified assistants, Antonia Maury, a Vassar graduate, chafed under the tedium. \"I always wanted to learn the calculus,\" she later said, \"but Professor Pickering did not wish it.\"\n\nMaury, truth be told, could be a pain to work with. She had been hired because she was Henry Draper's niece. Her work was slow and erratic, prompting her aunt to apologize for her behavior. \"I shall be happy,\" she had written to Pickering, \"when you are rid of the annoyance.\" But Maury's bad attitude was inflamed by a feeling that she was being discouraged from making original contributions.\n\nIn her own diary, Williamina Fleming, the housekeeper turned astronomical assistant, expressed the sense of frustration and stoicism some of the computers felt: \"If one could only go on and on with original work, looking to new stars, variables, classifying spectra and studying their peculiarities and changes, life would be a most beautiful dream; but you come down to its realities when you have to put all that is most interesting to you aside, in order to use most of your available time preparing the work of others for publication. However, whatsoever thou puttest thy hand to, do it well.\"\n\nCannon was happier with her lot. When a young British astronomer named Cecilia Payne arrived to study at the observatory in 1923, she wondered how Cannon could have spent all those years under Pickering meticulously classifying stars without speculating on what the new taxonomy might mean. In Cannon's case, Payne came to conclude, theorizing was against her nature: \"She was a pure observer, she did not interpret.\" And she seemed to rely less on reason than on instinct. \"She was like a person with a phenomenal memory for faces,\" Payne observed. \"She did not think about the spectra as she classified them\u2014she simply recognized them.\" When she needed to concentrate, she would disable her hearing aid.\n\nLeavitt's feelings about her own work have gone unrecorded. No revealing confessions or letters have been found, just the occasional anecdote. One day, confronted with a particularly mysterious variable called Beta Lyrae, she exclaimed to a colleague, \"We shall never understand it until we find a way to send up a net and _fetch the thing down_!\" She yearned, perhaps, to rise above the columns of numbers and really know the stars. Yet even after her discovery of the Cepheid law, she remained assigned to routine photometry, more astronomical needlework. As Cecilia Payne later put it, \"Pickering chose his staff to work, not to think.\"\n\nPerhaps this would have changed with Shapley. More than anyone, he had seized on Henrietta Leavitt's stars to plumb the depths of space. He later called her \"one of the most important women ever to touch astronomy.\" Considering how very few women there were in the field, it is hard to gauge how this weighed on his scales of praise. This was a man who measured the computational difficulty of astronomical jobs in \"girlhours\" and the really difficult ones in \"kilo-girl-hours.\"\n\nAny chance the two might have had to collaborate was short-lived. Leavitt, still living with her mother on Linnean Street, was sick again, this time with cancer.\n\n\"Took flowers to Miss Leavitt who is very ill,\" Cannon wrote in her diary for November 6, 1921. It was a dreary month. By Thanksgiving, Cambridge was besieged by the worst ice storm in memory. Trees and electric poles were breaking under the clinging sleet. The observatory lights went out.\n\nCannon's diary describes what came next:\n\n_December 6. Went to see poor Henrietta Leavitt, dying with a_ _malignant stomach trouble. So thin & changed. Very, very, sad._\n\n_December 8. Clear and cold._\n\nShapley dropped by to pay his respects. \"One of the few decent things I have done was to call on her on her death bed,\" he later said. \"It made life so much different, friends said, that the director came to see her.\" Maybe so.\n\n_December 12. Rainy day pouring at night. Henrietta passed_ _away at 10.30_ _p.m_ _._\n\n_December 13. Mr. Leavitt, Henrietta's brother, called early in_ _morning. Snowy, sloppy, dark day._\n\n_December 14. Wednesday. Henrietta's funeral at Chapel of 1st_ _Cong. Church 2_ _p.m_ _._ _Coffin covered with flowers._\n\nShe was buried at Cambridge Cemetery (across from the better known Mount Auburn), in the Leavitt family plot. Sitting at the top of a gentle hill, the spot is marked by a tall hexagonal monument, on top of which (cradled on a draped marble pedestal) sits a globe. Her uncle Erasmus and his family are also buried there, along with other Leavitts. A plaque memorializing Henrietta and her two siblings who died so young, Mira and Roswell, is mounted directly below the continent of Australia. Off to one side, and more often visited, are the graves of Henry and William James.\n\nA few days before her death Leavitt had written out her will in longhand, leaving her mother an estate of odds and ends:\n\nBookcase and books $5\n\nFolding screen $1\n\nRug $40\n\nTable $5\n\nChair $2\n\nDesk $5\n\nTable $5\n\nRug $20\n\nBureau $10\n\nBed-stead $15\n\nMattresses (two) $10\n\nChairs (two) $2\n\nOne @ $100 face value First convertible 4% Liberty Bond $96.33\n\nOne @ $50 face value Fourth 4\u00bc% Liberty Bond $48.56\n\nOne @ $50 face value Victory 4\u00be% Note $50.02\n\nThe total appraised value came to $314.91.\n\nAlso left behind was a photometric survey of the southern sky, and a study of the light curves of novae, including, as a Harvard annual report later put it, \"the famous new star of 1918,\" which had flared in the constellation Aquila. And she was not quite done with another round of revisions to her magnum opus, the North Polar Sequence. When the International Astronomical Union held its first general assembly in Rome the following May, the Commission of Stellar Photometry, of which she had been a member, recognized her \"great service to astronomy.\" \"She was one of the pioneers in a difficult field of investigation in which she worked with conspicuous success, and it is deeply regretted that she was unable to finish this her last undertaking.\"\n\nThe next year a Harvard administrative report noted, in passing, something that may have mattered to her more: \"She had hardly begun work on her extensive program of photographic measures of variable stars.\"\n\nShapley gave her desk to Cecilia Payne. He tried to persuade her to take over Leavitt's unfinished projects, but she had other ideas. After completing a celebrated dissertation on the chemical composition of stars, Payne earned Harvard's first doctorate in astronomy and, under her married name, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, went on to become a full professor and chair of the astronomy department. She never got to meet Leavitt, but she was touched by her story and came to believe that she had been done a great wrong.\n\n\"I heard it said when I came to Harvard that what really killed Miss Leavitt was Pickering's requirement that she devise a method by which the photographic magnitudes determined with all the Harvard instruments could be reduced to the same photometric system,\" she wrote years later. \"I cannot believe that he made so unrealistic a request.\" The judgment seems extreme. This was Leavitt's North Polar Sequence, which she had taken such pride in. But it did keep her away from her Cepheids.\n\nPayne could understand, from a managerial perspective, that it made sense to assign the best of the assistants to tasks that, however onerous, had to be done. \"But it was also a harsh decision,\" Payne wrote, \"which condemned a brilliant scientist to uncongenial work, and probably set back the study of variable stars for decades.\"\n\nFour months after the funeral, Annie Cannon found herself on a steamer bound for Peru, for a tour of the Andes and a visit to the observatory in Arequipa. One evening, after immersing herself in the clear southern skies, she made a note in her diary: \"Magellanic Cloud (Great) so bright. It always makes me think of poor Henrietta. How she loved the 'Clouds.' \"\n\n**3**\n\nLike Shapley, Heber Curtis had also moved up in the world, becoming director of the Allegheny Observatory near Pittsburgh. His successor at Lick, a young Swede named Knut Lundmark, carried on the tradition of antagonizing Shapley, claiming that he had been able to pick out individual stars in a pinwheeled nebula called Triangulum or M33 (after the number given it in the eighteenth century by the French astronomer Charles Messier). Assuming (1) that these were the brightest stars in the nebula (which is presumably why he could see them) and (2) that they had the same average magnitude as the brightest stars in the Milky Way, he estimated that M33 was more than a million light-years away. It was, in other words, a full-fledged galaxy.\n\nShapley quickly challenged him in a letter. Why had his paper not mentioned the work of his friend Adriaan van Maanen, who had measured the rotation of that very spiral, showing it must be small and nearby, or else spinning at impossibly high speeds? Lundmark replied diplomatically and Shapley, for now, was mollified. But he couldn't resist firing off one of the sarcastic slights that were becoming his trademark: \"Whether or not you care to recognize that [van Maanen's] measures, if real, practically eliminate the 'island universe' hypothesis, which you seem to espouse at present time more strongly than any one, is not a matter I can properly concern myself about.\"\n\nLundmark was not so easily defused, as Shapley learned to his annoyance when he picked up an astronomical journal a few months later and read a new paper entitled \"On the Motions of Spirals.\" The young astronomer was pushing island universes even more vigorously than before, directly questioning the validity of van Maanen's measurements.\n\nOthers had also uncovered problems with the data. The British astronomer James Jeans had studied the van Maanen rotations and found that they violated the known laws of physics. Still he was inclined to believe them (they supported his own theory of how galaxies evolve), explaining away the discrepancies with no less than a proposed modification to Newton's law of gravity.\n\nIf Lundmark was right, van Maanen's findings were riddled with inconsistencies. He was not suggesting that the astronomer had been sloppy. Measuring such tiny displacements was maddeningly subtle work and open to interpretation. When an object takes 100,000 years to make a single revolution, as van Maanen had concluded, it is not going to move very much in a single year or a decade, or even in the flash of a human lifetime.\n\nNo one understood this better than Lundmark. Months later, when he was remeasuring the images of M33, he briefly convinced himself that it really was spinning, so rapidly that \"the situation seemed to be rather hopeless for the followers of the island universe theory.\" Shapley, of course, was delighted. But the crisis of confidence quickly passed. Closer scrutiny assured Lundmark that he had succumbed to an illusion: there was no sign from this great distance that M33 was rotating at all.\n\n**4**\n\nBack at Mount Wilson, Hubble was training his sights on Andromeda. It was October 4, 1923. After taking a time exposure of the nebula, he saw what he suspected was another nova. The sky was hazy, so he tried again the next night. This time there seemed to be no question. A second photographic plate showed what appeared to be three novae.\n\nIn the observatory office down the mountain in Pasadena, he compared his plate with previous ones taken by Shapley and others. The confirming sign of a nova would be a bright spot appearing where none had been before. One of his flares, however, behaved much differently. Over a period of about a month it had brightened, dimmed, and then brightened again. This was a far more important finding than Hubble had expected. He marked the plate \"VAR!\" and in February wrote to Shapley: \"You will be interested to hear that I have found a Cepheid variable in Andromeda.\" According to the period-luminosity scale that Shapley himself had calibrated\u2014Shapley's curve\u2014the spiral must be a million light-years away.\n\nHubble went on to boast that, in fact, he had found two Cepheids and nine novae in Andromeda and expected more to come soon. \"Altogether next season should be a merry one and will be met with due form and ceremony.\"\n\nThere he was trying to sound like an Oxford don again. Cecilia Payne later recalled being in Shapley's office when the dispatch arrived: \"Here is the letter that has destroyed my universe,\" she remembered his saying, a bit melodramatically. One wonders whether Payne's memory was a little foggy and the visit actually came later, for Shapley's immediate reaction was hardly one of defeat.\n\n\"Your letter telling of the crop of novae and of the two variable stars in the direction of the Andromeda nebula is the most entertaining piece of literature I have seen in a long time,\" he replied a few days later. Continuing in this vein, he argued that Cepheids with periods as long as a month, like the one Hubble had used for his distance measurement, were unreliable as standard candles. It was most likely that what he had found was not a Cepheid at all. False Cepheids, Shapley said, were discovered all the time. He could show Hubble some examples, if he'd like, from the Harvard plate collection. It was going to take a lot more to convince Shapley that his map of the universe was wrong.\n\nHubble kept on looking at the sky. Pointing the 100-inch telescope toward the constellation Sagittarius, he zoomed in on an irregular-shaped patch of light that resembled a smaller, dimmer version of the Magellanic Clouds. It had first been spotted in the mid\u20131880s through a 5-inch telescope by Edward Emerson Barnard, an amateur astronomer with so keen an eye that he was given a fellowship at Vanderbilt and later hired as a professor at the University of Chicago. Later observations showed that Barnard's discovery (usually called by its New General Catalog number, NGC 6822) was a cluster made up of several smaller nebulae and numerous individual stars.\n\nThe question, of course, was whether this conglomeration was part of the Milky Way. During 1923 and 1924 Hubble took some fifty pictures of Barnard's cloud, then compared them with images from earlier years using a blink comparator. As he flipped back and forth between the two plates, variable stars pulsed like traffic lights. He found fifteen of them, concluding that most were Cepheids. According to the period-luminosity scale, what could now almost unequivocally be called Barnard's Galaxy was 700,000 light-years away.\n\nHubble also found more Cepheids in Andromeda and in its neighbor M33. This time he broke the news to Shapley with the gentleness of someone who knew he had changed astronomy. Allowing that it was premature to draw final conclusions, he noted that \"the straws are all pointing in one direction and it will do no harm to begin considering the various possibilities involved.\"\n\nShapley understood that this was an understatement.\"I do not know whether I am sorry or glad,\" he replied. \"Perhaps both.\"\n\nIn a later paper Hubble remarked that NGC 6822 indeed appeared to be \"a curiously faithful copy\" of the Magellanic Clouds. The galaxy had the same general shape and structure. It was just smaller and dimmer. If one trusted the Cepheids to measure the distances, the reason became clear. Barnard's Galaxy was farther away. For Hubble this consistency was vindication not just of the Cepheid yardstick but of an even grander principle: \"The principle of the uniformity of nature thus seems to rule undisturbed in this remote region of space.\"\n\n**5**\n\nWith few exceptions, the astronomical world almost immediately recognized that the island universe debate had come to an end. Even Henry Norris Russell realized that he had backed the wrong horse. He urged Hubble to announce his findings at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, to be held jointly in Washington with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In recent years AAAS, for short, has lost its significance as a place to unveil important new science. The huge annual meetings are devoted primarily to educational sessions, giving scientists and reporters a chance to catch up on developments in various fields. For many scientists and science writers the conference is mostly an opportunity to socialize. But in 1925, the meeting was, as Russell put it in a letter to Hubble, \"a splendid forum for a major scientific announcement.\" Russell also assured his young colleague that he was a natural for the recently established AAAS Thousand Dollar Prize for the most outstanding paper of the previous year. He was exasperated when, after arriving in Washington for the meeting, no paper from Hubble had been submitted. It arrived, however, at the last moment, and Russell himself read it from the floor. (In the end Hubble shared the prize with the author of two papers on protozoa inside the digestive tracts of termites.)\n\nAn abstract of \"Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae\" was published in May 1925, more than a year after Hubble had first broken the news to Shapley. The reason for the delay, Hubble told colleagues, was the flat contradiction between his results and van Maanen's. Rechecking his data once again, van Maanen continued to insist that he saw a rotation. But the closer Hubble looked, the more inclined he was to join Lundmark in concluding that the movement was spurious. It was a phenomenon visible to only one man.\n\nTo this day no one quite understands where van Maanen went wrong. Perhaps the most compelling theory is that the images of these stellar pinwheels and whirlpools look as though they _should_ be turning (as indeed they are, though many times more slowly). Van Maanen may have been subconsciously influenced by his expectations, seeing what he expected to see.\n\nWhy Shapley continued to embrace van Maanen's theory, until it was no longer possible to do so, requires no elaborate analysis. Cecilia Payne heard him explain it years later: \"After all, he was my _friend_.\"\n\nHad Shapley stayed at Mount Wilson, booking time on the mighty 100-inch scope, this new grander universe might have been his own. People would turn on their televisions decades later and admire the glorious photos taken by the orbiting Shapley Space Telescope. Instead he is primarily remembered, a little unfairly, as a great astronomer who couldn't see beyond the galaxy, who convinced himself that there could be nothing but the Milky Way.\n\nIn an interview decades later, he claimed to have forgotten all about the Great Debate. But as he looked back to the 1920s, the details, a bit scrambled, slowly emerged. His most vivid memory was the false one of Einstein's being there. Shapley said he was surprised that historians were now making so big a deal about the event, contending, a bit disingenuously, that on the \"assigned subject matter\"\u2014the scale of the universe\u2014 he was the clear winner. \"I was right and Curtis was wrong on the main point\u2014the scale, the size. It is a big universe, and he viewed it as a small one.\"\n\nBut that seems in retrospect a minor point compared with what Curtis got right\u2014that our galaxy, no matter how large or small, is one among a multitude, a small outpost in what Hubble would come to call \"the realm of the nebulae.\" His prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Allan Sandage later put it like this: \"What are galaxies? No one knew before 1900. Very few people knew in 1920. All astronomers knew after 1924.\"\nCHAPTER 8\n\nThe Mysterious K\n\nYouth Who Left Ozark Mountains to Study Stars Causes Einstein to Change His Mind.\n\n_\u2014Springfield Daily News, February 5, 1931_\n\nIn 1925, with the Roaring Twenties half over, John T. Scopes was convicted of violating a Tennessee law against teaching evolution, or any theory denying that the universe had been created as described in the Book of Genesis. Biblical fundamentalists, offended by the suggestion that they were related to monkeys, might have been even more disturbed had they known about recent developments in astronomy. After more than 2,000 years of measuring, scientists were finding little reason to maintain the belief that there was anything special about the position of the sun within the Milky Way, or of the Milky Way itself within the endless sea of galaxies called the universe.\n\nHad there been, say, a Hubble Star Trial resembling the Scopes \"Monkey Trial,\" one can imagine how the prosecution might have argued its case against the propounder of so great a heresy. It would have been difficult, and very unconvincing, to challenge the simple rules of geometry used to triangulate distances within the solar system or even to the nearest stars. Whether the baseline was the diameter of the Earth or the diameter of its orbit around the sun, the reasoning behind the measurements appealed to simple trigonometry and old-fashioned common sense.\n\nMore suspect, from the point of view of the astronomical fundamentalists, might have been some of the more indirect techniques\u2014\"mathematical mumbo jumbo,\" a William Jennings Bryan might have objected. And he might have really gone to town with the Cepheids themselves. Perhaps the intrinsic brightness of the variable stars twinkling in the Magellanic Clouds is indeed signaled by how fast they pulse. But is it not a leap of faith to assume that the very same rule applies to Cepheids throughout the universe? Could not the good Lord have made his stars blink in any way he liked?\n\nHere a Clarence Darrow, rising to the defense, might have prodded his client Hubble to remind the jurors how the distances derived from Cepheids harmonized so nicely with measurements made using other techniques, like the average luminosity of a galaxy's brightest stars. Completely independent gauges all seemed to point toward the same conclusion. \"But,\" Bryan might have countered, \"do not _all_ these methods assume that stars near the Earth are fundamentally the same as stars in the far reaches of the heavens? Is that not a leap of faith?\"\n\nDarrow would have been smart to concede the point. What astronomers were taking on faith was the principle of uniformity\u2014that the laws of physics apply equally in all parts of the cosmic realm. It would be an insult to the Creator to think he would design a universe in any other way.\n\nTaking this idea to heart, one could now estimate the distance to any galaxy for which it was possible to pick out individual stars. Assuming that they were similar in kind to those nearby, you could guess their intrinsic brightness and use them as standard candles. Reaching into the astronomical grab bag of variables, novae, and so forth, you could piece together a map of the universe, or at least those regions closer in.\n\nBeyond a certain distance, the method began to falter. Even with Mount Wilson's 100-inch telescope, most nebulae by far were featureless blurs. There was little hope of finding a blinking Cepheid or even an exploding star. For very rough measurements, you could choose a closer galaxy whose distance you had already established and take the whole thing as a standard candle: estimate its intrinsic brightness and assume that the farther galaxies produce approximately the same amount of light. Then the inverse square law would kick in. The method was similar to that used in the eighteenth century when astronomers assumed, both out of ignorance and for convenience, that all stars were equally bright, making dimness a simple gauge of distance\u2014and it was just as prone to error. Maybe the galaxy you were using as your standard was atypical, far brighter or dimmer than most. Still, if you averaged together the brightness of several known galaxies and used that as your yardstick, you could at least make a plausible argument. With this crude method, astronomers were reaching beyond Andromeda, finding galaxies whose light took millions of light-years to reach their telescopes.\n\nThe process was a bit like constructing a tall building with each level resting on the one below. With the diameter of the Earth as a baseline, you measure the distance to the sun. Assuming that figure is correct, you know the width of Earth's orbit, a larger baseline from which to triangulate the very closest stars. Building on this information, you chart the sun's own motion through the galaxy, providing an enormous baseline that, with some statistical sleight of hand, lets you measure the Cepheids and calibrate Henrietta Leavitt's yardstick, and from there you make the next great leap.\n\nThe higher you climb, the more precarious the structure becomes. Perched with their telescopes at the loftiest level, astronomers knew it was foolish to be overly confident. At any moment a lower support might buckle. Everything they had built could come tumbling down.\n\n**2**\n\nCompared with the rickety nature of the distance scales, the celestial speed stick was fairly robust. Because of the Doppler effect, anything that emitted light (stars, galaxies, clouds of gas) could be clocked according to its color shift\u2014a shrieking high-pitched blue if it was speeding toward you, a moaning low-pitched red if it was speeding away.\n\nMore specifically, the velocity was determined by the displacement of an object's spectral lines. The method depended on a discovery by the German scientists Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, who found in the 1850s that they could identify chemical elements by burning them in a flame and refracting the glow through a prism. Certain colors would stand out in the spectrum\u2014a combination of bright vertical lines as unique as a fingerprint. Sodium, for example, burns yellow. Seen through a spectroscope, it can be identified by a pair of bright \"emission lines\" at precise points in the yellow part of the spectrum.\n\nWhen Kirchhoff and Bunsen made the discovery, the existence of atoms was still controversial. Once they were discovered, the effect could be simply understood: when an atom is energized, its electrons jump into higher orbits. When they fall back down they emit various frequencies of light. Every kind of atom is built a little differently, its electrons arrayed in a specific way, resulting in a characteristic pattern.\n\nFor similar reasons, if you shine a light through a gaseous substance, like hydrogen or helium, certain colors will be filtered out. The result in this case is a characteristic pattern of black \"absorption\" lines interrupting the spectrum\u2014another unique chemical fingerprint. (The same colors marked by the absorption lines would appear as bright emission lines if the element was burned.) A scientist named Joseph von Fraunhofer had shown that lines like these appear in the spectrum of the sun. Using nothing more than a prism, one could stand on Earth and decipher the composition of the glowing orb 93 million miles away.\n\nThe natural next step was to add prisms to telescopes and analyze the chemical composition of stars and nebulae. They too exhibited the dark Fraunhofer lines, but not in the expected positions. They were displaced toward the red or blue end of the spectrum. Assuming this was caused by the Doppler effect, you could precisely gauge a galaxy's velocity. A few, like Andromeda, were blue-shifted, approaching the Milky Way, but these were exceptions. Most were severely red-shifted, hurtling away at extremely high speeds.\n\nAs the 1920s drew toward a close, astronomers were finding hints of an even stranger phenomenon: the smaller, fainter, and thus presumably more distant a nebula was from Earth, the greater its redshift. Some astronomers dismissed this as an anomaly, a flaw in their techniques. Farther objects were obviously harder to analyze than closer ones. Some kind of systematic error might cause observers to overestimate the more distant redshifts. To correct for the mistake, they added a fudge factor to their calculations, a term they labeled K. It was considered, at this point, no more than a Band-Aid on the equations. When observations improved, it could be peeled off and thrown away.\n\nThere was also a more interesting possibility: that the K term was describing a real physical effect\u2014that redshift actually did increase with distance. Grasping for an explanation, some theorists proposed that they were witnessing a heretofore unknown quality of light: the farther it traveled, the more its waves stretched and sagged toward the red end of the spectrum. This became known as the \"tired light\" theory. Perhaps, some proposed, the cause was some Einsteinian peculiarity of curved space-time.\n\nFinally, it was possible that distant galaxies truly were flying away faster than closer ones. This seemed almost too good to be true. In a universe like this, redshift would provide the ultimate measuring stick. The distance to anything, no matter how far, could be measured as long as you could gather its light. Assuming that all stars are made from the same basic ingredients\u2014hydrogen, helium, et cetera\u2014they can be expected to exhibit the familiar patterns of spectral lines. The more the lines appear to be displaced, the faster the galaxy is moving, and\u2014if the theory is correct\u2014the farther away it is.\n\nDuring a tour of Europe in 1928, Edwin Hubble, now the toast of his profession, heard reports of this curious redshift-distance connection. When he returned, he decided to investigate. He asked an assistant, Milton Humason, to train the 100-inch Mount Wilson telescope on some distant nebulae and see how their spectra behaved.\n\nEven more than Henrietta Leavitt, Humason seemed an unlikely candidate for the astronomical hall of fame. He began his career at Mount Wilson as a mule driver, carrying material and supplies up the mountain. He married the daughter of the observatory engineer and talked his way into a job as janitor. Given the chance to learn how to make photographic plates, he quickly proved himself to be a very good photographer of starlight and was promoted to assistant astronomer. He had a grade school education.\n\nHumason began his assignment by targeting a nebula so far away that no one had been able to measure its redshift: NGC 7619. The light, funneled through a prism, left its rainbow on the photographic plate. When it was developed it showed two familiar dark lines, indicating the presence of the element calcium. As expected, the lines were pushed toward the red. What was unexpected was how very big this displacement seemed to be. Humason took another picture to confirm the result. Working with a Mount Wilson computer (referred to in his paper simply as Miss MacCormack), he reported that he had clocked a galaxy speeding away at a rate \"twice as large as any hitherto observed\": 3,779 kilometers per second, or more than 8 million miles per hour, a velocity that would get you from here to the moon in under two minutes.\n\nIn the following weeks, Humason measured more redshifts while Hubble scrutinized the results. By now he had compiled a list giving the recessional velocities of forty-six nebulae. He believed he had reliable distances to about half of them, derived from Cepheids, novae, and other yardsticks. For this sample, speed indeed seemed to increase with distance, and in a delightfully straightforward way. Some astronomers had suggested that the relationship might be \"quadratic\": velocity would increase as the square of the distance. Others suggested more elaborate equations. What Hubble found could hardly have been simpler: A nebula twice as distant as another would be traveling at twice the speed. Triple the distance and the velocity would triple as well. The relationship was what a mathematician calls linear. Take any nebula in the universe and divide its speed by its distance. The result is always the same number\u2014about 150 by Hubble's reckoning.\n\nThis powerful number was none other than the mysterious K astronomers had been puzzling over. The \"error\" was apparently not an error at all but a factor describing how redshift increased with distance. A galaxy that was 1 million light-years from Earth was receding at about 150 kilometers per second. A galaxy 10 million light-years away traveled at 1,500 kilometers per second. Velocity equals distance times K. Or, more significantly, distance equals velocity divided by K. Applying his new formula to NGC 7619, the galaxy Humason had clocked at the breakneck speed of 3,779 kilometers per second, put it at more than 20 million light-years from earth.\n\nIt is impossible to sense from Hubble's typically understated paper, or from the droning account he delivered a few years later in a lecture series called \"The Realm of the Nebulae,\" what he felt as the pieces of a new picture of the universe fell into place. Conservative as always, he cross-checked his measurements, testing whether they resulted in absurd conclusions. Using the galaxies' apparent magnitudes and his new Doppler-derived distances, he computed how bright they would really be. The results were reassuring, comfortably within the range of galaxies closer by.\n\nIn the following months, Hubble and Humason continued to test the theory. Hubble would calculate a nebula's distance using various measuring sticks and predict the redshift before Humason had even measured it. By now they were clocking galaxies with velocities as high as 20,000 kilometers per second (from Earth to moon in 20 seconds), putting them more than 100 million light-years away.\n\nThe numbers were so large that some astronomers were initially doubtful. On a visit to Pasadena, Harlow Shapley told a colleague, \"I don't believe these results.\"\n\nNot that Hubble or his assistant would have cared. Humason remembered one of his last encounters with Shapley, when he was still working on Mount Wilson. Scrutinizing plates of Andromeda with the blink comparator, Humason had spotted what he believed to be stars that varied periodically in brightness. This was more than two years before Hubble made his landmark discovery, establishing with Cepheids that Andromeda was a distant, neighboring galaxy. Humason marked off the places where these anomalies occurred and took the plates to Shapley.\n\nDismissively explaining why they couldn't be Cepheids, Shapley took out his handkerchief and wiped the plates clean, erasing the data. A few months later he departed for Harvard.\n\n**3**\n\nAt heart, Hubble, like Edward Pickering, was an observer not a theorist, leery of speculating beyond what his eyes could see. It took an Einstein to explain the theory and the mechanism of what astronomers were soon calling the Hubble shift (the K in the equations ceremoniously replaced by an H). Why were the galaxies moving\u2014and why were they, with so few exceptions, all hurtling outward from the Milky Way?\n\nThink of the galaxies as runners in a race. After a certain amount of time has passed, they will be distributed according to their swiftness, the fastest ones farthest from the starting line and the slowest ones closest in. But didn't that imply that there was something special and outrageously non-Copernican about our position in the universe, as the point from which everything else was retreating?\n\nA motionless universe was far easier to fathom, even at first for Einstein. When his own general theory of relativity implied that the cosmos may be expanding, he had rejiggered the equations, committing what he would come to regard as an embarrassing mistake. Now he knew that the adjustment had been superfluous. The universe really moved. Visiting Pasadena in 1931 he told Hubble's wife that her husband's work was \"beautiful\" and publicly conceded that his earlier conviction of a static universe was wrong. Hubble's hometown newspaper in Missouri picked up the story: \"Youth Who Left Ozark Mountains to Study Stars Causes Einstein to Change His Mind.\"\n\nEinstein was glad he could restore his theory to its pristine form. What his equations now described was a universe in which space itself is expanding. Second by second, the galaxies grow wider apart like dots on an inflating balloon. Viewed this way, Hubble's discovery did not imply that the Earth was in a special position, at the center of the outward rush of everything. From any point in the cosmos the effect would be the same, with galaxies appearing to fly off in every direction. And if you could reverse the clock, everything would become closer and more compact, converging on a single point. The big bang. The universe had a beginning. And maybe it will have an end.\n\nSo rarefied a theory, now taken as gospel, was still of secondary interest to most astronomers. Hubble himself was noncommittal about the meaning of the Hubble constant and the Hubble shift. Expanding universe, tired light\u2014it didn't matter. What he knew for certain was that redshift, for whatever reason, increased with distance, and that gave him a way to measure as far as a telescope could see.\nCHAPTER 9\n\nThe Cosmic Stampede\n\nThe definitive study of the herd instincts of astronomers has yet to be written, but there are times when we resemble nothing so much as a herd of antelope, heads down in tight parallel formation, thundering with firm determination in a particular direction across the plain.\n\n_\u2014J.D.Fernie_\n\nOnce he had gotten used to the idea, the enthusiastic Dr. Shapley embraced the new universe with more gusto than the reserved Dr. Hubble would let himself show. Sometimes it almost seemed that Hubble was being willfully perverse. Hewing to tradition, he steadfastly reserved the term \"galaxy\" for the Milky Way, continuing to refer to Andromeda and the other island universes as nebulae\u2014\"extragalactic nebulae,\" to be exact. Etymologically this might be correct: \"galaxy\" comes from the Greek word for milk. But Shapley, like everybody else, quickly generalized the term, calling all the island universes galaxies. The bandwagon had almost taken off without him. Now he was back on board.\n\nThough Shapley's old view of the Milky Way as the sole galaxy seemed quainter by the year, he appeared to be right about its enormous size. After all, the same calibration of the Cepheids\u2014Shapley's curve\u2014that had revealed a Milky Way a whopping three hundred thousand light-years from end to end had also been used by Hubble to plumb the distance to Andromeda. From there he had extrapolated outward, using redshift to measure a hundred million light-years into space. If Hubble was right about the size of the universe, it seemed, Shapley must be right about the size of the Milky Way.\n\nAnd that led to a dilemma. With their new measuring techniques, astronomers could now judge how large other galaxies were. Just take the apparent size and adjust for distance to get the true diameter. Simple enough. But the results of the calculations were disconcerting. None of the galaxies came out to be anywhere near the size of our own. Andromeda measured only a tenth as wide, while the others ranged from a mere thousand light-years to perhaps seventy-five hundred light-years across. The term \"island universe\" took on a new meaning with the emphasis shifted to the first word. If these distant spirals were islands, Shapley contended, then our own galaxy was a continent.\n\nA few years earlier it would have been acceptable for people to find themselves living in the biggest galaxy around. But perceptions had changed. Shapley had moved the sun from the center of the galaxy, and Hubble had moved the galaxy from the center of the universe. This reversal of perspective was becoming so ingrained that it was a gold standard by which astronomical ideas were judged. If a theory or observation seemed to suggest that we, the observers, happen to occupy an exalted place in the heavens, then it was probably wrong.\n\nOf course it was possible that chance had conspired to put earthlings in a special location. But other discrepancies were harder to dismiss. If the big bang theory was correct, then the size of the universe was an indicator of its age. The larger it was, the longer it had been expanding since the primordial explosion. If the galaxies at the circumference were two billion light-years away, as recent measurements had suggested, it must have taken them two billion years to get there.\n\nTwo billion years seemed like a reasonable number. The Earth, however, measured using the technique of radioactive dating, came out to be four billion years old\u2014twice as ancient as the universe that contained it. Something somewhere would have to give.\n\n**2**\n\nWhen kinks like these develop in the fabric of knowledge, the fault might lie anywhere in the weave\u2014the result of bad data or a false assumption, the malfunction of a dumb machine or of a human brain. People may see things that turn out to be chimeras. Or miss what is right in front of their telescopes.\n\nAt Lick Observatory in California, a Swiss-born astronomer named Robert Trumpler had been studying structures called open clusters in the Milky Way. These stellar aggregations\u2014 Pleiades is an example\u2014are smaller and more loosely packed than the globular clusters Shapley used to map the galaxy. Comparing each cluster's true brightness with its apparent luminosity, Trumpler calculated its distance. With this information in hand, he could convert the cluster's apparent diameter into its true diameter\u2014how big it really was.\n\nAfter measuring a number of them this way, he was forced to a bizarre conclusion: the farther a cluster was from Earth, the larger it appeared to be. What were we doing sitting at the center of so symmetrical an arrangement, surrounded in all directions by increasingly larger star clusters?\n\nMore likely, Trumpler reasoned, he was being fooled by an optical illusion. All his calculations, like those of most every astronomer, took for granted that space was generally transparent, an empty medium through which light could travel unimpeded. If, however, the Milky Way was permeated with a fine cosmic dust, the measurements would be skewed\u2014especially those where the dust was thickest, along the galactic plane. The dimness of a star or galaxy might be due not only to distance but also to this cosmic pollution. The farther the galaxy, the more pronounced the effect. Once Trumpler corrected for the distortion, the clusters turned out to be approximately the same size.\n\nAstronomers had known there was dust in the Milky Way. The surprise was that it could be so pervasive. From almost the beginning, stargazers had contended with light and air pollution here on Earth. As civilization developed and the clarity of the sky degenerated, they placed their observatories higher and higher in the mountains. It hadn't occurred to them that space itself could be so dirty.\n\nAnd so came the first step toward resolving the Big Galaxy problem, the anomalous size of the Milky Way. When Shapley had taken his measurements, he had been looking through a fog. That made some of his beacons seem much farther than they really were. Once dust was factored into the equations, the home galaxy began to contract in size. That still left it larger than the others, but the adjustment felt like a step in the right direction. More revisions were about to come.\n\n**3**\n\nWhile Shapley's map of the galaxy shrunk, the one for the universe grew larger. Again the reason was cosmic dust. Because of the galactic haze, Shapley had underestimated the true brightness of the Milky Way Cepheids, the ones at the foundation of the period-luminosity scale. When Hubble relied on this same standard to measure the distance to Andromeda he was, in effect, mistaking 75-watt bulbs for 60-watt bulbs. If these Cepheids were in fact burning brighter, then we were seeing them across a greater expanse. Using redshift, other galactic distances had been gauged in terms of Andromeda's, so the error rippled outward. Everything was farther than it had appeared.\n\nAstronomers now routinely adjust for the amount of cosmic pollution. Like dust in the atmosphere intensifying the redness of the sunset, dust in interstellar space can be measured by how much it reddens starlight. The lesson, though, took a decade to sink in. For years, one paper after another ignored the dust factor and, errors canceling out other errors, continued to find confirmation for Shapley's original calibration. Looking back years later, the astronomer J. D. Fernie attributed the blindness to a herd instinct: \"most of the astronomers of the day simply could not bring themselves to believe that interstellar absorption played any important role.\"\n\nDust turned out to be just part of the problem. As far back as the Great Debate, Heber Curtis had suggested that Shapley was overreaching when he assumed that the variables in the Milky Way's globular clusters shared the same relationship between period and brightness as those Henrietta Leavitt had found in the Magellanic Clouds. Both kinds had been lumped together to draw Shapley's curve, the yardstick Hubble had used to measure to Andromeda.\n\nThe principle of uniformity encouraged these kinds of generalizations. But were the two variables really the same? If not, the whole distance scale might be askew.\n\nCertain celestial anomalies hinted that this might be true. Even when one allowed for distance, the brightest of the globular clusters in Andromeda\u2014the ones most easily detected\u2014 appeared to be inherently dimmer than their counterparts in the Milky Way. A German astronomer named Walter Baade later remembered discussing the discrepancy with Hubble, on cloudy winter nights at Mount Wilson as they waited for the sky to clear. Hubble argued that this might be a case where the principle of uniformity should not be so slavishly followed. After all, he noted, the clusters in the more distant galaxy M33, or Triangulum, were even fainter. Maybe this kind of variation was normal.\n\nBaade had a different idea. Maybe the distance scale was wrong. The clusters in Andromeda and Triangulum were not really emitting less light. They were simply farther than had been reckoned. If so, uniformity would be restored. He soon had a chance to put the hypothesis to a test.\n\nAs the mid-1940s approached, many astronomers were off serving in the war. Hubble himself was soon directing ballistic missile tests at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Once Baade, technically an enemy alien, persuaded government authorities that he was not a security threat, he found it easy to book telescope time at Mount Wilson. The periodic blackouts, staged to discourage aerial attacks of Los Angeles, restored the night sky to a primitive blackness. Aiming the 100inch telescope at Andromeda, he could actually resolve individual stars, not just in the spiral arms but inside the galaxy's dense core.\n\nHe discovered what appeared to be two different kinds of starlight. The stars in the galaxy's center and in its globular clusters were colored differently from the \"ordinary\" stars in the galaxy's outer reaches. That meant the two types must have different chemical makeups. While Leavitt's \"classical\" Cepheids belonged to what is now called Population I, Shapley's cluster variables belonged to Population II. It seemed a greater stretch than ever to assume that they obeyed the same law relating period and brightness.\n\nWhen the new 200-inch Hale telescope came on line at Mount Palomar, ninety miles southeast of Mount Wilson, Baade zeroed in on Andromeda for a closer look. The classical Cepheids, he observed, were on average 1.5 magnitudes brighter than the cluster variables. \"Instead of one period-luminosity relation,\" he concluded, \"there are actually two.\"\n\nWhen the new, brighter value of the classical Cepheids was plugged into the inverse square law, Andromeda turned out to be twice as distant as Hubble had reckoned. And so was the distance to everything else. As the newspapers put it, the universe doubled in size overnight. And, from the perspective of the big bang theory, it doubled in age. It was no longer younger than the Earth.\n\nBaade's discovery completed the explanation of why the other galaxies had seemed so much smaller than our own. That too had been an illusion. If they were farther away, then they were also larger.\n\nFinally, with the new adjustments, the Milky Way was taken down to about 100,000 light-years in diameter\u2014right in between where Curtis and Shapley had put it. It was, in the end, as unremarkable as its stars.\n\nHUBBLE DIED IN 1953. Over the next few years, Allan Sandage, the young astronomer who had served as his last assistant, continued to clock redshifts and make adjustments to the distance scale. For some of his calibrations, Hubble had relied on the brightest star method. Sandage showed that what his old boss had taken as individual stars were actually entire stellar regions. Their intrinsic brightness was therefore much greater, putting the galaxies still farther away. Hubble, as Shapley might have put it, had mistaken trees for asters. The universe was expanding, not just because of the big bang but because of the explosion in astronomical knowledge.\n\nAnother way to say it is that the Hubble constant\u2014the number by which you divide a galaxy's velocity to get its distance\u2014was growing smaller and smaller. And so, because of the reciprocal nature of the relationship, the size of the universe continued to grow. Hubble had initially set the constant at 150 kilometers per second per million light-years. More commonly the ratio is expressed using \"parsecs\" instead of light-years. As the Earth orbits the sun, a star that shows a parallax of 1 arc-second (1\/3,600 of a degree) is, by definition, a single parsec (about 3.26 light-years) away. On that scale the Hubble constant had been around 500, Baade knocked it down to 250, and now Sandage to 75. Later he would reduce it again\u2014to 50, ten times smaller than the original value. \"The incredible shrinking constant,\" one astronomer has called it. Every time it gets smaller, the map of the universe grows. So much is packed into that one little number. At its core lie Miss Leavitt's stars.\nCHAPTER 10\n\nGhost Stories\n\n\"What monsters may they be?\"\n\n\"Impersonal monsters, namely, Immensities. Until a person has thought out the stars and their inter spaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape. Such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky.\"\n\n_\u2014Thomas Hardy,_ Two on a Tower\n\nFor years after Henrietta Swan Leavitt's death in 1921, her presence lived on, not just in her discovery about Cepheid variables but in a ghost story that circulated around Observatory Hill. Cecilia Payne, the young Harvard astronomer (and later department chairman) who had inherited Henrietta's old desk, was amused to hear rumors \"that Miss Leavitt's lamp was still to be seen burning in the night, that her spirit still haunted the plate stacks.\" More likely, she concluded, someone had seen Payne herself as she burned the midnight oil, sometimes working on theories about variable stars.\n\nThere is something almost ghostlike in the scant traces Leavitt left in the public record\u2014biographical ectoplasm to be shaped according to one's need. After years of so little recognition, there has followed an almost reflexive rush to mythologize her. A planetarium has been named after her, albeit a virtual one residing only on the World Wide Web. While Harlow Shapley had an entire cluster of galaxies named in his honor, Leavitt (and Annie Cannon) got a crater on the moon.\n\nIn brief hagiographies scattered across the Web, the same few scraps of data about Leavitt's life, and often the same sentences, are repeated again and again, all traceable to a few stable sources. She has been turned into a standard bearer by people less interested in her astronomy than in the fact that she was a woman, and deaf. She has been included, absurdly, in a roster of \"The World's Greatest Creation Scientists,\" for no apparent reason other than that she believed in God. She probably would be appalled.\n\nAmong the factoids that ricochet through the infosphere is that she was nominated for a Nobel Prize. What happened is that in 1925 G\u00f6sta Mittag-Leffler, an elderly Swedish mathematician, heard something about Leavitt's work from a colleague and was impressed enough to write her a letter. He didn't know that she had died.\n\n\"Honoured Miss Leavitt,\" he began. \"What my friend and colleague Professor von Zeipel of Uppsala has told me about your admirable discovery of the empirical law touching the connection between magnitude and period-length for the S. Cephei-variables of the Little Magellan's cloud, has impressed me so deeply that I feel seriously inclined to nominate you to the Nobel prize in physics for 1926, although I must confess that my knowledge of the matter is as yet rather incomplete.\" His expertise was in analytic function theory, not astronomy.\n\nHe asked for more information and vowed to handle the matter \"with the greatest discretion and in the way that seems to me most likely to further my plan.\" He also promised to send, for her perusal, a treatise he had written on Sonja Kowalewsky, a stunning young Russian mathematician, and her correspondence with Karl Weierstrass, the older mentor who had furthered her career. Maybe Mittag-Leffler was hoping Henrietta would become his Sonja.\n\nWhen the letter arrived at the observatory, it was forwarded to the director, Harlow Shapley. It is hard to know quite what to make of his reply:\n\n\"Miss Leavitt's work on the variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds, which led to the discovery of the relation between period and apparent magnitude, has afforded us a very powerful tool in measuring great stellar distances.\"\n\n_Led to the discovery_ of the relation between period and luminosity? His phrasing suggests that he would deny her credit for her one breakthrough, relegating her back to the role of human computer, the diligent manipulator of data.\n\nThe next sentence continues in this vein\u2014faint praise weighed with subtle condescension:\n\n\"To me personally [the discovery] has also been of highest service, for it was my privilege to interpret the observation by Miss Leavitt, place it on a basis of absolute brightness, and extending it to the variables of the globular clusters, use it in my measures of the Milky Way.\"\n\nIt is clear whom Shapley would like to nominate for the prize.\n\nUNTIL THE END, Leavitt's title continued to be \"assistant.\" Although Solon Bailey, in his history of Harvard College Observatory, does give her credit for the period-luminosity relationship, he describes the work only in passing and notes, a little belittlingly, \"The number of variables included in Miss Leavitt's discussion was unfortunately rather small, but the data have been much increased since that time, especially by the studies of Shapley.\"\n\nLeavitt probably would have been surprised by how much fuss would later be made over her delightfully simple observation, and by how far Shapley and then Hubble were able to go with it. Given the opportunity\u2014better health, better times\u2014 maybe she would have joined them at the forefront. Or maybe not. Barring the discovery of a lost cache of letters, we may never know.\n\nIn time, someone else would have discovered Henrietta's law. It is the discovery not the discoverer that matters. Miss Leavitt may have understood this in a way that a Shapley or a Hubble never could. She seemed content to be a small part of a greater thing called science.\n\nIn January 1920, the year before she died, a census taker encountered her for the last time in the apartment with her mother on Linnean Street. Among their neighbors were teachers, a salesman for a candy company, a bank clerk, an auditor. Asked to state her occupation, Miss Leavitt replied, honestly and perhaps a bit defiantly, \"Astronomer.\"\n\n**2**\n\nOn a spring afternoon in 1996, seventy-six years to the day since the Great Debate, astronomers gathered at the same lecture hall in Washington for a presentation called, once again, \"The Scale of the Universe.\" The cosmos was seventy-six years older and, if you believed the big bang theory, seventy-six light-years larger in every direction than it had been in 1920.\n\nIt was a real debate this time, with opening arguments, rebuttals, and closing statements presented by two celebrated astronomers, Gustav A. Tammann and Sidney van den Bergh. While Tammann argued for a Hubble constant of around 55, van den Bergh put it at about 80. Plugged into the equations of universal expansion, that narrow difference would translate into a universe ranging, depending upon other factors, somewhere between 10 billion and 15 billion light-years in radius.\n\nLarge as it seemed, the spread had narrowed in recent years. The lowest values for the constant, around 50, continued to be championed by Allan Sandage, who had taken over where Hubble left off, an opportunity and a burden he once compared to having been Dante's assistant and inheriting _The Divine Comedy_. (The legacy included the incomplete\u2014barely begun, in fact\u2014 _Hubble Atlas of Galaxies._ ) Then just as the number seemed set in stone, or at least wet cement, an astronomer named Gerard de Vaucouleurs came along and doubled it back to 100, cutting the size of the universe in half. The ensuing controversy became known as the \"Hubble Wars.\"\n\nAs Sandage's collaborator and prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Tammann was an ideal person to carry on the fight for an older, larger universe, and van den Bergh showed himself to be a formidable opponent. As the debate unfolded, each man in turn challenged the other's choice of standard candles and the manner in which he interpreted them. Watching from the auditorium, members of the audience wore colorful buttons, \"Hubble Meters,\" on which they displayed their own guesses about the constant's value. One might have come away from the debate with the impression that the size of this most fundamental parameter was a matter of opinion.\n\nFor all the constant's inconstancy, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis both would have been impressed by how far the craft of intergalactic measuring had come. Edward Pickering and Henrietta Leavitt would have been astonished. What is now the world's largest telescope, the Keck, perched atop the 13,800-foot Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, collects light with a mirror 10 meters wide. That's 394 inches, or almost twice the size of the 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar, which was twice the size of the one that Hubble had used to show that Andromeda is really a galaxy. Just when it seemed that mirrors had become as large as physically possible, on the verge of buckling under their own weight, computer and robotics technology stretched the limits further. The mirror on the Keck telescope was made from thirty-six hexagonal sections nudged back and forth by precision pistons so that the whole thing acts like one enormous reflector. Its shape can be constantly adjusted, a few nanometers at a time, to compensate for atmospheric distortion, a technique called adaptive optics. The glass molds itself to the sky.\n\nIn fact, by the time of the second debate, there were two Keck telescopes sitting side by side on the mountaintop soon to be linked by an optical interferometer, a computerized device that would combine light from both mirrors, along with that from several smaller scopes, into a single image. The result would be as powerful as a telescope with a mirror 85 meters, or 3,346 inches, across.\n\nFor even more acute observations, the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was orbiting 380 miles above the Earth, electronically beaming back pictures of deepest space. Among its tasks was looking for Cepheids.\n\nAccording to the picture that has emerged from these investigations, Andromeda, two million light-years away, now appears to be twice the size of the Milky Way. Both these nebulae mark the far edges of the constellation of galaxies called the Local Group, which also includes Triangulum, the Magellanic Clouds, and several dozen dwarf galaxies.\n\nNearby are other groups called Sculptor, Maffei, Canes I, Canes II, Dorado... so many (more than 150) that most are just given numbers. In addition to the groups are larger \"clusters\" like Fornax, with 49 galaxies, and Eridanus with 34. Largest of all in this tiny corner of the universe is the Virgo Cluster, which includes another 200 galaxies. Put all these together and you have the Virgo Supercluster\u2014a galaxy of galaxies, numbering in the thousands, spanning 200 million light-years. One of them is the Milky Way.\n\nFarther beyond are the neighboring superclusters: Coma, Centaurus, Hydra, Pavo-Indus, Capricornis, Horologium, Shapley, Sextans\u201480 of them within a billion light-years. As might be expected, our own Virgo Supercluster turns out to be on the smallish side.\n\nAltogether there are believed to be tens of millions of galaxies just within a billion light-year radius of our solar system\u2014 more galaxies than there once were stars.\n\nFor all the technological progress astronomy has made, the basic approach to measurement has remained fundamentally the same: use redshift to gauge the recessional velocity of a galaxy or a galactic cluster, then divide that number by the Hubble constant to get the distance.\n\nTo calibrate the Hubble scale, Cepheids are still the standard of choice, when you can find them. The Hubble Space Telescope has been spotting them in distant clusters that once remained beyond reach. By the end of its mission in 1993, the European Space Agency's High-Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite, or Hipparcos, had measured parallactic shifts as tiny as one milli-arc-second\u20141\/1,000 of one second of one degree. The thousands of stars whose distances it gauged included a number of Cepheids.\n\nIt would be comforting to report that Hipparcos had been able to directly measure the trigonometric parallax of at least one Cepheid in as straightforward a manner as Hipparchus himself had measured the moon. The whole celestial distance scale, the ladders piled on top of ladders, would stand on firmer ground. But the nearest Cepheids are still too distant for even the orbiting satellite to fix any one of them very accurately. A statistical analysis of the better measurements suggested to some astronomers that the whole cosmic distance scale might have to be corrected by 10 percent.\n\nThe interpretation is open to dispute. It is probably inevitable that the more astronomers study Miss Leavitt's stars, the less simple they appear. The pulsations of some, including Polaris, include subtle \"overtones,\" secondary rhythms that can throw off the beat. Debates periodically erupt over whether Cepheids of various colors and chemical content have significantly different period-luminosity curves.\n\nIn tweaking the Hubble constant, astronomers also now rely on other kinds of pulsating stars, like the RR Lyraes (Shapley's old \"cluster\" variables) and the Miras. In addition are a wide assortment of secondary candles, those of lesser reliability that are calibrated using Cepheids for measuring beyond where it is possible to pick out individual stars.\n\nDuring the 1920 debate, one of the arguments against the existence of island universes had been the extreme brightness of a certain nova in Andromeda. Unless the nebula was nearby, the nova would have to be unusually powerful, way off the scale. By the time of the 1996 debate, astronomers spoke comfortably of \"supernovae,\" intense bursts of light coming from exploding stars. A variety of supernovae called Type Ia has been calibrated for use as standard candles. Because of their extreme brightness they have been detected billions of light-years away.\n\nWhen whole galaxies must be used as standard candles, astronomers can draw on something called the Tully-Fisher method: the larger a spiral galaxy, the faster it will spin. Bigger galaxies are also brighter, so their intrinsic luminosity can be estimated from their rotational speed, which is gauged by measuring Doppler shifts.\n\nThe details of this and other methods can quickly become esoteric, but the underlying idea is the same: if you can devise a theory that relates an observable characteristic\u2014of a star, a supernova, a galaxy, a cluster\u2014to its inherent brightness, then you can use it as a standard candle.\n\nThe measurements remain fraught with uncertainty. In addition to the universe's outward expansion, galactic clusters are also pulled gravitationally toward one another. These \"peculiar motions\" result in kinks in the Hubble expansion that must be corrected for. Our Local Group is believed to be gradually falling into the massive Virgo Cluster, a phenomenon called virgocentric flow.\n\nAstronomers must also guard against selection effects, giving too much weight in their calculations to the stars, galaxies, and clusters that are easiest to see. The most well-known of these is the so-called Malmquist bias: The stars you can pick out in a cluster are necessarily the brightest. If you rely on them to compute the average luminosity, the answer will be skewed.\n\nEven with so many ways to go wrong, astronomers have been moving toward a consensus that the universe is a little less than 14 billion years old. Looking out from any vantage point, an observer will be at the center of a bubble extending that many light-years in every direction. It is still a hard idea to get used to. No one is at the center yet everyone is. Wherever you stand, you can see no farther than light has been able to travel since the big bang, the explosion that occurred everywhere and nowhere, that created space and time.\nEPILOGUE\n\nFire on the Mountain\n\nThis book began with a parable about a village that learned how to measure all the way to a far-off mountain. Because of a mistaken assumption\u2014that the vegetation on the mountaintop was the same as that on the valley floor\u2014the inhabitants underestimated the distance, only learning of their mistake after they sent an expedition there.\n\nThere is a coda to the story. Much later in their history, the villagers established a scientific outpost on the mountain. They built high towers and learned to concentrate light with tubes outfitted with curved lenses and mirrors. Looking out at the unknown expanse beyond them, they realized that their explorations had barely begun. Their mountain was merely a hillock. What lay on the new horizon was a peak that, magnified many times, was of breathtaking grandeur.\n\nIt too was fringed with green, and this time, to avoid fooling themselves, the villagers used the _average_ height of their own vegetation as a standard yardstick. No more mistaking asters for trees. While the mountain they were standing on was a thousand canyon widths from the village, this new mountain appeared to be approximately a thousand times farther still. This place, they knew, would not be visited in their lifetime, and probably not within the lifetime of their people.\n\nOne night up in the tower, one of the scientists saw a brilliant light on the horizon. The remote mountain had exploded in flames. Measuring the intensity of the light, the scientist did some calculations. From the distance to the mountain and its apparent size, he had already estimated how big it was. Now he calculated how much light would be produced if the mountain had caught on fire.\n\nThe answer didn't make sense. The flames were so brilliant that they would have to be far more intense than anything resembling ordinary combustion.\n\nWhen he reported his finding to his colleagues back in the village, they offered several hypotheses. One proposed that some peculiarity of the air may have magnified the light, acting like a natural lens, but few thought that was plausible. More popular was the theory that fire in the distant land burned much hotter, that they had discovered a new kind of energy.\n\nThe scientist who had made the observation had a different idea: that this time they had somehow _over_ estimated the distance. If the mountain was really a hundred times closer, the anomaly could be explained away....\n\nSOMETHING LIKE THIS happened here on earth. It was 1963 and Maarten Schmidt, a Mount Palomar astronomer, had just ascertained that a starlike (\"quasi-stellar\") object called 3C273 showed a redshift that would put it several billion light-years from earth, as far as some of the most distant galaxies.\n\nOther quasars were soon found to have even more severe redshifts. They appeared to be receding from our part of space at a velocity almost as great as light. The Hubble law put them nearly at the edge of the visible universe. For something so remote to shine so brightly, it would have to be emitting the light of thousands of galaxies, the energy generated, perhaps, by matter pouring into the intense gravitational field of a black hole.\n\nWhatever the cause, accepting the immense distance of these fantastic objects caused all kinds of trouble. The quasar 3C273 (the 273rd entry in the _Third Cambridge Catalog of Radio Sources_ ) expels from its core a jet of light that appears to be traveling at several times the speed of light. That of course would be impossible. Astronomers quickly came up with a more palatable explanation: the superluminal motion is probably an illusion. The jet happens to be coming almost straight at us, making it appear to be much faster than it really is.\n\nThere is however another possibility: that 3C273 and all the quasars are really very near by. The velocity of the jet would then be much, much smaller. That also would solve another problem. If the quasars are close to us, then we need not conclude that they are so fantastically bright.\n\nFor this to be true, redshift would have to be caused by something other than Hubble expansion\u2014maybe by the old \"tired light\" theory or some other new physics. If so, the entire universe might be vastly smaller, and there may not have been a big bang.\n\nThe idea that the redshifts are \"noncosmological\" is, to say the least, a minority view. Most astronomers are persuaded by a tightening net of circumstantial evidence that quasars really are blinding beacons lying near the edge of what it is possible to see.\n\nOne of the strongest arguments involves a weird phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Sometimes astronomers see two quasars, one right next to the other. The doubling, however, is believed to be an illusion. According to the theory of general relativity, gravity can bend light. Something as massive as a galaxy can act like an enormous piece of curved glass, projecting a double image. If all that is true, then the quasar must be behind the galaxy not in front of it, and therefore very far away.\n\nWith each step outward, the act of measurement becomes a little more abstruse. With arithmetic and a ruler you can get from the desk to the window, with trigonometry and a transit you can get to the moon and, with a few assumptions, to the nearest stars.\n\n\"With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly,\" Hubble once said, in a rare moment of oratorial eloquence. \"Eventually, we reach the dim boundary\u2014the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and search among ghostly errors of measurements for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.\"\n\nEstablishing the distance of the quasars requires not only the Hubble law, but the entire framework of Einsteinian relativity. Measuring began as a way to gather data to verify theories. Now the measuring stick itself has become one more theory to test.\nNotes\n\n**Epigraphs**\n\n_p. ix_ \"Her columns grew longer\": Thomas Mallon, _Two Moons_ (New York: Pantheon, 2000), p. 11.\n\n_p. ix_ \"Then, by means of the instrument at hand\": Thomas Hardy, _Two on a Tower_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1895), p. 33.\n\n**Prologue. The Village in the Canyon**\n\n_p. 1_ As readers shall see in chapter 6, my story about the village in the canyon is elaborated from a comment made by Harlow Shapley in the Great Debate of 1920.\n\n_p. 6_ The view from Tau Ceti is described on pp. 170\u201371 of Heinlein's _Time for the Stars_ (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956).\n\n**Chapter 1. Black Stars, White Nights**\n\n_p. 9_ \"We work from morn till night\": Jones and Boyd, _Harvard College Observatory_ , p. 190. This book and Bailey's _History and Work of the College Observatory_ are the two standard sources for the early history of the observatory.\n\n_p. 9_ Computers earned 10 cents more than a cotton mill worker: Pamela Etter Mack, \"Women in Astronomy in the United States, 1875\u20131920\" (bachelor's thesis, Harvard University, 1977). I also referred to her chapter, \"Straying from Their Orbits: Women in Astronomy in America,\" in _Women in Science_ , edited by Kass-Simon and Farnes, pp. 72\u2013116.\n\n_p. 11_ an apparatus of leaf springs: Alison Doane, Curator of Astronomical Photographs at the observatory, has told me that her own research cannot confirm this tale. The repository was built in the 1930s.\n\n_p. 14_ \"It is delightful to see the stars brought out\": William Cranch Bond, letter to Harvard President Edward Everett, September 22, 1847, quoted in Jones and Boyd, p. 68.\n\n_p. 15_ The Great Refractor extended the reach to the fourteenth magnitude: One of the telescope's first great discoveries, in 1848 by William Cranch Bond and George Bond, was Saturn's eighth moon, Hyperion, which is between the fourteenth and fifteenth magnitudes.\n\n_p. 15_ My portrait of Pickering is drawn from Bailey, pp. 243\u201352, and Jones and Boyd, pp. 178\u201382.\n\n_p. 16_ Eventually Harvard measured and cataloged forty-five thousand stars: Jones and Boyd, p. 202. The results were published in 1908 as _The Revised Harvard Photometry_ and appeared in volumes 50 and 54 of the _Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College_.\n\n_p. 17_ The saga of the observing station at Arequipa is entertainingly described in Fernie's _Whisper and Vision_ , pp. 153\u201388. Accounts also appear in Bailey and in Jones and Boyd.\n\n_p. 18_ \"A great observatory should be as carefully organized\": Pickering, in a June 28, 1906, address to the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 19_ 25 cents an hour amounted to the minimum wage: Adjusted for inflation, 25 cents in 1900 would be worth $5.27 in 2003. Source: \"The Inflation Calculator,\" www.westegg.com\/inflation.\n\n_p. 19_ Portraits of Fleming, Cannon, Maury, and other computers appear in Jones and Boyd.\n\n_p. 20_ The hours and wages of computing are described in Mack, \"Women in Astronomy.\"\n\n_p. 20_ \"He seems to think that no work\": Williamina Paton Fleming diary, March 12, 1900, in the Harvard archives. (The journal is part of a project in which staff members and students apparently were asked to keep a diary showing what life was like at the university.)\n\n_p. 20_ Pickering's handling of Fleming's request for a raise is documented in his own diary entry for the same date, also in the Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 21_ Pickering's salary is found in Jones and Boyd, p. 182. The description of his typical workday is from his diary.\n\n_p. 21_ _The Observatory Pinafore_ : Jones and Boyd, pp. 189\u201393. The author of the parody was Winslow Upton.\n\n**Chapter 2. Hunting for Variables**\n\n_p. 23_ \"My friends say, and I recognize the truth of it\": The letter from HSL to Pickering, dated May 13, 1902, is in the Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 25_ The Leavitt family genealogy is from the excellent database maintained by the Western Association of Leavitt Families at www.leavittfamilies.org, and from information provided by the National Association of Leavitt Families, including a private publication, \"Descendants of John Leavitt, the Immigrant, Through His Son, Josiah, and Margaret Johnson,\" by Emily Leavitt Noyes (Tilton, N.H., 1949), pp. 83, 105, 133.\n\n_p. 25_ The description of the Leavitt household on Warland Street (now Kelly Road) is from U.S. Census documents, the Cambridge Historical Commission, Cambridge city directories, and a visit to the house, which still stands. The only record I found of Roswell's death was the inscription on his gravestone at Cambridge Cemetery.\n\n_p. 26_ Erasmus Leavitt's steam engine is described in a pamphlet published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, \"The Leavitt Pumping Engine at Chestnut Hill Station of the Metropolitan District Commission, Boston, Mass.,\" printed in honor of the occasion of its designation as a National Historical Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, December 14, 1973.\n\n_p. 26_ For HSL at Oberlin I relied on alumni records in the college archives. Her time at Radcliffe is documented in her transcript, college catalogs, and other records in the Radcliffe College Archives. The period between Radcliffe and Harvard is described in a one-page alumni questionnaire she filled out for Oberlin on April 6, 1908.\n\n_p. 28_ \"Miss Leavitt inherited, in a somewhat chastened form\": Bailey's obituary of HSL appeared in _Popular Astronomy_ 30, no. 4 (April 1922), pp. 197\u201399. (It was followed by an article, \"Shall We Accept Relativity?\" by William H. Pickering, Edward's brother.)\n\n_p. 30_ \"an almost religious zeal\": Bailey, _History and Work_ , p. 264.\n\n_p. 30_ The letters between HSL and Pickering during her stay in Beloit are in the Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 31_ The short biography in which HSL is called \"extremely deaf\" at Radcliffe appears in volume 8 of the _Dictionary of Scientific Biography_ , edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973).\n\n_p. 33_ The letter sent from the S.S. _Commonwealth_ and a note from HSL's brother acknowledging receipt of her paycheck are in the Harvard archives.\n\n**Chapter 3. Henrietta's Law**\n\n_p. 34_ \"What a variable-star 'fiend' Miss Leavitt is\": The letter, dated March 1, 1905, is from Professor Charles Young at Princeton; it is quoted in Jones and Boyd, _Harvard College Observatory_ , p. 367.\n\n_p. 34_ \"In no other portion of the heavens\": John Herschel is quoted in Shapley's _The Inner Metagalaxy_ ,p.42.\n\n_p. 36_ \"Men said to him, in angry letters\": Reverend Leavitt's address to the annual meeting of the American Missionary Association was published as \"Preaching: The Main Feature in Missionary Work,\" _The American Missionary_ 39, no. 3 (March 1885), pp. 76\u201379. (He mistakenly refers to the astronomer as James Herschel.)\n\n_p. 36_ HSL's trip to Europe is documented in a letter from her to Pickering, dated August 4, 1903, in the Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 37_ \"an extraordinary number\": From H. S. Leavitt, \"1777 Variables in the Magellanic Clouds,\" _Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College_ 60, no. 4 (1908), pp. 87\u2013108.\n\n_p. 37_ The _Washington Post_ news brief about HSL appeared January 28, 1906, on p. 4.\n\n_p. 37_ \"the northern star of a close pair\": Leavitt, \"1777 Variables\", p. 96.\n\n_p. 37_ \"boarding with Uncle Erasmus\": The _Cambridge City Directory_ lists her at his address, 33 Garden Street.\n\n_p. 38_ the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America: This became the American Astronomical Society in 1914, after a long and acrimonious struggle in which the newer science of astrophysics tried to avoid being subsumed as a branch of astronomy. See \"How Did the AAS Get Its Name?\" by Brant L. Sponberg and David H. DeVorkin, on the society's Web site, www.aas.org\/~had\/name.html. In two letters to Pickering (December 20, 1905, and December 20, 1906), HSL refers to the group simply as the Astrophysical Society.\n\n_p. 38_ \"It is worthy of notice\": Leavitt, \"1777 Variables,\" p. 107.\n\n_p. 38_ \"It has not escaped our notice\": Watson and Crick's legendary paper, \"Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids,\" appeared in _Nature_ 171 (1953), pp. 737\u201338.\n\n_p. 39_ The letters written during HSL's illness in 1908\u20131910 are in the Harvard archives. The description of the Leavitt household in Beloit is from census records. That year census takers asked whether anyone in a household was deaf, but the record is ambiguously marked, so it is impossible to tell whether Henrietta was put in that category.\n\n_p. 42_ Reverend Leavitt's estate is described in his will (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, probate court records for Middlesex County). Henrietta's visit home after his death is documented in letters in the Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 42_ The visit to Des Moines is mentioned in a letter dated July 3, 1911, in the Harvard archives refers to a Mrs. W. G. H. Strong. In June 1901 Henrietta's sister Martha had married a William James Henry Strong, originally of Council Bluffs, Iowa.\n\n_p. 43_ \"A remarkable relation\": From Edward C. Pickering, \"Periods of Twenty-five Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud,\" _Harvard College Observatory Circular_ no. 173 (March 3, 1912). The relationship between period and luminosity is logarithmic.\n\n_p. 44_ Cepheid yardstick: HSL was clearly aware of the possibilities opened up by her discovery\u2014if the yardstick could be calibrated. As she wrote on the last page of the report, \"It is to be hoped, also, that the parallaxes of some variables of this type may be measured.\"\n\n**Chapter 4. Triangles**\n\n_p. 45_ \"I had not thought of making the very pretty use\": Quoted in Smith, _The Expanding Universe_ ,p.72.\n\n_p. 45_ An authoritative source for the history of astronomical parallax is Albert Van Helden's _Measuring the Universe_. Good popular accounts include Kitty Ferguson's book by the same name and Alan W. Hirshfeld's _Parallax_. I also relied on two fine histories of astronomy, Arthur Koestler's _The Sleepwalkers_ and Timothy Ferris's _Coming of Age in the Milky Way_.\n\n_p. 48_ The astronomer who first measured the distance to Mars was Gian Domenico Cassini, director of the Paris Observatory.\n\n_p. 49_ The Transit of Venus occurs twice a century\u2014but not every century. The transits of 1874 and 1882 were followed by the pair scheduled for 2004 and 2012.\n\n_p. 55_ Ejnar Hertzsprung's use of the sun's motion to triangulate some Cepheids was a bit more complicated than I describe. To determine how much of a star's change in position is due to solar parallax you must first account for how much it has moved on its own. This can be done with statistical methods similar to those Shapley used to measure the Milky Way (see chapter 5).\n\n_p. 55_ Hertzsprung's article appeared in _Astronomische Nachrichten_ 196, pp. 201\u201310.\n\n_p. 56_ \"that the best service he could render\": Bailey, _History and Work_ ,p.25.\n\n_p. 56_ HSL's work diary is in the Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 56_ recovering from stomach surgery: HSL's letter to Pickering, dated May 8, 1913, in the Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 57_ \"It is desirable that the standard scale\": HSL, \"The North Polar Sequence,\" _Annals of Harvard College Observatory_ 71, no. 3 (1917), p. 230.\n\n**Chapter 5. Shapley's Ants**\n\n_p. 59_ \"Her discovery of the relation of period to brightness\": Letter from Shapley to Pickering, September 24, 1917, Shapley correspondence, Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 59_ \"It is much more natural and reasonable\": Kant, _Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels_ , published in 1755.\n\n_p. 59_ Good sources on the early-twentieth-century controversy over the nature of nebulae are Smith's _The Expanding Universe_ and J. D. Fernie, \"The Historical Quest for the Nature of the Spiral Nebulae,\" _Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 82 (1970), pp. 1189\u20131230.\n\n_p. 60_ \"No competent thinker\": Quoted in Struve and Zebergs, _Astronomy of the Twentieth Century,_ p. 436.\n\n_p. 61_ \"enveloped and beclouded\": Smith, p. 21.\n\n_p. 61_ an intrinsic magnitude of about \u20138: Astronomers knew this because the Doppler effect gave a direct reading of how fast a nova was expanding in the direction of Earth. Comparing that number with how fast the nova _appeared_ to expand revealed the distance, and from the distance one could gauge the intrinsic brightness. Curtis then reversed the procedure, using the hypothesized brightness to estimate the distance of the novae outside the Milky Way.\n\n_p. 62_ Shapley tells about the ants in his book _Through Rugged Ways to the Stars_ , pp. 65\u201368.\n\n_p. 64_ \"[T]his proposition scarcely needs proof \": Harlow Shapley, \"On the Nature and Cause of Cepheid Variation,\" _Astrophysical Journal_ 40 (1914), p. 449.\n\n_p. 66_ Shapley's artful chain of assumptions was developed in nineteen papers each titled \"Studies Based on the Colors and Magnitudes in Stellar Clusters\"; some of the later ones were coauthored with his wife, Martha, and other co-workers. A full list of citations can be accessed through the Bruce Medalist Web page for Shapley: www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu\/BruceMedalists\/Shapley. Also see the detailed bibliography in Smith.\n\n_p. 66_ living alone in a Cambridge rooming house: Actually the _Cambridge City Directory_ lists two: 49 Trowbridge Street and then 49 Dana Street.\n\n_p. 66_ \"Does Miss Leavitt know if they have shorter periods\": Letter from Shapley to Pickering, August 27, 1917, Shapley correspondence, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 66_ \"Miss Leavitt is now absent on her vacation\": Letter from Pickering to Shapley, September 18, 1917, ibid.\n\n_p. 67_ \"Her discovery of the relation of period to brightness\": Letter from Shapley to Pickering, September 24, 1917, ibid.\n\n_p. 67_ \"I believe the most important photometric work\": Letter from Shapley to Pickering, August 20, 1918, ibid.\n\n_p. 67_ \"A few days ago I talked with Miss Leavitt\": Letter from Pickering to Shapley, September 14, 1918, ibid. Pickering died on February 3, 1919.\n\n_p. 68_ Van Maanen's research on the rotation of spiral nebulae was centered on M101, M51, and M33.\n\n_p. 69_ \"So the center has shifted\": Shapley's letter to Hale, dated January 19, 1918, is quoted in Owen Gingerich, \"Shapley's Impact,\" in the Harlow Shapley Symposium on Globular Cluster Systems in Galaxies, _Proceedings of the 126th International Astronomical Union Symposium_ , Cambridge, Mass., August 25\u201329, 1986 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), pp. 23\u201336.\n\n_p. 69_ \"Man is not such a big chicken\": Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways_ ,p. 60.\n\n**Chapter 6. The Late, Great Milky Way**\n\n_p. 70_ \"The spectrum of the average spiral nebula\": From the slides Curtis used in his 1920 debate with Shapley, Allegheny Observatory Archives, Pittsburgh.\n\n_p. 70_ The train trip to Washington is described in Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways to the Stars_ , pp. 77\u201378.\n\n_p. 70_ The wrangling that took place before the debate is vividly described in Michael A. Hoskin, \"The Great Debate: What Really Happened,\" _Journal for the History of Astronomy_ 7, pp. 169\u201382. I also relied on Virginia Trimble's scholarly and entertaining paper \"The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Discussion: Background, Issues and Aftermath,\" _Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 107 (1995), pp. 1133\u201344, and on a perceptive analytical account in Smith, _The Expanding Universe_ , pp. 77\u201386, and Struve and Zebergs, _Astronomy of the Twentieth Century_ , pp. 416\u201320, 441\u201344.\n\n_p. 71_ \"to some region of space\": Quoted in Hoskin's paper.\n\n_p. 72_ \"hammer and tongs\": ibid.\n\n_p. 72_ \"miserable\" Cepheids: the letter to Russell is quoted in Smith, p. 81.\n\n_p. 73_ \"noble human antique\": Shapley's memory of the debate is from _Through Rugged Ways_ , pp. 78\u201381. As with his story about Einstein, Shapley may have also misremembered these details. The records of the meeting in the archives of the National Academy of Sciences are not detailed enough to tell.\n\n_pp. 73_ _\u2013_ _79_ In addition to the works mentioned above by Hoskin, Trimble, and Smith, my account of the debate relies on Shapley's typescript (the original is in the Harvard University Archives) and Curtis's slides (originals at Allegheny Observatory). Both documents are available at antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov\/diamond_jubilee. The debaters repeated and expanded on their positions in formal papers published in the _Bulletin of the National Research Council_ 2 (1921), pp. 171\u201393 and 194\u2013217.\n\n_p. 79_ \"Debate went off fine in Washington\": Quoted in Hoskin's paper. _p. 7_ _9_ \"Now I would know how to dodge things\": Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways_ ,p.79.\n\n_p. 80_ \"the engulfing of a star\": Shapley, \"Globular Clusters and the Structure of the Galactic System,\" _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 30 (1918), p. 53.\n\n_p. 80_ \"Suppose that an observer\": From Shapley's _Bulletin_ paper.\n\n**Chapter 7. In the Realm of the Nebulae**\n\n_p. 82_ \"One of the few decent things I have done\": Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways to the Stars,_ p. 91.\n\n_p. 82_ For biographical details about Shapley, I referred to _Through Rugged Ways_ , as well as the transcript of the oral-history interviews on which the book is based (Charles Weiner and Helen Wright, \"Harlow Shapley,\" American Institute of Physics, Center for the History of Physics, College Park, Md., June 8, 1966). In addition to serving as my main source on Hubble's life, Christianson's _Edwin Hubble_ provided a vivid portrait of Shapley (pp. 129\u201332).\n\n_p. 82_ \"He is the best student I ever had\": Jones and Boyd, _Harvard College Observatory_ , p. 432, n. 16.\n\n_p. 84_ \"Bah Jove\" and \"come a cropper\": Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways_ ,p. 57.\n\n_p. 84_ Hubble's uneasy relationship with Shapley is documented in the books by Christianson and Smith.\n\n_p. 85_ \"the apartment building on Linnean Street\": According to the _Cambridge City Directory_ , HSL and her mother had moved there by 1919. Cambridge Historical Commission records show that the building (3\u20135 Linnean Street and called Linnean Hall) was built in 1914. Rents ranged from $30 to $52.50 a month.\n\n_p. 85_ \"enormous importance in the present discussion\": Shapley's letter to HSL, May 22, 1920, is in the Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 85_ Shapley had been overestimating: Owen Gingerich has documented the behind-the-scenes wrangling in \"How Shapley Came to Harvard or, Snatching the Prize from the Jaws of Debate,\" _Journal for the History of Astronomy_ 19 (1988), pp. 201\u20137. Also see Hoskin's \"The Great Debate\" (cited in the notes for chapter 6).\n\n_p. 85_ \"He is much more venturesome\": Gingerich, \"How Shapley Came to Harvard,\" p. 203.\n\n_p. 86_ \"Shapley couldn't swing the thing\" : Ibid., p. 204.\n\n_p. 86_ \"So young, so clean, so brilliant\": Cannon's diary is in the Harvard archives. Details about Cannon and the Shapley era at Harvard Observatory are from Jones and Boyd, Bailey's _History and Work_ , and Haramundanis's _Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin_ , an edition of the astronomer's memoirs edited by her daughter.\n\n_p. 87_ \"I always wanted to learn the calculus\": Maury said this to Cecilia Payne (Haramundanis, p. 149).\n\n_p. 87_ \"I shall be happy\": Quoted in Jones and Boyd, p. 398.\n\n_p. 87_ \"If one could only go on and on\": Fleming diary, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 88_ \"She was a pure observer\": Haramundanis, p. 139.\n\n_p. 88_ \"We shall never understand it\": HSL quoted in Haramundanis, p. 140.\n\n_p. 88_ \"Pickering chose his staff to work\": Ibid., p. 149.\n\n_p. 88_ \"one of the most important women\": Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways_ ,p.91.\n\n_p. 88_ \"girl-hours\" and \"kilo-girl-hours\": Ibid., p. 94.\n\n_p. 88_ \"Took flowers to Miss Leavitt\": Cannon diaries, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 90_ The details of HSL's estate are from probate court records for Middlesex County, Massachusetts.\n\n_p. 90_ What HSL was working on when she died is from the Bailey obituary cited in the notes for chapter 2 and from _Harvard University Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College, 1922\u20131923: The Observatory_ , p. 244, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 90_ \"the famous new star of 1918\": _Reports of the President, 1922\u20131923_ , p. 244, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 91_ \"great service to astronomy\": _Transactions of the International Astronomical Union_ 1 (1922), p. 69.\n\n_p. 91_ \"She had hardly begun work\": _Reports of the President, 1921\u20131922_ , p. 208.\n\n_p. 91_ For the story of Cecilia Payne and HSL's desk, see Haramundanis, p. 153.\n\n_p. 91_ \"I heard it said when I came to Harvard\": Ibid., p. 146\n\n_p. 92_ \"Magellanic Cloud (Great) so bright\": Cannon diaries, April 20, 1922.\n\n_p. 92_ The dispute between Lundmark and Shapley is described in Smith, pp. 105\u201311.\n\n_p. 92_ \"Whether or not you care to recognize\": Quoted in Smith, p. 106.\n\n_p. 93_ \"On the Motions of Spirals\": Knut Lundmark, _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 34 (1922), pp. 108\u201315.\n\n_p. 93_ Jeans's analysis of van Maanen's data is described in Smith, p. 104. Jeans wasn't opposing the island universe theory. Rather, he thought the Milky Way was considerably smaller than Shapley did. If the spirals were of similar size, they would be much closer to Earth, making the rate of their spin far slower.\n\n_p. 93_ \"the situation seemed to be rather hopeless\": Quoted in Smith, p. 108.\n\n_p. 94_ An artful account of Hubble's measurement of Andromeda is in Christianson, pp. 157\u201362; also see Smith, pp. 111\u201326.\n\n_p. 94_ \"You will be interested to hear\": Quoted in Smith, p. 114. The correspondence between Hubble and Shapley is divided between the Edwin P. Hubble Manuscript Collection at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., and the Harvard University Archives.\n\n_p. 94_ \"Here is the letter that has destroyed my universe\": Haramundanis, p. 209.\n\n_p. 95_ \"Your letter telling of the crop of novae\": Quoted in Christianson, p. 159.\n\n_p. 95_ Before he became a professional astronomer, Barnard had earned enough money spotting new comets (a New York philanthropist was paying $200 for each one) to make a down payment on what he called his \"comet house.\" Today he is best known as the namesake and discoverer of Barnard's star.\n\n_p. 96_ \"the straws are all pointing\" and \"I do not know whether I am sorry\": Quoted in Christianson, p. 159.\n\n_p. 96_ \"a curiously faithful copy\": Edwin Hubble, \"N.G.C. 6822, A Remote Stellar System,\" _Contributions from the Mount Wilson Observatory_ 302 (1925), p. 410.\n\n_p. 96_ \"The principle of the uniformity\": Ibid., p. 432.\n\n_p. 97_ \"a splendid forum\": Quoted in Christianson, p. 160. The AAS\/AAAS meeting is described in the same passage. More details are in _Popular Astronomy_ 33, no. 4 (1925), pp. 158\u201360. An abstract of Hubble's paper, \"Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae,\" appeared in the same issue beginning on p. 252.\n\n_p. 97_ Hubble shared the prize: The other winner of what is now called the Newcomb Cleveland Prize was L. R. Cleveland, whose papers had been read before the American Society of Zoologists.\n\n_p. 98_ \"After all, he was my _friend_ \": Quoted in Haramundanis, p. 209.\n\n_p. 98_ \"assigned subject matter\" and \"I was right\": Shapley, _Through Rugged Ways_ ,p.79.\n\n_p. 98_ \"the realm of the nebulae\": The phrase is used as the title of Hubble's 1936 book, based on his Silliman lectures at Yale.\n\n_p. 98_ \"What are galaxies?\": Sandage, _The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies_ ,p.1.\n\n**Chapter 8. The Mysterious K**\n\n_p. 99_ \"Youth Who Left Ozark Mountains\": The newspaper headline, which appeared on page 2 of the paper, is quoted in Christianson, _Edwin Hubble_ , p. 210.\n\n_p. 99_ the Scopes \"Monkey Trial\": The Harvard historian of science Owen Gingerich has in his collection a telegram from Darrow inviting Shapley to testify.\n\n_p. 102_ \"with some statistical sleight of hand\": I'm referring here to the technique of statistical parallax, described in chapter 5.\n\n_p. 104_ For details of Humason's unusual background see Christianson, pp. 185\u201386. His work with Hubble is described in Christianson, pp. 192\u201395, and Smith, _The Expanding Universe_ , pp. 180\u201383.\n\n_p. 105_ \"twice as large as any hitherto observed\": Milton Humason, \"The Large Radial Velocity of N.G.C. 7619,\" _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 15, no. 3 (March 15, 1929), pp. 167\u201368.\n\n_p. 106_ at about 150 kilometers per second: Hubble actually expressed K as 500 parsecs (one parsec being 3.26 light-years). His early results are reported in his paper, \"A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebula,\" published in the same issue of _PNAS_ as Humason's paper (pp. 168\u201373). This was followed in 1931 by Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason, \"The Velocity-Distance Relation Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae,\" _Astrophysical Journal_ 74, no. 43 (1931), pp. 43\u201380.\n\n_p. 107_ \"I don't believe these results\": Quoted in Christianson, p. 198.\n\n_p. 107_ The encounter between Shapley and Humason is described by Christianson, p. 151. In _The Expanding Universe_ , Smith gives good reasons to believe the story may be true (p. 144, n. 122).\n\n_p. 108_ Einstein's calling Hubble's work \"beautiful\": See Christianson, p. 211.\n\n**Chapter 9. The Cosmic Stampede**\n\n_p. 109_ \"The definitive study of the herd instincts of astronomers\": J. D. Fernie, \"The Period-Luminosity Relation: A Historical Review,\" _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 81, no. 483 (December 1969), pp. 719\u201320.\n\n_p. 109_ For a detailed account of the controversy over the Milky Way's seemingly anomalous size, see Smith, _The Expanding Universe,_ pp. 153\u201356.\n\n_p. 110_ If these distant spirals were islands: Ibid., p. 154. For a while, Shapley toyed with what he called the Super-Galaxy Hypothesis, in which the Milky Way consisted of a confederation of several smaller galaxies\u2014the globular clusters\u2014bunched together.\n\n_p. 111_ Trumpler reported his discovery of cosmic dust in his paper \"Absorption of Light in the Galactic System,\" _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 42 (1930), pp. 214\u201327.\n\n_p. 113_ \"most of the astronomers of the day\": Fernie, \"Period-Luminosity Relation,\" pp. 716\u201317.\n\n_p. 114_ Baade gave a nice personal account of how he recalibrated the Cepheid scale\u2014including a description of his conversation with Hubble\u2014in a talk to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, later published as \"The Period-Luminosity Relation of the Cepheids,\" _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 68 (1956), pp 5\u201316. Christianson provides further details in _Edwin Hubble_ ,pp. 291\u201393.\n\n_p. 115_ \"Instead of one period-luminosity relation\": Baade, p. 11. Along with the cluster variables, he discovered that the Cepheids occasionally found in globular clusters also belonged to Population II.\n\n_p. 116_ For the revisions to the Hubble constant, see Virginia Trimble, \"H0: The Incredible Shrinking Constant, 1925\u20131975,\" _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 108 (December 1996), pp. 1073\u201382.\n\n**Chapter 10. Ghost Stories**\n\n_p. 117_ \"What monsters may they be?\": The passage appears on p. 34 of Hardy's _Two on a Tower_.\n\n_p. 117_ \"that Miss Leavitt's lamp was still to be seen burning\": Haramundanis, _Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin_ , p. 153.\n\n_p. 117_ Leavitt's scant traces: Annie Cannon was, by contrast, quite a pack rat. The Harvard University Archives are stuffed with diaries, guest books, photo albums, letters\u2014nothing, it seems, was discarded. The scant mention these papers make of Henrietta Leavitt make one wonder whether they were even friends.\n\n_p. 117_ A virtual planetarium: The Henrietta Leavitt Flat Screen Space Theater is located at www.thespacewriter.com.\n\n_p. 118_ crater on the moon: Harry Lang, \"Six Moon Craters Named for Deaf Scientists,\" _The World Around You_ , January\u2013February, 1996 (published by Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.).\n\n_p. 118_ \"The World's Greatest Creation Scientists\" can be found at www.creationsafaris.com. The criteria for compiling the list are so loose that it also includes Sir Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Leonardo da Vinci, William and John Herschel, and even Galileo.\n\n_p. 118_ \"Honoured Miss Leavitt\": Letter from Mittag-Leffler to HSL, February 23, 1925, in Shapley correspondence, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 118_ Sonja Kowalewsky: The name also appears in English as Sonya Kovalevskaya. Other variations are Sonja Kowalewski, Sophia Kovalevsky, Sofia Kovalevskaia, and Sofya Kovalevskaya.\n\n_p. 119_ \"Miss Leavitt's work on the variable stars\": Letter from Shapley to Mittag-Leffler, March 9, 1925, Shapley correspondence, Harvard archives.\n\n_p. 119_ \"The number of variables included in Miss Leavitt's discussion\": Bailey, _History and Work_ , p. 185.\n\n_p. 120_ The 1996 \"The Scale of the Universe\" debate was amply documented in six papers appearing in _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ 108 (December 1996): Jerry T. Bonnell, Robert J. Nemiroff, and Jeffrey J. Goldstein, \"The Scale of the Universe Debate in 1996,\" pp. 1065\u201367; Owen Gingerich, \"The Scale of the Universe: A Curtain Raiser in Four Acts and Four Morals,\" pp. 1068\u201372; Virginia Trimble, \"H0: The Incredible Shrinking Constant, 1925\u20131975,\" pp. 1073\u201382; G. A. Tammann, \"The Hubble Constant: A Discourse,\" pp. 1083\u201390; Sidney van den Bergh, \"The Extragalactic Distance Scale,\" pp. 1091\u201396; and John N. Bahcall, \"Is H0 Well Defined?\" p. 1097.\n\n_p. 121_ having been Dante's assistant: Christianson, _Edw_ _in Hubble_ , p. 363.\n\n_p. 121_ Besides the value of the Hubble constant, other factors affecting the size of the universe include its shape and the value of a parameter called the cosmological constant.\n\n_p. 121_ The Hubble Wars are described in Overbye, _Lonely Hearts of the Cos_ _mos_ , pp. 263\u201384.\n\n_p. 121_ Wonderful maps of clusters and superclusters can be found at www.anzwers.org\/free\/universe\/galaclus.html.\n\n_p. 124_ corrected by 10 percent: M. W. Feast and R. M. Catchpole, \"The Cepheid PL Zero-Point from Hipparcos Trigonometric Parallaxes,\" _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_ 286 (1997), L1\u2013L5. More recently, the biggest news about Hipparcos has been a controversy over the accuracy of its triangulation of the Pleiades: X. Pan, M. Shao, and S. R. Kulkarni, \"A Distance of 133\u2013137 Parsecs to the Pleiades Star Cluster,\" _Nature_ 427 (2004), p. 396.\n\n**Epilogue: Fire on the Mountain**\n\n_p. 130_ \"With increasing distance, our knowledge fades\": Hubble, _Realm of the Nebulae_ , p. 202.\nSelected Bibliography\n\nBailey, Solon I. _The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839 to 1927_. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931.\n\nChristianson, Gale E. _Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.\n\nEvans, David S., Terence J. Deeming, Betty Hall Evans, and Stephen Goldfarb, eds. _Herschel at the Cape: Diaries and Correspondence of Sir John Herschel, 1834\u20131838_. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.\n\nFerguson, Kitty. _Measuring the Universe: Our Historic Quest to Chart the Horizons of Space and Time_. New York: Walker, 1999.\n\nFernie, Donald. _The Whisper and_ _the Vision: The Voyages of the Astronomers_. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1976.\n\nFerris, Timothy. _Coming of Age in the Milky Way_. New York: William Morrow, 1988.\n\nHaramundanis, Katherine, ed. _Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections_. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.\n\nHirshfeld, Alan W. _Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos_. New York: W.H. Freeman, 2001.\n\nHoffleit, Dorrit. _Women in the History of Variable Star Astronomy_. Cambridge, Mass.: American Association of Variable Star Observers, 1993.\n\nHubble, Edwin. _The Realm of the Nebulae_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936.\n\nJones, Bessie Zaban, and Lyle Gifford Boyd. _The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships, 1839\u20131919_. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971.\n\nKass-Simon, G., and Patricia Farnes, eds. _Women of Science: Righting the Record_. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.\n\nKoestler, Arthur. _The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe_. New York: Macmillan, 1959.\n\nLayzer, David. _Constructing the Universe_. New York: Scientific American Library, 1984.\n\nOverbye, Dennis. _Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe_. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.\n\nSandage, Allan. _The Hubble_ _Atlas of Galaxies_. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1961.\n\nShapley, Harlow. _The Inner Metagalaxy_. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Through Rugged Ways to the Stars_. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969.\n\nSmith, Robert W. _The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's \"Great Debate\" 1900\u20131931_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.\n\nStruve, Otto, and Velta Zebergs. _Astronomy of the Twentieth Century_. New York: Macmillan, 1962.\n\nVan Helden, Albert. _Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.\n\nZeilik, Michael, and John Gaustad. _Astronomy: The Cosmic Perspective_. Second ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990.\nAcknowledgments\n\nMy increasing curiosity about Henrietta Swan Leavitt could hardly have been sated without the help of Louisa Gilder, who searched the archives at Harvard and Radcliffe with a thoroughness and a connoisseur's eye for detail that went far beyond mere research.\n\nI would also like to thank Kathleen Rawlins and Susan E. Maycock of the Cambridge Historical Commission; Jolene Passey, Faye Leavitt, and Joseph Leavitt of the Western Association of Leavitt Families, and Winston Leavitt of the National Association of Leavitt Families. I greatly benefited from the excellent work of several historians of early-twentieth-century astronomy, including Gale Christianson, J. D. Fernie, Owen Gingerich, Dorrit Hoffleit, Michael Hoskin, Peggy Aldrich Kid-well, Pamela Mack, Robert W. Smith, and Virginia Trimble (their books and papers are cited in my notes). At Harvard College Observatory, Alison Doane guided me through the stacks of photographic plates and old notebooks and helped me find the office where Henrietta Leavitt and the other computers probably worked.\n\nSeveral people generously read the manuscript, helping me strike a balance between clarity and precision. First I thank the experts: Owen Gingerich, Research Professor of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University; Alison Doane, Curator of Astronomical Photographs at Harvard College Observatory; her predecessor, Martha Hazen; Stephen Maran of the American Astronomical Society; and Virginia Trimble, Professor of Astronomy and the History of Science at the University of California in Irvine. Just as valuable were the comments of smart, general readers, the kind of people this book is written for: Louisa Gilder, Julie Kinyoun, Douglas Maret, Nancy Maret, and Olga Matlin.\n\nAt James Atlas Books and Norton, I would like to thank Mr. Atlas himself, Jesse Cohen, Ed Barber, and Angela Von der Lippe, for their support and enthusiasm. Thanks also go to Trent Duffy, the excellent copy editor, and Esther Newberg and Christine Bauch at International Creative Management.\nIndex\n\nPage numbers in _italics_ refer to illustrations.\n\nAAAS Thousand Dollar Prize, 97, 144 _n_\n\nAberdeen Proving Ground, 114\n\n\"absorption\" lines, 103\n\nadaptive optics, 122\n\nAlexandria, 46\u201347\n\nAllegheny Observatory, 92\n\nAlpha Centauri, 52\n\nAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, 26\n\nAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 96\u201397\n\nAmerican Astronomical Society, 96\u201397, 137 _n_\n\nAmerican Missionary Society, 35\u201336\n\nAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers, 26\n\nAndover Theological Seminary, 26\n\nAndromeda:\n\nblueshift of, 103\n\nCepheid variables in, 94\u201395, 101, 107, 109\u201310, 113, 115\u201316\n\ndistance of, 7, 68, 78, 101, 103, 109\u201310, 113, 122\n\nsize of, 68, 122\u201323\n\nas spiral galaxy, 59, 60, 78\n\nstar types in, 104\u20135\n\n_Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College,_ 38, 57\n\nants, 62\u201363, 69\n\nAquila, 90\n\narcs, 47, 48, 52, 68, 116, 123\u201324\n\nArequipa, Peru, observing station, 17\u201318, 35, 37, 92\n\nAstronomical and Astrophysical Society of America, 38\n\n_Astronomische Nachrichten,_ 55\n\nastronomy:\n\nbias in, 57, 60, 79, 80\u201381, 97\u2013100, 109, 113, 125\n\ndiscoveries in, 35\u201336, 38\u201339, 55\u201356, 96\u201398\n\nmeasurement in, 8, 14\u201316, 18, 38\u201340, 43\u201344, 53\u201358, 60, 62, 65, 68, 72, 74, 79, 80\u201381, 85, 88, 92\u201394, 97\u2013100, 102, 107, 114\u201315, 121\u201322, 130\n\npublished results in, 18, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39\u201340, 42, 43, 55, 56, 57\u201358, 64, 96, 97, 106\n\ntheoretical basis of, 5\u20136, 62\u201381, 94\u201395, 107\u201313, 130\n\n_Astrophysical Journal,_ 64\n\natmospheric distortion, 112, 122\n\natoms, 102\u20133\n\nBaade, Walter, 114\u201315, 116\n\nBailey, Solon I., 17, 28, 56, 119\u201320\n\nBarnard, Edward Emerson, 95\u201396, 144 _n_\n\nBarnard's Galaxy, 95\u201396\n\nBarnard's star, 144 _n_\n\nbaseline measurements, 45\u201355, _51,_ 99\u2013102\n\nBeloit College, 30, 32, 42\n\nBeta Lyrae, 88\n\nBible, 12, 36, 99\n\nbig bang theory, 16, 108, 110\u201311, 115, 116, 120, 126, 129\n\nBig Dipper, 6\n\nBig Galaxy theory, 62\u201381, 82, 84, 94\u201395, 109\u201310, 111, 112\u201313, 115, 119, 138 _n,_ 143 _n_\n\nbinary stars, 64\n\nblack ants, 62\u201363\n\nblack holes, 16, 129\n\nblink comparator, 68, 95\u201396, 107\n\nblueshift, 60\u201361, 64, 102\u20133\n\nblue stars, 74\u201375, 77\n\nBond, George, 134 _n_\n\nBond, William Cranch, 134 _n_\n\nBo\u00f6tes, 6\n\nBoston Water Works, 26\n\nBrazil, 34\n\nBrookhaven National Laboratory, 19\n\nBruce, Catherine Wolfe, 17\n\nBruce Telescope, 17\u201318, 67\n\nBryan, William Jennings, 100\n\nB-type stars, 74\u201375\n\n_Bulletin of the National Research Council,_ 79\n\nBunsen, Robert, 102\u20133\n\nBurroughs Arithometer, 9\n\ncalcium, 105\n\nCambridge Cemetery, 89\u201390\n\ncandles, standard, 61, 64, 65\u201366, 74, 78, 95, 100\u2013101, 121, 124, 125\n\nCannon, Annie Jump, 20, 41\u201342, 86\u201389, 92, 118, 142 _n,_ 146 _n_ \u201347 _n_\n\nCape of Good Hope, 34, 52\n\nCassini, Gian Domenico, 138 _n_\n\ncensus (1880), 25\u201326\n\n\"Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae\" (Hubble), 97\n\nCepheid variables:\n\nin Andromeda, 94\u201395, 101, 107, 109\u201310, 113, 115\u201316\n\nchemical composition of, 114\u201315, 124\n\nas distance scale, 53\u201355, 101\u20132, 113\u201316, 123\u201324\n\nHubble's use of, xiii\u2013xiv, 94\u201398, 100, 120\n\nLeavitt's analysis of, xiii\u2013xiv, 43\u201344, 53\u201355, 56, 62, 64, 66\u201367, 72, 76, 88, 94\u201396, 101, 102, 120\n\nin Magellanic Clouds, 43\u201344, 53\u201355, 64, 67, 85\n\nas measurement standard, 43\u201344, 53\u201355, 62, 65, 68, 72, 74, 102, 107\n\nperiod-luminosity relationship in, 43, 64\u201365, 85, 94, 96, 113, 114\u201315, 119, 124, 138 _n_\n\nShapley's use of, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 72, 74, 75, 76, 85, 94, 109\u201310, 113\n\nCepheus, 44\n\nCerro Tololo Observatory, 12\n\nChristian fundamentalists, 12, 99\n\nClerke, Agnes, 60\n\nCleveland, L. R., 144 _n_\n\ncluster variables, 64\u201365, 115, 124\n\nColumba, 54\n\ncomets, 144 _n_\n\nCommission of Stellar Photometry, 90\u201391\n\n_Commonwealth,_ S.S., 33\n\ncomputers (clerical workers):\n\ndata collected by, 9\u201310, 18\u201319, 55\u201356, 90\u201392, 105\n\nLeavitt as example of, xiii, 9, 22, 23\u201333, 36, 37, 39\u201342, 52, 55\u201358, 59, 66\u201367, 88, 90\u201392, 119\u201320\n\nstatus of, 86\u201388\n\nviewing instruments used by, 23\u201324, 35, 41, 58\n\nwages of, 9, 18\u201321, 31\u201332, 134 _n_\n\nwomen as, 19\u201322, 86\u201388\n\nconstellations, 6, 54\n\n_see also specific constellations_\n\nCopernicus, Nicolaus, 48, 54, 107\u20138\n\ncosmic dust, 78\u201379, 111\u201313\n\ncosmological constant, 148 _n_\n\ncotton mill workers, 9\n\n\"creation science,\" 99\u2013100, 118\n\nCrick, Francis, 38\n\nCurtis, Heber, 61, 70\u201381, _77,_ 92, 98, 113, 115, 120\u201322, 140 _n_ \u201341 _n_\n\nCygnus, 29\n\nDante, 121\n\ndark matter, 16\n\nDarrow, Clarence, 100\n\nDarwin, Charles, 26\n\nDarwin, Erasmus, 26\n\nDay of Reckoning, 12\n\ndegrees, 47, 48, 52, 68, 116, 123\u201324\n\ndepth perception, 45\n\n_Dictionary of Scientific Biography,_ 31\n\ndisplacement, 45\u201349\n\n_Divine Comedy, The_ (Dante), 121\n\nDNA, 38\n\nDoppler effect, 60\u201361, 65, 102\u20137, 125, 139 _n_\n\nDraper, Henry, 20, 87\n\ndwarf galaxies, 123\n\nEarth:\n\nage of, 111\n\ndiameter of, 99, 101\n\norbit of, 48, 50\u201351, _51,_ 53\u201354, 99\u2013100, 101, 116\n\nposition of, 69, 107\u20138, 125\u201326\n\neclipses, 15, 29, 46\u201347, 64\n\neclipsing binaries, 64\n\nEddington, Arthur, 62\n\nEinstein, Albert, 6, 71, 73, 98, 107\u20138, 130, 141 _n_\n\nelectromagnetic waves, 5\n\nelectronic computers, 9, 122\n\nelectronic sensors, 9\n\nelectrons, 102\u20133\n\nemulsion, photographic, 10, 28\u201329\n\nEridanus Cluster, 123\n\nEuropean Space Agency, 123\n\nevolution, 99\u2013100\n\nextra-galactic nebulae, 109\n\nextrapolation, 1\u20135, 8, 80\u201381, 116, 127\u201328, 133 _n_\n\nFalse Cepheids, 95\n\nFelt & Tarrant Comptometer, 9\n\nFernie, J. D., 109, 113\n\nFleming, Edward Pickering, 20\n\nFleming, Williamina Paton, 19\u201321, 33, 87\n\n\"fly spankers,\" 29\n\nFornax Cluster, 7, 123\n\nFraunhofer, Joseph von, 103\n\nfrequencies, wave, 60\u201361, 101\u20137, 129\n\nFrohman, Charles, 37\n\nfundamentalism, religious, 99\u2013100, 118\n\ngalactic plane, 78, 112\n\ngalaxies:\n\naverage luminosity of, 100\u2013102\n\nclusters of, 7, 118, 123, 125\n\ndistance of, 7, 34, 51\u201352, 61, 96, 99\u2013101, 103\u20138, 112\u201316, 121\u201322\n\nevolution of, 93\n\ngroups of, 7\u20138, 11, 34\u201335, 77, 118, 122\u201323, 125\n\nas nebulae, 11\u201312, 51\u201352, 59\u201362, 68\u201369, 70, 75\u201376, 95\u201398\n\nnumber of, 122\u201323\n\nrotation of, 68\u201369, 84, 92\u201394, 97\u201398, 125, 143 _n_\n\nsize of, 55, 109\u201310, 123\n\nsuperclusters of, 7\u20138, 123\n\nvelocity of, 102\u20137, 116\n\n_see also_ nebulae\n\nGalileo Galilei, 15, 17, 51, 52, 54\n\ngas clouds, 8, 12, 51\u201352, 59, 60, 68, 76, 78, 80\n\nGenesis, Book of, 99\n\ngenetics, 38\n\nGilbert, W. S., 21\n\nglobular clusters, 63\u201366, 69, 74, 77, 85, 111, 113, 114, 119, 146 _n_\n\nGod, 12, 36, 69, 100, 118\n\nGoodricke, John, 44\n\ngravitational lensing, 130\n\ngravity, 61, 93, 129, 130\n\nGreat Debate (1920), 70\u201381, 86, 98, 113, 115, 120\u201322, 133 _n,_ 140 _n_ \u201341 _n_\n\nGreat Refractor telescope, 12\u201314, _13,_ 134 _n_\n\nGreece, ancient, 17, 46\u201348, 54, 124\n\nHale, George Ellery, 69, 70\u201371, 85\n\nHale telescope, 115\n\nHalley, Edmond, 49\u201350\n\nHardy, Thomas, ix, 117\n\n_Harvard College Observatory Circular,_ 39\u201340, 43\n\nHarvard Number 1354, 37\n\nHarvard Number 1391, 37\n\nHarvard Number 1509, 37\n\nHarvard Observatory:\n\nArequipa observing station of, 17\u201318, 35, 37, 92\n\nbudget of, 9, 18\u201321, 31\u201332, 134 _n_\n\ncomputers for, _see_ computers\n\nconstruction of, 12\u201314\n\nGreat Refractor telescope of, 12\u201314, _13,_ 134 _n_\n\nLeavitt as computer for, xiii, 9, 22, 23\u201333, 36, 52, 55\u201358, 66, 88, 90\u201392, 119\u201320\n\nPickering as director of, 15\u201321, 73, 86\u201387, 88, 91\u201392\n\nrepository of, 10\u201311, 20, 117\n\nShapley as director of, 72\u201373, 82, 85\u201386, 107\n\nHarwood, Margaret, 66\n\nHeinlein, Robert, 5\u20136\n\nhelium, 103, 104\n\nHellespont, 46\n\nHenry Draper Catalogue, 20, 86\n\nHercules, 54, 75\n\nherd instinct, 62\u201363, 109, 113\n\nHerschel, Caroline, 51\n\nHerschel, John, 34, 35\u201336, 52\n\nHerschel, William, 51\u201352, 54, 59\n\nHertzsprung, Ejnar, 45, 55, 56, 62, 66, 74, 138 _n_\n\nHertzsprung-Russell diagram, 74\n\nHigh-Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite (Hipparcos), 123\u201324\n\nHipparchus, 46\u201347, 124\n\n_H.M.S. Pinafore_ (Gilbert and Sullivan), 21\n\nHubble, Edwin:\n\nas astronomer, 96\u201397, 98, 107\u20138, 121, 130\n\nbackground of, 82\u201384\n\nCepheid standard used by, xiii\u2013xiv, 94\u201398, 100, 120\n\ndeath of, 115\n\nat Mount Wilson Observatory, 84, 95\u201397, 104\u20137, 114\n\nperiod-luminosity law used by, xiii\u2013xiv, 94\u201396, 120\n\npersonality of, 83\u201384, 94, 109\n\nphotograph of, _83_\n\npublications of, 96, 97, 106\n\nredshift investigated by (Hubble shift), 103\u20138, 110, 115\u201316, 125\n\nreputation of, 96\u201397, 98, 104, 107\u20138, 144 _n_\n\nresearch of, 94\u201396, 97, 106, 121, 122, 130\n\nShapley's relationship with, 82, 84, 95\u201398, 107, 109, 116, 142 _n_\n\nuniverse as measured by, 109\u201311\n\n_Hubble Atlas of Galaxies,_ 121\n\nHubble constant (K term), 103\u20138, 116, 120\u201321, 123, 124, 129, 130, 147 _n_\n\n\"Hubble Meters,\" 121\n\nHubble shift, 103\u20138, 110, 115\u201316, 125\n\nHubble Space Telescope, 98, 122, 123\n\n\"Hubble Wars,\" 121\n\nHumason, Milton, 104\u20135, 106, 107\n\nhydrogen, 103, 104\n\nHyperion, 134 _n_\n\nInternational Astronomical Union, 90\u201391\n\nInternet, 117\u201318, 147 _n_\n\ninterstellar dust, 78\u201379\n\ninverse square law, 44, 50, 53, 61, 65, 74, 101, 115\n\n\"island universes,\" 12, 59\u201362, 68, 71, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 84, 92\u201398, 109, 110, 124, 143 _n_\n\n_Ivernia,_ H.M.S., 36\n\nJames, Henry, 90\n\nJames, William, 90\n\nJeans, James, 62, 93, 143 _n_\n\nJesus Christ, 12\n\nKant, Immanuel, 59\n\nKapteyn, Jacobus, 63, 68, 84\n\nKapteyn universe, 63\n\nKeck telescope, 122\n\nKendrick, Mary, 25\n\nKennedy, John F., 7\n\nKepler, Johannes, 48, 50\n\nKirchhoff, Gustav, 102\u20133\n\nKowalewsky, Sonja, 118\u201319\n\nK term (Hubble constant), 103\u20138, 116, 120\u201321, 123, 124, 129, 130, 147 _n_\n\nlamplight, 16\n\nLaplace, Pierre-Simon, 59\n\nLeavitt, Caroline, 25\n\nLeavitt, Darwin, 25, 39\n\nLeavitt, Erasmus Darwin (grandfather), 25\u201326\n\nLeavitt, Erasmus Darwin (uncle), 26, 27, 33, 37\u201338, 42, 66, 89\n\nLeavitt, George, 25, 33, 39\n\nLeavitt, George Roswell, 25, 26, 35\u201336, 42, 137 _n_\n\nLeavitt, Henrietta Swan:\n\nas astronomer, 27, 30\u201333, 55\u201358, 88, 90\u201392, 104, 118\u201322\n\nbackground of, 25\u201328\n\nbiographical information on, xiii\u2013xiv, 25\u201328, 30\u201333, 90, 117, 120, 147 _n_\n\nin Cambridge, Mass., 25\u201328, 32\u201333, 36, 37\u201338, 39, 41\u201342, 66, 85, 88\u201389, 120, 140 _n,_ 142 _n_\n\nin Cleveland, Ohio, 26, 28\n\nas computer, xiii, 9, 22, 23\u201333, 36, 37, 39\u201342, 52, 55\u201358, 59, 66\u201367, 88, 90\u201392, 119\u201320\n\ncorrespondence of, xiii, 22, 23, 30\u201333, 39\u201342, 88, 120\n\ndeafness of, 23, 28, 31, 32, 33, 44, 86, 136 _n,_ 137 _n_\n\ndeath of, 22, 28, 82, 89\u201392, 117, 118\u201320\n\ndesk of, 91, 117\n\neducation of, 25, 26\u201327, 28, 31\n\nEurope visited by, 30, 33, 36\n\nas female scientist, xiii\u2013xiv, 23\u201325, 27, 88, 118\n\nfinances of, 31\u201332, 90\n\n\"ghost\" of, 117\n\ngrave site of, 89\u201390\n\nillnesses of, 31\u201333, 39, 56, 88\u201389\n\nInternet planetarium named after, 117\u201318, 147 _n_\n\nlast will of, 90\n\nlunar crater named after, 118\n\nmagnitude studied by, 28\u201330, 39\u201344\n\non Nantucket Island, 66\n\nNobel Prize nomination for, 118\u201319\n\nnotebook of, 9\u201310, 29, 56\u201357, 135 _n_ \u201336 _n_\n\nobituary of, 28\n\npersonality of, 28, 56\n\nphotographs of, 23, _24_\n\nphysical appearance of, 23\u201324\n\npress coverage of, 37\n\nprogress reports of, 38, 42\n\npublications of, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39\u201340, 42, 43, 56, 57\u201358\n\nin Beloit, Wisc., 30\u201333, 36, 39\u201342\n\nreligious affiliation of, 25, 28, 118\n\nreputation of, xiii\u2013xiv, 28, 34, 37, 104, 117\u201320\n\nscientific research of, xiii\u2013xiv, 30\u201333, 36\u201344, 55\u201358, 85, 86, 90\u201396, 118\u201320, 124\n\nShapley's views on, 59, 66\u201367, 119\u201320\n\nvariable stars studied by, 29\u201330, 34\u201339, 40, 42\u201344, 53\u201355, 62, 75, 76, 85, 91\u201392, 113, 116, 119\u201320\n\nviewing instruments used by, 23\u201324, 35, 41, 58\n\nas volunteer, 25, 27\u201333\n\nwages of, 9, 31\u201332\n\nLeavitt, Henrietta Swan Kendrick, 25, 42, 57, 85, 90, 142 _n_\n\nLeavitt, Josiah, 25\n\nLeavitt, Martha, 25\n\nLeavitt, Mira, 25, 89\n\nLeavitt, Roswell, 25, 89\n\nLeavitt pumping engine, 26\n\nLick Observatory, 61, 92, 111\n\nlight:\n\nabsence of, 16, 129\n\ncurvature of, 90, 130\n\ngravity and, 130\n\npollution from, 12, 112, 122\n\nspeed of, 5\u20136, 7, 44, 69, 74, 116\n\n\"tired,\" 104, 108, 129\n\nwaves of, 60\u201361, 101\u20137, 129\n\nlight-years, 7, 74, 116\n\nlinear relationships, 105\u20136\n\n_Liometopum apiculatum,_ 62\u201363\n\n\"Local Group\" galaxies, 7, 122\u201323\n\nLongy School of Music, 38\n\nLowell, Abbott Lawrence, 85\u201386\n\nLowell Observatory, 60\n\nlunar parallax, 46\u201347, _47,_ 48\n\nLundmark, Knut, 92\u201394, 97\n\nM33 (Triangulum) galaxy, 92\u201393, 94, 114, 123\n\nMacCormack, Miss, 105\n\nMaffei Group, 7\n\nMagellan, Ferdinand, 34\n\nMagellanic Clouds:\n\nas galaxies, 11, 34\u201335, 55, 123\n\nLarge, 34, 85, 92\n\nphotograph of, _35_\n\nSmall, 34, 36\u201337, 53, 55, 85, 118\n\nvariable stars in, 35\u201339, 40, 43\u201344, 53\u201355, 56, 64, 66\u201367, 76, 85, 92, 95, 96, 100, 113, 119\n\nmagnitude:\n\napparent, 11, 14\u201318, 28\u201330, 38\u201344, 56, 58, 106, 111, 119\n\naverage, 92, 101\u20132, 125\n\nfifteenth, 37, 75, 134 _n_\n\nfifth, 14\u201315\n\nfirst, 14\u201315\n\nfourteenth, 15, 134 _n_\n\nintrinsic, 11, 43\u201344, 45, 50, 53, 55, 58, 74, 100\u2013101, 111, 113, 116, 119, 125, 139 _n_\n\nmeasurement of, 14\u201318, 39\u201340, 56\u201358, 114\u201315\n\nperiod and, 38\u201339, 43, 59, 64, 85, 94, 96, 113, 114\u201315, 119, 124, 138 _n_\n\nrange of, 14\u201315, 65\n\nsixteenth, 58\n\nsixth, 14\n\ntemperature and, 74\u201375\n\ntenth, 58\n\nMallon, Thomas, ix\n\nMalmquist bias, 125\n\nMarch Comet (1843), 12\n\nMaria Mitchell Observatory, 66\n\nMars, 18, 48\u201349, 138 _n_\n\nMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 15\n\nMauna Kea Observatory, 12, 122\n\nMaury, Antonia Caetana, 20, 87\n\nMerz and Mahler, 14\n\nMessier, Charles, 92\n\nMilky Way:\n\ncenter of, 63, 69, 107\u20138\n\ncosmic dust in, 78\u201379, 111\u201313\n\ngalactic plane of, 78, 112\n\nas galaxy, 34\u201335, 76\u201379, 99\u2013100, 109, 122\u201323\n\ngas clouds in, 8, 12, 51\u201352, 59, 60, 68, 76, 78, 80\n\nglobular clusters in, 63\u201366, 69, 74, 77, 85, 111, 113, 114, 119, 146 _n_\n\ngravitational field of, 61\n\nGreat Debate on (1920), 70\u201381, 86, 98, 115, 120\u201322, 133 _n,_ 140 _n_ \u201341 _n_\n\nmeasurement of, 62\u201381, 82, 84, 94\u201395, 109\u201310, 111, 112\u201313, 115, 119, 138 _n,_ 143 _n_\n\nneighboring galaxies of, 11, 34\u201335, 77, 122\u201323, 125\n\nopen clusters in, 111\u201312\n\npoles of, 78\n\nshape of, 60, 62, _63,_ 63\u201364\n\nsize of, xiii, 7, 8, 54, 62\u201381, 82, 94\u201395, 98, 109\u201313, 115, 119, 138 _n,_ 143 _n_\n\nsun's position in, 11, 54, 63, 69, 75, 99, 110\n\nas universe, xiii, 8, 59\u201362, 69, 70, 84, 92\u201396, 98\n\n\"zone of avoidance\" in, 78\u201380\n\n_see also_ universe\n\nMillerites, 12\n\nMiras, 124\n\nMittag-Leffler, G\u00f6sta, 118\u201319\n\n\"Monkey Trial\" (1925), 99\u2013100\n\nmoon:\n\ncraters on, 118\n\ndistance to, 46\u201347, _47,_ 48, 124, 130\n\nexploration of, 7\n\nMount Harvard, 17\n\nMount Palomar Observatory, 12, 115, 122, 128\n\nMount Wilson Observatory, 12, 17, 41, 56, 62\u201363, 64\u201367, 68, 69, 84, 95\u201397, 101, 104\u20137, 114\n\nNational Academy of Sciences, 70\u201381, 141 _n_\n\nNazism, 73\n\nnebulae:\n\nchemical composition of, 60, 78, 103\n\ndistance of, 59\u201362, 101\u20132, 109\n\nextra-galactic, 109\n\nas galaxies, 11\u201312, 51\u201352, 59\u201362, 68\u201369, 70, 75\u201376, 95\u201398\n\nas gas clouds, 8, 12, 51\u201352, 59, 60, 68, 76, 78, 80\n\nas \"island universes,\" 12, 59\u201362, 68, 71, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 84, 92\u201398, 109, 110, 124, 143 _n_\n\nnovae in, 61, 68, 78, 94, 124\u201325\n\nnumber of, 59\u201360\n\nphotographs of, 20, 59\u201360\n\npinwheel, 68\u201369, 92, 97\u201398\n\nrotation of, 68\u201369, 84, 92\u201394, 97\u201398, 125, 143 _n_\n\nsize of, 75\u201376\n\nspectra of, 60, 70, 78, 102\u20138\n\nspiral, 59, 60, 61, 68\u201369, 75\u201376, 78\u201379, 80, 84, 92\u201394, 97\u201398, 114, 125, 143 _n_\n\nas star matter, 59, 60, 61, 78\u201380\n\nvelocity of, 60\u201361, 84, 92, 102\u20137\n\nwhirlpool, 68, 97\u201398\n\n_see also_ galaxies\n\nNew General Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters (NGC), 61, 95\n\nNewton, Isaac, 93\n\n_New York Herald,_ 18\n\nNGC 6822, 95\u201396\n\nNGC 6946, 61\n\nNGC 7619, 105\u20136\n\nNobel Prize, 118\u201319\n\n\"noncosmological\" events, 129\u201330\n\nNorth Polar Sequence, 39\u201342, 56\u201358,\n\n90, 91\u201392\n\nNorth Star, 16, 29, 53, 124\n\nnovae:\n\nbrightness of, 61, 124\u201325, 139 _n_\n\ndiscovery of, 94\u201396\n\nlight curves of, 90\n\nin nebulae, 61, 68, 78, 94, 124\u201325\n\nsuper-, 124\u201325\n\n\"O Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me\" mnemonic, 86\n\nOberlin College, 26, 28\n\nobservation points, 45\u201350\n\nObservatory Hill, _10,_ 12\u201313, 38, 117\n\n_Observatory Pinafore, The,_ 9, 21\u201322, _22_\n\n\"On Running in Trails\" (Shapley), 62\u201363\n\n\"On the Motions of Spirals\" (Lundmark), 93\n\nopen clusters, 111\u201312\n\noptical illusions, 111\u201312, 115, 130\n\noptical interferometer, 122\n\nO'Reilly, Miss, 56\n\nOrion, 6, 17\n\nOxford University, 83\n\nparallax, 2, 45\u201349, _51,_ 53\u201355, 65, 80\u201381, 116, 123\u201324, 138 _n,_ 145 _n_\n\nparsecs, 116\n\nPayne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia, 87\u201388, 91\u201392, 94\u201396, 98, 119\n\n\"peculiar motions,\" 125\n\nPeirce, Charles Sanders, 16\n\npendulum clocks, 48\n\nperiod-luminosity law, 50\u201355\n\nCepheid variables in, xiii\u2013xiv, 43\u201344, 53\u201355, 56, 62, 64, 66\u201367, 72, 76, 88, 94\u201396, 101, 102, 120\n\ndistance measured by, 54\u201355, 66\u201367, 76, 101\u20132, 119, 124\n\nHubble's use of, xiii\u2013xiv, 94\u201396, 120\n\nimplications of, 50\u201355, 67, 116, 118\u201320\n\nLeavitt's analysis of, xiv, 11, 44, 45, 66\u201367, 118\u201320, 138 _n_\n\nperiod-luminosity relationship in, 38\u201339, 43, 59, 64\u201367, 76, 85, 94, 96, 113, 114\u201315, 119, 124, 138 _n_\n\nShapley's use of, xiii\u2013xiv, 59, 62, 66\u201367, 72, 75, 119\u201320\n\nPeru, 17\u201318\n\nPhiladelphia High School, 12\n\nphotographic plates:\n\nblack-star negatives of, 10\u201311, 30\n\ncomparison of, 59\u201360, 68, 95\u201396, 107\n\nemulsion of, 10, 28\u201329\n\nexposure of, 23\u201325, 61, 94\n\nmagnitude measured by, 14, 17\u201318\n\nstorage of, 10\u201311, 20, 117\n\ntime exposure of, 17, 28\u201330, 94\n\nphotometry, 16, 28\u201330, 56, 81, 86, 88, 90\u201391\n\nphysics, 15, 73, 77, 93, 100\n\nPickering, Edward Charles:\n\nas astronomer, 15\u201318, 55\u201356, 107, 121\u201322\n\ncorrespondence of, 23, 30\u201333, 39\u201342, 59, 66\u201367, 85\n\ndeath of, 67, 73, 85\n\nas Harvard Observatory director, 15\u201321, 73, 86\u201387, 88, 91\u201392\n\nLeavitt's relationship with, 25, 27\u201333, 37, 39\u201342, 55\u201356, 59, 66\u201367\n\nphotograph of, _19_\n\nas professor, 15, 27\n\npublications of, 43\n\nsalary of, 21\n\nShapley's relationship with, 59, 66\u201367, 85\n\nPickering, William, 18\n\nPilgrim Congregational Church, 25\n\npinwheel nebulae, 68\u201369, 92, 97\u201398\n\nplanetary orbits, 48, 54\n\nPleiades, 17, 111\n\nPolaris, 16, 29, 53, 124\n\nPopulation I, 114\u201315\n\nPopulation II, 114\u201315, 146 _n_\n\nPrinceton University, 82\n\nprisms, 60, 102\u20137\n\nProcyon, 52\n\n\"proto solar systems,\" 59\n\nprotractors, 45\n\nPtolemy, 48\n\nPuritanism, 25, 28\n\nquadratic relationships, 105\n\nquasars, 128\u201330\n\nradar signals, 47\n\nRadcliffe College, 26\u201327, 31, 136 _n_\n\nradial velocity, 64\n\nradioactive dating, 111\n\n\"Realm of the Nebulae, The\" (Hubble), 106\n\nrecessional velocities, 102\u20137, 123\n\nredshift, 60\u201361, 64, 102\u20138, 110, 113, 115\u201316, 123, 125, 128\u201330\n\nred stars, 56, 75\n\nrelativity, theory of, 5\u20136, 71, 98, 107\u20138, 130\n\nreligion, 12, 36, 69, 100, 118\n\nrobotics, 122\n\nRR Lyraes, 124\n\nRussell, Henry Norris, 45, 55, 64, 73, 74, 79, 82, 85, 86, 96, 97\n\nRussian Imperial Observatory, 14\n\nSagan, Carl, 11\n\nSagittarius, 69, 95\u201396\n\nSandage, Allan, 98, 115\u201316, 121\n\nsatellites, 123\u201324\n\nSaturn, 14, 134 _n_\n\n\"Scale of the Universe\" debate (1920), 70\u201381, 86, 98, 113, 115, 120\u201322, 133 _n,_ 140 _n_ \u201341 _n_\n\n\"Scale of the Universe\" debate (1996), 120\u201322\n\nSchmidt, Maarten, 128\n\nscience fiction, 5\u20136, 7\n\nScopes, John T., 99\n\nSculptor Group, 7\n\nSecond Coming, 12\n\n\"1777 Variables in the Magellanic Clouds\" (Leavitt), 38\u201339\n\nShakespeare, William, 21\n\nShapley, Harlow:\n\nants as interest of, 62\u201363, 69\n\nas astronomer, 72\u201373, 82, 85\u201386, 92\u201394, 98, 107\n\nbackground of, 64, 82\n\nCepheid standard used by, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 72, 74, 75, 76, 85, 94, 109\u201310, 113\n\ncorrespondence of, 59, 66\u201367, 85\n\ngalaxy cluster named after, 118\n\nin Great Debate (1920), 70\u201381, 86, 98, 113, 115, 120\u201322, 133 _n,_ 140 _n_ \u201341 _n_\n\nas Harvard Observatory director, 72\u201373, 82, 85\u201386, 107\n\nHubble's relationship with, 82, 84, 95\u201398, 107, 109, 116, 142 _n_\n\nLeavitt as viewed by, 59, 66\u201367, 119\u201320\n\nMilky Way as measured by (Big Galaxy theory), 62\u201381, 82, 84, 94\u201395, 109\u201310, 111, 112\u201313, 115, 119, 138 _n,_ 143 _n_\n\nat Mount Wilson Observatory, 62\u201363, 64\u201367, 68, 69, 84, 98, 107\n\nnebulae as viewed by, 62, 74\u201376, 79, 80, 92\u201398, 146 _n_\n\nperiod-luminosity law used by, xiii\u2013xiv, 59, 62, 66\u201367, 72, 75, 119\u201320\n\npersonality of, 62\u201363, 82, 92\u201393, 109\n\nphotograph of, _71_\n\nreputation of, 72\u201373, 79, 80, 85\u201386, 98, 118\n\n\"village in the canyon\" analogy and, 80\u201381, 116, 133 _n_\n\nShapley's curve, 65, 72, 94, 109\u201310, 113\n\nSirius, 6, 15, 50, 52\n\n61 Cygni, 52\n\nSlipher, Vesto Melvin, 60\u201361\n\nSociety for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, 26\n\nsodium, 102\n\nsolar systems, 59, 99\n\nspace, 16, 78\u201379, 104, 111\u201313\n\nspace program, U.S., 7\n\nspace shuttle, 7\n\nspace-time curvature, 16, 104\n\nspace travel, 5\u20136, 11\n\nspectral lines, 102\u20137\n\nspectral type, 86, 87\u201388\n\nspectrographic analysis, 15, 20, 29, 56, 60, 70, 78, 86, 87\u201388, 102\u20138, 114\u201315\n\n_Springfield Daily News,_ 99\n\nstar matter, 59, 60, 61, 78\u201380\n\nstars:\n\nappearance of, 38\u201339, 43\u201344, 45, 74\u201375, 77\n\nbinary, 51, 52, 64\n\nblue, 74\u201375, 77\n\nB-type, 74\u201375\n\nchemical composition of, 15, 102\u20133, 114\u201315, 124\n\nclassification of, 16\u201317, 20, 86, 87\u201388\n\ncoordinates of, 35\n\ndata on, 15\u201316, 18\n\ndistance of, 6, 8, 15, 38\u201339, 43\u201344, 50\u201355\n\neclipses of, 29\n\nexploding, 101, 124\u201325\n\nmagnitude of, _see_ magnitude\n\nmotion of, 15, 64\u201365\n\nposition of, 15\n\npulsation of, 29\u201330, 36\u201337, 43\u201344, 45, 53\u201355, 64, 65, 76, 85, 100, 124\n\nred, 56, 75\n\nspectra of, 15, 20, 29, 56, 60, 70, 78, 86, 87\u201388, 102\u20138, 114\u201315\n\ntemperature of, 74\u201375\n\nvariable, _see_ variable stars\n\nvelocity of, 64\u201365\n\n_see also specific stars_\n\nstatistical parallax, 65, 124, 145 _n_\n\nstellar aggregations, 111\u201312\n\nstellar photometry, 16, 28\u201330, 56, 81, 86, 88, 90\u201391\n\nstellar regions, 116\n\nSullivan, Arthur, 21\n\nSummer House Hill, 12\u201313\n\nsun:\n\nbrightness of, 50, 74\n\ndistance of, 50\n\neclipses of, 15, 46\u201347\n\nmovement of, 54\n\nposition of, 11, 54, 63, 69, 75, 99, 110\n\nspectrum of, 103\n\nas star, 59, 77, 80\n\nsuperclusters, 7\u20138, 123\n\nSuper-Galaxy Hypothesis, 146 _n_\n\nsuperluminal motion, 129\n\nsupernovae, 124\u201325\n\nsurveyor's transits, 45\n\nSwan, _see_ Cygnus\n\nTammann, Gustav A., 120\u201321\n\ntelepathy, 5\u20136\n\ntelescopes:\n\nimprovement of, 51\u201352\n\nlenses of, 14, 16, 17\n\nlimitations of, 130\n\nmechanical clockworks for, 17\n\nmirrors of, 16, 51\n\nreflectors for, 122\n\n_see also specific telescopes and observatories_\n\n_Third Cambridge Catalog of Radio_ _Sources,_ 129\n\n3C273 quasar, 128, 129\n\ntime, 5, 16, 104\n\n_Time for the Stars_ (Heinlein), 5\u20136\n\n\"tired light\" theory, 104, 108, 129\n\ntransit of Venus, 49\u201350, 138 _n_\n\ntransverse velocity, 65\n\ntriangulation, 2\u20133, _2,_ 45\u201355, _51,_ 80\u201381, 99\u2013102, 130, 138 _n_\n\nTriangulum (M33) galaxy, 92\u201393, 94, 114, 123\n\ntrigonometry, 2, 45\u201349, 52, 80\u201381, 124, 130\n\nTrumpler, Robert, 111\u201312\n\nTully-Fisher method, 125\n\n_Two Moons_ (Mallon), ix\n\n_Two on a Tower_ (Hardy), ix, 117\n\nType Ia supernovae, 125\n\nuniformity principle, 77\u201378, 93, 96, 100, 113\u201314\n\nuniverse:\n\nage of, 110\u201311, 115, 120, 125\n\nbig bang theory of, 16, 108, 110\u201311, 115, 116, 120, 126, 129\n\ncenter of, 69\n\nexpansion of, 106\u20138, 125\u201326\n\nhuman position in, 69, 107\u20138, 125\u201326\n\nmapping of, 11, 16, 99\u2013101\n\nMilky Way as, xiii, 8, 59\u201362, 69, 70, 84, 92\u201396, 98\n\nsize of, 7\u20138, 11, 98, 109\u201316, 120\u201326, 147 _n_ \u201348 _n_\n\nstatic, 107\u20138\n\nuniformity principle in, 77\u201378, 93, 96, 100, 113\u201314\n\n_see also_ Milky Way\n\nUniversity of Chicago, 83\n\nUniversity of Missouri, 82\n\nUniversity of Pennsylvania, 62\u201363\n\nunmanned space probes, 7\n\nUranus, 51\n\nUrsa Major, 6\n\nvan den Bergh, Sidney, 120\u201321\n\nvan Maanen, Adriaan, 68\u201369, 84, 92\u201393, 97\u201398, 143 _n_\n\nvariable stars:\n\ncluster, 64\u201365, 115, 124\n\nidentification of, 29\u201330, 34\u201339, 40, 42\u201344, 45, 53\u201355, 62, 64\u201365, 75, 76, 85, 91\u201392, 94\u201396, 100, 107, 113, 116, 119\u201320\n\nin Magellanic Clouds, 35\u201339, 40, 43\u201344, 53\u201355, 56, 64, 66\u201367, 76, 85, 92, 95, 96, 100, 113, 119\n\n\"overtones\" of, 124\n\npulsation of, 29\u201330, 36\u201337, 43\u201344, 45, 53\u201355, 64, 65, 76, 85, 100, 124\n\n_see also_ Cepheid variables\n\nVaucouleurs, Gerard de, 121\n\nVega, 52\n\nvelocity, 60\u201361, 64\u201365, 84, 92, 102\u20137, 116, 123\n\nVenus, transit of, 49\u201350, 138 _n_\n\n\"village in the canyon\" analogy, 1\u20135, 8, 80\u201381, 116, 127\u201328, 133 _n_\n\nVirgo, 7\n\nvirgocentric flow, 125\n\nVirgo Cluster, 7, 123, 125\n\nVirgo Supercluster, 123\n\n_Washington Post,_ 37\n\nWatson, James D., 38\n\nWeierstrass, Karl, 119\n\nwhirlpool nebulae, 68, 97\u201398\n\nWhite Mountains, 16\n\nWilliams College, 26\n\nwomen:\n\nacademic appointments of, 87, 91\n\nas computers, 19\u201325, 86\u201388\n\neducation of, 26\u201327, 87\n\nWorld War I, 83\u201384\n\nWorld War II, 114\n\nyellow-white stars, 77\n\nZ\u00f6llner astrophotometer, 16\n\nzone of avoidance, 78\u201380\nCopyright\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2005 by George Johnson\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\n\nFirst Edition\n\nFor information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110\n\nManufacturing by R. R. Donnelley, Harrisonburg Division\n\nBook design by Chris Welch\n\nProduction manager: Julia Druskin\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nJohnson, George, date.\n\nMiss Leavitt's stars : the untold story of the woman who discovered how\n\nto measure the universe \/ George Johnson.\u2014 1st ed.\n\np. cm. \u2014 (Great discoveries)\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\n**ISBN 0-393-05128-5**\n\n**ISBN 978-0-39334-837-8 (e-book)**\n\n1. Astrometry\u2014History. 2. Leavitt, Henrietta Swan, 1868\u20131921. 3. Astronomical photometry. 4. Astronomy\u2014United States\u2014History\u201420th century.\n\nI. Title. II. Series.\n\nQB807.J64 2005\n\n522'.09'04\u2014dc22\n\n2005002823\n\nAtlas Books, 10 E. 53rd St., 35th Fl., New York NY 10022\n\nW.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110\n\nwww.wwnorton.com\n\nW.W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75\/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT\nOther Works\n\nPUBLISHED TITLES IN THE GREAT DISCOVERIES SERIES\n\nDavid Foster Wallace\n\n_Everything and More: A Compact History of_ \u221e\n\nSherwin B. Nuland\n\n_The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, \nand the Strange Story of Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis_\n\nMichio Kaku\n\n_Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our \nUnderstanding of Space and Time_\n\nBarbara Goldsmith\n\n_Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie_\n\nRebecca Goldstein\n\n_Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt G\u00f6del_\n\nMadison Smartt Bell\n\n_Lavoisier in the Year One: \nThe Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution_\n\nGeorge Johnson\n\n_Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman \nWho Discovered How to Measure the Universe_\n\nFORTHCOMING TITLES\n\nDavid Leavitt on Alan Turing and the Computer\n\nRichard Reeves on Rutherford and the Atom\n\nDaniel Mendelsohn on Archimedes and the Science of the Ancient Greeks\n\nWilliam T.Vollmann on Copernicus and the Copernican Revolution\n\nDavid Quammen on Darwin and Evolution\n\nGeneral Editors: Edwin Barber and Jesse Cohen\n\nBY GEORGE JOHNSON\n\n_Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and_\n\n_Paranoia in American Politics_\n\n_Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence_\n\n_In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads_\n\n_Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order_\n\n_Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and_ \n_the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics_\n\n_A Shortcut Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer_\n\n_Miss Leavitt's Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman_ \n_Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe_\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":" \nPRAISE FOR\n\nTHE DRAGON CONSPIRACY\n\n\"I'm at a loss for words here, since I have no idea how to fully convey how much I loved _The Dragon Conspiracy_ . . . With Makenna's typical sarcastic narration, nearly nonstop action, and plot twists which completely surprised me, _The Dragon Conspiracy_ left me aching for more.\"\n\n\u2014All Things Urban Fantasy\n\n\"[Shearin's] skillful ability to combine scary and heart-stopping chills with laugh-out-loud humor is part of what makes her books such addictive gems.\"\n\n\u2014 _RT Book Reviews_\n\n\"With _The Dragon Conspiracy_ , Lisa Shearin has gotten even more awesome! . . . [It] contains all of Shearin's trademarks: witty dialogue, a winning protagonist, and a plot that doesn't quit. I can't recommend Shearin's work enough.\"\n\n\u2014Tynga's Reviews\n\n\"A fantastic ensemble . . . A fun and thrilling urban fantasy adventure with characters I'd love to go out and have a drink with.\"\n\n\u2014Bea's Book Nook\n\n\"Lisa Shearin has painted a wonderful picture of New York and all of its supernatural inhabitants . . . A fast-paced, fun read with all kinds of supernatural goodness and great world-building.\"\n\n\u2014Wicked Little Pixie\n\n\"Funny, frightening, fast-paced . . . Imminent disaster has never been more fun.\"\n\n\u201438 Caliber Reviews\n\n\"A fast-paced urban fantasy, pack[ed] with action and interesting characters and surprises in most every turn.\"\n\n\u2014Ami's Hoard\n\nPRAISE FOR\n\nTHE GRENDEL AFFAIR\n\n\"Lisa Shearin always delivers a great story. Fresh and exciting, humorous and action-packed, _The Grendel Affair_ is urban fantasy at its best.\"\n\n\u2014Ilona Andrews, #1 _New York Times_ bestselling author of _Magic Shifts_\n\n\"Throw Stephanie Plum, _The X-Files_ , and tequila in a blender and experience it all explode in your face with murder, mystery, the supernatural, tea-drinking dragons, and a hot partner who always has your back (and he might have a little more if given half a chance). Nonstop action, hilarious klutziness, romance, and lethal Lotharios everywhere. What could be better?\"\n\n\u2014Rob Thurman, _New York Times_ bestselling author of _Nevermore_\n\n\"In Lisa Shearin's SPI Files series, seer Makenna Fraser brings Southern sass, smarts, and charm to the mean streets of Manhattan as she battles monsters and other magical beings. An action-packed mix of monsters, magic, and mayhem that will keep you turning the pages.\"\n\n\u2014Jennifer Estep, _New York Times_ bestselling author of _Dark Heart of Magic_\n\n\"One of the best parts of being an author is getting to read books like _The Grendel Affair_ before they're published. One of the most frustrating parts is sitting here asking, 'When does the next one come out?' before book one is even in print. This was great fun, with engaging characters and plenty of fast-paced action. But seriously, when does the next one come out?\"\n\n\u2014Jim C. Hines, author of _Revisionary_\n\n\"One of the strongest parts of this book is the humor. It is deadpan and had me laughing out loud.\"\n\n\u2014Fiction Vixen\n\n\"Light, bouncy, and just fun to read, this book is the perfect antidote for doom and gloom.\"\n\n\u2014Bookyurt\n\nPRAISE FOR THE RAINE BENARES NOVELS\n\n\"Dazzling wit and clever humor. It's gritty, funny, and sexy\u2014a wonderful addition to the urban fantasy genre . . . From now on Lisa Shearin is on my auto-buy list!\"\n\n\u2014Ilona Andrews\n\n\"An enchanting read from the very first page . . . [Shearin is] definitely an author to watch!\"\n\n\u2014Anya Bast, _New York Times_ bestselling author of _Embrace of the Damned_\n\n\"Exceptional . . . Shearin has proven herself to be an expert storyteller with the enviable ability to provide both humor and jaw-dropping action.\"\n\n\u2014 _RT Book Reviews_\n\n\"Lisa Shearin's fun, action-packed writing style gives this world life and vibrancy.\"\n\n\u2014Fresh Fiction\n\n\"An exciting, catch-me-if-you-can, lightning-fast-paced tale of magic and evil filled with goblins, elves, mages, and a hint of love interest.\"\n\n\u2014Monsters and Critics\nAce Books by Lisa Shearin\n\nThe Raine Benares Novels\n\nMAGIC LOST, TROUBLE FOUND\n\nARMED & MAGICAL\n\nTHE TROUBLE WITH DEMONS\n\nBEWITCHED & BETRAYED\n\nCON & CONJURE\n\nALL SPELL BREAKS LOOSE\n\nThe SPI Files Novels\n\nTHE GRENDEL AFFAIR\n\nTHE DRAGON CONSPIRACY\n\nTHE BRIMSTONE DECEPTION\n\n** **\n\n**An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC**\n\n**375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014**\n\nTHE BRIMSTONE DECEPTION\n\nAn Ace Book \/ published by arrangement with the author\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2016 by Lisa Shearin.\n\nPenguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.\n\nACE\u00ae is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.\n\nThe \"A\" design is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.\n\nFor more information, visit penguin.com.\n\neBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61845-5\n\nPUBLISHING HISTORY\n\nAce mass-market edition \/ February 2016\n\nCover illustration by Julie Dillon.\n\nCover design by Judith Lagerman.\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nVersion_1\n\n# CONTENTS\n\n_Praise for Lisa Shearin_\n\n_Ace Books by Lisa Shearin_\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\nChapter 1\n\nChapter 2\n\nChapter 3\n\nChapter 4\n\nChapter 5\n\nChapter 6\n\nChapter 7\n\nChapter 8\n\nChapter 9\n\nChapter 10\n\nChapter 11\n\nChapter 12\n\nChapter 13\n\nChapter 14\n\nChapter 15\n\nChapter 16\n\nChapter 17\n\nChapter 18\n\nChapter 19\n\nChapter 20\n\nChapter 21\n\nChapter 22\n\nChapter 23\n\nChapter 24\n\nChapter 25\n\nChapter 26\n\nChapter 27\n\nChapter 28\n\nChapter 29\n\nChapter 30\n\nChapter 31\n\nChapter 32\n\nChapter 33\n\n_About the Author_\n\n# 1\n\nI wasn't sure this qualified as a first date.\n\nYes, I was having lunch with one of the richest and most eligible bachelors of not only Manhattan but also another dimension. We were in a trendy new restaurant in Tribeca, with a celebrity chef in the kitchen. Two nights ago, I'd played a big part\u2014along with said inter-dimensional bachelor\u2014in saving the lives of the supernatural citizens of the tristate area.\n\nThat was three causes for celebration: hot guy, great food, still alive. Yay, me.\n\nThe fly in my fancy soup du jour, so to speak, was twofold.\n\nFirst, on the other side of the restaurant, and unfortunately with a clear view of our table, was my partner, Ian Byrne. My name is Makenna Fraser. Ian and I work together at a worldwide organization fighting the forces of supernatural evil. Ian thought that my date, Rake Danescu, deserved a spot near the top of our most wanted list.\n\nSecond, I was still considered a newbie and my partner was the protective type. Actually, that was part of his job. Protecting me, that is. Right now, those protective urges were getting on my last nerve. I'd had more than one near-death experience during the last few days, and was way overdue for some R&R. Having Ian only taking his eyes off of me long enough to stare crosshairs onto Rake's forehead was taking the rest right out of my relaxation. We'd recently decided that a healthy mentor\/mentee relationship shouldn't also be a romantic relationship. I had to admit that took a lot of the tension\u2014sexual and otherwise\u2014out of our workday, which was good for focusing on the bad guys and not my partner's mighty fine backside. But right now, Ian was putting plenty of tension right back in. He wasn't jealous\u2014at least I didn't think he was. I think he was being protective of his still relatively new partner.\n\n\"I knew you were reluctant to accept my invitation,\" Rake murmured, \"but I assure you a bodyguard wasn't necessary.\"\n\nI sighed. \"I didn't tell him.\" It was a coincidence that we were all here at the same time. A really unpleasant and awkward coincidence.\n\nRake smiled slowly. \"You didn't tell him? Oh, I like this devious side of you.\"\n\n\"I'm not being devious. My personal life isn't anyone's business but my own.\"\n\n\"I don't think he agrees with you.\"\n\n\"Doesn't appear that way, does it?\"\n\nRake peered around a waiter to see who my partner was having lunch with, and to provoke Ian even more, he made a leisurely show of appreciating the view. I thought I heard Ian growl all the way from our table. Kylie gave Rake a smile and finger wave.\n\nThey knew each other.\n\nOf course they did. They were both breathtakingly beautiful supernaturals.\n\nRake Danescu was a goblin. Kylie O'Hara was a dryad.\n\nKylie was a friend and coworker. Different department, same secret organization.\n\nInterspecies dating wasn't frowned on by most supernaturals. Heck, dryads didn't have much of a choice. All dryads were female, and they all came from trees, so their intraspecies dating pool was more of a puddle. Unless they were lesbians or had a thing for botanicals, dryads had to hunt elsewhere when looking for love. Kylie had dark hair, green eyes, was five foot nothing, and like her sisters down through history, could probably get any man she wanted with the crook of one dainty digit.\n\nIan had had a crush on Kylie since she started at SPI. Though \"crush\" sounded like something out of high school. Let's say he admired her from afar, because getting close would violate one of the personal rules my stoic partner wouldn't allow himself to break\u2014no workplace romance. I'd told him numerous times to just ask her out already. But in the end, it wasn't my doing that resulted in them being here together, it was the same near-death experience that had gotten me here with Rake. When Death does heavy breathing on the back of your neck, you reexamine your life. My partner decided that life was too uncertain to throw away potential happiness.\n\nI smiled. The rule of \"no workplace romance\" was presently being bent until it squealed in Caf\u00e9 Mina's corner booth. I wondered which of his \"thou shalt nots\" my partner would take out for a reexamining look-see next.\n\n\"Kylie O'Hara, a lovely girl,\" Rake said. \"Though I always thought she had more discerning taste.\"\n\nI gave him a look.\n\n\"What?\" The goblin was all innocence, which was no mean feat for any goblin, let alone Rake.\n\n\"You know very well what. Ian doesn't trust you as far as he can throw you.\" I stopped and thought a moment. \"Actually less than that. Night before last, the two of you were at each other's throats, and now here you are having lunch with his partner and making goo-goo eyes at his date.\"\n\n\"Goo-goo? That must be a droll, human term that I'm unfamiliar with. But if its meaning bears any resemblance to how it sounds, I assure you I have never made 'goo-goo eyes' in my life.\"\n\n\"It sounded better than undressing her with your eyes.\"\n\nRake lowered his voice to a soft rumble. \"Do I detect a hint of jealousy?\"\n\n\"In your dreams.\"\n\n\"You and Miss O'Hara battling, with me as the prize for the winner . . .\" His dark eyes turned from teasing to full smolder. \"That would be a dream worth remembering. I assure you, dearest Makenna, you are the only woman I am interested in undressing.\"\n\nI took my napkin out of my lap and calmly placed it on the table.\n\n\"Are you required to check in with Agent Byrne every hour?\" Rake asked, as I scooted my chair back to stand.\n\nI didn't even need to glance at him to know he was smiling and enjoying himself immensely. But I did need to look at him to make sure he completely understood what I was about to say.\n\n\"You know I don't. Now wipe that grin off your face.\"\n\nHe actually batted his eyelashes at me. \"What grin?\"\n\n\"The grin that's telling Ian, 'I'm up to no good with your partner, and there's nothing you can do about it.' 'Cause I can guarantee you he _will_ do something about it. Then I'll have to do something about the two of you, and no one here wants to see that.\"\n\n\"On the contrary, everyone here would _love_ to see that, myself included. And now you've piqued my curiosity. We goblins are rather like your domestic cats in that regard. Once aroused, our curiosity must be satisfied.\" The gleam in his dark eyes said that satisfying his arousal in regard to me had nothing to do with curiosity.\n\n_That_ was Ian's problem.\n\nTall, dark, sleek, and seemingly made for sex, goblins had a reputation for . . . let's just say they had a reputation. A well-deserved one. Add to that Rake being the owner of Bacchanalia, Manhattan's most exclusive sex club, and Ian's concerns were justified, as Rake hadn't even tried to hide his interest in me. In fact, I think Rake had turned teasing me and antagonizing Ian about teasing me into his newest hobby.\n\nI pushed my chair back and stood. Rake, playing at being the perfect gentleman, stood with me.\n\nIan needed to understand that I was a big girl and as such was totally aware of who Rake was and what he wanted. And he wasn't getting any of it until when\u2014or if\u2014I decided I wanted it, too. Not that it was any of Ian's business, which was another thing he needed to get through his head.\n\n\"I'll be back in a minute.\"\n\nRake smiled fully as he took his seat. Anyone watching saw an unwholesomely handsome man giving his date a dazzling smile. I saw all of that plus a pair of fangs. I was a seer. It was a rare ability that enabled me to see through wards, spells, shields, and glamours that supernaturals used to disguise themselves from the humans around them. Only about half the people in Caf\u00e9 Mina were human; the rest were a mix of supernatural races.\n\nSo I knew exactly what Rake Danescu was, in more ways than one.\n\n\"I shall eagerly await your return,\" Rake all but purred.\n\nI sighed. \"Yeah.\"\n\nI started across the restaurant, to the accompaniment of Rake's low chuckle.\n\nIan's date glanced up from her menu with a quick grin that, in the language of girlfriends everywhere, said: \"I'm so happy for you!\" Or if expressed in a single sound\u2014\"Squee!\"\n\nIan was not happy\u2014for me or anyone else\u2014and he most certainly was not fighting back an urge to squee. The only urges Ian was fighting were violent ones, and he didn't appear to be fighting very hard.\n\n\"Stop it,\" I told him.\n\nTwo words. One directive. I didn't believe in beating around the bush.\n\n\"I haven't done anything,\" he said. The \"yet\" was unspoken.\n\n\"Neither has Rake.\"\n\n\"He wants to.\"\n\nI resisted rolling my eyes. \"So does every other red-blooded man with any woman they're attracted to.\" I left \"yourself included\" unsaid. I paused. Goblins had red blood, didn't they? For the sake of my argument I'd go with yes.\n\n\"Every other red-blooded man hasn't enthralled you,\" Ian noted.\n\nKylie did a combo groan and face palm.\n\n\" _Enthralled?_ I'd ask you to please tell me you're kidding, but I know you're not.\"\n\n\"Rake Danescu is a dark mage, one of the best.\"\n\n\"And I'm a hick from the North Carolina mountains ripe for the pickin'.\"\n\n\"I did not say that.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, you did.\"\n\nMy first night on the job, Rake had magicked himself a look inside my mind. It hadn't been personal, merely business. Okay, maybe it had been a little personal. From what I understood, it'd be easier the next time. I'd been with SPI for well over a year now, and Rake hadn't tried it again.\n\nThe combativeness went out of Ian. \"Mac, I'm simply worried that\u2014\"\n\nA man screamed.\n\nAn immaculately groomed guy in a really nice suit who'd just come back from the men's room was staring in total and complete horror at his waiter. The guy was human; his waiter was not.\n\nI could see that. The man shouldn't have been able to.\n\nThe two other suit-clad men across the table from him were staring at this guy like he'd lost his mind. They looked like a trio out for a business lunch. The screaming guy had a tablet next to him on the table. Yep, business lunch. If those were his clients, the screamer wasn't making a good impression.\n\nEveryone else in the restaurant saw the waiter as what he wanted them to see\u2014a hot-beyond-belief, twentysomething, out-of-work actor waiting tables to pay the rent. I saw what he really was\u2014an incubus.\n\nSomehow the businessman, who'd now progressed from screaming to babbling, saw what I was seeing.\n\nThe incubus's features were vaguely humanoid, but more closely resembled a creature out of a bad 1950s horror movie, with translucent skin and a slit suction cup for lips.\n\nThe man stood so quickly his thighs hit the table, nearly knocking it over on the two men with him, who scooted back to keep from taking soup in the lap. One guy wasn't so lucky with his drink, shouting a word people generally tried not to say at a polite business lunch as he grabbed a napkin and blotted the front of his pants.\n\nThe hysterically babbling man didn't notice.\n\nI noticed his right hand was clenching a steak knife.\n\n\"He can see them,\" I whispered quickly to Ian.\n\nIan didn't answer. He didn't need to. He knew what I meant.\n\nThe man spun, taking in the supernaturals all around him, both diners and restaurant staff.\n\nThen he spotted the one closest to him.\n\nRake.\n\nOh no.\n\nBefore Ian could stop me, I sprinted the short distance back to our table, stopping in front of Rake, trying to block the man's view. Fat lot of good that did since the goblin was now on his feet, ready to defend himself if necessary. Rake was a head taller than me, and other than the gray skin visible on his hands, from the neck up was everything that said \"goblin\" to anyone who could see past Rake's human glamour. To me, and any other supernatural or enlightened human with a pulse who could see past that glamour, Rake was gorgeous. But I could see where silvery skin, pointed ears, and fangs could be disconcerting.\n\nThe man's eyes widened in disbelief. \"What . . . what are you?\"\n\nIan stepped up like the former cop he was, his voice low and calm. \"Sir, I need you to put down the knife.\"\n\nThe man quickly turned and saw the reassuringly human Ian.\n\n\"Do you see them?\" His words came in a rush. \"Can\u2014\"\n\n\"I see that you have a weapon, and you need to put it on the table next to you and step away.\"\n\nKylie was on her phone, no doubt calling headquarters.\n\nThe man spotted a couple sitting at the table behind us. Kelpies. Everyone else saw a nice, middle-age couple. He saw vaguely human creatures with green skin, gills, and a mouthful of sharp teeth.\n\n\"Monsters!\" he shrieked.\n\nHe staggered back, stumbling and catching himself on a bananas Foster serving cart. He stayed upright, the cart didn't. Flames ignited the closest tablecloth, and were fed by the spilled rum.\n\nPeople screamed, shouted, and ran for the exits as the sprinkler system went off.\n\nI heard a siren outside. Someone must have already called the police. Now we needed the fire department, too.\n\nRake stepped up close behind me, his lips at my ear. \"I promised you'd never be bored on a date with me.\"\n\n\"This wasn't what I had in mind.\"\n\nAll signs of playfulness were gone. \"Neither did I.\"\n\nWith his hand at the small of my back, Rake steered me toward the restaurant's kitchen, away from the fire and the crowd surging toward the front doors. In a panic, people tended to go with the obvious, even if it wasn't the closest or safest. Leave it to Rake to know the back way out of a building he'd never been in before.\n\nIan and Kylie were right behind us.\n\nI turned my head toward Ian. \"Where\u2014\"\n\n\"He dropped the knife and ran out the front,\" Ian told me. \"First one out. Right into the waiting arms of my former brothers in blue.\"\n\n\"In addition to his freedom,\" Kylie said, \"I think it's safe to say he just lost his clients _and_ the account.\"\n\n# 2\n\nGOBLINS, elves, vampires, werewolves, fairies, trolls, dwarves, and anything else you've read about in fairy tales or your favorite fantasy novel series.\n\nThey're all real.\n\nIt used to be known, confirmed, and accepted fact that all of those and more existed. Then humans went and got themselves civilized and educated. The smarter humans thought they were, and the more they thought they knew, the less they believed in things that went bump in the night.\n\nTheir disbelief didn't make any of those things any less real\u2014or deadly.\n\nIn a world where supernaturals lived alongside humans, what you couldn't see could kill you. Some of them could even bring you back from the dead and kill you again.\n\nMagic exists, monsters are real, and fighting the forces of evil is a full-time job. At least there's hazard pay.\n\nHumans, being human, merely thought up more explanations for what monsters were, and excuses for what they couldn't possibly be.\n\nTo tell you the truth, our job was a lot easier when John and Suzie Q. Public didn't know they were lucky to make it to the office every morning without getting pecked to pieces. Though that was only during the Werepigeon Infestation of 2003. Before my time, but definitely one for the agency history books.\n\nNew Yorkers pride themselves on not even batting an eye when they walk past the weird, the wacky, and the otherworldly.\n\nI've got news; if they saw someone change into a werewolf right in front of them, their blas\u00e9 would go bye-bye, probably along with the contents of their bladder. Heck, the sound effects alone\u2014bones popping, sinews stretching, muzzle elongating and sprouting fangs\u2014would be enough to send them screaming into the night.\n\nWe battle the creatures of the night and keep humans in the dark.\n\nWe're the agents of Supernatural Protection & Investigations. SPI is a worldwide organization, but New York is home to the U.S. and world headquarters.\n\nThere are two New Yorks. As if there isn't enough traffic in one.\n\nThere's the New York that millions of people see, hear, touch, smell, and in the summer when the wind's right and the garbage barges are ripe, taste. Then there's the New York that's home to the world's largest concentration of supernatural beings\u2014unseen, unheard, unknown. And it's SPI's job to keep it that way.\n\nI was one of the agency's five seers. Since the beginning of crime, some bad guys\u2014human or otherwise\u2014have depended on disguises to elude capture. While humans were limited to wigs, makeup, and the ever popular but terribly ineffective sunglasses, supernaturals could tap into their magic or buy an amulet that would enable them to alter their appearance, or even hide their entire body with a cloaking spell.\n\nIt didn't matter what they used, or how good it was, I could see right through any and all of it.\n\nSo seers were downright handy in an organization like SPI.\n\nI pointed out the bad guys, and our agents or commando teams brought them in.\n\nIan was our top agent.\n\nKylie was our director of media and public relations.\n\nAnd Rake pretty much had a permanent spot on our suspects list.\n\nRight now the four of us were sharing a booth in a coffee shop around the corner from the restaurant. The police had taken it as their interviewing room since Caf\u00e9 Mina was presently a smoke-filled ruin. One of the cops had recognized Ian from their time together in the NYPD, and one of the staff had told them that Ian had tried to disarm the hallucinating crazy guy. Since the three of us were with him, they wanted our statements as well.\n\nLucky us.\n\nIan and Rake had declared an unspoken temporary truce. I knew it wasn't due to any newfound camaraderie, but rather that it wouldn't go over well to beat the crap out of each other in front of the cops. For the moment, they could pretend to make nice.\n\nThe officer who'd taken our statements was an elf. He knew who we were and who we worked for\u2014or at least he knew who Ian and Kylie were, and everyone knew who Rake was. The elf couldn't see through Rake's glamour, but he knew what Rake's human glamour looked like. The elf didn't know me from Adam's house cat, and I was fine with that. It's never been a goal of mine to be recognized on sight by the police force of any city.\n\nFrom what the guy had been screaming while being taken into custody, it was apparent that he could see the supernaturals in the restaurant with him for what they really were. The young elven officer knew that but he couldn't exactly put that in his report. I felt bad for him, but in a place like New York, with its huge supernatural population, being able to work a case while keeping the city's biggest secret was a required talent. If he couldn't juggle, he'd better learn fast.\n\n\"The gentleman began behaving strangely after coming out of the men's room,\" Rake said. \"While you were arguing,\" he added with an amiable smile, looking right at Ian, \"I was observing.\"\n\n\"Arguing?\" the elf cop asked Ian.\n\n\"A personal matter, Officer.\"\n\nIan's face was a perfect mask of neutrality; however, from Rake's pained hiss, Ian had just introduced the heel of his boot to the top of Rake's foot. Then Ian grunted as Kylie did the same to him, except with a stiletto heel.\n\nI rolled my eyes.\n\n\"So you're implying that he may have taken a drug?\" the officer asked.\n\n\"Well, he wasn't screaming about monsters _before_ he went to the head,\" drawled a familiar voice from behind me.\n\nOur day was finally looking up.\n\nLieutenant Frederick Ash was a detective with the NYPD's drug enforcement unit and, like the elven officer, was clued in to SPI and the supernatural community. Unlike the young elf, Fred was an elf\/human hybrid. While he had enough elven blood running through his veins to use minor magic, his physical appearance lacked the jewel-tone eyes, pale skin, and pointed ears that marked the elven race, so no glamour was needed.\n\nFred was plainspoken and said it like he saw it.\n\nI liked him.\n\nI liked it even better that he was here.\n\nIan liked it enough that he and Fred did the bro-hug thing. Though they'd worked closely together during Ian's time with the NYPD, his leaving the force to come work for SPI hadn't weakened that bond. Not to mention, it helped us to have people inside the NYPD, and the reverse was true for them. A lot of crime in the city crossed the human\/supernatural barrier, which sometimes wasn't so much a barrier as a chalk outline on a sidewalk, an outline drawn around human and supernatural alike.\n\nKylie's eyes went to the street outside. I turned to look.\n\nOh crap.\n\nTwo news trucks complete with satellite dishes. For now it was probably to cover the destruction of the city's newest trendy restaurant, but all it would take would be talking to any of the patrons, most of whom would love to be on TV, to root out the cause of the fire. A previously upstanding businessman suddenly seeing monsters, who was probably cooling his heels in a padded observation room by now, would spark the sensation and ratings seeker that was in the heart of every TV journalist.\n\n\"Officer, do you have any more questions for me?\" Kylie asked.\n\n\"No, ma'am.\"\n\nShe nodded in the direction of the news trucks. \"Then if you all would excuse me, it's time I went to work.\"\n\nShe scooted out of the booth and headed for the door, heels clicking on the tile with sharp purpose.\n\nMedia and Public Relations is SPI's largest and sometimes most critical department. Kylie and her team were hands-down the best at what they did\u2014neutralizing a supernatural exposure problem _before_ it became a publicly visible crisis. In addition, Kylie's \"secret identity\" was a world-renowned debunker of the supernatural, and the ultimate mistress of misinformation. She put herself front and center on TV and radio talk shows, and was accepted by respected journalists as an expert on the expos\u00e9.\n\nKylie was the best at spinning a supernatural news story the way she\u2014and SPI\u2014needed it to go.\n\nFred jerked his head in the direction of a back table. \"A word with you, Ian?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nThe boys went off to chat, leaving me and Rake alone.\n\nAn immaculately groomed man with a microphone and cameraman in tow met Kylie at the door. Though \"met\" was a little mild. \"Ambushed\" was a more accurate description.\n\nThere could've been hurricane-force winds out there and not one hair on Baxter Clayton's head would've moved.\n\nBaxter was an investigative reporter for a local TV station and an all-round asshat. I didn't envy Kylie her job right now. Actually, I'd never envied Kylie's job. I was a horrible liar and even worse at hiding how I felt when around people I didn't like, and Baxter Clayton definitely qualified.\n\nRake swore.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Baxter Clayton.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I don't like him, either. I don't think anyone does. That's probably why they keep him around. The guy everyone loves to hate. Hate equals high ratings.\"\n\n\"He hasn't been trying to get you on camera for a story on New York's upper-class sex industry,\" Rake muttered.\n\nI bit back a snort.\n\n\"It's not funny.\"\n\nBaxter Clayton was in earnest conversation with a professionally poised and smiling Kylie.\n\n\"It looks like Kylie's taking one for the team then. You owe her.\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss O'Hara will have my eternal gratitude _if_ I can get out of here without being seen.\"\n\nRake was ruffled. It was a rare sight, so I was going to enjoy it while it lasted. \"You do a lot of ducking out back doors, don't you?\" I asked with a smile.\n\n\"Enough that I've become quite adept at it.\"\n\nWith that, he scooped my hand off the table and brought it to his lips.\n\nHis voice softened. \"And by the way, this lunch didn't count. A maniac setting fire to the table next to ours doesn't qualify as a successful date.\"\n\n\"Define successful,\" I managed.\n\nThe goblin gently turned my hand and placed a lingering kiss on the palm, sending a tingle of sensation to other places.\n\n\"No dinner,\" I said, trying for firm and uncompromising\u2014and probably failing miserably.\n\nRake's eyes glittered. \"Breakfast then?\"\n\n\"You don't give up, do you?\"\n\n\"Not anytime soon.\"\n\n\"How about another lunch?\" I suggested.\n\n\"How about tomorrow?\"\n\n\"I'll check and get back to you.\"\n\n\"If you don't, I will.\"\n\nGiving the back of my fingers a parting brush of his lips, Rake quickly escaped out the back door.\n\nI snuck a glance over at Ian and Fred. Thankfully, my partner had his back to me.\n\nFred did not.\n\nFrom the sly wink he just gave me, I'd say he saw Rake's Cyrano de Bergerac exit. Then he gestured me over to join them.\n\nOh boy.\n\n\"I was just telling your partner what your knife-wielding businessman had likely snorted.\"\n\n\"So it was a drug,\" I said.\n\nFred nodded. \"A new one. High-end designer.\"\n\nIan glanced back at the now empty booth.\n\n\"Rake had to leave,\" I told him before he could ask any questions that I'd completely blow answering.\n\nFred, bless him, didn't say a word.\n\nKylie wasn't the only one who'd taken one for the team. It looked like I might owe Fred one, too.\n\n\"I was telling Ian that from what I've heard about Brimstone, your boy was one of the latest customers.\"\n\n\"Brimstone?\"\n\nFred shrugged. \"That's what they're calling it. It can be smoked or snorted. We haven't gotten our hands on any yet for the lab to play with, and the latest customer didn't have any more on him. One of our sources told us it's lava colored. We're assuming that's the source of the name. And from the reactions of the three people who've taken it while in public . . .\" Fred lowered his voice. \"One of the side effects is that they can see supernaturals.\"\n\n\"Through glamours,\" I said, likewise keeping my voice down.\n\n\"Through anything.\"\n\nGlamours, shields, wards, and cloaks.\n\n\"Well, there goes my job security,\" I said.\n\n\"Hardly,\" Fred replied. \"The humans who've gotten hold of the stuff freak out like you just saw.\"\n\n\"How about supernaturals?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Unknown. We've had no reports of a supernatural under the influence of Brimstone. We didn't find out about the stuff until a couple days ago. But if supernaturals were taking it, they wouldn't exactly scream about seeing monsters.\"\n\n\"How long do the effects last?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"They start to come down after a couple of hours.\" He paused. \"Good part is that they don't remember what they saw, just that it was the mother of all bad trips.\"\n\n\"Great,\" I said. \"At least if they got the crap scared out of them, they won't be lining up to buy more.\"\n\n\"Wish people had that much sense,\" Fred said. \"When I heard we might have another customer, I wanted to get some fresh eyewitness accounts.\" He grinned. \"Imagine my surprise to find you two among the witnesses.\"\n\n\"It wasn't exactly how we intended our lunch hour to go,\" I said.\n\n\"I got that impression.\" His blue eyes twinkled.\n\nFred didn't need to elaborate. Ian and Fred were beer and steak kinds of guys. Caf\u00e9 Mina was hardly where either one would go\u2014or could afford to go\u2014to grab a quick bite for lunch. Fred simply eyed Ian's sports jacket and tie, glanced out at Kylie, grinned, and gave my partner a congratulatory smack on the shoulder.\n\nDetective Fred Ash. Master of deduction and masculine nonverbal communication.\n\n\"Know where the supply is coming from?\" Ian asked. My partner was the master at ignoring questions, direct or implied.\n\n\"That's the reason I'm glad to run into you two here,\" Fred replied. \"We'll continue to investigate, but let's just say we'll only be able to get so far.\"\n\nIan swore mildly, like a man who knew he wasn't going to have time for more fancy lunches anytime soon.\n\nFred nodded. \"Yeah. I'd bet my next paycheck that Brimstone came from out of town.\"\n\n# 3\n\nWHEN you worked for SPI or were clued in to the supernatural world, \"out of town\" didn't mean Hoboken.\n\nA supernatural criminal entrepreneur was cutting him- or herself a slice of New York's drug-dealing pie. The highly profitable, upper-crust part. That wasn't going to make the city's established drug lords and ladies very happy. And when they weren't happy, and that much money was involved, blood would start flowing.\n\nWhat lunch I'd managed to eat hadn't even had a chance to settle before we got the call.\n\nThe goblin manager of an upscale apartment building had received a tenant complaint of heat and a really bad smell coming from the apartment next door. Suspecting a fire of some sort, he'd quickly knocked, and when no one answered, he used his master key to open the door.\n\nHe saw what was inside and promptly closed it.\n\nHe then called SPI, not the NYPD.\n\nThere was a dead body, it was a supernatural, and the stink was sulfur.\n\nSulfur could mean one of two things: demons or a black-magic-spawned portal. Or both. None of the above signaled fun times ahead for us.\n\nSulfur was another name for brimstone.\n\nCoincidence?\n\nI wasn't gonna hold my breath on that one. Especially when we learned who the dearly departed was.\n\nSar Gedeon.\n\nElf, exiled aristocrat, and drug lord, who was most definitely from out of town, just like the new designer drug.\n\nThe apartment building was only two blocks from Caf\u00e9 Mina.\n\nWe were there within minutes.\n\nNormally Ian and I weren't part of an initial response team unless the investigation required the services of a seer, but we were the closest agents. Our job was to secure the scene from mortal authorities until SPI's crime scene investigators could get there.\n\nLike humans, supernaturals died every day in New York, and everywhere else for that matter. There was a problem when supernatural deaths involved a crime. Crime meant police, and police meant the potential for exposure.\n\nLiterally.\n\nSupernaturals who didn't look human needed a glamour to disguise themselves. Any glamour, regardless of the power of the spells that held it in place, faded within one hour after death. In a murder investigation, that meant that the victim would go through a quick and rather startling transformation, either before the police arrived or while they\u2014and the body\u2014were still on the scene. Those were the tough ones.\n\nEach major city had its own supernatural medical examiner's office that reported suspicious deaths to the regional SPI office.\n\nSupernatural families also notified SPI in the case of any unusual deaths, and our investigators and medical examiners responded. Humans have local morticians and funeral homes, and so do supernaturals. Each race has cultural or religious beliefs that dictate what is done with a body after death\u2014without attracting the attention of mortal authorities. But when supernaturals made themselves a part of human society\u2014or were inconsiderate enough to get themselves murdered in public\u2014things could get dicey.\n\nThat was the situation we were dealing with now.\n\n* * *\n\nIan discreetly showed his badge to the doorman at the Murwood.\n\nThe man glanced down at the ID and at Ian's face without moving anything except a pair of cool gray eyes. He wore the double-breasted, quasi-military style of long coat and hat that seemed to be the uniform of doormen at upper-crusty apartment and condo buildings citywide. His bearing said ex-military or police, loud and clear. Then his face took on the neutral and faraway expression that signaled someone was speaking to him on his Bluetooth earpiece. Either that, or he was having an out-of-body experience.\n\n\"Mr. Nadisu is expecting you.\" Not taking his eyes off either us or anyone else on the street nearby\u2014which was a nifty trick\u2014he reached back and opened the door for us.\n\nThe lobby of my apartment building was more of a foyer with mailboxes against one wall. It was almost impossible to squeeze past anyone checking their mail without way too much intimate contact with a neighbor whose name you didn't know.\n\nAt least a dozen of my lobbies would have fit in the Murwood's.\n\nThe goblin who met us there looked like his day was going worse than ours.\n\nGoblins liked being in control of themselves and everyone and everything around them. You'd never see a goblin frazzled, at least not in public, and definitely not in front of strangers. This guy was frazzled. He wanted to be cool and collected, but today just wasn't his day to get what he wanted.\n\nAs Ian and I could attest, there was a lot of that going around.\n\nThere was no one else in the posh lobby, but Ian still kept his voice down as he introduced us, even though Jesin Nadisu knew who we were. Official protocol had to be observed.\n\nAnyone else, Ian included, would see a human man, in his mid-thirties, impeccably dressed in a suit that probably made him fit right in with the building's wealthy tenants. He wouldn't want to offend his tenants' sensibilities by wearing anything that came off the rack. Other than that, there wasn't anything that made him particularly noticeable.\n\nBrown hair, brown eyes, medium height. Like his suit, Jesin Nadisu had gone out of his way to blend in.\n\nWith my seer vision, I saw a surprisingly young and unsurprisingly handsome goblin in his early twenties (or whatever the goblin age equivalent was) with sleek, shoulder-length, blue-black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck, with large dark eyes. Elves and goblins age slower than humans, and do a better job of it while they do; no plastic surgery or Botox shots needed.\n\nThe goblin gestured. \"This way, please.\"\n\nWe took one of the elevators to the seventh floor.\n\n\"How long has Mr. Gedeon lived in the apartment?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Mr. Gedeon owns . . . _owned_ the apartment,\" the goblin said, \"but he didn't live there. He visited once or sometimes twice a week. He kept the place for a lady friend.\"\n\n\"The name of the tenant?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Mara Lorenz. She went out of town two days ago.\"\n\n\"Then why was Mr. Gedeon here?\"\n\nJesin Nadisu's professional reserve cracked and he smiled slightly. \"The same reason he was always here. To get away from his wife.\"\n\nWhen we got to the seventh floor, the stench of sulfur smacked us all in the face.\n\nThe goblin unlocked the apartment door, but made no move to open it.\n\nI didn't blame him. He'd been there, done that, got the trauma.\n\nIan broke the silence. \"Mr. Nadisu, I need you to return to the lobby and wait for our lab team.\"\n\nThe goblin nodded with no small measure of relief and turned toward the elevator.\n\n\"And don't let anyone in unless they live in the building or are from Sarkowski Plumbing,\" my partner added. \"They're our lab team.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't anyway. This is a secure building.\" The young goblin winced. \"At least it was.\" He swallowed in an audible gulp. \"And on my watch.\" He paused. \"Would your non-admittance request include any of Mr. Gedeon's business associates?\"\n\n\"It would. And do not discuss what you have seen with anyone.\"\n\n\"My discretion and that of the Murwood is assured for _all_ of our tenants.\"\n\n\"Good. Keep it that way.\"\n\nI noticed he never said he wouldn't tell anyone, just that his discretion was assured. With goblins, you had to watch for the small print. Many of the top lawyers in the city were goblins\u2014and more than a few of the politicians. I was sure Ian had noticed; he chose not to try to wrangle a promise out of him. A goblin could find ways to get around those, too.\n\nBut I still felt sorry for him. Contrary to what Ian had told him, he'd have to tell the owner of the building what had happened. I was sure we could count on their discretion as well. No landlord wanted to spread around that a murder had occurred in one of their buildings.\n\n\"Have any of the other tenants been asking questions?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"No, just from the apartment one floor below, and the couple next door. They've since left for a luncheon engagement. I've called and told them that I've looked into it, and there's no cause for concern.\"\n\nGoblins could spin a lie as easily as breathing. Like I said, they were great lawyers and politicians.\n\nIn my book, your next-door neighbor getting himself murdered was plenty cause for concern. Though if Sar Gedeon had been specifically targeted\u2014considering what he did for a living, that scenario was highly likely\u2014there really wasn't any need for the neighbors to worry for their own safety. That is, unless they stuck their noses where they didn't belong and the killer got wind of it. So, when you looked at it like that, the manager's lie might have saved their lives. See? He lied and it was for their own good. It was all in how you spun it.\n\nAs soon as the elevator doors closed, Ian drew his gun, which was loaded with silver-infused hollow points.\n\n\"Stay here,\" he told me.\n\n\"I can do that.\"\n\nNot only could I do that, I was glad to do that. Running underneath the sulfur stink was an odor I could only describe as burned beef brisket. I wasn't a math whiz, but the smell of burned meat coming from a room with a dead body? Those added up to a cause of death I was in no hurry to confirm for myself.\n\nIan opened the door and slipped into the apartment.\n\nI had the smell of sulfur and burned flesh to keep me company while I waited in the hall. I didn't know which one was worse; but since they were both here, I didn't have to choose. Lucky me.\n\nI was familiar with the smell of brimstone. I'd gotten a snootful of the stuff only once before, and that was one time too many.\n\nMy SPI training had included a class in what was generously called \"Aroma Identification.\" When tracking a supernatural suspect, let's just say that sometimes visual contact didn't come first.\n\nOne of the aromas covered in class was brimstone. Our instructor kept samples in airtight containers of substances we needed to immediately know when we caught a whiff of it.\n\nBrimstone was the biggie.\n\nIts presence at a crime scene or while in pursuit of a suspect indicated two things that set my survival instinct to twitching: demons and black-magic-spawned portals.\n\nNeither were things you wanted catching you by surprise.\n\nTwo minutes and no shots fired later, Ian opened the door and I stepped in just far enough for him to close the door behind me.\n\n# 4\n\nWHEN a supernatural dies, any glamour they might have been using to disguise their true appearance fades within the first hour after death. A supernatural creature manifesting on a slab in the city morgue in front of a screaming technician was one of those awkward moments it was part of our job to prevent. The scene inside that apartment was bad, but wasn't the worst I'd ever seen. Believe me, you haven't seen a murder scene until you've busted into a room after a grendel has had ten seconds to rip arms, legs, and head off some poor sot, and dangle his intestines from an overhead light fixture like a party streamer.\n\nI thought that had to be the apex of disgusting, and as far as the ick meter went.\n\nThis came close. What the building manager had found beyond that apartment door jumped right over awkward and landed smack dab on bizarre.\n\nSar Gedeon had gotten away from his wife. Too bad he hadn't had similar success with his murderer.\n\nAnd it was most definitely a murder.\n\nThe dead elf was shirtless, as if the killer wanted to show off his work. Though at least he still had his pants on. His killer had apparently decided to confine his work to above the waist.\n\nGedeon's hands were clenched into claws, and the palms and insides of the fingers had been burned black. So much for the source of the burned brisket smell. The other burned body part was the skin over and around the breastbone. It had been branded with a single hoofprint. Though considering the presence of the sulfur smell, I figured we weren't dealing with a homicidal cow.\n\nThe brand was either a signature by the demon that had done the burning, or the way it had held down the elf while it\u2014or a partner in crime\u2014had caused what looked to me, a non-medical professional, as the likely cause of death.\n\nA gaping hole in Sar Gedeon's chest.\n\nIan approached the body, careful not to step on any stain or splatter, squatted down next to the chest, and looked inside.\n\nHis brow creased. \"That's interesting.\"\n\nOnly a man who'd spent five years as a homicide detective in the NYPD and the seven years before that doing something in the military that he wouldn't (or couldn't) talk about would describe the inside of a man's open chest as \"interesting.\" Made me wonder what it'd take to make my partner regret eating lunch, which made me know I didn't want to find out.\n\nHowever, being the curious type, I found Ian's description irresistible.\n\nI went to where Ian squatted, leaned over his shoulder, and took a peek.\n\nAnd regretted it.\n\nCuriosity wouldn't kill a cat, but getting a gander of this could make it hork up one heck of a hairball. Right now, I was about to do something similar.\n\nI'd heard our folks who dealt with bodies as part of their jobs carried a little jar of Vicks with them. Constantly. On duty or off. With SPI, you never knew when off duty could turn to very much on duty.\n\nBack in North Carolina's pollen-filled spring and fall seasons, Vicks was my best friend. Some nights I was so stuffy I couldn't get to sleep without a swipe of that wondrous eucalyptus-scented goop under my nose. Since coming to New York, my allergies were gone. My Vicks was buried in the dark recesses of the cabinet under my bathroom sink. When I got home, I was going spelunking.\n\nI already carried Dramamine and Tums. Now I was adding Vicks. I'd only been on the job a year and I was already carrying around my own starter pharmacy.\n\nIan had his phone out. The pick up on the other end was quick. Ian's communication was even faster. \"We've got a demon, Class Five or higher.\"\n\nThat'd send the folks at headquarters scrambling. Classes of demons went up to twelve. In my opinion, five was bad enough. Anything higher wasn't known for having a light enough touch to leave a brand. We wouldn't have found a hole in the victim's chest; we'd have found a hole where the vic had been squashed into the floor.\n\nNot all demons had cloven hooves, but no other supernatural did\u2014except for satyrs and minotaurs, and neither one of those could radiate heat through their bodies to burn hands and brand a chest.\n\n\"You're sure it wasn't a branding iron?\" I didn't think it was, but it never hurt to hope.\n\n\"The burns on Gedeon's hands weren't made by grabbing a branding iron,\" Ian said. \"The fingers are spread the same width apart and burned in the same places. Our vic was grabbing a demon's leg. The span of his hands indicates a larger demon, at least Class Five. The cloven hoof was holding him down while the demon's partner cut his chest open and ripped his heart out.\"\n\nMy lip curled. \"That looks a bit jagged for a knife. Maybe a claw?\"\n\nIan looked closer at the inside of the elf's ruined chest. \"A possibility. Good catch.\"\n\nMy lip twisted further. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Do you see any other evidence to support that?\"\n\nOnly my partner would turn a gruesome murder scene into a pop quiz.\n\n\"The lack of blood and dark edging around the entry wound suggests cauterization.\" I managed a swallow, though it was more of a gulp to keep from gagging. \"And what blood is there is blackened.\" I gulped again, any attempt at cool and casual be damned. \"Like it was heated.\"\n\nIan nodded approvingly. \"Nice.\"\n\nNone of this was nice . . . not sight, nor smell, nor oily feel on my skin from the brimstone and burned flesh.\n\nIt'd take me a while before I'd be able to eat barbeque again. And for a Southern girl, that was a crime in itself.\n\nThe NYPD knew Sar Gedeon as a human drug lord. If they'd come in here now, they would have found him dead, sporting Spock ears, a cauterized hole in his torso, no heart, and a hoofprint branded into his chest. I'd like to be a fly on the wall for that investigation.\n\n\"So what would your precinct buddies have to say about this one?\" I asked, putting a couple steps distance between me and the elf brisket.\n\n\"From a human viewpoint, we've got cosplay with the ears, possible devil worship with the brand, and apparent human sacrifice. This case would drive them crazy, but they'd love the challenge. I never thought I'd say anything like this, but knowing elves and demons are real can certainly simplify an investigation.\" One side of his mouth quirked in a quick grin. \"Makes me damned glad I came over to the dark side.\"\n\nI nodded. \"And we have cookies.\"\n\n\"The locked door and no sign of entrance or exit would have thrown them for a loop. We know that brimstone could very well be from the leftovers of a gate. Demons aren't exactly known for walking in through the front door. With a gate, they're in, rip out a heart, they're out. Nice and neat.\"\n\nI wasn't seeing anything nice or neat.\n\n\"Why would a class-five demon kill a drug lord?\" I asked. \"Would one of his business rivals hire demons for a professional hit?\"\n\n\"Never heard of demons hiring out their services.\" Ian paused. \"Unless the guy doing the hiring was interested in offering his soul for the low, low price of one murder.\"\n\nI raised one brow.\n\n\"Demons don't accept cash,\" Ian explained.\n\n\"Not even credit cards? With the interest rates some of those things have, I wouldn't be surprised to find Satan himself in the big office.\" Then I remembered about the heat the other tenants had complained about. It felt fine in here to me. \"So was the heat coming from the body or the demon?\"\n\nIan shook his head. \"Neither. It would have been from the portal the demon used to get in.\"\n\n\"That makes sense. That Jesin Nadisu guy seems to be on the ball. I couldn't see him missing a pair of demons strolling through his lobby.\"\n\n\"The area near the wall around the corner felt warmer,\" Ian told me. \"Since there aren't any vents nearby, that'd be the most likely portal location.\"\n\nI went to take a look.\n\nUnless a portal was standing open it couldn't be seen. If Ian hadn't seen the portal, that meant it was closed. Closed equaled safe. A portal could only be used by the being that created it, or someone the creator had keyed to that specific portal. It was security at its finest.\n\nI stepped into a short hallway. . .\n\nAnd simply stared.\n\nThe wall was glowing. Orange. Not the entire wall, just a section, a seam running from the floor to a few feet from the ceiling. The seam was closed, but that didn't keep the glow from spilling onto the hardwood floor at my feet.\n\nThe light didn't come from the wall itself. It came from what lay beyond, and I didn't mean in the next room.\n\nIt was the portal, complete with sulfuric heat coming from it in waves.\n\nA shadow from the other side eclipsed the light.\n\nI took a step back, eyes locked on the opening.\n\nThere was something just on the other side.\n\nWatching me.\n\nIt knew I could see it and the portal.\n\nTerror put my gun in my hand, even though I knew that whatever was on the other side would laugh at my puny mortal weapon. I slowly backed away, my gun held low in a two-handed grip, trying to stop my hands from shaking.\n\nMy terror made it past my lips with one word.\n\n\"Ian.\" I could barely hear myself.\n\nNo response from the front room.\n\nI swallowed hard and tried again.\n\n\"Ian.\"\n\nAn instant later, Ian was beside me, gun drawn.\n\nThe shadow retreated.\n\nIan looked where I was looking, body tense and ready for anything.\n\nHe saw nothing.\n\n\"Mac, we're looking at a wall.\"\n\n\"And it's not all there.\"\n\nMy partner looked like he was thinking the same thing about me.\n\n\"There's a big glowing gash down the middle,\" I said.\n\n\"Describe it.\" His voice immediately went tight with apprehension.\n\nNow we were getting somewhere.\n\n\"It's a gash in the middle of the wall,\" I told him, trying to be the analytical professional I was supposed to be. \"It starts at the floor and goes up about six feet. The gash is closed, so it's more like a seam, and where it comes together is . . .\" I made a face. \"Squishy. Like glowing orange Jell-O.\"\n\n\"Orange?\"\n\n\"Jell-O.\"\n\n\"And you can see it.\"\n\n\"I could also see the shadow of a thing on the other side.\"\n\n\"The other side?\" Ian adjusted the hold on his gun.\n\nI suddenly needed a place to sit down, but I'd only be doing that after I ran all the way down to the lobby, probably to the accompaniment of my own screams.\n\n\"Uh-huh. But I can't see portals.\"\n\n\"That appears to no longer be the case.\"\n\nI took another step back. \"How?\"\n\n\"Don't know.\"\n\nWe both looked at the wall: me at the portal, Ian at where I'd told him the portal was.\n\n\"I take it the color means something?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\nIan had his phone out again, eyes still on the wall as if he expected something to jump out of it at any second. That made both of us.\n\nI waited for someone at headquarters to pick up. I had no doubt Ian was calling headquarters again, just as I had no doubt that orange wasn't a good color for a portal.\n\nSulfur stink plus hoofprint brand equaled a portal that in all likelihood went to a place I had no desire to go.\n\nAnd something in that undesirable place had seen me see it.\n\nOh crap.\n\n# 5\n\nSPI'S lab team arrived, and so far demons hadn't poured out of the wall.\n\nBoth were good things.\n\nThe seam had also stopped glowing and the wall appeared more solid.\n\nGood things number three and four. We were on a roll.\n\nIan had left a voicemail for Vivienne Sagadraco telling her about me and the portal.\n\nHe'd told me not to tell anyone what I'd seen until the boss gave the okay. I had absolutely no problem with that. I didn't want to think about it, let alone get chatty with anyone.\n\nJust to be on the safe side, Ian had requested backup of the demon-fighting variety, and until they arrived, we stayed.\n\nI was happy to say that our wait was blissfully uneventful.\n\nI didn't hold out the same hope for our investigation. When you were dealing with demons, you were guaranteed to get \"eventful\" by the bucket load.\n\nHowever, I knew that one thing would go right. When investigating a murder, SPI had one huge advantage over the NYPD.\n\nWe had a necromancer on staff.\n\nOnce we got Sar Gedeon back to headquarters, Bert could just ask the elf who killed him.\n\n* * *\n\nI didn't think Sar Gedeon's body could look worse.\n\nI was wrong.\n\nI was convinced that morgues had the same lighting as department store dressing rooms. One made you look dead; the other made you look so fat you wished you were dead. Neither even tried to be flattering.\n\nI looked at the elf. He didn't look like he'd gained any weight, just lost more blood, or maybe it'd just pooled in his back and butt like I'd seen on _CSI_. Now if we could solve a murder in an hour like they did.\n\nI wondered briefly about putting \"flattering morgue lighting\" on my end-of-life request list.\n\nI'd be gone and wouldn't care, but I'd rather no one see me on a stainless steel table looking anywhere near that bad. Though hopefully, some of me wouldn't have been partially cooked, and I wouldn't have had a sadistic killer rip his way into my chest and cut out my heart while his demon buddy held me down with his big ol' cow hoof. I didn't care who you were, no one looked good after that.\n\nWe were six stories below Manhattan's Washington Square Park in the lab of SPI's world headquarters complex. Nearly as big as the park itself, the complex was centered around what we called the bull pen, which was where most of the field agents had their offices. Above were five stories of steel catwalks connecting labs, more offices, and conference rooms.\n\nWe were in the morgue section of the lab. It was my first time here and I really wouldn't have minded it being my last.\n\nEverything was white tile and stainless steel, and totally pristine\u2014except for the burned brisket of a mutilated elf on the table. A table with troughs and drains.\n\nNormally when I felt this queasy, I went straight for the ginger ale and saltines.\n\nOur resident necromancer, Bertram Ferguson, looked like somebody's grandpa. That is, if their grandpa was Santa Claus.\n\nEven though it was only the first week of November, Bert knew better than to wear anything red. The belt loop on his jeans had long since turned over their challenging job to suspenders. Today's suspenders were navy, the plaid shirt dark green, making him look less like Santa Claus and more like an understated lumberjack. Bert was big, not in an excess of fat, but bigness of big.\n\nThe necromancer's strength and speed were equally notable. Bert attended a crime scene only if there was a dead body, but that didn't mean there couldn't still be living perpetrators lurking around. For all his size, the necromancer could outsprint most SPI field agents to reach the safety of his armored van, though it was more like a laboratory on wheels. Not being eaten by the monster du jour was a powerful motivator.\n\nOutside the morgue lab, Bert had met me with his usual bear hug. And as usual, I'd had to stand on tippy toes to even try to get my arms over his shoulders to hug his neck. I and everyone else at SPI loved Bert Ferguson.\n\nHe regarded me with his bright blue eyes. And yes, like Santa's, they did twinkle.\n\n\"I understand you had unexpected company at lunch,\" he said.\n\n\"Ian or the guy having the bad trip?\"\n\n\"Yes. Which one ruined your date more?\"\n\nI blinked. \"You knew about my date?\"\n\n\"Everyone knew. So which one was it?\"\n\n\"I'll have to think about that and get back to you.\"\n\nBert chuckled. \"Take it easy on him, he's\u2014\"\n\nI waved a hand. \"I know. He's just doing his job.\"\n\n\"That, too. You don't have any big brothers, do you?\"\n\n\"No brothers, period. No sisters, either.\"\n\nBert gently patted me on the shoulder with one big paw. \"You've got a brother now. And he's going to take care of you whether you like it or not.\"\n\n\"I'm getting that impression.\"\n\nThe morgue tech stuck her head out the door. \"Whenever you're ready, Bert.\"\n\n# 6\n\nDETECTIVE Fred Ash had asked to be present for the pre-autopsy questioning. Before starting work at SPI, those were two words I never thought I'd hear together.\n\nA few supernatural members of the NYPD enjoyed SPI headquarters privileges. Fred was one of them. When crimes involved supernatural perps or victims, shared information between SPI and select members of the NYPD had brought criminals to justice many times. It was a working relationship we all valued.\n\nIan and I were in the morgue because with me able to see the portal the killers had used to enter and leave the scene of the crime, this case was going to land on our desks with a resounding thud.\n\nI'd called my manager, Alain Moreau, about what I'd seen. He hadn't been in his office, so I'd left a voicemail. My being able to see portals was the earth-shattering equivalent of a documented visitation from the Almighty himself, so I expected my vampire manager to come crashing through the morgue door any moment now.\n\nThe tech left to give Bert more privacy to work, so it was just the four of us. Five, if you counted the corpse we were about to have a conversation with.\n\nBert sure wasn't creepy and neither was questioning the victim of a violent crime. But when said victim hadn't survived the perpetration of said violent crime . . . if that didn't say creepy loud and clear, I didn't know what did.\n\nOne heaping helping of nightmare fodder, coming up.\n\nI'd seen Bert communicate with the soul of a newly dead person once before\u2014one that hadn't been murdered. A silvery mist had risen from the body and stopped to hover directly above it. The form was vaguely the size and shape of the body it'd arisen from. There was no face, no features, and of course, nothing that could be used to speak. The investigating agent asked the questions; Bert spoke for the dead person.\n\nAnyone who didn't know Bert or was unfamiliar with how a necromancer worked would consider this an arrangement ripe for fraud. Though I'd like to hear their explanation for the body-sized and -shaped mist, and the details that only the victim would have known that came from Bert's mouth.\n\nNot only was Bert legit, he was considered one of the best at his craft, period.\n\nThe process itself was quite simple and relied solely on the power of Bert's necromantic magic, which was considerable.\n\n\"Sar Gedeon.\"\n\nThe boom of Bert's deep and resonate voice filled the morgue's tiled walls and then some. I jumped in spite of myself. His voice and the power behind it didn't ask the dead elf to come and talk to us, it commanded him.\n\nNothing happened.\n\nAt least that was the way it looked. How it felt was like I'd been turned into one of those long, skinny balloons that clowns used at kids' birthday parties, and Bert's magic was hell-bent on twisting me into a poodle. Ian and Fred looked equally uncomfortable.\n\nI swear I heard my joints pop. I sure as hell felt it. You didn't have to be a sensitive to feel magic on the level of Bert's.\n\nI sucked in as much air as my lungs could pull in. I knew I was going to need it. Not that I minded not breathing in a room dedicated to cutting open and examining dead people who, like Sar Gedeon here, had met their ends in less than peaceful circumstances. However, there was only so long living people could stay that way without air. Mouth breathing was preferred, but morgue air had a taste, too.\n\nOr maybe it was just me.\n\nIn the interest of being able to eat at some point today\u2014and keep it down\u2014I kept my breathing shallow.\n\nTiny drops of sweat beaded on Bert's forehead and upper lip. He could chat with the dead in his sleep\u2014and he had. It wasn't hot in here. SPI's medical team kept it cold for obvious reasons.\n\nThe necromancer was having a problem.\n\nI hoped it was the necromagic equivalent of technical difficulties and not a certain elf corpse fighting back.\n\nBut when Bert's brow creased in a scowl, I knew it wasn't heat or overactive sweat glands.\n\nNeither Ian nor I said a word or even moved. Heck, I already was barely breathing.\n\n\"Damn,\" he said simply.\n\nThe pressure in the room, and on my body, immediately vanished.\n\n\"No luck?\" I asked. Way to go, Captain Obvious.\n\nBert shook his head. \"No soul.\"\n\nIan made his own four-letter contribution. \"We waited too long.\"\n\n\"The soul didn't leave,\" Bert told us.\n\n\"But you said\u2014\"\n\n\"It was torn out.\"\n\nOuch.\n\n\"A drug lord with no heart or soul,\" Fred drawled. \"Anyone else love the irony?\"\n\nStereotypically speaking, I knew that demons had a thing for souls, but I thought they tasted sweeter or something when the owner signed it over voluntarily. Delayed gratification and all that.\n\n\"How do you even _do_ that?\" I asked.\n\nBert drew a breath. \"Well, first the\u2014\"\n\nI waved my hands. \"No, no, that was rhetorical. I'm sure that's one of those things I'm better off not hearing about.\"\n\nI'd discovered there were a lot of those in our line of work. Too often I'd been told details that'd ended up with a supporting role in my nightmares. In our profession, I had plenty of those, too.\n\nIan looked likewise reluctant to receive enlightenment. Considering what my partner's past careers were, that said a lot.\n\n\"I can explain without offending,\" Bert assured us.\n\n\"Will it help us find the demons that did this?\" Fred asked.\n\n\"No, but\u2014\"\n\nThe detective held up a hand. \"Then I'm ignorant, too, and happy about it.\"\n\n\"Expanding one's knowledge is good.\"\n\n\"So is me being able to eat lunch,\" I said. \"Fill us with knowledge when we're not standing over the visual aid.\"\n\n\"Where's your curiosity?\"\n\n\"Hiding behind the remains of my appetite.\"\n\n\"Very well.\" Bert stepped forward so that his ample belly was right against the side of the stainless steel table. \"If you don't want to hear how Mr. Gedeon's soul was removed, you certainly will not like remaining in the room for what I'll need to do now, since there's no soul to communicate with.\"\n\nMy stomach dropped. Being a science type, Bert had never been one for exaggeration.\n\n\"If you say we're not gonna like this, I'm thinking I should leave right now. We're here because we need to hear his testimony. We have tape recorders for that kind of thing, right?\"\n\nBert nodded. \"There is a video and audio record of every interaction.\"\n\nFred snorted. \"Meaning if you barf on the body, kid, it'll be playing on the break room TV within the hour.\"\n\n\"Bert wouldn't do that.\"\n\nFred grinned evilly. \"No, but I would.\"\n\nIan gave us both a look that said he was the adult and we were twelve. \"You were saying, Bert?\"\n\n\"A warning, though,\" the necromancer said. \"Depending on the level of residual energy remaining, the body could . . .\" He hesitated. \"Let's see how to put this delicately.\"\n\nFred shifted uneasily. \"Just say it, Doc.\"\n\n\"Move.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Move. The corpse could move.\"\n\nI stood utterly still. \"Could you be more specific?\"\n\n\"Jerk, spasm, flail. I've even had one punch me.\" Bert grinned. \"Packed quite a wallop, too. Impressive for a deceased.\"\n\nIf a corpse sat up and took a swipe at me, I'd be using a lot of words, but \"impressive\" wouldn't be one of them.\n\nThen without any warning, Bert placed his bare-naked hands right on the corpse's face.\n\nIck didn't even begin to cover it.\n\nThis wasn't a doctor examining a corpse; this was a necromancer about to do some seriously spooky shit.\n\nMaybe this was his way of getting back at us for not letting him expand our horizons with a treatise on soul ripping.\n\nBert lifted the fingers of his left hand slightly and repositioned them. None of us could miss the dimples left behind by the pressure of his fingers.\n\nJust like Play-Doh.\n\nPlease don't move your hand again, I said silently.\n\nThankfully, he didn't. But that image had been branded into my brain, like that cloven hoofprint on the dead elf's chest, and it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.\n\n\"I'll be able to see what his eyes saw in his final seconds of life\u2014hopefully including his killers. It works like an imprinting. If any images remain, they would be in the eyes.\"\n\nBert settled his fingers around the orbital bones surrounding the corpse's eyes.\n\nThen he did what you couldn't pay me any amount of money to do . . . Okay, I'd probably do it for _some_ amount of money, but it'd have to be absurdly huge.\n\nBert leaned over the table, putting his face close enough to kiss the corpse, his eyes less than two inches from Sar Gedeon's.\n\nThere was nothing Bert Ferguson wouldn't do in the name of science.\n\nUnlike before, there was no joint popping, no chest constricting, and I could breathe in all the air I wanted to, though considering that it still smelled like roasted elf, I only took in what I needed to keep from passing out.\n\nNo one moved, including the dead elf. I was sure I wasn't the only one grateful for that.\n\nBert was breathing in and out, the breaths growing loud and labored, the speed increasing until they were short gasps. His hands and face were whiter than the tile behind him.\n\nI didn't know what to expect; but to me, it looked like Bert was in trouble.\n\nI shot a sharp glance at Ian. His face bore signs of worry bordering on alarm.\n\nFred spat a silent curse.\n\nWe all knew the cardinal rule\u2014do _not_ disturb a practitioner in the middle of a magical link or incantation. I didn't know the reason behind it, but every ounce of common sense told me that snapping a link of any kind between a living person and the spirit, soul, energy, whatever of a violently murdered person couldn't be anything but bad.\n\nBut for Bert's sake, not breaking that link would be worse.\n\nIf we did nothing, I had a feeling there'd soon be two corpses in SPI's morgue and no one left to talk to either one of them.\n\nIan got his arm between Bert and the corpse, wrapping his big hand around the necromancer's shoulder, and leveraged his weight against Bert's chest to pull him off the corpse. Fred did the same from the other side.\n\nBert didn't\u2014or couldn't\u2014budge.\n\nA keening cry came from Sar Gedeon's now open mouth.\n\nNormally spirits spoke through Bert. I had no idea who or what this was.\n\nFred blanched and swore. Bracing his feet on the floor, the elf detective twisted his body and pulled harder.\n\nNothing.\n\nIt was as if Bert was fused to the body.\n\nThe keening grew louder and more frantic.\n\nVeins were bulging on the sides of Bert's neck.\n\nDammit, he was going to have a heart attack.\n\nBert's eyes were locked on the open and lifeless ones of Sar Gedeon. His hands might as well have been superglued to the dead elf's face.\n\nBrute force wasn't working.\n\nThere was just enough room between Bert and where his face was almost touching the corpse.\n\nHuman contact. Calm, warm human contact. I wouldn't be touching the corpse, I'd be touching Bert.\n\nI quickly moved to the head of the table and slipped my hands over Bert's eyes, breaking the visual contact between him and the dead elf.\n\n\"Bert, it's Mac.\" I tried to keep my voice calm. \"Come back to us.\" Moments passed. \"Bert, can you hear me? You can do this. Whatever it is, you're stronger. Fight it, Bert. Kick its ass.\"\n\nBert drew a breath that I swear must have shuddered clear down to his toes.\n\nGood thing Ian's and Fred's arms were supporting him, or Bert would have collapsed on the corpse.\n\nThey eased him back onto the floor. There was another steel table next to the one the elf's body was on, but thankfully the guys chose the floor. Bert was a necromancer and was comfortable around dead people, but waking up on a morgue slab would scare the crap out of anyone. I knew what my reaction would have been, and nobody's ears could've withstood that much screaming.\n\nFred ran out into the hall to get help for Bert.\n\nBert's breathing was still shallow, but it wasn't as labored. I didn't know if he was unconscious, but his eyes remained closed. I didn't blame him one bit. If I'd damned near gotten sucked into the great beyond through a corpse's eyes\u2014or whatever had happened to him\u2014I'd have kept my eyes closed, too.\n\nBert might need to hear that, or at least some reassurance.\n\n\"Bert,\" I said quietly, taking one of his big hands in both of mine. It was way too cold. \"It's over. You're safe now. You're safe.\"\n\nIan relaxed his grip so that it qualified more as a hug than a wrestling hold. I'd been on the receiving end of an Ian hug more than once. It'd sure made me feel better.\n\nA medical team arrived and Ian and I relinquished our holds on Bert.\n\nI looked up on the table at Sar Gedeon. Whatever had reanimated\u2014or possessed\u2014his body was gone now, but it'd left a calling card.\n\nSar Gedeon's dead lips were curled in a smile.\n\n* * *\n\nAfter our medical folks had taken charge of Bert, Ian and I were alone in the hall outside of the morgue.\n\nSar Gedeon's body was back in its refrigerated steel drawer where it couldn't channel demons at anyone else, securely under lock and key. The smile was gone. I was the only one who'd seen it. The tech explained it as a postmortem spasm.\n\nRight.\n\nIan slipped an arm around my shoulders, and I wearily leaned into it.\n\n\"It was smiling,\" I said.\n\n\"I believe you.\" Ian gave my shoulders a squeeze. \"Good work in there.\"\n\nI knew he wasn't talking about seeing a corpse grin.\n\n\"I just did what I'd want if I'd gotten myself locked in a stare-off with a corpse\u2014someone to hold my hand and tell me it was going to be okay.\" I felt myself start to tear up. What the hell?\n\nIan gave me another squeeze.\n\nI smiled a little and sniffed twice. Yep, Ian's hugs always did the trick.\n\n\"You did the right thing.\" He went quiet for a moment. \"Need something to eat?\"\n\nI would've thought that with all I'd seen and smelled, food would be the last thing I'd want to be in the same room with, let alone actually eat it. Surprisingly, I was starving.\n\n\"Come on, let's get you fed.\"\n\n# 7\n\nFOR SPI agents on duty\u2014or who wanted to be nearby when a coworker regained consciousness after being psychically attacked by a demon-possessed corpse\u2014our new onsite cafeteria was the place to get a quick bite. Though calling it a cafeteria didn't come close to describing the gastronomic delights available to hungry and stressed agents.\n\nIt's said that you can accomplish pretty much anything if you throw enough money at it. And our agency founder and director, Vivienne Sagadraco, certainly had enough wealth to throw around to ensure that her agents were well fed and happy around the clock. There were plenty of hotshot supernaturals and clued-in human chefs available in a city known for its world-class restaurants. The boss simply waved some more money in front of them, got them to sign one hell of a non-disclosure agreement, and we had a kitchen staff that rivaled anything New York City had to offer. Our head of HSR (Human and Supernatural Resources) was a voodoo high priestess. SPI's non-disclosure agreements for new employees were signed in her office and in their blood. It didn't matter who or what you did or didn't worship, nobody messed with voodoo. No one had ever even thought about blabbing about the agency to the press or anyone else. Once signed, our secret was safe.\n\nAs to food in our cafeteria, you could get anything you wanted at any time. Human, goblin, elf, troll, gnome, vampire, werewolf, were-anything\u2014if you had a craving, the boys and girls in the kitchens would whip it up\u2014or procure it\u2014for you. It was nothing short of culinary heaven.\n\nBest of all, they kept me in iced tea sweet enough to stand a spoon in. Ask any Southerner; you couldn't get decent sweet tea above the Mason-Dixon Line. That is, if you could even find sweet tea at all. Thanks to the generosity of Vivienne Sagadraco, there was no beverage homesickness for me. I'd even managed to score numerous converts.\n\nIn case Bert came around quickly, I just went with a turkey and provolone sandwich. It sounded simple, but all bread was made on-site. I'd had enough contact with red meat for one day. On second thought, make that for the next week.\n\nI could tell Ian wanted to ask me something, but he kept it to himself until I'd finished eating. He was having an open-faced roast beef, piled high with meat and drowning in gravy. I tried not to look at it. It didn't matter what my partner had just seen, smelled, or even touched, he could eat anything, anywhere, anytime. Even though his and Kylie's lunch reservation at Caf\u00e9 Mina had been half an hour before mine and Rake's, and he'd had time to eat, he was hungry again. Ian was about six two and solid. It took a lot of fuel to run that.\n\n\"It's not Caf\u00e9 Mina,\" Ian noted, when I polished off the last bite of my sandwich.\n\nI sat back with a contented sigh. \"You can read minds now?\"\n\n\"Nope. It was obvious that you were hungry.\"\n\nI nodded toward his empty plate. Even the gravy had been mopped up. \"Likewise.\"\n\nIan shrugged. \"Mina's was good, but it's kind of . . .\"\n\n\"Froufrou?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"I know. You're a bar, beer, and burger kind of guy. Does Kylie know that?\"\n\nIan smiled slightly. \"She does. For our first time out, she said she wanted to take me somewhere nice.\"\n\n\"Aww. Sorry, couldn't help myself. That's just so sweet. Does she know you want actual food, not decorative squiggles on a plate?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"She does. Next time, I pick the place.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"I was thinking about Franco's.\"\n\nItalian. Low light. Romantic ambiance. Best of all, good food and lots of it. A carb-loading, meat-lover's paradise. \"Good choice.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"You wouldn't know it to look at her, but that girl can put away some food. She can flat out load some carbs. I've had lunch with her enough to know. She'll love Franco's.\"\n\nIan took a breath and looked down at his plate. He could probably see his reflection in the thing. \"I'm sorry about what I said today at lunch about you and Rake Danescu.\"\n\nI smiled and gave him a little nudge under the table with the toe of my boot. \"No, you're not.\"\n\nHe glanced up, his lips twitching at the corners. \"You're right. I'm not. He asked you out again.\"\n\n\"Yep, lunch tomorrow. He . . . Wait, that wasn't a question. Unless you sprouted eyes in the back of your head, how did\u2014\"\n\n\"There was a framed print on the wall of the coffee shop behind Fred. I could see your reflection. Danescu must have been hungry, too. I thought he was going to eat your hand.\"\n\n\"Just because I haven't been out before with a goblin millionaire\u2014\"\n\n\"Billionaire.\"\n\nI raised an eyebrow. \"Well, dang.\" I shrugged. \"Okay, all that means is there's a couple of extra zeros in his bankbook. And yeah, he's hot, but money and looks don't impress me.\"\n\n\"Then why would\u2014\"\n\n\"He's interesting,\" I said simply. \"Intriguing, even. I want to know what makes him tick. That he's easy on the eyes while I'm trying to find that out is just a side benefit.\"\n\n\"The stereotypical mystery man.\"\n\n\"Hey, I'm not embarrassed to admit it.\"\n\n\"And if you actually find out what makes Rake Danescu tick?\"\n\n\" _That_ just might be the reason to keep seeing him\u2014or send me screaming in the other direction.\"\n\nIan's expression went grim. \"That's part of what worries me. He's a dark mage.\"\n\n\"I've known dark mages, back home and here. Heck, I'm even related to a few. My family's thick with seers, but that's not the only magical flavor in the family casserole. A lot of families have colorful relatives in their metaphorical attic. We Southerners take ours out and show 'em off. Dark doesn't mean evil. Now the big question would be why is he interested in me? I mean, I clean up good, but I'm no beauty.\"\n\nIan started to speak. I held up a hand. \"Thank you, but don't bother. I'm good with how I look, and I don't need any empty compliments to boost my self-esteem. It's quite healthy.\"\n\n\"Any compliment I pay you wouldn't be empty.\"\n\n\"Thank you again.\" I smiled slightly. \"The only reason I can come up with is that I'm probably the only woman who's ever told him no. And if it turns out that's his only reason, I'm not interested.\"\n\n\"There's your magic. He tried to hire you away from SPI your first night on the job.\"\n\n\"And he hasn't tried again since then.\"\n\n\"Goblins can be patient.\"\n\n\"Good, because I'm gonna be trying the heck out of his patience, regardless of his reasons for chasing after me. If you're worried about my safety, don't be. Ms. Sagadraco knows all about today's lunch.\"\n\n\"She does?\"\n\nI nodded. \"Since Rake's on the perpetual suspect list, I thought it might be prudent to check in with the boss first.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"She told me to go and have fun. If Ms. Sagadraco isn't worried, then you shouldn't be, either. Rake's not gonna do anything without my say so, and if he's serious about trying, he's gonna have to answer to me. He's well aware that he doesn't want to piss off the boss.\" I gave him a quick grin. \"Or my partner.\"\n\n\"Damn right, he doesn't.\"\n\n\"See? All settled.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't call it settled.\"\n\n\"Of course you wouldn't.\"\n\n\"But I feel better hearing your side of it.\"\n\n\"I can assure you, it takes a lot to turn my head\u2014and I have yet to lose it, over anyone.\"\n\n\"Just know that if he ever hurts you\u2014\"\n\n\"Honey, you're gonna have to get in line behind me. Though we both might have to get in line after Vivienne Sagadraco, and once she's through with him, there might not be enough left to bother with.\"\n\nIan's grin was ferocious. \"I'd gladly relinquish my place in line _and_ pay to see that. Speaking of our bosses, have you heard back from Alain Moreau?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\n\"Maybe you should go straight to the Dragon Lady. It's not every day one of her agents can see a portal.\"\n\n\"I just saw _one_. That doesn't mean I'll be able to see any more.\"\n\n\"But it makes it highly likely.\"\n\n\"You're squashing my hope here.\"\n\n\"Have you felt any different since Saturday night?\"\n\n\"I had a couple of dizzy spells, but I chalked that up to getting sucked inside Viktor Kain's head for a stroll down his World War II Memory Lane. Though the trip inside Kain's head felt more like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.\"\n\n\"Can anyone in your family see portals?\"\n\n\"No. At least not that I'm aware of. I can see through wards and glamours on living things. To the best of my knowledge, portals aren't living things.\" I thought back to the pulsing wall\u2014and what had stood waiting on the other side. \"Or are they?\"\n\n\"No, they're not. And what keeps anyone\u2014except the person who created it\u2014from seeing a portal isn't a ward, it's the nature of portals. The magic used in their creation is specific to that person on a DNA level. Otherwise they couldn't pass through.\"\n\n\"And I can't create portals, so there's no good reason that I should be able to see one.\"\n\n\"Creating one takes a level of magical skill and training that you haven't had. That being said, there aren't many people who took a direct hit from a ley line convergence.\"\n\nI knew about ley lines. We had one running through the mountain near where I grew up.\n\nLey lines were narrow, intersecting energy streams that magnified magical and paranormal powers. There were a number of them near Manhattan. One ley line ran north and south roughly along the East River. Another ran more east to west. The east\/west ley line ran directly beneath the SPI complex. It was one of the reasons why Vivienne Sagadraco chose this location for SPI's world headquarters.\n\nThose possessing earth magic could tap a microscopic amount of power from ley lines, but they would be unable to use the lines to magnify and spread their magic. Diamonds, like ley lines, are of and from the earth. Rare diamonds\u2014like the Dragon Eggs from our most recent big case last Saturday night\u2014that are imbued with power can tap directly into ley lines to carry and spread the power they contain like an underground river.\n\nThe results of that connection had nearly been catastrophic.\n\nI'd been woozy, dizzy, and faintly nauseated after experiencing just a fraction of that power, though I'd chalked it up to an involuntary psychic link to a psychotic Russian dragon\/crime lord.\n\nMaybe my dizziness then had more to do with coming so close to a convergence of major ley lines that'd been kicked awake by the power of the activated Dragon Eggs.\n\nNo one else had picked up any additional mojo.\n\nOr had they?\n\nCaera Filarion didn't have any magical talent to speak of. Was that still the case?\n\nAnd Ben Sadler probably wouldn't know if he had picked up any extra power. He was still getting used to his gem mage powers waking up.\n\nCrap.\n\nWhat about Rake Danescu?\n\nHe wouldn't tell us how he was involved in what we were standing knee deep in. Why would I think he'd tell us he'd picked up an extra magical talent or two that night?\n\n\"Ian?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"If my being able to see portals is somehow connected to what happened on North Brother Island . . . I wasn't even touching the Dragon Eggs, and now I can see portals. What about Ben and Caera?\" I paused. \"And what about Rake?\"\n\nIan ran his hand over his face.\n\n\"Yeah,\" I agreed. \"And fat chance of his telling us if he did pick up a 'little something extra.' Ben and possibly even Caera could have gotten a boost. Though if Rake did get one of his talents supersized, at least he'd know how to control and use it. That could be good, or it could be cause for a whole mess of concern.\"\n\n\"You got it.\"\n\nThe cafeteria doors opened, and there stood Vivienne Sagadraco and Alain Moreau.\n\nOur quiet meal was about to turn into a serious meeting.\n\n# 8\n\nWHEN SPI's top necromancer tried to link with a murder victim and got zapped with a demonic booby trap, you knew there was gonna be a meeting. If it was strong enough to put Bert in a psychic headlock, it was serious enough to earn a visit from the occupants of the fifth floor\u2014SPI's executive suite.\n\nAnd when one of the agents who witnessed said zapping had also developed an inexplicable talent for seeing portals, the bigwigs would quickly bring that meeting to you.\n\nEntirely too many of my cases ended up with me explaining myself to Vivienne Sagadraco. Only once had I been in real trouble, but that time hadn't been my fault. A doppelganger had been impersonating me to plant grendel eggs in headquarters with the intent of slaughtering\u2014and eating\u2014as many of our agents as they could. When I'd seen me on that surveillance camera, for a minute there, I'd almost believed I was guilty, too.\n\nIan and cookies had saved me from a fate worse than firing. My doppelganger had been dressed exactly like me. My distinguishing characteristic that day had been powdered sugar sprinkled down the front of my sweater. I'd been eating cookies that a coworker had brought in and left in the break room.\n\nMy doppelganger had not. No cookies consumed. No powdered sugar to show for it.\n\nSaved by my sweet tooth.\n\nMy sweet tooth wasn't going to help any of us today.\n\nVivienne Sagadraco stood five foot and some change. Back when she was born\u2014actually hatched\u2014that had probably been quite tall. That had been a little over two thousand years ago. The founder and CEO of SPI was a dragon\u2014a three-story-tall, iridescent blue and green dragon. In her human form, she reminded me of 007's M as played by Judi Dench.\n\nAlain Moreau was a tall, slender, and impeccably well-dressed vampire. I didn't know when he'd been turned, but company rumor had it that he was at least three hundred years old. He didn't look a day over thirty-five with the silver-fox-Anderson-Cooper look he had going on.\n\n\"Agents Byrne and Fraser,\" the boss said.\n\n\"Ma'am,\" we said in unison.\n\n\"Sir,\" I added with a nod to Alain Moreau.\n\n\"You weren't at your desk,\" my manager noted coolly. \"And neither of you are answering your phones.\"\n\nIan and I exchanged a baffled look and reached for our phones.\n\n\"Shit!\" I jerked my hand away. \"Excuse me, ma'am, but damn that thing's hot.\" I winced. \"Excuse me, again.\"\n\nIan managed to get his hand on his phone and tossed it on the table. I could swear I saw smoke coming from it. He flipped his phone over with the back of one finger and peered at the display. \"Fried.\"\n\nDeep fried. The Gorilla Glass was even broken.\n\nI wrapped my hand in a cloth napkin and extracted mine from its holster. Dead as a doornail. Even more baffling was that we hadn't felt the heat until we'd actually touched the phones.\n\n\"I called you when we got back from the Murwood,\" I told Moreau. \"It was working fine then.\"\n\n\"That was before both of us grabbed Bert,\" Ian reminded me.\n\nAnd after Bert had his brain grabbed by a demon-possessed corpse.\n\n\"Sir, may I borrow your phone?\" Ian asked Moreau. \"Fred Ash was with us.\"\n\n\"He won't be able to answer if his phone got zapped, too,\" I pointed out.\n\nMoreau handed Ian his phone, and my partner started entering Fred's number. \"Yes, but we'd get an 'out of service' message. That would clinch it.\" He waited as the phone tried to call Fred. After about thirty seconds he hung up and passed the phone back to Moreau. \"Thank you. Fred's number is disconnected or is no longer in service.\"\n\nLooked like touching a necromancer under attack by a possessed corpse was bad for phone health, too.\n\nVivienne Sagadraco settled herself into one of the cafeteria's chairs. \"Considering the number of encounters you've had today, I think you'd both better start at the beginning.\"\n\nIan and I took turns, starting with our interrupted lunch.\n\nAlain Moreau had a raised eyebrow at the identity of my lunch date, but Ms. Sagadraco didn't bat an eye. While Moreau was my manager, Vivienne Sagadraco was boss lady to both of us. She'd told me to go and have fun. Her blessing overruled one raised eyebrow. Besides, I wasn't the one dating the world's oldest gorgon, Helena Thanos. Though she _was_ the boss's BFF, and was _not_ on SPI's perpetual suspect list. Neither could be said of Rake.\n\nWe recounted what we'd found at the scene of Sar Gedeon's murder: the unique and grisly cause of death, and most critical\u2014at least to me\u2014how the killers had gotten into and out of the apartment. In order to describe precisely what I had seen, I had to recall every detail, which I wasn't too keen to do, but if I wanted to find out why I could suddenly see portals, I had a sinking feeling I'd be telling it more than once. I'd better not only be good at it, but also get used to it.\n\n\"This is a new skill,\" Vivienne Sagadraco said when I'd finished. She didn't ask it as a question. She knew what I could do, and until today, what I could do didn't include seeing portals.\n\n\"Agent Byrne and I believe it may have something to do with the ley line convergence,\" I said. \"I _was_ right on top of it.\"\n\n\"So were Ben Sadler and Agent Filarion,\" Ms. Sagadraco said.\n\n\"And Rake Danescu,\" Ian added.\n\n\"Interesting,\" she murmured. \"Alain, would you check with Mr. Sadler and Agent Filarion to see if they are experiencing any unusual aftereffects due to contact with the Dragon Eggs?\"\n\nThe vampire nodded. \"As soon as we're finished here.\"\n\n\"Is it possible?\" I asked. \"I didn't actually touch any of the Dragon Eggs, but could exposure to a magnified ley line nexus do something like that?\"\n\n\"Prior to Viktor Kain collecting those seven diamonds, they had never been together, let alone activated by a gem mage of Mr. Sadler's skill. Add to that the fact that they were activated above the convergence of two major ley lines . . . I feel safe in saying that we are treading new ground.\"\n\nHoly crap. Vivienne Sagadraco was two millennia old. Alain Moreau was at least three centuries. They'd been around the block a couple thousand times. If they'd never heard of it happening, it'd never happened.\n\n\"I've never aspired to be a trailblazer, ma'am.\"\n\nShe almost smiled. \"Those who are, seldom do.\"\n\n\"Could there be another explanation?\"\n\n\"There is, but it is one that you would find distasteful.\"\n\n\"I've already got a bad taste in my mouth from all of this.\"\n\n\"You were briefly connected to the mind of Viktor Kain. That combined with your proximity to the nexus and activated Dragon Eggs may be what is responsible for your new talent.\"\n\n\"I'm trying real hard _not_ to think Viktor Kain might have something to do with this.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, it must be considered as a possibility.\"\n\n\"I don't feel like I'm being influenced by evil forces.\"\n\n\"I wasn't implying that you were, merely that all possibilities must be considered. And as we recently experienced with Mr. Sadler, abilities previously dormant can emerge in startling ways.\"\n\n\"Seeing a demonic portal was startling all right.\"\n\n\"No doubt.\"\n\n\"Ma'am, do you think it'll be possible to find out what caused it?\"\n\n\"Rest assured, if the answer can be found, we will find it.\"\n\nI knew for a fact that Vivienne Sagadraco could read minds\u2014and emotions. She knew I was scared. She'd hired the best and brightest minds she could lure away from both the government and private sector. What she said was what she meant: if the reason could be found, SPI would find it. I couldn't ask for better odds than that.\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am.\"\n\n\"For now we'll assume that Mac seeing the portal at the murder scene wasn't an isolated incident,\" Alain Moreau said. \"Who knows about this?\" he asked me and Ian.\n\nI shifted uneasily. \"Aside from whatever was watching me on the other side of that portal, just the four of us.\"\n\n\"There's nothing we can do about the one; but on this side, it doesn't leave this table for now. We'll bring others in on a strictly need-to-know basis.\"\n\nWe all knew the reason why.\n\nAs the only seer in SPI's New York office, and one of only five worldwide, I made it more difficult for supernatural criminals to magically disappear into a crowd. My three predecessors at headquarters had met untimely\u2014and highly suspicious\u2014ends. One death could've been an accident; two would've been bad luck. But three? In a row? That was foul play of the premeditated kind. For whatever reason, someone out there didn't want SPI New York to have a seer.\n\nNow I could see portals.\n\nPortals weren't exactly common. It took specialized and expensive talent to create them. Well-connected criminals used portals as escape routes. Powerful and highly placed elves and goblins used them to travel between the dimensions\u2014most notably ours\u2014undetected. For someone in law enforcement to be able to see them? Well, that'd make me the most popular girl on any number of hit lists.\n\nMy mouth went dry at the thought, and I downed the last of my sweet tea. \"I already have a target on my back by being a seer; now I've got the magic equivalent of a red laser dot between my eyes.\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"Isn't anyone going to tell me I'm wrong?\"\n\n\"I make it a point never to lie to my agents,\" Ms. Sagadraco said.\n\n\"Ma'am, I wouldn't mind the occasional happy, fluffy, white one.\"\n\nShe turned toward Moreau. \"I want to bring Martin DiMatteo in on this.\"\n\nOh boy.\n\nThat confirmed that demons were going to be a big part of my immediate future; though as long as I didn't end up like Sar Gedeon, I could deal with it.\n\nMartin DiMatteo was SPI's expert on all things demonic. We'd been introduced during my first week when, as a new employee, I felt like I'd been introduced to every person who worked at SPI and their intern. No one really expected newbies to remember all the names and faces thrown at them, but I'd had no trouble remembering Mr. DiMatteo. If SPI had business cards, Martin DiMatteo's would've said \"Director of Demonology.\" When we'd been introduced, he'd had pink scorch marks where his eyebrows should have been. That earned him a special place in my memory.\n\nThe eyebrows hadn't grown back.\n\nA couple of weeks later, what hair he had on his head had disappeared as well\u2014though I think the hair was a personal style choice rather than another work-related mishap.\n\nMartin DiMatteo was probably a nice enough guy once you got to know him, but let's just say I'd always hoped our caseloads would never intersect on the agency meeting calendar.\n\nSounded like my luck was about to run out; but like I said, if I didn't end up on a slab in the morgue, it was all good.\n\n\"When we leave here, I'll be going to see Bertram,\" Ms. Sagadraco said. \"I would like to be there when he regains consciousness. I don't want to tax his strength having him tell me what happened.\"\n\n\"Whereas we were there and _didn't_ get walloped by a demon,\" I said.\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\nI let Ian do the honors. He'd had much more experience giving detailed reports.\n\n\"Detective Ash and I couldn't get Dr. Ferguson to let go of the corpse, though I think it was more like the corpse wouldn't let go of Dr. Ferguson. It was Agent Fraser who was able to help break whatever had hold of Bert's mind.\"\n\n\"May I ask how?\" Ms. Sagadraco asked.\n\n\"You can ask, ma'am,\" I said, \"but I honestly don't know. I just blocked Bert's visual contact with Sar Gedeon. I think Bert did all the work. I just let him know we were there and he wasn't alone.\"\n\n\"Sometimes the reassuring touch of another being is more effective than any magic.\"\n\n\"What attacked him?\" Moreau asked.\n\n\"That we won't know for sure until Bert wakes up and tells us,\" Ian said, \"but I think it was a trap, deliberately set for a necromancer attempting a postmortem contact. In this case, the soul had been taken and the trap left in its place.\"\n\nMoreau leaned forward. \"Taken?\"\n\n\"The heart had been removed in addition to the soul.\"\n\n\"I'm unfamiliar with any demonic significance of those acts,\" Moreau said. \"Madam?\"\n\n\"Likewise. Another reason why Martin's insights could prove invaluable.\"\n\n\"Fred Ash is one of the NYPD's investigators assigned to Brimstone,\" Ian said. \"We'll share information as needed. Even though we don't have a solid and proven connection between Sar Gedeon's killers and the drug, it's a coincidence we can't ignore. Fred said that as far as they know, Gedeon wasn't connected to Brimstone manufacturing and sales, but it's possible he could be a link in the chain.\"\n\n\"What effect is it supposed to have?\" Ms. Sagadraco asked.\n\n\"Unknown,\" Ian replied. \"Fred said they haven't been able to get a sample for analysis.\"\n\n\"Then that should be our first priority. If it is a drug that is not of this dimension, we are most qualified to locate a supply and track down its source. Our lab facilities and technicians are better qualified to analyze a drug of extra-dimensional origin, and determine what effects it has on mortal, immortal, and supernatural alike. That being said, our colleagues of the NYPD could ascertain the reason for its popularity as well as we could. I can't imagine anyone paying any amount\u2014exorbitant or not\u2014to be scared out of their wits.\"\n\n\"I don't know, ma'am,\" I said. \"We humans can be a pretty flaky lot.\"\n\nShe almost smiled. \"I have observed this on occasion. The same can also be said of immortals and supernaturals. Alain, have our agents with connections in the city's drug industry find out what they know about this Brimstone. Have any new underworld elements recently arrived here? And by underworld, I mean criminal or demonic\u2014or both. If this drug is of extra-dimensional origin, it is bothersome to me that mortal law enforcement discovered its existence before we did. In the light of a possible connection between this drug and today's murder, I would like to know why.\"\n\n\"I will take care of it, madam.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Alain.\"\n\nI gave a silent whistle. I was glad I wasn't on narcotics detail. For their sakes, I hoped they had a good reason why the NYPD had beat them on this one.\n\nSPI had detectives and investigators the same as any mortal police department, and those who had contacts in New York's drug industry would be set on Brimstone's trail.\n\nWe didn't have enough evidence to connect Brimstone with the murder of Sar Gedeon, but someone involved in that murder, whether or not it was the actual killer, had set a trap for any necromancer who tried to have a chat with their victim.\n\nBertram Ferguson was SPI New York's only necromancer.\n\nThe murder was committed in New York.\n\nTherefore, Bert had been targeted.\n\nAgain, we had no evidence to turn my hypothesis into a fact, but my friend nearly died\u2014or worse\u2014and I was fully prepared to take that personally. So I was going to investigate anything that might lead me to the asshole responsible.\n\nI had a source. And as long as Ian bought a lottery ticket later today, he would talk to me.\n\n# 9\n\nI never liked hospital rooms.\n\nThough I imagine not many people do. No one wants to sit in a tiny room watching someone you care about unconscious and with machines hooked up to them. Aside from the birth of a baby, there is no happy reason to be in a hospital.\n\nBert wanted to see me and Ian.\n\nNow.\n\nWhen we got to the infirmary, Bert was wide awake.\n\nFor a man who was zapped only an hour or so ago by a trap set in the mind of a dead body, Bert was looking pretty good. His color wasn't the best, but he was conscious and sitting up in bed. I was glad to see both.\n\nNot only was he awake, he looked pissed. Really pissed.\n\nIt appeared that Bert was taking the attack personally. Since he was the only necromancer in SPI's New York office, I couldn't imagine who else the killer thought would go poking around in Sar Gedeon's head.\n\n\"Looks like you went one round too many with one of the boys downstairs,\" Ian told him.\n\nMy partner wasn't talking about the guys in SPI's motor pool.\n\nBert just nodded. \"After what you two saw in that apartment, I was an idiot for getting in the ring.\" The big guy shrugged. \"But taking punches is part of my job.\"\n\nI nearly said, \"It shouldn't be,\" but he was right. We knew the risks of the work when we'd signed on. It was just that some of us risked more than others. I merely pointed out warded supernatural criminals. Bert talked to dead people, and most of those people had gotten themselves dead by violent means. To me, that was the psychic equivalent of going around and sticking your bare hand in a hole in the ground. You never knew what you were going to find.\n\nOr what was going to find you.\n\nI had a good idea of what had found Bert.\n\nThe same thing that'd seen me from the other side of that portal.\n\n\"I need to talk fast before Doc Stephens comes in here and tries to give me a sedative.\"\n\nI didn't miss Bert's emphasis on \"tries.\" I could see the necromancer being a bad patient.\n\n\"What did you see?\" Ian asked quietly.\n\n\"For starters, I can confirm that class-five demon.\"\n\n\"Too bad.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nI concentrated on taking air in and blowing air out.\n\nToday was my first experience with demons. Like many Southerners from small towns, if someone asked you if you thought demons were real, you gave the Sunday school answer of \"yes.\" But they weren't something you thought about on a day-to-day basis. Even working at SPI, you knew certain things were real, but you never really put religion together with anything you might run into on the job. At least I hadn't.\n\nUntil now.\n\nBy helping Bert break a hold a demon had on him, I could've put myself in its crosshairs. And if that same demon was what I had seen on the other side of that portal, he'd now met me twice.\n\nCold sweat prickled across my skin at the thought.\n\nI knew without a doubt that I'd help Bert again in a heartbeat, but I really hoped I didn't have to.\n\nBert noticed.\n\n\"You look like you need this bed more than I do.\"\n\n\"It's just been a long day already.\" That wasn't a lie. I tried on a smile for size. \"Trust me, I'm gonna do my best not to end up in an infirmary bed.\"\n\nOr in a stainless steel drawer next to Sar Gedeon.\n\nBert grimaced as he pulled himself up further in the bed. Dr. Stephens might have the right idea of sedating Bert to make him get some rest.\n\n\"I saw them kill the elf,\" he told us. \"I saw it because they wanted me\u2014or whoever tried a PML\u2014to see them work.\"\n\n\"PML?\" I asked.\n\n\"Postmortem link.\"\n\nAll corporations had their acronyms, but SPI was a special snowflake.\n\n\"Your higher class demons are arrogant bastards,\" Ian said.\n\nBert snorted. \"Or drama queens. You two talked to Marty yet?\"\n\n\"Martin DiMatteo,\" Ian said in response to my confused expression. Then he grinned. \"You don't want to get Marty and Bert started at company parties. They try to outdo each other with work war stories.\"\n\n\"I'll try to avoid doing that.\" Some stories are better left untold, especially if they involved demons and dead people.\n\n\"No, we haven't seen Marty,\" Ian said, \"but the boss wants to bring him in on this one.\"\n\n\"A demon coming through a portal and ripping the insides out of an elf drug lord. Marty will love this one.\"\n\nNo, I definitely didn't want to be around when Bert and Marty started storytime.\n\n\"Our Class Five\u2014or his cohort\u2014left me that present on purpose,\" Bert told us. \"The elf never had a chance.\"\n\n\"You saw this from Gedeon's point of view?\" Ian asked.\n\nBert shook his head. \"I saw through the eyes of whoever was working with that demon. They were the one in charge.\"\n\n\"So one was a demon and the other was . . . ?\"\n\n\"Unknown.\"\n\n\"The accomplice planted the trap,\" I said.\n\nBert nodded. \"The demon had its hand wrapped around the elf's entire neck. It was a big Class Five, and it was wearing a classic form: red skin, horns, tail, hooves.\"\n\nI swallowed, or tried to.\n\n\"It picked Gedeon up off the floor and squeezed his neck until he stopped struggling but was still conscious. Then he tossed the elf on the floor and put one hoof on his chest to hold him still. Though I don't think it was necessary. The accomplice had already paralyzed the elf. There are spells or drugs that can do that but leave the victim fully aware.\"\n\nGod.\n\n\"So he felt it when they opened up his chest and cut out his heart.\" Now Bert did look sick. \"In his last moments of awareness, Sar Gedeon was forced to watch as the demon ate his heart.\"\n\n\"There weren't any screams?\" I asked quietly.\n\n\"His vocal cords were paralyzed, too.\"\n\nAnd now so were mine.\n\n\"What about the soul?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Held immobile until the demon was ready for it.\"\n\n\"He ate it.\" Ian's voice was flat and without emotion, but I knew my partner. He was feeling plenty of emotion. He was just keeping himself from putting his fist through the nearest wall. Sar Gedeon may have been a merciless criminal who killed people and destroyed lives, but no one deserved to die like that.\n\n\"What kind of thing can do that?\" I asked Bert.\n\n\"Unfortunately more than a few. Equally unfortunate is that the perp foresaw Sar Gedeon's murder leading to a necromantic investigation. This thing took great pride and enjoyment in its work, and wanted it to be seen and appreciated.\" His blue eyes went hard. \"I hate to disappoint him, her, or it, but I didn't appreciate it one damned bit.\"\n\n\"Sar Gedeon was also a mage,\" Ian said. \"Mid-level power, but it was enough that no one wanted to cross him.\"\n\n\"He got crossed all right,\" I muttered.\n\n\"I'm sure the killer knew that, which would only have increased his enjoyment.\" Bert said. \"I sensed a sadistic satisfaction\u2014glee, even\u2014because of Gedeon's inability to defend himself. This thing likes it when his victims are helpless.\"\n\nBert's telling of Sar Gedeon's last minutes terrified me, but it also made me mad as hell.\n\n\"The thing fed Gedeon's heart and soul to his demon muscle while the elf had to watch and couldn't do anything about it. Is there a descriptor beyond sadistic? 'Cause this guy would qualify in spades.\"\n\nIan spoke one word. \"Monster.\"\n\n# 10\n\nWE left Bert in his infirmary bed, gearing up for the inevitable argument with Dr. Stephens about how long\u2014or not\u2014he was going to stay there.\n\nMy money was on Bert.\n\nIan and I had been issued new phones and were headed out to take the next step to finding out who murdered Sar Gedeon; and more importantly, who tried to fry the mind of our coworker and friend.\n\nPart of me didn't want to find the trail that would lead me to what I'd seen beyond that portal, but that part was soundly outvoted by the certainty that the only way to get rid of fear was to confront the thing that scared you.\n\nEven if that thing was a class-five demon that ate hearts and souls.\n\nAfter being reamed out for letting the NYPD get the jump on them in discovering a new supernatural drug on the streets, SPI's narcotics team was left scrambling to get information for our Dragon Lady and get themselves out of the doghouse.\n\nIan and I had sources of our own that were more well-rounded in their knowledge gathering. If they could make a living selling or trading information about one segment of New York's criminal society, they figured that they could bring in even more if they broadened their base. Snitches, like investments, were more profitable when they diversified.\n\nOrd Larcwyde had a financial goal and a life goal. Make enough money to retire well. Live long enough to enjoy both.\n\nHe was an entrepreneur and a veritable information clearinghouse.\n\nAnd out of all of SPI's agents, he would only talk to me.\n\nWhile I'd like to be able to say it was due to my street savvy, I knew it was my accent.\n\nTwenty years ago, Ord had transplanted from Atlanta. Business was too good in New York to ever consider going back home, but talking to me helped ease his homesickness for all things Southern.\n\nIan was a barbaric Yankee who he tolerated only on my account.\n\nI'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a wee smidgen of pride at being able to be one up on Ian, even if it was only with a single snitch. My partner was nearly legendary in the agency, so I took what I could get.\n\nOrd Larcwyde did business out of a small organic greengrocer one block south of the Meatpacking District on Horatio Street in the West Village. He had many information-related businesses, but only one interested me today. If you were on an extremely selective pre-approved list, you came in, bought a hundred dollar lottery ticket, and you got to talk to Ord. How long he'd chat with you depended on the questions you were asking\u2014and how much he enjoyed your company.\n\nProfits from sales of New York's lottery tickets went to the public schools.\n\nOrd Larcwyde was very civic-minded.\n\nPlus, you might actually win. So there was something for everyone.\n\nBecause I was Southern and he liked me, I got to talk to Ord for free. But today I laid a twenty on the counter to let Ord know I was thinking of the children, and that this wasn't just a social call. Plus, it was good manners.\n\nWhile the elven store owner was letting Ord know we were there, I scratched off the numbers.\n\nTo win back the money I'd just spent wasn't my objective, though it would've been nice. My reward would be information on Brimstone, the murder motive, the identities of the killers, or I'd love the jackpot of getting all three.\n\nDang. The tickets were losers.\n\nHopefully Ord would be the source of my payout.\n\n* * *\n\nOrd Larcwyde kind of reminded me of Colonel Sanders. That is if the Colonel was a three-foot-tall gnome who wore a blue velour tracksuit and gold chains instead of a white suit and black string tie.\n\nOrd stood, came around his desk, and treated my hand to a most-proficient kiss. Ian was on the receiving end of a terse nod.\n\n\"Makenna, you are a sight for sore eyes. Please, sit and make yourself comfortable.\"\n\nOrd had two chairs in his office: one for him and one for a guest.\n\nIan the Barbaric Yankee leaned against the open door.\n\nOrd would close it for truly private conversations, but he knew I didn't like being closed inside what was essentially a vault.\n\nThe back room was spacious as far as Manhattan grocery stores went, but Ord's reason for choosing this particular location for his office was an oversized fixture left behind by the previous grocer tenant.\n\nAn old walk-in freezer. It was the Fort Knox of offices.\n\nThe present store owner had a newer model that he used, and the old one was too big and expensive to move. Ord offered to make it worth his while to keep it. It was big for a freezer, but small for an office. Ord was a gnome; he didn't need space, just security. It didn't get more secure than what was essentially a big steel box. Ord got his office. The grocery store owner got rent to compensate for the storage space he lost by having the thing in his back room, as well as additional store and lottery customers from those, like us, who came in to meet with Ord.\n\nOnce again, everyone was a winner.\n\nOrd had the freezer part disconnected, and had a handle and lock installed on the inside as well. He'd also had an opening installed for air to get in, though he'd never told anyone where it was. Since Ord was small, I imagined the air opening was, too. If someone ever wanted to kill Ord for running his mouth, they'd have better luck trying to off him after office hours. Either that, or bring the world's biggest can opener.\n\nOrd had a step stool behind his desk that let him get in his office chair without any undignified hopping or climbing.\n\nThe gnome settled himself in the leather chair. \"I'd ask what do I owe this pleasure, but I've already heard. A human who can't hold his powder sets fire to a restaurant, and an elf who's responsible for the deaths of at least hundreds finally meets Death for himself. You've had a busy day.\"\n\nSounded like Jesin Nadisu, the building manager at the Murwood, wasn't as discreet as he'd claimed. Then again, goblins were known for having a different take on promises and agreements. He'd seemed like such a nice kid.\n\nIt must have shown on my face.\n\n\"Three representatives of Sarkowski Plumbing went in the back entrance of the Murwood, and they were seen wheeling out a black bag that could never be mistaken for a defective toilet.\"\n\nOf course. \"Your pixies,\" I said.\n\nThe gnome smiled. \"Their loyalty and work ethic are unquestioned.\"\n\nPixies were tiny, winged, and nosier than your worst neighbor. New York and Los Angeles were thick with the things. About the size and speed of hummingbirds, they were the eyes and ears of the city's supernatural paparazzi, and individuals like Ord who dealt in information. Like hummingbirds, pixies lived on a liquid diet. Pay them with Mountain Dew, Red Bull, or any other high-sugar, high-caffeine drink, and they were yours for life.\n\n\"My winged friends provide me with the information I need; I keep them well stocked with the beverages they want. It's a partnership made in heaven.\" Ord looked at Ian. \"While SPI really should change their disguises more often, in all fairness, there really is no disguising a dead body. You could hardly have folded up Sar and carried him out in a duffel bag. It would potentially destroy evidence on the body.\" He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. \"So who did the elf finally annoy badly enough to kill him?\"\n\n\"I was hoping you could tell us,\" I said.\n\nIan gave me a look. I'd just told a source that the all-knowing, all-powerful SPI wasn't all-knowing all the time, and Ian didn't like telling Ord that he didn't have all the answers. I liked the gnome, so I didn't have that problem.\n\n\"There is no shame in admitting ignorance, Agent Byrne,\" Ord told my partner. \"The only shame would lie in willfully remaining that way. Considering their success in keeping their operation 'under the radar,' as you humans say, my guess would make the new boys and girls in town either elf or goblin. Both races are ever so adept at keeping secrets. What I do know is that the hornets' nest has been soundly kicked.\"\n\n\"It couldn't be vampires?\" I asked.\n\n\"Unlikely. There are three families that are not associated with any of the vampire governing covens. Two of them\u2014the Frontino and B\u00e1thory families\u2014deal in drugs.\"\n\n\"B\u00e1thory? I asked. \"As in Hungarian countess Elizabeth B\u00e1thory? Bathing-in-the-blood-of-hundreds-of-virgins B\u00e1thory?\"\n\nOrd gave me a nod. \"That's her. The family's right proud of their ancestor.\"\n\nI made a face. \"Nice people.\"\n\n\"You don't know the half of it.\"\n\nI held up a hand. \"And I'm fine staying that way.\"\n\n\"And the Frontino family proudly traces their ancestry back to Cesare Borgia, who was also reputed to be a vampire.\"\n\nI nodded. \"A Machiavellian bloodsucker. I can see that.\"\n\n\"You got it. And . . .\"\n\n\"And as interesting as the history lesson is,\" Ian interrupted, \"could we stick to the present for now?\"\n\n\"You'll have to excuse him,\" I told Ord. \"He's no fun.\"\n\n\"I've gotten that impression.\" The gnome turned to Ian. \"Their descendants aren't heavily into drug dealing, but they don't believe in ignoring a potential revenue stream, even though it risks contaminating their food supply, namely humans. For that reason, the vampire covens had nothing to do with the drug trade. These two vampire families market the standard products.\"\n\n\"Not much into R&D?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"None. Which is probably why they're interested what the newcomers are selling. Supposedly Brimstone lets the user see through glamours and read minds.\"\n\nI snorted. \"So much for why the guy in the restaurant did a line or two before his meeting.\"\n\nIan nodded. \"Anything that would let you read the mind of a potential customer\u2014or existing competition\u2014would be worth its weight in gold in this city.\"\n\n\"Too bad he couldn't get past the change of scenery.\"\n\n\"Which is why the locals want a piece of the action,\" Ord said. \"The local businessmen asked, the newcomers refused. It seems they don't share well with others, though I can hardly blame them. Unfortunately some of our locals are slow learners. They asked again, and the newcomers began saying no in most impolite ways.\"\n\n\"Such as?\" I asked.\n\n\"Four days ago, the partially eviscerated body of a B\u00e1thory courier was hung on the front gate of the B\u00e1thory family compound on Long Island.\"\n\nIan stood straighter. \"Define partial.\"\n\nOrd looked from one of us to the other. \"The heart had been cut out.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\" I asked.\n\n\"A hoofprint had been branded into what was left of the chest. Some of their street dealers are missing.\"\n\n\"The B\u00e1thorys didn't report any of it.\" My partner didn't ask it as a question.\n\n\"To have a body deposited in such a manner . . .\" The gnome swallowed queasily. \"And in such a condition would raise questions about their business activities that the B\u00e1thory family would prefer not to answer. They cleared one racketeering charge last year by the skin of their pointy teeth.\"\n\n\"Was Sar Gedeon one of the locals who wanted a cut?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Oh yes.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\" _His_ chief courier was found three days ago in the driver's seat of one of Gedeon's prized vintage Porsches inside his locked\u2014and warded\u2014twelve-car garage.\"\n\nI exchanged a glance with Ian. Sounded like Gedeon didn't take no for an answer until it'd been his heart and soul being scooped out.\n\n\"And the B\u00e1thorys aren't the only ones missing some dealers,\" Ord continued. \"The Gedeon organization and Frontino family also have fewer employees than they had two weeks ago.\"\n\nA buzzer sounded in the front of the store. The owner came down the hallway to the back.\n\n\"Delivery, sorry for the interruption.\" He went to open the back door.\n\nOrd made an impatient sound. \"If this place wasn't so perfect for me, I'd have moved by now. The noise lately\u2014\"\n\nThe owner's body flew across the small storeroom and smashed into a wall lined with steel shelving. The shelving fell against a stack of boxes filled with garlic, which toppled onto the floor.\n\nNone of this affected the stance of the balaclava-wearing gunman who fired a spray of bullets through Ord's open door.\n\nOrd hit the floor behind his desk. I plastered myself against the wall next to the door. Ian made a flying dive out the door and onto the floor of the storeroom, his gun drawn. This unfortunately coincided with the boxes falling over.\n\nOn top of my partner, burying him in garlic.\n\nThe gunman turned and ran.\n\nOh, hell no.\n\n\"You okay?\" I yelled over the ringing in my ears from the gunfire.\n\nMuffled curses coming from under the boxes indicated the affirmative.\n\nThis wasn't a robbery. The shooter had been posing as a delivery guy.\n\nHe'd been aiming at Ord.\n\n\"In pursuit,\" I yelled over my shoulder.\n\nIan's muffled curses were less muffled. I chose to ignore the \"No!\" that I really couldn't be all that certain I'd heard.\n\nWhat wasn't muffled was Ord slamming and locking the door to his freezer\/office.\n\nApparently there were limits to his Southern hospitality.\n\nThe one thing I hadn't needed any training on when I'd started working at SPI was running. I'd mostly used it to run away from something trying to kill and eat me, though not necessarily in that order. Running was both offensive and defensive. Running _from_ took the same skill as running _after_. Either one could help keep you alive.\n\nToday I was running to apprehend an assassin who just tried to kill my best source, even though Ord had locked me and Ian out of his office. I tried not to think that said assassin had a gun and had just displayed a willingness to use it. I also had a gun, but was lacking in enthusiasm.\n\nIan would follow as soon as he could wrestle his way clear of those boxes. Yasha was circling the block waiting for our pick-up call.\n\nYasha Kazakov was our driver. Catching supernatural bad guys was easier than finding a parking place in New York. A driver who wasn't shy about throwing his weight around was a must. Yasha was also a nearly hundred-year-old werewolf, but he didn't look any older than Ian. With the Russian werewolf's preternatural hearing, I was sure he'd heard the shots.\n\n\"Yasha, pursuing suspect on foot,\" I said into my new phone's earpiece. I sucked in a double lungful of air. \"Approaching Greenwich Street.\"\n\nIf there was one thing that Yasha loved, it was running down bad guys of any shape or substance with the Suburban that he considered his partner. I'd never asked if he loved her more than me or Ian. I didn't think I wanted to know the answer.\n\n\"Am half block away,\" came the Russian werewolf's voice in my ear.\n\nI hoped Yasha wouldn't do a three-point turn or drive on the sidewalk to intercept the gunman, but I wouldn't put it past him. Heavy traffic or no traffic, if Yasha thought he could do it, he would. The Russian werewolf's mantra was, \"I saw it in a cartoon once and I think I can do it.\" There were two werewolf packs in New York: one in Manhattan and another in the outer boroughs. Yasha wasn't a member of either one. He considered SPI his pack.\n\nThere were plenty of disadvantages of working for a secret agency, but the biggest pain in the ass was not being able to yell \"NYPD! Freeze!\" At least not legally.\n\nWhen in pursuit of an armed suspect running down a busy sidewalk, the goal was to catch the suspect without anyone being shot. In theory, a suspect trying to get away didn't want to bring any more trouble down on their heads by opening fire on a crowded street. And the West Village was definitely crowded with traffic and people.\n\nEven with all the foot traffic, I had no trouble spotting him.\n\nHe'd taken off his balaclava to try to blend in, but all that did was give him a serious case of hat hair.\n\nHe definitely wasn't a goblin. He wasn't using a glamour of any sort, and silver skin would've been a standout. As far as I could tell, the ears had rounded tips, which eliminated him being an elf. Besides, he couldn't run nearly fast enough to be an elf.\n\nUntil I could get a closer look at him, I'd say he was human. About six foot. Dark blond hair standing straight up, presently weaving through the pedestrians near the end of the next block at Hudson Street.\n\nBingo.\n\nBeyond that was Seravalli Playground. If I had anything to say about it, he wasn't going to get that far. Even though he was running from me, I didn't delude myself into believing he was scared of me; he simply didn't want to get caught.\n\nOr he could be leading you into a soul-ripping, heart-staking ambush, my little voice said. Did you ever consider that?\n\nI hadn't, but I had an assassin on the run in broad daylight, and I would chase him until my lungs exploded if it meant bringing in a man who'd been told to permanently silence Ord Larcwyde\u2014and who had no qualms about me and Ian as collateral damage. That was someone worth interrogating.\n\nAll that being said, like a little terrier chasing a big truck, I hadn't given much thought to how I'd subdue him when\u2014or if\u2014I caught him. Though also like certain small terriers, come hell or high water, I wasn't giving up.\n\nI didn't slow down until I reached a clump of what had to be tourists, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at an honest-to-god paper map. Did they even make those things anymore?\n\n\"'Scuse me, pardon me, coming through,\" I said, weaving, dodging, and bumping my way through.\n\nThe gunman had vanished around the corner.\n\nDammit.\n\nI stopped at the corner long enough to peek around and make sure he wasn't waiting to blow my head off. I got a gratifying glimpse of him darting into a parking garage across the street.\n\n\"Yasha, parking garage on Hudson.\"\n\nI crossed the street and quickly darted inside to keep from being silhouetted against the sunlight from the entrance. I drew my gun and sprinted as quietly as I could down into the garage to the protection of the closest concrete column and stopped to let my eyes adjust to the shadows.\n\nThe garage was below street level. I'd been in these before. Going through the low entrance made you feel like you were driving into a cave. If you had to go to the bottom level to find a space, it felt like there was barely enough clearance to stand up in, and if you weren't a claustrophobic wreck before driving in, you were then.\n\nI didn't know how far down this one went, but I wasn't going any farther than this level.\n\nWhen a predator went to ground, you didn't jump in the hole after it\u2014and if you had to, you didn't go far.\n\nSince the garage was small by Manhattan standards and the gate was both an entrance and exit, this was probably the only way in or out. I could simply stay put and wait. The only way this guy was getting out was past me. Unless his car was here, then he'd be trying to go over me.\n\nI tried to turn down the volume on my breathing enough to hear the gunman moving or starting a car.\n\nI opened my mouth to get even more air in. What the hell? I could sprint farther than this without getting winded. Apparently running after\u2014or from\u2014a guy with a gun who'd just fired shots inches from where I'd been standing kicked my adrenaline into overdrive. More adrenaline flowing equaled more air needed.\n\nOnce I could hear over my own wheezing, there wasn't anything else to hear, other than passing traffic and dripping water from somewhere below.\n\nIt was too dark to tell how many columns were down here, but it was highly likely the gunman was behind one nearby waiting for me to make the first move.\n\nI had news, I wasn't going anywhere.\n\nOnly minutes away was a Russian werewolf in an armored Suburban that could block the gunman's exit or pin him against a back wall. Ian and I had been shot at, and Yasha was the protective sort. Since there'd never been a day when a shelf and a pile of boxes had stopped my partner, he'd follow, if for no other reason than to yell at me for running off without backup.\n\nNone of that would keep the gunman from taking an elevator up into the building above, but I had one elevator in my line of sight, and chances were in a garage this small, there was only one. It was the only decently lit thing down here. Only half of the lights in the rest of the garage actually worked, the rest were either burned out or flickering on and off, like they were powered by anemic fireflies instead of electricity.\n\nLooking out into the silent, too-poorly-lit-to-be-down-here-by-myself hole in the ground, I began to have second thoughts about my show of initiative, or as my Aunt Vicki, who was the police chief back home would have said, I'd \"run off half-cocked.\"\n\nAs my adrenaline rush faded, realization started to set in, and it wasn't pretty. A trained and experienced agent could do something like this. I was neither trained, nor experienced.\n\nI was a dumbass.\n\nIf I managed not to get myself killed, the next time I found myself in a similar situation, I'd think twice. I'd probably still do it, because the way I saw it I didn't have a choice, but at least I'd think about it more before it did it.\n\nThe garage was almost full, except for the far corner, which, considering the size of the garage wasn't all that far, was twenty spaces at the most.\n\nNo one had parked there.\n\nI couldn't really blame them. There was no light for five spaces in either direction. I wouldn't have parked there. The corner didn't even have shadows, just a big chunk of dark.\n\nI looked closer.\n\nA chunk that was less dark than it'd been a couple of blinks ago.\n\nThe source of light wasn't a bulb, it was the wall itself. A wall that should have been a solid slab of concrete.\n\nUnderground garages smelled like gas, oil, and the leftovers of whatever fast food someone had most recently tossed out of their car.\n\nEven then, chances were nil to none that those leftovers would smell like rotten eggs.\n\nA smell nearly identical to sulfur.\n\nI jumped as explosive pops and showers of sparks rained down from overhead as every light in the garage blew, leaving me in near total darkness.\n\nExcept for the far corner.\n\nA thin, glowing line appeared, spreading, disintegrating the dark as it went.\n\nAn orange glow.\n\nOh shit.\n\nThe gunman didn't have a getaway car down here; he had a getaway portal.\n\n# 11\n\nTIME for me to leave.\n\nI turned.\n\nLess than ten feet away\u2014standing between me and the only exit\u2014was the gunman.\n\nHis hands were loose at his sides, there was no gun in sight, and his jacket was unzipped all the way, exposing a bare and seriously pasty chest.\n\nHe was smiling.\n\nThis was wrong on so many levels, I didn't know where to start.\n\nHe kept smiling and shrugged out of his jacket.\n\nAdd another level to the wrongness.\n\nI raised my gun and took a step back.\n\n\"You need to stop.\" I backed up another step. \"There's an easy way to avoid this whole confrontation\u2014or whatever it is you have in mind. You step aside. I leave. Simple.\"\n\nHe stopped smiling. Not because he was any less happy, but because his mouth was changing, along with the rest of his body\u2014at least above the waist. If there was anything going on below the belt, he was still wearing his pants, so thankfully, I didn't have to see it.\n\nHis arms lengthened and became serpentine as if his bones had melted. Other appendages sprouted from his shoulders and sides.\n\nTentacles.\n\nThe bottom half of his face writhed and snake-like tentacles emerged like a fleshy beard.\n\nOh yeah, this was definitely wrong.\n\nAnd it sure as hell wasn't human.\n\nThe gunman was a shapeshifter.\n\nA type of shapeshifter I'd never seen, heard of, or had a nightmare about. Though I'd be rectifying that last one tonight, if I lived through this.\n\nThe squid guy had forced me away from the column. The opening portal was still the length of the garage behind me, but it wasn't nearly far enough away.\n\nI aimed for the spot right between his eyes. \"Stop or I'll shoot.\"\n\nHe didn't stop.\n\nI fired.\n\nThe bullet hit him right between the eyes\u2014and made a dimple. Then the flesh beneath rippled and popped the bullet right out. It landed with a metallic plink on the concrete.\n\nI didn't get a second shot.\n\nA tentacle shot out like a whip around my legs and swept me off my feet.\n\nI landed hard, hitting my head on the concrete. I saw stars and heard my gun clattering away from me.\n\nIan had been training me in hand-to-hand combat, not hand-to-tentacle combat. I couldn't win against two arms, let alone six tentacles. And if this guy got on top of me, I was toast.\n\nThe tentacle continued to constrict like a python around my legs until I couldn't feel them anymore.\n\nI rolled sharply. At least that's what I tried to do.\n\nMy gun was out of reach.\n\nI had a knife inside the top of my tentacle-wrapped right boot. My other knife was at the small of my back.\n\nI twisted, scrambling wildly to get at it. Another tentacle shot out and wrapped around my waist, as he started dragging me toward the portal.\n\nA portal that was now open to the width of a car.\n\nI couldn't see through to the other side, but I could make out restless shadows shifting and passing across the opening just over the threshold.\n\nOne shadow stood still on the edge of the portal where it met and melted the dark.\n\nI'd seen it before.\n\nIt was waiting.\n\nI didn't need three guesses to know for whom.\n\nI didn't believe in coincidences. I believed in traps. And I was being dragged toward one.\n\nThe squid had two tentacles wrapped around me and the other four were flailing around my squirming self, trying to get a hold. If he dragged me across that threshold, I was worse than dead and I knew it.\n\nI panicked.\n\nI got my knife in my hand, stabbing and sawing frantically at the tentacle wrapped around my knees, black blood soaking my hands. I gripped the knife harder. It was all I had and I couldn't lose it.\n\nMy whimpers turned to enraged screams. They could have been girly screams for all I knew. I didn't care. Screaming tapped my primal self, the terrified animal that kept me cutting and fighting with everything I had.\n\nI cut through the tentacle's tough core and through the rubbery flesh on the other side, freeing my legs. I drove the heel of my boot into my attacker's knee, simultaneously hooking the toe of the other boot behind his ankle. One sharp pull and he went down. I stabbed the knife's blade into the tentacle at my waist and started sawing. The thing's high-pitched keening echoed through the garage.\n\nIt went well with my screaming.\n\nIf something was trying to mug you, rape you, kill you, or drag you through a fiery portal to your eternal doom\u2014make noise. Help could be just one good shriek away.\n\nThe tentacle tightened around my waist, and I sawed faster. The squid thing was still keening. My screams had turned back to frantic whimpering.\n\nI severed the tentacle, slicing into my numbed waist before I could stop. Black blood pumped from the tentacle's severed stump, the end of it still wrapped around my waist and constricting as if unaware that it was no longer attached.\n\nWith a keening squeal, the squid dropped me, staggering toward the portal, its remaining four tentacles cradling the stumps of the other two. I desperately pushed against the blood-slicked concrete with the heels of my boots as my hands scrambled and clawed for a hold to pull myself away.\n\nAt least I tried.\n\nIn my mind, I was making all kinds of progress getting away from that portal. In reality, I couldn't move. Not one muscle.\n\nI didn't have to move to see the portal. The squid demon was gone, and the shadow standing silently beyond was still silent, but he had moved. The shadow had become a silhouette of a man. Tall and thin. Long fingers flared like a fan and my whimpers froze in my throat . . .\n\nAnd my blood froze in my veins. Not from the paralyzing effects of what must have been a spell launched from the other side of the portal, but from the knowledge of who had done the launching.\n\nSar Gedeon's murderer. The thing that had held the elf still while a class-five demon had cut out and eaten his heart\u2014then his soul.\n\nA horned figure suddenly loomed behind the mage.\n\nOh God . . .\n\nTires screeched behind me.\n\nIn that instant, it wasn't my life that flashed before my eyes. It was gratitude. I was grateful that I was about to become the city's newest speed bump rather than a demon meal.\n\nJust as the stink of burned rubber overrode my senses, the portal snapped shut, leaving no sign that it'd ever been there.\n\nMy body went limp in a fit of shaking.\n\nI could move again.\n\nDoors opened and arms were lifting me off the concrete. Ian's arms. Oh God, that hurt. The parts of me that weren't still numb had concrete burn.\n\nI couldn't make sense of Ian's words over the sound of my ragged breathing. Since the ones I did hear were creative variations on the four-letter variety, my partner appeared to be going for emotional expression over sentence structure.\n\n\"Sq . . . squid.\" Great, my teeth were chattering, too.\n\nI tried to point toward the portal.\n\nIt was gone. The Suburban's headlights lit the garage like high noon. The corner walls were just concrete. There was nothing left of the portal but the stink.\n\nAnd the black blood on the floor\u2014and on me.\n\nIan had one arm around me; the other hand held his gun. Yasha wasn't encumbered.\n\nWhen in human form, Yasha's favorite weapons were his Suburban and his Desert Eagle. The Eagle was the only handgun large enough for his hands. He had it in his hand now. The other held a flashlight that could fry your retinas.\n\nThe Russian swept the entire garage with its beam.\n\n\"Is gone.\"\n\n\"It was a shapeshifter,\" I told them \"I didn't do this . . . to myself.\"\n\nIan's expression was grim as his eyes scanned the cars. \"I know you didn't. Yasha, get a\u2014\"\n\n\"Sample for lab,\" the Russian finished for him.\n\n\"Thanks, buddy.\" He looked down at me with an expression that said, unlike Yasha, I wasn't his buddy right now, or at the very least he was pissed at my show of initiative.\n\nI pulled at my shirt. \"I've got lab samples, too. He bled all over me when I cut off his tentacles.\"\n\nIan's expression changed from definitely pissed to possibly impressed.\n\n\"Just the two,\" I clarified. \"He had six. It was kind of like cutting bait.\"\n\nReally big bait.\n\nFor now, I left out the panicking and whimpering part. I wanted to keep my badass illusion going for as long as possible. Impressed while looking at me was a new expression for Ian, and I was enjoying it. Besides, he didn't look like he wanted to yell at me\u2014at least not as much.\n\nI thought I had enough breath now for the really bad news. My partner was going to have a lot of questions, and I needed the wind to answer.\n\n\"Ian, there was a portal . . . and a mage.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWithin fifteen minutes, SPI had investigative and cleanup teams on site, complete with agency demonologist, Martin DiMatteo. The teams were disguised as elevator repairmen. Their job was to get in, get readings, get rid of the evidence, and get out. And they actually did do what the name on the van blocking the garage entrance indicated. They repaired the elevator\u2014which was needed after they disabled it to keep anyone from descending into the garage.\n\nBoth teams had plenty of practice in being thorough and fast. The NYPD could have closed the garage as a crime scene for hours. Since SPI didn't officially exist, we couldn't officially do anything, and didn't have time on our side. The disguise was to keep the curious from asking too many questions; the speed was to prevent anyone from seeing squid demon blood splattered on both concrete and cars. Fortunately for evidence eradication, squid demon blood dried to the consistency of blackberry jelly and was easily powerwashed down the garage's storm drains. Unfortunately for the cars, it ate through the paint.\n\nThat was why I was wearing Yasha's spare sweats that he kept in the Suburban. My clothes had quickly developed holes. To keep those holes from being eaten into me, I got into the back of the Suburban with its conveniently tinted windows and stripped down. Going werewolf quickly was hell on a wardrobe. The Russian was tall enough in his human form; going wolf added another eight inches in height, and let's just say an impressive amount everywhere else. If he didn't have time to get naked before going wolf, his clothes didn't stand a chance.\n\nRight now, I was glad he kept spares.\n\nYasha's sweatshirt hung nearly to my knees. If it hadn't been November, and cold, I'd have left it at that; but it was, so I couldn't. Keeping his sweatpants where they needed to be on me required sitting down and staying there. After running five blocks then wrestling for my life and soul with a determined squid demon to keep from being dragged through a portal to Hell, sitting down was exactly what I wanted to do. It ran a close second to drinking the massive hot chocolate Ian had gotten for me. I loved New York. There were coffee shops on every corner. My partner knew exactly what I needed. I was still shivering, and I didn't think it was from cold. At times like this, a girl needed chocolate\u2014or a stiff drink. Despite what we did for a living, drinking on the job was still frowned upon, so a hot chocolate it was.\n\nAt the moment, Ian was talking to our lead investigator, but he kept the Suburban in sight at all times. I smiled around my cup. Yasha wasn't the only protective one.\n\nI was sitting curled up in the Suburban's second row of seats in the exact middle. Just because the portal and Sar Gedeon's murderer were gone didn't mean I didn't want as many exit options open to me as possible\u2014or the protection of armored glass on every side. It probably wouldn't stand up to demons, but it was what was available, so I gladly took it.\n\nExcept for the partially open driver's side window. I'd rolled that down myself. Just because I'd had the hell scared out of me didn't lessen my curiosity. The lab folks were having a field day with this one. It wasn't often they got to play with squid demon blood, and I didn't want to miss a word of it.\n\nThe rear passenger-side door opened. I had a visitor, an expected one.\n\nSPI's director of demonology, Martin DiMatteo.\n\nI saluted him with my gargantuan paper cup. \"Hi, Marty.\"\n\nWe'd only met once before on my first day on the job, and he was many levels of agency bureaucracy above me, but after what'd just happened, I had no fracks left to give.\n\nNot that he was intimidating or anything. I think the term \"mild mannered\" was coined with this guy in mind. Average height, average build, average looks. The only thing that wasn't average was the complete lack of hair above the neck. Below the neck, he was covered by a navy blue suit with a non-descript tie. Even the tie's pattern was muted.\n\nMartin DiMatteo gave me a cool nod. \"Agent Fraser.\" He got in and closed the door.\n\nI took a big gulp of my hot chocolate. Interrogation, here we come.\n\n\"You can call me Mac, if you want to,\" I told him. \"Or . . . Agent Fraser if you don't.\"\n\n\"I understand you've had quite the eventful day, Agent Fraser.\"\n\nSo much for friendly small talk.\n\nThough one element of my eventful day wasn't going to be a topic of talk, small or otherwise. Ian had notified Vivienne Sagadraco about what had happened; and until after an official debriefing, she wanted us to keep the mage to ourselves. I had absolutely no problem with that. I didn't want to think about what'd nearly happened to me, let alone have a chat about it. As the director of demonology, Martin DiMatteo would probably be hearing about it soon enough, but I was fine with him being told by the boss and not me.\n\n\"I think we can safely call it the day from Hell,\" I said.\n\n\"Technically, no. A more accurate description would be a day from an anteroom of Hell, but then that doesn't have nearly the dramatic flair.\"\n\n\"I don't want drama in my life.\" I nearly added \"Marty,\" but decided against it. I could only claim shock-induced familiarity for so long. \"What's the difference between a portal to Hell and an anteroom?\"\n\n\"One's a direct flight; the other has a layover.\" He didn't crack a smile, or show any emotion whatsoever.\n\n\"So it's true what we say back home: to get to Heaven or Hell, you've gotta go through Atlanta.\"\n\nStill no smile. I don't think the guy understood humor.\n\n\"In a manner of speaking, yes.\"\n\n\"But if I'd been dragged through, I could have been taken to Hell from there.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nGulp.\n\n\"There is no way directly into our dimension from Hell,\" he continued.\n\n\"That's good.\"\n\n\"It's the only reason any of us are still here.\"\n\nGulp again.\n\n\"The vast majority of demons cannot cross over,\" he said.\n\n\"Let me guess, squid demons can.\"\n\n\"Actually, that's what makes this incident so interesting. They shouldn't be able to, and definitely not so far from open water. Then there was what happened this morning, both in our morgue and with that elf's murder. Both highly unusual demonic behavior.\"\n\nI'm glad only one of us considered all that merely interesting. I'd broken out in a cold sweat at the thought of what I was about to ask. \"So demons don't like to torture humans\u2014or elves\u2014and eat their hearts?\"\n\n\"They derive great enjoyment from that. However, they generally don't do it here. Contrary to what most major religions believe, demons really don't find us all that fascinating on an individual basis.\"\n\nI probably didn't want to know, but couldn't help asking. \"And as a group?\"\n\nDiMatteo shrugged. \"I've heard that we're tasty and addictive, rather like buffalo wings. It's our dimension that they covet. They consider our dimension\u2014or any dimension other than their own, for that matter\u2014to be much more hospitable than theirs.\"\n\n\"Must be the beaches,\" said an unexpected voice.\n\nI danged near choked on my chocolate. \"Bert?\"\n\n\"Mac.\" He nodded in greeting. \"I escaped.\"\n\n\"I see. Should you be here?\"\n\n\"You saw another portal\u2014and the bastard who attacked me standing on the other side. Where else should I be?\" He nodded to my visitor. \"Marty.\"\n\n\"Bert.\"\n\n\"Where you should be is still in bed with Dr. Stephens fussing over you.\" I spotted a flash of white on the back of his big hand. My mouth fell open. \"Is that tape from your IV needle?\"\n\nBert looked down, grunted in acknowledgment, and ripped it off.\n\n\"You really did escape.\"\n\n\"I didn't have a choice,\" Bert said. \"I'm fine, Stephens didn't believe me. That's his problem, not mine.\"\n\n\"I hate to disappoint you, but the portal's gone. You came here for nothing.\"\n\n\"There've been two portals today, and you've been there for both of them. You're batting a thousand, kid. If I stick with you, I'll be there for the next one.\"\n\nI couldn't believe my ears. \"Did you hit your head on the table in the morgue? It's more like I've got two strikes, and the next one means I'm out. I'd like nothing more than to take myself out of the game before that happens.\"\n\n\"What proof do you have that a class-five demon was with the elf's killer?\" DiMatteo asked Bert.\n\nThe necromancer gave the demonologist a flat look. \"Seven foot tall _without_ the horns. Tail as long as Mac here is tall. Turn-ons include chest branding, heart eating, and soul sucking. Yeah, it was a Class Five.\"\n\nDiMatteo either ignored the sarcasm or he didn't get that, either. \"Were there bony protrusions like a ridge down the length of its back?\"\n\nBert shook his head. \"Smooth back.\"\n\n\"Slender build or heavy?\"\n\nBert looked confused.\n\n\"Swimmer or linebacker?\" DiMatteo clarified.\n\n\"Somewhere in between, but more toward swimmer.\"\n\n\"The horns. Were they upward-, forward-, or backward-facing? Forward would be like a bull. Backward is like a goat. Upward is . . . up.\"\n\nThat question gave Bert pause. \"I'm not sure.\"\n\n\"Think.\"\n\n\"It's important?\"\n\n\"Critical.\"\n\n\"Upward, but curved and slightly tilted toward the back.\"\n\nMartin DiMatteo would have raised his eyebrows in surprise if he'd had any. Two little crinkles appeared where his eyebrows would have been.\n\n\"Are you certain? Not like a goat or bull?\"\n\nBert closed his eyes, mentally reviewing his \"game tape.\" He opened them. \"Upward. The base was about as thick as two of my fingers. They narrowed to a sharp point. They also had circular ridges like growth rings down the length.\"\n\nThe demonologist sat back on the seat next to me with a genuine smile. You'd have thought Bert had just handed him the best present he'd ever gotten. \"Then it wasn't a Class Five.\"\n\n\"Well then, what class was it?\"\n\n\"Demon lords are above the BCS.\"\n\n\"BCS?\" I asked.\n\n\"Brinkman Classification System.\"\n\n\"Someone got close enough to demons to classify them?\"\n\n\"Affirmative. But he's not around anymore.\"\n\nNo doubt.\n\nI swallowed. Hard. \"A demon lord sounds bad.\" My voice sounded tiny. I'd just had firsthand experience with seeing one, at least a silhouette, which was more than I ever wanted to see again.\n\n\"That would depend on your perspective, Agent Fraser. If what Bert says is accurate, and I don't have reason to doubt him, now that I've extracted more details, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.\"\n\n\"After Sar Gedeon got up close and personal with that thing, his lifetime was over. And if Gedeon's killer used a demon lord as their hired muscle, what does that say about what the killer is?\"\n\n\"Precisely.\" The demonologist added a delighted eye twinkle to go with his smile.\n\nHe was getting happier than a pig in mud.\n\nI was getting even more scared and creeped the hell out than I already was.\n\n\"Demon lords\u2014and ladies\u2014only leave Hell for special occasions,\" DiMatteo said. \"This particular lord must consider it to be very much worth his while. They are proud, arrogant, and utterly self-absorbed, and would only consider subjecting themselves to Hell's aristocracy.\"\n\nI felt the blood run out of my face. \"So the killer is a\u2014\"\n\n\"Not necessarily the aristocracy, but a being that the demon lord could tolerate partnering with until he gets what he is in this to obtain.\"\n\n\"What would that be?\"\n\n\"Unknown at this time. Whatever it is, 'catastrophic' would probably be the best description for how bad it would be if he got it.\"\n\n# 12\n\nDR. Stephens wasn't all that disappointed\u2014or surprised\u2014that Bert had flown the medical coop. It was obvious that the necromancer was a less than ideal patient.\n\nBesides, now he had me.\n\nThe squid demon bouncing my head off the garage's concrete floor earned me a CAT scan and a stay for overnight observation in SPI's infirmary.\n\nI was in the same bed\u2014with fresh sheets\u2014that Bert had occupied until he pulled a Houdini. Bert had said earlier that I had looked like I needed to be in that bed worse than he did. If I'd had a lick of sense, I'd have just crawled in then and saved myself the pain, possible concussion, and definite emotional trauma.\n\nAll of the tentacle constricting hadn't interrupted the blood flow to my legs long enough to do any permanent damage. My feet still felt a little tingly, which wasn't exactly conducive to standing, let alone running after or away from anything. The scrapes and cuts from being dragged across the concrete had been cleaned and spritzed with some kind of miracle spray that not only took the sting out, but dried to provide a bandage that wouldn't move or come off. It needed to be reapplied every twelve hours.\n\nBecause of all that, Alain Moreau\u2014and more importantly, Vivienne Sagadraco\u2014after they had come to talk to me about what had happened\u2014and what had almost happened\u2014had ordered mandatory bed rest and observation for at least the next twelve hours.\n\nThey'd both listened in grim silence as I'd recounted my experience. They'd asked few questions, all of them to clarify details, then the boss had told me to get some sleep, and they'd left.\n\nIf they knew who or what my attacker was\u2014and I strongly suspected they had an inkling\u2014they weren't telling me. Probably because I needed to sleep, and sleep would've been hard to come by if Dr. Stephens had to sedate me during the panic attack I would've had if they'd told me what they knew.\n\nIf ignorance was bliss, I was fine with being stupid and happy for as long as possible. I knew it wouldn't last, so I'd enjoy it while I had it.\n\nIt was nearly nine o'clock in the evening of one of the longest days I could ever remember; and to tell you the truth, I really didn't mind the thought of spending the night at headquarters. And since Dr. Stephens had come in and told me I didn't have a concussion, I wouldn't have either him or one of the nurses waking me up every hour, to make sure I _could_ wake up, and shining that little penlight in my eyes.\n\nMy eyelids were getting heavy, and I thought with a little silent cheer that I might actually get some much needed sleep.\n\nIt'd been only two days ago that we'd been racing against entirely too little time to protect the supernaturals of the tristate area from death by cursed diamonds. Those who depended on glamours and other magic to hide what they really were from humans would have had that protection stripped from them; they would have been the lucky ones.\n\nNeedless to say, during the forty-eight hours leading up to that, no one had gotten any sleep. Halloween had been on a Saturday. Sunday, I'd still been too keyed up to sleep. Today was Monday and I was running on fumes.\n\nYes, I was in a hospital room, but I could mostly feel my legs, and there wasn't any permanent damage to them or to the insides of my skull. Whether I merely felt safe being in a secure complex with one of our commando teams on duty and the other on call, or I was simply exhausted, or a combination of both, I slept like a baby.\n\nThe nurse on duty, God bless her, didn't wake me up during the night or even the next morning. I got to wake up on my own. Aside from a brief bout of heart palpitations from waking up in a strange bed, it was a night well spent.\n\nI really wanted to smell coffee, but instead, my nose twitched at the scent of flowers.\n\nThe nurse\u2014or someone\u2014had been in during the night and made a floral delivery. A cut crystal vase holding at least three dozen roses stood on the bedside table. Their petals went from a pink blush for the outer petals to a pale golden glow in the center. They looked like tiny sunrises. I made a soft sound. I loved roses, and these were the most beautiful I'd ever seen.\n\nAnd there was a card.\n\nI leaned over to get it and winced at stiff and seriously sore muscles. I saw a stretching session in my immediate future.\n\nI opened the small envelope. Even the paper felt expensive.\n\nRake.\n\nI'd check with the nurse, and if she hadn't brought them in, I'd have Kenji check the security cameras for one stealthy and determined goblin.\n\nI read the card.\n\nDearest Makenna,\n\nLunch (or dinner) awaits your pleasure, as do I.\n\nBe well and be careful.\n\nYours, \nR\n\nVery nice. Caring, polite, yet not pushy. Brownie points earned.\n\nSleeping in, floral delivery . . . the SPI infirmary was starting to feel more like a hotel. I was wondering if I could get room service and schedule a massage when there was a knock, and Ian came in with a familiar pink box and a cardboard tray with two cups of life-restoring coffee.\n\nAsk and ye shall receive.\n\nI wasn't going to push my luck with the massage request.\n\nA box of anything from Kitty's more than made up for it.\n\nKatherine Poertner\u2014or Kitty to her friends, and I was fortunate to count myself as one\u2014was the owner and pastry chef extraordinaire of Kitty's Confections. She was a veritable wizard in the kitchen. Though to be perfectly accurate, Kitty Poertner was a witch. As far as those of us at SPI with a sweet tooth were concerned, Kitty's superpower was her baking skills. Everything that came out of Kitty's kitchen made people happy. She brought joy to the world\u2014supernatural and mundane\u2014one cookie at a time. Pink boxes turned up so often on SPI break room tables and in meetings that a lot of the folks here had started referring to her as the Goodie Goddess.\n\nOne thing Kitty didn't bake was gingerbread.\n\nBetween Thanksgiving and Christmas every bakery and coffee shop in the city was selling anything and everything gingerbread.\n\nKitty wouldn't touch the stuff.\n\nIn her defense, she had a good reason. Her entire family had a ton of bad karma to live down. Kitty's great-great-great-grandmother made Hannibal Lecter look like a cannibalism dilettante. She'd chow down on adults in a pinch, but she preferred children. She lured them in with sweets, most notably gingerbread.\n\nYep, she was _that_ witch.\n\nA cannibalistic child abductor was a heavy load on a family tree.\n\nIan saw the flowers on the bedside table. Everything else in the room was stark white. How could he miss them?\n\n\"Danescu?\"\n\nI tapped the tip of my nose twice in reply.\n\nIan held up the box, roses ignored, but, I was sure, not forgotten. \"Lemon-blueberry scones fresh out of the oven.\"\n\nMy favorite.\n\nI made a sound halfway between a moan and a . . . Okay, it was moan. Meg Ryan's deli experience had nothing on Kitty's scones. And from the size of that box, there were four warm wedges of pure heaven inside.\n\n\"Thank you, thank you, thank you,\" I said rapidly as I reached for the box with shamelessly greedy hands. \"This is even better than Krispy Kreme when the 'HOT' light's on. I'm getting all kinds of presents this morning. If I didn't have to wrestle with a squid demon to get them, I'd do it more often.\" I opened the box and looked down. \"One's missing.\"\n\nIan pulled the lid off his coffee to let it cool. \"Pickup and delivery fee.\"\n\nI remembered the previous pickup Ian had done\u2014me off of a garage floor\u2014and my appetite wavered, but didn't vanish. I was too hungry for even a near-death experience to ruin. \"And a fee that was well earned and deserved,\" I told him. \"Want another?\"\n\nIf Ian had gotten my reference\u2014and I was sure that he had\u2014he wasn't going to bring it up, at least not now. That took considerate to a whole new level.\n\n\"I won't turn it down,\" he said. \"We're both going to need to tank up today.\"\n\nI stopped mid bite. \"Aw, jeez. Can I at least eat one before you tell me who got slaughtered last night and how?\"\n\n\"No one got slaughtered.\"\n\nI took a bite and gave a thumbs-up. \"Score one for the humanoids.\"\n\n\"At least not anyone that we've found. Ord sent me a message this morning via one of his pixies. Two more local dealers vanished last night. They had guards and they still got snatched.\"\n\nA lump formed in my throat. \"Portal?\"\n\nIan shook his head. \"No stink.\"\n\n\"But no bodies.\"\n\n\"Not yet, but the day's young.\"\n\n\"Heard anything from Fred and the NYPD?\"\n\n\"Not a thing.\"\n\n\"Our people get any leads?\"\n\n\"Still digging. Still nothing.\"\n\nI grinned. \"Even though Ord sent you a pixie-gram to make nice, you still gonna kick his tiny ass for locking you out of his office?\"\n\nIan answered around a mouthful of scone. \"Seriously thinking about it.\" He swallowed and drank some coffee. \"I've also been thinking about a common denominator in all this, and I've found one.\"\n\n\"Good. What is it?\"\n\n\"It's a who. A lawyer by the name of Alastor Malvolia.\"\n\n\"Sounds goblin.\"\n\n\"A lot of the best lawyers are. He's Sar Gedeon's lawyer\u2014though now he's the executor of his estate. He handles all legal matters for the Frontino and B\u00e1thory families, and he's on retainer in one capacity or another with all of the other supernatural crime families.\"\n\n\"Elves using a goblin lawyer?\"\n\n\"Not one of his clients has ever been convicted. In fact, Al Malvolia's been highly successful in countersuing any accusers\u2014and winning most of the time.\"\n\n\"And the other times?\"\n\n\"The suit was dropped due to the lack of a plaintiff.\"\n\n\"Lack as in gone?\"\n\n\"Al's known for making problems\u2014and sometimes the people who cause those problems for his clients\u2014go away. He's a win-at-any-cost kind of guy.\" Ian glanced at his watch. \"We have a meeting with him at eleven o'clock. That gives you three hours to get up, shower, get dressed, and get moving. You feeling up to that?\"\n\n\"Sure. That is, if Dr. Stephens is willing to cut me loose. If not, I can just pull a Bert and leave. Thankfully I don't have any IVs to take out.\"\n\n\"You're sure?\"\n\n\"I'm sure, but are you? You actually want me to go with you?\"\n\n\"I need the benefit of your new skill set.\"\n\n\"How did you get a meeting with him?\"\n\n\"I made an appointment.\"\n\n\"As yourself? He knows you work for SPI?\"\n\n\"He does. I made the appointment not only as an agent of SPI, but as a personal representative of Vivienne Sagadraco. I told her my theory, and she's given me the green light to share any detail of the murder I need to in order to gain Malvolia's cooperation. It's in his best interests to help us in any way he can if he wants to keep representing living clients instead of handling dead clients' estates.\"\n\n\"I imagine he's gonna be popular. First us, next the NYPD will come calling.\"\n\n\"I'm sure they'd love to talk to him, but they can't.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"They can't find him. That's the other reason why I need you to go. Let's just say he doesn't have a local address.\"\n\n* * *\n\nI'd heard about pocket dimensions, but I never expected to find a high-powered goblin lawyer's office in one. Though when I thought about it, what better place?\n\nA pocket dimension is attached to a larger dimension, like a coat closet off of a ballroom. Though depending on the talent of the mage who did the construction, not all pockets are small. Like coat closets, pocket dimensions have a door\u2014otherwise known as a portal. The big difference between the portal to Alastor Malvolia's office and the two portals to Hell's anteroom that I'd seen yesterday is an actual, physical connection. Malvolia's office is in our dimension. Our dimension and Hell's dimension, fortunately, aren't next to each other.\n\nMalvolia's portal is permanent, like a door is permanent. However, it's still invisible to those not keyed to it.\n\nNeither Ian nor I were keyed to Malvolia's office portal, but since we had an appointment, there would be someone there to escort us across. Ian wanted to know whether I could see it for myself. It'd be a test. If I could see the portal to this pocket dimension, I'd probably be able to see any and all kinds. That'd be great for SPI, but bad for me if people like Alastor Malvolia knew what I could do. If I could see the door to Al's hidey-hole, I wouldn't be making an announcement.\n\nThe goblin lawyer's office on Park Avenue occupied the same space as a prominent Manhattan law firm.\n\nIan and I went inside and he gave our names, and who we were there to see, at the front desk.\n\nWithout a word, the receptionist keyed in a code on his computer's keyboard, and a door clicked open that, until that moment, had looked like part of the wall.\n\nNifty. And more than a little concerning.\n\n\"Wait inside, please. Mr. Malvolia's assistant will be right with you.\"\n\nIan nodded. \"Thank you.\"\n\nMy partner went through the door and I followed. The door\/wall clicked shut behind us.\n\nI'll admit it, I jumped a little. Ian glanced around, but otherwise didn't move. There was nothing to see.\n\nThat was my problem.\n\nThe room was no larger than ten by ten. No windows, no doors, all walls\u2014and not a portal to be seen or sensed.\n\nI casually went back to back with Ian. \"I don't like this,\" I said, trying not to move my lips. I had an entirely unwanted image of the _Star Wars_ trash compactor scene. Minus the trash and stink, that is. For a potential trap, it was actually a very nice room. Death by polished wood paneling.\n\n\"Easy, partner,\" Ian murmured. \"It's a pocket dimension. They don't need doors.\"\n\nDimensions didn't need doors, but if an exit didn't show itself soon, I was going to either hyperventilate and pass out, or make my own door.\n\nI continued with the whispering and not-moving-my-lips thing. \"If I can see portals, why can't I see this one?\"\n\n\"Because they haven't activated it yet.\"\n\nOh.\n\nBefore I had time to feel too embarrassed, a pale green glow appeared in a smooth seam down the same wall we'd come in through, though not in exactly the same place. It wasn't a friendly, springtime leaf green; this was a noxious acid green glow. Somehow it suited a guy who by all accounts could have single-handedly given lawyers of every species a bad name.\n\nI'd never thought of myself as much of an actress, but I did my best to look past the portal as if I hadn't seen it, and moved to where Ian could see me checking my watch.\n\nThat was our pre-arranged I've-seen-a-portal signal.\n\nIan casually and quietly cleared his throat.\n\nMessage received.\n\nI received a little message of my own. More like a confirmation. I could see portals, probably any and all of them.\n\nI sighed. Oh goody.\n\n* * *\n\nThe goblin lawyer took my partner's hand in an enthusiastic two-handed shake.\n\n\"Ian, my boy, how are you?\"\n\nWith a name like Alastor Malvolia, I expected the goblin version of Mr. Burns on _The Simpsons_ , not the bright-eyed, cheerful man who greeted us just inside the door to his office. Of course, someone would be less likely to expect a knife in the back from a happy guy.\n\nMalvolia's assistant had walked us through an office that looked disturbingly similar to the human lawyer's office in our dimension\u2014and that occupied almost the exact same space. That felt cosmically wrong on every level.\n\nGoblins were known for being tall, but Alastor Malvolia was maybe an inch taller than me, if that. Goblins were also known for being sexy. I felt confident in saying that no creature\u2014in our dimension or any other\u2014would think Al Malvolia was hot.\n\n\"Mr. Malvolia, I'd\u2014\"\n\n\"Al. After all this time, please call me Al.\"\n\nIan smiled what I'd come to know as his fake work smile. \"If you insist.\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Al, this is my partner Agent Makenna Fraser.\"\n\nThen I was on the receiving end of the two-handed shake as my hand completely vanished in both of his.\n\n\"A pleasure, Agent Fraser. Though I wish our meeting was under different circumstances. Mr. Gedeon was a longtime client of mine. The nature of his death has been a shock to all of us who knew him. Please, both of you, have a seat. May I offer you something to drink?\"\n\nIan held up a hand.\n\nI said, \"No, thank you.\"\n\nThe goblin sat behind his surprisingly non-imposing desk. \"Then we'll go directly to what brings you here. The killer who is preying on the citizens of our city.\"\n\nAt least he didn't say \"innocent citizens.\" That would have been pushing it. How he described them was perfectly accurate. Drug lords and their underlings may be directly or indirectly responsible for hundreds\u2014maybe thousands\u2014of deaths, but they were citizens of New York.\n\n\"We believe Sar Gedeon's murder, as well as those of several of your other clients' employees, are linked to the arrival of the drug Brimstone and the individuals behind its manufacture and sale. We have reason to believe the source of the drug is extra-dimensional. However, we can't confirm this without access to the drug.\"\n\nMalvolia laughed. \"And you think that I would happen to have a sample lying around the office.\"\n\nAgain with the smile. \"Of course I don't. Though it would make our job much easier if you did. If we can analyze the drug, we can determine its origin\u2014and track down those who brought it here. We have reason to believe Mr. Gedeon was killed because of his desire to negotiate a business arrangement with Brimstone's manufacturers. His request was rebuffed with some finality in an incident involving one of his employees three days ago.\"\n\nMalvolia laughed, a half-hiss, half-wheeze that didn't do a thing to make me feel more comfortable.\n\n\"Ian, you missed your calling,\" the goblin said. \"You would have made a fine attorney.\"\n\nMy partner inclined his head in acknowledgment, though he'd been a cop long enough to take anything coming from a creature like Alastor Malvolia as a compliment.\n\n\"From what we saw of Mr. Gedeon this morning,\" Ian continued, \"he either hadn't taken the hint, or his killers wanted to make an example of him to those who wanted to make a similar business arrangement\u2014or perhaps both.\" He paused significantly. \"SPI wants to stop all of this. I'm sure you want the same. Your clients may have information that could help, either a sample of the drug, or names of the people who they attempted to negotiate with. Either would help us locate these individuals and stop the killings. We would greatly appreciate their cooperation and assistance.\"\n\nAlastor Malvolia had steepled his fingers and was regarding Ian with calm, calculating eyes. _Now_ , we were seeing some Mr. Burns. \"And what would be in it for my clients?\"\n\n\"They might get to live longer,\" I said before I could stop myself.\n\n\"Such charming honesty.\" The goblin smiled, but it didn't make it to his eyes. \"I have spoken with several of my clients who have been affected by recent events. They consider themselves qualified to protect themselves, their families, and their employees.\"\n\nThey've done a crappy job so far. I thought it, but this time I didn't say it.\n\n\"If I decide to relay SPI's offer to them, they would want to know what they would receive in return for their cooperation. Where is the value for my clients?\"\n\n\"Have you heard how Sar Gedeon died?\" Ian asked.\n\nAny pretense of polite vanished. \"Your agency has been unwilling to release that information\u2014or the body of my client. I have sent a request for access to the body and the murder scene, and that request has been stalled. Mr. Gedeon's widow has been denied permission to claim her husband's body.\"\n\n\"Our investigation is not complete. Mr. Gedeon is more than a victim; he is our only source of clues to the identity of his killer. I would think Mrs. Gedeon would want us to find who murdered her husband and why. As to how he was killed, I have been authorized by Vivienne Sagadraco to share that with you.\"\n\nIan shared\u2014and he included the details Bert had seen.\n\nAl developed a twitch in his left eyelid.\n\nLooked like Al now had a newfound appreciation for the severity of the situation.\n\nHearing that a demon lord\u2014and someone unknown, but even worse\u2014was hunting down and butchering your client base would do that.\n\n\"I will contact my clients, and then get back to you.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\nAl's eyelid twitched again.\n\n\"Eight o'clock tonight. A few of my clients prefer to sleep during the day. Will that be acceptable to Ms. Sagadraco?\"\n\nIan smiled, and now it was genuine. \"Perfectly.\"\n\n# 13\n\n\"I'LL be interested to hear what Al comes up with by tonight,\" Ian said as Yasha stopped in front of the Park Avenue office building to pick us up.\n\nI settled in the middle of the second row of seats and buckled in. \"You enjoyed that, didn't you?\"\n\nIan got in the front passenger seat. He always rode shotgun. \"Just because a person knows the law does not mean that they respect it. No one has less respect for the laws of our dimension than Alastor Malvolia. So yes, I enjoyed rattling his cage.\"\n\n\"I don't think we're going to get as friendly of a greeting next time.\"\n\n\"I would be surprised\u2014and wary\u2014if we did. However, the next time SPI needs to twist Malvolia's arm, it'll be Moreau's turn.\"\n\n\"You guys take turns?\"\n\n\"Mostly. This meeting should have been Moreau's, but the boss thought that since I'd seen Sar Gedeon at the murder scene, I was better qualified to describe it to Malvolia, if he needed persuading to cooperate with us.\"\n\n\"And the fun was just a nice fringe benefit.\"\n\nIan grinned. \"I'm not opposed to enjoying my work.\" He glanced at his watch. \"Want to grab some lunch?\"\n\n\"Sure. If you can find us a restaurant that's not likely to get set on fire.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWe hit the Full Moon.\n\nIt was close enough to headquarters if we needed to get back quickly, but far enough for a little peace and quiet.\n\nWe were all greeted with hugs by the owners, Bill and Nancy Garrison. Bill was the king of the barbeque pit, and Nancy had the brains for the business, and the Southern charm and hospitality to keep the place full of happy customers.\n\nThey were also werewolves.\n\nBest of all, they were from my home state of North Carolina.\n\nI came here to get a literal taste of home.\n\nThe barbeque was slow cooked, the burgers were rare, the steaks were tartar, and the regulars were furry. There was always a booth reserved for hungry SPI agents, and Yasha's Suburban was always welcome in the alley\/delivery area behind the restaurant. Needless to say, it was Yasha's all-time favorite place to eat.\n\nPart of Nancy's business savvy involved billing the Full Moon as \"New York's Official Werewolf Bar.\" She even turned a section of the front of the restaurant into a gift shop selling T-shirts, mugs, shot glasses, and if you wanted to build your Pomeranian's street cred at the dog park, there was werewolf gear for the small, but fierce, canine in your life. The restaurant and bar were decorated with dark wood, dim lights, and every werewolf clich\u00e9 that existed. Werewolf movie posters and props were on display, and everything on the food and drink menus had a werewolf- or movie-monster-inspired name.\n\nFun place, good people, great food.\n\nAs soon as Bill set that plate of pulled pork barbeque in front of me, I forgot all about finding Sar Gedeon nearly twenty-four hours ago, and nearly coming face-to-face with his killer soon after. Good food that was much needed would do that. I didn't think I was all that hungry until I started eating. I was glad I ordered the large platter. I was small, but I could put away some groceries.\n\n\"Do you think Al's going to have any luck getting his clients to talk?\" I asked Ian.\n\n\"He might. If he does, he might even decide to tell us what they said. I'm not going to hold my breath on either one, but I hope their survival instinct overrides their greed.\"\n\n\"Greed? You've lost me.\"\n\n\"If the families have gotten their hands on some Brimstone or the formula, they're going to have a hell of a time getting the main ingredient.\"\n\nI was still confused, and apparently I looked it.\n\n\"She was not in meeting last night,\" Yasha reminded Ian.\n\nI blinked. \"There was a meeting?\"\n\n\"You were asleep.\"\n\n\"You didn't tell me this morning.\"\n\n\"I was preoccupied this morning, and I'm telling you now.\"\n\nI sighed. \"Go on.\"\n\n\"While we still need a sample of Brimstone for the lab, we've got enough information now to have a good guess as to where it came from.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"The main ingredient was imported directly from Hell.\"\n\nWhoa. \"Real, biblical hellfire and brimstone?\"\n\nIan nodded. \"In our dimension, brimstone is another, non-scientific, name for sulfur. What I found out from Marty last night is that our sulfur got the alternative name of brimstone because there's an actual mineral, found only in Hell, that stinks like sulfur. He showed me several samples in his lab. It's bright orange.\"\n\nI remembered yesterday at the coffee shop. \"And Fred told us that Brimstone is orange.\" Just like the portal I'd seen in Gedeon's apartment and the parking garage.\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Okay, I have to ask. How did Marty get samples?\"\n\n\"He said he gathered them himself on a field trip.\"\n\n\"To Hell.\"\n\n\"Wasn't Hoboken.\"\n\n\"I wonder if that was when he lost his eyebrows.\"\n\n\"Nope. That's an even better story. You'll have to ask him. He tells it better.\"\n\n\"So what does brimstone from Hell do besides stink?\"\n\n\"That's where it gets interesting. Marty said its chemical composition contains elements found in our dimension's LSD.\"\n\n\"So much for why man in restaurant saw monsters,\" Yasha said.\n\n\"Before I got some shut-eye myself last night,\" Ian continued, \"I touched base with Fred. When the man was questioned about where and who he bought the drug from and for what purpose, he couldn't remember. The NYPD has a vampire on the force who has a knack for lie detecting. The guy was telling the truth. He doesn't remember a thing.\"\n\n\"That makes absolutely zero sense,\" I said. \"What good is a drug that lets you see supernaturals and read minds, but then wipes your memory? I mean, it's good for us; no one would remember seeing goblins and elves, but it's bad for tracking down the source of this stuff. Well, besides Hell. Though that doesn't make any sense, either. Marty told me that demons aren't interested in humans on an individual basis. Why would demons provide brimstone as an ingredient to presumably a mortal drug kingpin\u2014or queenpin?\"\n\nTo say we were missing something here was the ultimate understatement.\n\nIan's phone rang.\n\nHe looked down at the display. \"Fred.\"\n\n\"Speak of devil,\" Yasha said with a grin.\n\nI grinned back.\n\nIan spat his favorite four-letter word into the phone, and waved for Nancy. \"We've got to go. Now. Would you put this on my tab?\"\n\n\"Of course, sugar. Want some of it to go?\"\n\n\"Love to, but no time.\" He stood. \"There's been another murder,\" he continued when Nancy began speaking to other customers three booths away. \"Goblin by the name of Kela Dupari.\"\n\nI scooched out of the booth. \"Drug lord?\"\n\n\"Lady, one of the 'queenpins.' Her territory is the Upper West Side. This one's worse.\"\n\nI suddenly wished I hadn't scarffed down all that barbeque. \"Worse than a heart cut\u2014\"\n\nIan shook his head. \"No. The NYPD got there first.\"\n\nYasha snarled the Russian equivalent of my partner's favorite word. It sounded better in Russian.\n\n\"Then what do we have to do?\" I asked.\n\n\"We'll get there and then we'll see.\"\n\n\"See what?\"\n\nYasha pulled the Suburban keys out of his pocket. \"If we need to steal a body.\"\n\n# 14\n\nI'VE had some strange things added to my job description since joining SPI, but I never imagined body snatcher would be one of them. Though technically it would be ambulance robber, or if we were going to get picky, ambulance hijacker.\n\nRegardless of the semantics, I hadn't signed up for any of it.\n\nSo I was more than relieved when we didn't have to do it.\n\nThis was the NYPD we were talking about. Getting arrested\u2014at least for me\u2014wouldn't be _if_ it would happen, but how fast. I didn't want Alain Moreau having to come down to whatever precinct they dragged me to and bail me out. It'd happened once, and I didn't want it to happen again.\n\nIan had just gotten the call from one of our dispatchers that the medical examiner had taken care of extending the victim's glamour for another few hours.\n\nDr. Anika Van Daal was the medical examiner. She was also a vampire and mage who had arrived in the city soon after it'd been taken from the Dutch by the British and the name changed from New Amsterdam to New York. That'd been in 1625. At that time, two-thirds of the island was still wilderness.\n\nShe'd begun her medical career as a midwife, and had become the first licensed female doctor in the city. Every few decades, she \"retired\" from one position and took another. She'd been in her mid-twenties when she'd been turned, so she didn't stand out when she went back to school after a retirement to catch up on the latest medical advances. She'd learned to glamour and glamour well. As a result, she'd never had problems blending in or being found out.\n\nVivienne Sagadraco had a lot of pull in this town, and one of the ways she used it was getting supernaturals placed in strategic jobs. In addition to supernaturals in the NYPD, there were mages who, like Dr. Van Daal, could replace a glamour on a dead supernatural and hold it there until the body was turned over to the family. Or if no one claimed the body, until it was cremated or buried by the city. These mages were in the homicide divisions, medical examiner's office, and CSI teams.\n\nThe boss had covered all the bases she could, but occasionally a corpse tried to steal home. When that happened, there was a lot of scrambling and improvising by whichever agents were closest.\n\nThankfully today, no one needed to scramble.\n\nWe watched from a parking spot on the street that by some miracle of maneuvering, Yasha had managed to wedge the Suburban into, without turning either the car in front or the one behind us into an accordion. I'd turned to look at something totally fascinating out my window, so Yasha wouldn't see me cringing the entire time.\n\nOur cozy spot was half a block from the murder scene. Ian wanted to stake it out for a while to see if any of the curious onlookers behind the police crime scene tape looked a little too curious\u2014or pleased with themselves.\n\n\"Dr. Van Daal will get a copy of her report to Moreau, but the preliminary is the same MO as Gedeon's murder.\"\n\n\"Portal stink?\" I asked.\n\n\"Including portal stink.\"\n\n\"Bert won't get a shot at this body,\" I noted with no small measure of relief. \"And I'm perfectly fine being half a block away from where there was a portal.\" I spotted a familiar face trying to act casual as he exited the building. It was a ten-story building, and hundreds of people would have a reason to be there, but it was too much of coincidence that this individual would be one of them.\n\nJesin Nadisu. The apartment building manager of the Murwood, aka murder scene number one.\n\n\"Do you see\u2014?\"\n\nIan was out the door before I could finish.\n\nSince Yasha was legally parked for once, he joined us.\n\nThe young goblin's day was about to take a turn for the worse.\n\nMy day was going to be just fine. Not only did Ian not tell me to wait in the SUV, but if Jesin Nadisu ran for the closest parking garage and getaway portal, I'd have plenty of qualified backup this time.\n\nThe goblin didn't run for the nearest parking garage. When he saw us, he just ran. Fast. If Yasha could have gone wolf, he could have been on our Olympic wannabe in three bounds and a leap. It was the middle of the day in Midtown, going furry wasn't an option, so we had to do it the old-fashioned way.\n\nIan had missed out on snagging the assassin yesterday, and he wasn't going to take second place today. Jesin Nadisu didn't want to be caught, so he was motivated. Ian was just pissed. People were being killed, a coworker was attacked, and his partner was damned near dragged to Hell\u2014excuse me, an anteroom\u2014by a squid demon. As a motivating factor, anger topped fear anytime.\n\nShots rang out that weren't ours, and the goblin went down.\n\nPeople screamed.\n\nWe instantly went from pursuit to protect.\n\n\"Police!\" Ian yelled. \"Get inside.\"\n\nIt wasn't a lie; he was the police, just not the NYPD, at least not anymore.\n\nRegardless, when Ian ordered, people obeyed.\n\nSoon we had the section of street to ourselves\u2014until the NYPD investigating the murder came out to join us. We needed to be gone before that happened.\n\nWith bullets flying around, I would have liked to have been one of the people obeying Ian's order and getting the heck off the street, but instead I ran with Yasha to where the young goblin had pulled himself to the protection of a building doorway before he collapsed.\n\nIan ran in pursuit of the shooter, with a sharp wave to Yasha to get the car.\n\n\"Go,\" I told him. \"I've got this.\"\n\nYasha didn't like it, but he went. The quicker he got back, the less chance that we'd all get arrested, and it wouldn't be for stealing a dead body; it be for taking a wounded murder suspect.\n\nWhen I got to Nadisu, he was still conscious. He saw me and tried to drag himself farther away.\n\n\"Hey, we're the good guys here. _You_ were running from _us_.\"\n\nPain kept him from talking, but from the dread in his eyes, being caught was worse than being shot.\n\nDespite his presence at two murder scenes, I didn't think Jesin Nadisu was a murderer, at least not the kind of murderer who'd eat souls and be partnered with a demon lord.\n\nI'd been wrong before, but I knew I wasn't wrong about this.\n\nFor one, other than the small magics needed for a glamour, I didn't sense any power coming from him. The only thing a demon lord would want him for was a snack.\n\nBlood was spreading under his suit coat on his white shirt. His hands weakly fought me as I pulled the coat back to see the damage.\n\nA package fell out of the inner pocket. The bullet must have nicked it. An orange powder from inside dusted my hand. I highly doubted it was Tang.\n\nI glanced at Nadisu's face to see his reaction, but he'd passed out.\n\nTires screeched as the Suburban arrived, and Yasha leapt out and picked up the goblin like he weighed next to nothing, laying him out on the middle seat. I jumped up beside him and started buckling him in, and Yasha shut the door behind us. The Suburban had a second set of seat belts mounted like on a stretcher.\n\nThe passenger door opened and Ian all but dove into his seat. His face was flushed and grim, and looked about as angry as I'd ever seen him.\n\n\"Get us home,\" was all he said.\n\n# 15\n\nJESIN Nadisu was going to be in surgery for at least two hours.\n\nIn addition to an infirmary, SPI had a fully staffed and equipped trauma center and ER, albeit on a much smaller scale than most New York hospitals. When you fought monsters and powerful mages and supernatural criminals, your people could get injuries that would do more than raise eyebrows at the neighborhood ER. Vivienne Sagadraco valued her employees, and made sure that we had only the best medical care available to us.\n\nJesin Nadisu was presently on the receiving end of that expertise.\n\nWe couldn't question him until he was out of recovery, and then it would be up to the trauma surgeon as to when and for how long. Not that we thought the young goblin was guilty of anything other than having a kilo of Brimstone on him. Heck, we were grateful that he had.\n\nWhile the doctors were working on Jesin Nadisu, the lab down the hall was working on the Brimstone. The analysis would probably take longer than the surgery. But we wanted to be close to get word on both.\n\nI was standing in the hall outside the main lab, looking through the glass wall.\n\nI'd never asked the reason for a glass wall in a lab, but I guessed that privacy was less important than someone outside seeing if something went very wrong inside\u2014and then getting help. Fast.\n\nAfter hanging out in the ER waiting room for a while, I'd walked down the hall to the lab. Ian had gone to make a few phone calls. I hadn't asked him about what had happened in the chase to catch Jesin Nadisu's shooter. All that Ian had volunteered was that he'd gotten away. Something important was going on here, but I'd learned that when my partner needed me to know, he'd tell me. I was learning to tamp my curiosity down until that happened. I didn't say it was easy; I said I was learning.\n\nThe elevator door dinged.\n\nIan.\n\n\"Anything?\" he asked, indicating the lab.\n\n\"If so, they're not acting like it.\" I glanced back into the lab to make sure none of the white-coats had gone all giddy in the past ten seconds. \"Nope, no high fives or group hugs.\"\n\nMy partner sat in one of the chairs lining this section of wall and put his head in his hands.\n\nI sat next to him. \"Want to tell me about it yet?\"\n\nIan didn't move for another handful of seconds, then he sat up, thunked the back of his head against the wall, and stared at the ceiling with an expression of \"Why me?\"\n\nI didn't take any of that as an indictment on my curiosity, but rather frustration at the situation we were neck deep in, so I leaned my head back and helped my partner look at the ceiling.\n\n\"Nightshades,\" he finally said.\n\n\"I'm assuming you're not talking about the plant.\"\n\n\"I wish I was. You could get rid of those with weed killer. We rarely see these, let alone get a chance to eradicate them. They just come back. Then again, maybe they are like the plants.\"\n\n\"Then they're a who, not a what.\"\n\n\"Nightshades are basically elven black ops mercenaries. They'll do whatever they're paid enough to do. Today one of them was paid to get Jesin Nadisu.\"\n\n\"He didn't do a very good job.\"\n\n\"It's lucky we were here so he couldn't finish the job. If we hadn't been watching\u2014\"\n\n\"He wouldn't be here and alive getting stitched up.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"But you saw the shooter, and I take it you recognized him.\"\n\n\"He's one of their best marksmen.\"\n\n\"And he only got Jesin in the side?\"\n\nIan gave me a flat look.\n\n\"He didn't kill him on purpose?\" I guessed.\n\nIan nodded once. \"There was an ambulance parked around the corner.\"\n\nI knew where this was going and it wasn't anywhere good. \"A fake ambulance to fool anyone who saw them. They wanted him alive.\"\n\n\"And afraid and in pain. They hired Nightshades to make it happen. And if he had died . . . there are necromancers who sell their services to the highest bidder. The Nightshades keep two on retainer.\"\n\nCripes.\n\n\"Jesin doesn't look like the drug-runner type.\"\n\n\"The best runners arouse the least suspicion, and neither one of us would have suspected the manager of an exclusive, high-rent apartment building to be running drugs.\"\n\n\"He does dress well,\" I admitted. \"Do you think he knew who was gunning for him?\"\n\n\"Maybe, maybe not. We won't know until we can talk to him. In the meantime, I'm having Ord Larcwyde brought in for questioning, though the agents picking him up have been told to go with 'protective custody.'\"\n\nI grinned. \"Ord does value his safety.\"\n\n\"I thought it'd go over better. Whoever was pulling that demon lord's strings was worried enough that Ord had damaging information to send a demon assassin after him. I want to know what that information is.\"\n\n\"When he gets here, you might want to let me do the chatting. He likes me more than he does you.\" I thought of something and chuckled. \"I wonder if he's come out of his freezer yet.\"\n\n\"If not, the agents are taking a blowtorch with them, just in case. Either he comes out on his own, or the boys go to work on his cube.\"\n\nA door opened down the hall in the hospital wing and Dr. Stephens gestured for us to come down there.\n\nOur patient was awake.\n\n* * *\n\n\"I'll let you do the talking,\" I told Ian.\n\nHe gave me a bemused glance. \"Really. You're sure about that.\" Neither was a question, at least not real ones.\n\n\"Hey, I've never questioned a shooting victim fresh out of surgery. I take it you have.\"\n\n\"I have.\"\n\n\"Then this one's all yours.\"\n\n\"I'll believe it when I don't hear it.\"\n\nWe went into the recovery room.\n\nJesin Nadisu looked like hell.\n\nThough he didn't look nearly as bad as Sar Gedeon had. Thanks to the skill of our surgical team, Jesin at least had all his pieces and parts. Most of them probably hurt right now, but at least he still had them. Considering all that he'd been through in the past few hours, I thought I should keep that comparison to myself. The young goblin had gotten off lucky. For the sake of his continued emotional well-being, I'd keep that to myself, too.\n\nSPI's chief trauma surgeon had told us not to stay for longer than five minutes. The only reason she wasn't in the room with us was that she didn't need to be. There was a two-way mirror next to the door that would let her see and hear everything that went on. At the first sign of fatigue or distress from her patient, I was certain she'd be in here with us a split second later, telling us to leave. Nicely the first time, then not so nice. SPI agent, suspect, or caught-red-handed clawed criminal, her patients were her top priority. One of the things we learned in new-agent training was not to argue with Dr. Barbara Carey.\n\n\"Mr. Nadisu?\" Ian said quietly, but loud enough to be heard. \"Mr. Nadisu, I need to ask you just a few questions, and then you can continue to rest.\"\n\nThe goblin's eyes fluttered open. Large, dark, and long lashed, he looked even younger than he had when he'd met us in the lobby of the Murwood. If he'd been human, he wouldn't have looked old enough to buy a beer, let alone manage an exclusive apartment building.\n\n\"Agent Byrne.\" His voice was rough from the breathing tube we'd been told they'd had to use during surgery. Apparently the bullet had nicked the bottom of his lung and a not-so-minor blood vessel or two. He blinked a few times and focused on me. \"And Agent Fraser.\" He tried a weak smile that didn't quite make it. \"I can explain about the Brimstone.\"\n\nAt least we had confirmation that what the lab was analyzing was Brimstone. Though right now, a plastic-wrapped, brick-shaped block of glowing orange powder taken from a demonic murder scene couldn't be much else.\n\n\"Do you know who shot you?\" Ian asked.\n\nNadisu didn't answer.\n\n\"If you're worried about them getting to you, don't,\" I told him. \"You're safe here.\"\n\nIan cleared his throat.\n\nOops. So much for letting him do the talking.\n\n\"Do you know where you are?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nMy partner was silent for a moment. \"How long have you been in our dimension?\"\n\nI refrained from doing a double take. Ian's voice was actually gentle. He clearly knew something that I didn't.\n\n\"If you're here illegally, we won't send you back,\" he continued.\n\nOh, okay, now I got it.\n\nBoth goblins and elves were very selective over who they let come through the permanent dimensional portal between our world and theirs. Though like humans, if you wanted to get here badly enough, you'd find a way. For supernaturals, that meant paying a small fortune in bribes to mercenaries with access to an illegal portal.\n\nBoth races operated under a controlling monarchy supported by a powerful aristocracy. Unless you were related to an influential family or had a magical talent that the nobility were interested in, you might as well not exist. No rights, no hope of a better life, and if you pissed off the wrong noble or mage\u2014no life at all.\n\nHumans weren't the only species who came to New York looking for a better life.\n\nUnless they could afford papers to let them pass as a legal citizen of the good ol' U S of A, and could afford to have a mage fit them with a glamour to let them pass as human, they were just like the thousands of undocumented human immigrants in the city, but with goblins and elves, the term \"alien\" was literal.\n\nIn such an environment, it wasn't a surprise to anyone that organizations emerged to \"govern\" their people, to resolve differences without human interference, to serve up justice when it was needed, and to execute whoever they decided should be.\n\nPolice, judge, jury, and executioner.\n\nAny attempt by SPI to intervene was called interference in a \"goblin matter\" or \"elven business.\"\n\nWe saw them as the criminal families they were.\n\nAnd Jesin Nadisu was apparently scared to death of one of them.\n\n\"You're at SPI headquarters,\" Ian told him. \"So whoever it is that you're afraid of can't get to you here.\"\n\nThe goblin sighed. \"Would you like to bet on that?\"\n\n\"We know about Nightshades,\" Ian said. \"You're completely safe from them or anyone else you may have reason to fear.\"\n\nIncluding demons opening portals. Then I had another thought.\n\n\"Your employer, maybe?\" I asked.\n\nThe goblin turned even pastier, if that was possible.\n\nThe door immediately opened.\n\n\"That's all, Agents Byrne and Fraser.\" Dr. Barbara Carey wasn't going to accept any response other than us getting away from her patient.\n\nWithin seconds, we were in the hall with the door firmly closed behind us.\n\nIf I could've kicked myself in the ass, I would've. \"Dammit, I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it. Our time was almost up. Dr. Carey wouldn't have let us have a second more. Sounds like the kid's afraid of his boss.\"\n\n\"Do we know who owns the Murwood?\"\n\n\"No, but Kenji has a database of buildings owned by supernaturals. Murwood is the name of a forest in the goblin and elf dimension, so chances are good that a supernatural owns the building.\"\n\n\"I have a couple of follow-ups I need to do, so I'll check in with Kenji on that.\"\n\nIan nodded. \"I'll wait for Dr. Carey to come out and see when she might let us talk to Jesin Nadisu again, though I'm not holding my breath for it being anytime soon.\"\n\nI tilted my head down the hall. \"And if you could listen out for any celebrations erupting in the lab.\"\n\n\"Will do.\"\n\nI headed down to the bull pen and to my desk.\n\nOnly to find Alain Moreau sitting in my chair.\n\nAw crap.\n\nBeing called into your manager's office was stress inducing enough. But to have your manager camp out in your chair to wait for you?\n\nI'd stepped in something serious. Even worse, I'd stepped in so much lately, I had no clue which pile this could be about. At least he hadn't had to come down to one of the NYPD's precincts to bail me out. Regardless, I was sure I looked like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar, even though I didn't know what I'd done.\n\nAlain Moreau looked like a man about to fire someone.\n\nHe'd hired me. He could fire me.\n\n\"I can explain,\" I told him. That is, as soon as I knew what he was here for. \"Or . . . do I just need to pack a box?\"\n\nMoreau looked baffled\u2014baffled and tired. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"A box. To clean out my desk.\"\n\nMore bafflement as he regarded the surface of my desk. \"It appears to be acceptably tidy. Why would you need to clean\u2014?\"\n\n\"You're not firing me?\"\n\n\"You're not going anywhere, Agent Fraser.\"\n\nI took an involuntary step backward. Maybe SPI management considered firing to be wasteful. If I was a failure as an agent, maybe I'd be a rousing success as a meal in the employee cafeteria. After all, I wouldn't actually have to do anything. I couldn't screw that up.\n\n\"Unless you wish to leave,\" he continued, still sounding tired.\n\nNow I was confused.\n\nHe had the same expression as Ian had upstairs\u2014too much bad news and no idea how to deal with it. But instead of thunking his head against a wall, Moreau ran his hand through his perfect hair. Hair that was still perfect. I wasn't sure if it'd even moved. Maybe it was a vampire thing.\n\n\"We have questioned both Agent Filarion and Mr. Sadler, and neither have experienced any effects\u2014ill or otherwise\u2014from being exposed to the ley line convergence.\"\n\n\"Dang it.\"\n\nOne of Moreau's silvery eyebrows shot up in surprise.\n\n\"Okay, that didn't come out right. Sorry, sir. It's just that that wasn't what I wanted to hear. I mean, I'm glad that Caera and Ben didn't get zapped with some kind of mutant power, but it'd be nice not to have the only explanation left being a bizarre mind-meld, power-transfer thing with Viktor Kain. I'm not exactly enthused about catching anything from a multi-millennia-old, psychotic criminal mastermind.\" I paused for breath and sighed. \"At least I don't have an urge to take over the world,\" I muttered. \"Yet.\"\n\n\"That is not the only explanation left.\"\n\nI perched on the edge of my desk. \"It's not? But Ms. Sagadraco said\u2014\"\n\n\"We need to reconsider your family background. The contact with either Viktor Kain or the diamonds or the nexus\u2014or even a combination\u2014could have awakened a previously dormant ability.\"\n\n\"No one in my family can see portals. If they can, I never heard about it. Not to mention, I'd kind of hoped to be able to avoid calling home and asking.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"They worry about me enough as is, moving up here and all. Calling home and going, 'Uh, Mom . . . yeah, I'm doing great. I've got a question. Has anyone in our family ever been able to see portals? No, no. No problems here. Just asking out of curiosity.'\"\n\n\"I can see how that might be awkward.\"\n\n\"And impossible to hide why I want to know. Mom's relentless. And don't even get me started on Grandma Fraser. Trust me; you don't want my family coming up here. Nobody wants that. Least of all, me. Has Kenji taken a shot at it yet?\"\n\nKenji Hayashi was SPI's CTA\u2014Chief Technology Agent. Each SPI office worldwide had their own CTA, but Kenji was the best, which was why he was here at agency headquarters. If it existed in cyberspace, the Japanese elf could find it, and decipher it six ways from Sunday.\n\n\"I give him _full_ permission to dig into my family background,\" I said. \"Just as long as he promises not to laugh at my more colorful relatives.\"\n\n\"I'll ask Agent Hayashi to look into it as soon as possible.\" Moreau paused. \"I have been unable to contact Rake Danescu to ask of any effects he may have experienced. I've left two messages, but he has yet to return my calls. He may be more willing to answer the question if it came from you in person.\"\n\n\"What makes you think I'll be seeing him?\"\n\n\"Your lunch date was interrupted.\"\n\n\"He wanted to reschedule for lunch today or dinner last night. But that got nixed by a squid demon and a possible concussion.\" I decided not to mention the flowers I found on my bedside table this morning. Moreau probably knew, but if he didn't, I really didn't want to bring it up. \"Are you visiting my desk because of Rake? Because if\u2014\"\n\nMy manager held up an elegant hand. \"It is not about Monsieur Danescu. I will admit to having concerns, but after speaking with Madame Sagadraco, she and I are in agreement.\"\n\nI gave him a small smile. \"That I'm a big girl and can take care of myself.\"\n\n\"That and while Rake Danescu may be many things, he has never been foolish.\" He narrowed his eyes very faintly. \"Do I need to explain that statement?\"\n\nMy smile broadened into a grin. \"Oh no, sir. I got it loud and clear. And I think Rake probably has, too. He behaves or there'll be a line to kick his ass, and you and Ms. Sagadraco will be near the front. Though Agent Byrne might want to argue for the right of first in line.\"\n\n\"No doubt. I wanted to speak with you concerning your satisfaction with your employment here.\"\n\nI tensed. \"Are you or Ms. Sagadraco not satisfied with my employment here?\"\n\n\"I assure you we are most satisfied with your job performance. The question is how you feel about your job. I imagine it has turned out differently than you envisioned.\"\n\n\"Yes, it has.\" I thought back to the events of the past week. \"I try my best to stay out of trouble. Problem is trouble keeps finding me.\"\n\n\"That is part of our concern. I encourage those who report to me not to hesitate to tell me if parts of their job are distressing to them. You haven't requested a meeting.\"\n\n\"Anything that's happened has pretty much fallen under my job description. More or less.\"\n\n\"On New Year's Eve, you chased down a fully grown grendel in a crowd of nearly a million people.\"\n\n\"I was the only one who could see her.\"\n\n\"A human without defensive magical powers taking on a monster out of legend bare-handed.\"\n\n\"I was the only agent there. I couldn't just let her start eating people.\"\n\n\"But it was not your job. It was far beyond what anyone would have expected or demanded of you.\"\n\n\"I had to do it.\"\n\n\"And last week with Agent Byrne, Yasha Kazikov, and Rake Danescu. You didn't have to go to that island to take on Bastian du Beckett and prevent those diamonds from being activated.\"\n\n\"Ben Sadler was being held prisoner. I felt responsible for him. Then there was Yasha, you, Ms. Sagadraco, and every supernatural in SPI. None of you are just coworkers; you've become like family.\" I said it without one bit of embarrassment. \"If there was some way I could help, I was going to do it.\"\n\n\"And you have not sought me out to lodge a complaint about your life being in danger beyond what you were hired to do.\"\n\n\"I don't mean any disrespect, sir, nor am I trying to be rude, but you're getting at something. What is it?\"\n\n\"Have you at any point during your employment with us considered turning in your resignation?\"\n\n\"Not seriously.\"\n\n\"And why is that? Through no fault of your own, you've nearly lost your life on numerous occasions. Other times you have purposefully placed yourself in harm's way.\"\n\n\"I don't think I'm a danger junkie, sir, if that's what you're getting at.\"\n\n\"I don't think that you are.\" His gaze searched my face. \"Why do you do it, Makenna?\"\n\nI suddenly knew the answer without having to think about it. I pressed my lips together not only against a tiny smile, but against the sudden sting of tears in my eyes.\n\n\"I feel needed. Sometimes I screw up, but I know what I'm doing is worthwhile. I can't imagine not doing it. I love my job.\"\n\nMoreau stood. \"That's all I needed to know. If that ever changes, I trust you will inform me.\"\n\n\"Absolutely, sir.\"\n\n\"Then I'll let you get back to work.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir.\"\n\nMoreau headed for the elevators, and I realized my teeth were clenched in a smile that'd probably scare small children.\n\nThe silence of the agents in the bull pen behind me was absolute.\n\nI turned slowly and was met with dozens of pairs of curious eyes: human, elf, goblin, troll, gnome . . .\n\n\"I'm still here,\" I said loudly. When that didn't make them stop staring, I gave a double thumbs-up for emphasis.\n\nAt that, everyone returned to what they'd been doing, and the noise levels returned to normal.\n\nI sat down with a sigh. Nothing about this place was normal.\n\n# 16\n\nI'D barely gotten started digging for an answer to a question that'd been nagging me, when I heard the click of Kylie O'Hara's stiletto heels coming toward my desk. I'd never seen her in heels lower than four inches. She was pretty much five foot nothing, and while human women of her height would have worn heels for added height regardless of the excruciating pain, Kylie wore them because they were fun.\n\nIt had to be a dryad thing. They must have tiny arches of steel.\n\nShe nodded toward the elevators. \"Well, how did _that_ go?\"\n\n\"Good. He just wanted to be sure I was happy in my work.\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\n\"Sure. Until something kills me, but then it'd be too late to lodge a complaint. Well, unless y'all get Bert involved, but I'd really rather you didn't.\"\n\n\"Noted. So you're definitely staying?\"\n\n\"I don't think I'd be allowed to leave if I wanted to. And I don't want to,\" I hurried to add.\n\n\"Good.\" She shot a withering look at the bull pen. \"Because there's way too much testosterone around here.\"\n\n\"And eavesdropping.\"\n\nKylie shrugged. \"Agents. They can't help it.\"\n\nShe perched on the edge of my desk. In her stiletto heels and short pencil skirt, she did a better job of it than I had. The boys in the bull pen agreed. They eavesdropped on me; they ogled Kylie.\n\n\"I found out from Baxter the Bastard about those _Sex in the City_ segments,\" she said.\n\nBoth monikers were her creation. The first was the God's truth. Baxter Clayton, news anchor, was most definitely a bastard. The other was a cute and clever name for the series the aforementioned bastard was doing on New York's high-class sex industry.\n\n\"And?\"\n\nThe dryad leaned in closer. \"His producer shut down the project last month. The sex industry in this town must have a lot of pull.\"\n\n\"Pun intended?\"\n\nShe thought a moment. \"No, lucky coincidence. And it wasn't the station that pulled the plug. The _network_ brass axed it.\"\n\n\"Oooh. Wanna bet some of those bad boys are clients?\"\n\n\"I'd put money on it, though it sounds like they already have.\"\n\n\"So would anyone who was going to have their business featured have known that the series had been scuttled?\" I asked.\n\n\"Definitely.\" Kylie gave me a fess-up look. \"Why do you need to know?\"\n\n\"Yesterday in the coffee shop, Rake needed to leave. Fast. He claimed it was because Baxter had been stalking him for his segment.\"\n\nThe dryad sighed. \"Honey, think about the goblin mind for a minute.\"\n\n\"I'd rather not.\"\n\n\"Too bad. Besides, if you decide to make this thing work with Rake, you'll need the practice. Technically, he didn't lie. I have no doubt that Baxter would have been stalking him for that segment. The total truth was that Bax wasn't stalking him _anymore_. So, the question then becomes, why the sudden need to leave?\"\n\nI sat back and wished I had a wall behind me to thunk my head against. \"It was obvious he didn't want to get away from me. So we can toss out fear of commitment. _Aversion_ to commitment maybe, but not fear. I think he saw someone he either needed to get away from . . .\"\n\n\"Or chase after,\" Kylie finished for me.\n\nShe hopped off of my desk. There were a couple of sighs from the bull pen. Kylie ignored them.\n\n\"Sorry hon, you're on your own to pry that out of Rake.\" She flashed a dazzling smile to a few more sighs from the boys. \"But if you play your cards right, you could at least have fun doing it. And yes, _that_ pun was intended.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Kylie.\"\n\n\"Anytime.\"\n\n* * *\n\nDamnation.\n\nAbout an hour later, I didn't want a wall to thunk my head into, but I'd sure take one to use on Rake.\n\nKenji had gotten me into the databases I'd needed, but I'd done the digging myself.\n\nI'd hit pay dirt all right. The operative word there being \"dirt.\"\n\nThe Murwood _and_ the office building where the second murder had taken place earlier this afternoon were both owned by none other than Rake Danescu, under the name of Northern Reach Holdings. That made Jesin Nadisu\u2014with his kilo of Brimstone and Nightshade bullet\u2014Rake's employee. An employee who had looked ready to faint at the mention of his boss. On a hunch, I ran a search on the office building where Alastor Malvolia's supersized pocket dimension contained his law firm.\n\nYep, Northern Reach Holdings, aka Rake Danescu's personal property.\n\nJesin Nadisu's reaction could have been his morphine getting low or any number of sudden pains after having a sniper's bullet blast through his insides, but eyes don't lie. That wasn't pain; that was fear. As a result, I had several urges bubbling to the surface, but the front-runner was an overwhelming need to kick Rake Danescu's ass.\n\nThe goblin was capable of a lot, maybe even murder. Who was I kidding? Definitely murder. But what had been done to Sar Gedeon and Kela Dupari wasn't Rake's style. If he wanted someone dead, he'd just kill them, not make a B horror-movie production out of it. And then there was all that blood and the brimstone stink. I couldn't see Rake getting within smelling distance of a demon, let alone partnering with one. No dry cleaner could get demon stink out of a silk suit. Plus, my gut told me that his hand would never go fishing around in a chest cavity for a heart treat to toss to his demon accomplice. \"Innocent\" was the last word I'd use to describe Rake Danescu, but he wasn't the murderer.\n\nI knew in my gut the man whose silhouette I'd seen on the other side of that open portal had been the one to paralyze Sar Gedeon and the others while his demon used his claws to go grocery shopping. That silhouette didn't belong to Rake.\n\nMy desk phone rang.\n\nIt was the receptionist at Saga Partners Investments, our cover office on the surface. Rake Danescu was there to see me.\n\nSpeak of the devil. Pun and clich\u00e9 intended.\n\n\"Shall I tell Mr. Danescu that you're in a meeting?\" she asked.\n\nI smiled, though to the guys in the bull pen it'd look more like a baring of teeth.\n\n\"No, no. Not necessary. I would love to see Rake Danescu,\" I said. \"I'll be right up.\"\n\n* * *\n\nRake stood in the reception area of Saga Partners Investments, impeccably dressed, and looking uncharacteristically grim.\n\nGood. We were in the same mood. It'd save a lot of time getting past pleasantries if neither one of us had any.\n\nWhen he saw me, grim turned to guarded. He knew I was mad. At him. Yes, the last time we'd seen each other was across a table in a coffee shop when he'd been kissing the palm of my hand. Now he knew that if he went for my hand, I'd give him my fist.\n\nBut he didn't know why, hence, the guardedness.\n\nI was about to enlighten him.\n\nBut not here, not now.\n\nWhat I'd just discovered wasn't personal; it was business. Rake was now a suspect, if not of murder, then of drug running, or at the very least, collusion\u2014but most of all of being an asshole of a boss who terrified his employees. Until all of those had been thoroughly addressed, the one thing he was not was a potential boyfriend.\n\n\"Karen,\" I asked the receptionist, \"is the conference room available?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is.\"\n\n\"Would you put me down for half an hour?\"\n\n* * *\n\nI closed the door. The main Saga conference room was essentially an interrogation room with fancy seating. I fully intended to bring Rake downstairs for Ian and possibly Ms. Sagadraco to question, but first I had to confirm that there was justification to take that next step.\n\n\"Before we get started, I wanted to thank you for the flowers. They're beautiful, and they were the first pleasant surprise I've had in days. Now your turn. You're here, asking for me, and you're not happy. Why?\"\n\n\"You have my employee Jesin Nadisu here. Has he been arrested?\"\n\nInteresting. Rake didn't know he'd been shot.\n\n\"No, we're merely asking him a few questions.\"\n\n\"With an attorney present?\"\n\n\"There's no need for\u2014\"\n\nRake reached for his phone. \"I want him to have one. Anything he might have said to this point is inadmissible without an attorney present.\"\n\n\"I don't see why he would need one.\"\n\nThe goblin's dark eyes narrowed. \"Oh, you don't, do you?\"\n\nI wasn't taking the bait. But with that attitude, I didn't feel guilty tossing him a curve.\n\n\"Because we don't think _he_ is the one who's guilty\u2014at least not of murder.\"\n\n\"Murder?\"\n\n\"Murder. As to having a kilo of Brimstone on him . . .\" I shrugged. \"For all we know, he could have been holding it for a friend.\"\n\nRake paused, his long index finger poised above a key. Jeez, the guy had his lawyer on speed dial. I really hoped it wasn't Alastor Malvolia, though with Rake being his landlord, I wouldn't have been surprised.\n\n\"Unless _you_ think he's guilty,\" I continued, \"in which case, you need to seriously reevaluate your hiring practices, hiring psychotic serial killers. I'd have thought you would've been more careful about things like that, being a savvy and successful big-city businessman and all.\"\n\n\"Not guilty?\"\n\n\"That's what we think.\"\n\n\"Then why do you have Jesin Nadisu in custody?\"\n\n\"We don't have Jesin Nadisu in custody. We had him in surgery.\"\n\nThe goblin went dangerously still. \"What?\"\n\n\"He was shot outside a building that was the scene of the second murder in as many days. He had a kilo of Brimstone on him. We're analyzing it in the lab now. But it would help greatly if you'd care to tell us why the demons peddling the stuff are thinning out the competition by killing drug lords in your buildings?\"\n\n\"My buildings?\"\n\n\"Your buildings. You own\u2014and Jesin Nadisu manages\u2014the Murwood, scene of the first murder. Two hours ago, he was shot outside an office building on West Seventy-Ninth Street, aka murder scene number two, also owned by you. And the lawyer who represented both victims\u2014as well as probable future victims\u2014has his cozy pocket-dimension office in yet another of your buildings.\"\n\n\"Alastor.\"\n\n\"That's him. A real sweetheart. Met him this morning. You know, if you'd give us a list of all of your real estate holdings, maybe we could get ahead of the killers and keep Al from losing any more clients.\"\n\n\"You've been busy.\"\n\n\"I'm not the one hosting a demonic murder convention\u2014and terrorizing your employees.\"\n\n\"Terrorizing my . . . What the hell are you talking about?\"\n\n\"We were telling Jesin that he didn't have anything to be afraid of, that he was safe here. We tried to determine who he was afraid of. When we mentioned 'your employer' the poor kid damned near fainted. Imagine my surprise when I found out just now that he works for you.\"\n\n\"I can't imagine why he would be afraid of me.\"\n\n\"Can't you?\"\n\n\"No, I can't. Though at least I know why you're upset.\"\n\n\"I'm not upset, Rake. I'm about to become violent.\"\n\nHe exhaled heavily. \"How is Jesin and who shot him?\"\n\n\"He'll live. He's in recovery. Apparently the Nightshade sniper who shot him just wanted to clip him enough to justify using the fake ambulance waiting around the corner to come pick him up. Trust me, the poor kid will be a lot happier waking up here rather than wherever those elf ninjas would've taken him.\"\n\nRake swore and dropped into one of the chairs. Then he was silent, but there was a lot going on behind those dark eyes, mostly disbelief, confusion, and concern. \"Thank you,\" he finally said.\n\nOkay, that was unexpected.\n\nRake could have been pretending to care more about Jesin than defending himself, but I didn't think so. When I'd said \"Nightshade,\" he'd gone a shade or two paler than usual. You can't fake that; at least I didn't think so. I wasn't going to back down, but for now I decided to back off.\n\n\"Could you tell me what happened without compromising your investigation?\" he asked.\n\nPale _and_ polite. There wasn't any part of what had happened that Rake wouldn't be able to find out himself with a few questions in the right places, so I wouldn't get in trouble for telling what we knew, which wasn't really all that much.\n\n\"The NYPD arrived at the second murder scene before we could,\" I said. \"We got there and were staking out the location when we spotted Jesin leaving the building. He looked nervous.\"\n\nRake gave a halfhearted smile and shook his head. \"Contrary to what you may believe, goblins aren't born knowing how to conceal their emotions.\"\n\n\"So it's an acquired annoyance?\"\n\n\"Touch\u00e9.\"\n\n\"Jesin saw us and ran, there was a shot and he went down. Ian ran after the shooter, I stayed with Jesin until Yasha got back with the Suburban. We got him back here and into our ER as fast as we could.\"\n\n\"Thank you, again.\"\n\n\"You're welcome, but we were just doing our jobs. We would have done that for anyone.\"\n\n\"Even me?\"\n\n\"Including you. Though Ian might not have run so fast after the shooter. And Yasha wouldn't have been as gentle putting you into the Suburban. It probably would've been more like a quasi-aimed toss.\"\n\nThat got a slight smile out of Rake.\n\n\"Why would Jesin be afraid of you?\"\n\n\"He's not. At least he wasn't as of yesterday when he told me about you and Agent Byrne coming to the Murwood and about Sar Gedeon's murder.\" He spread his hands in exasperation. \"I have no idea why he would react like that. I'm his favorite uncle.\"\n\n\"Uncl . . . he's your _nephew_?\"\n\n\"Yes. He's extraordinarily bright, a hard worker, with an uncanny knack for business. He's also one of the few in my family whom I actually like. When he came here, he wanted to work, so I put him in charge of the Murwood. The boy has a head for management.\"\n\nI couldn't resist. \"What? You didn't have him working at Bacchanalia?\"\n\n\"His mother, my oldest sister, would skin me alive herself.\"\n\nOldest sister. That implied more than one. \"Sounds like a nice lady.\"\n\n\"You have no idea. She was against him coming here from the beginning. I will have much explaining to do.\"\n\n\"If Jesin wasn't afraid of you yesterday and is today\u2014\"\n\nRake's eyes tightened in disapproval. \"He wasn't carrying a kilo of Brimstone from the scene of a murder yesterday.\"\n\nThere was a soft knock. The door opened a crack and Karen stuck her head inside.\n\n\"Excuse me, Agent Fraser, Mr. Danescu, but Ms. Sagadraco would like to see you both.\"\n\nI couldn't say I was surprised. Karen probably had a standing order to let the boss know whenever an agent asked to use a conference room for a chat with a perpetual suspect.\n\nI wasn't in the least bit nervous. Alain Moreau had already told me that he and Ms. Sagadraco were very pleased with my job performance, so I wasn't having another what-the-hell-did-I-do moment.\n\nRake, on the other hand, had probably done, initiated, been directly or indirectly responsible for, or merely involved in so many nefarious activities that the concerned crease on his forehead was from trying to figure out which one all this was about. Was it about Jesin, Jesin's reaction to the mention of him, the murders, or Brimstone? Or something else entirely? I guess it was hard to cover your ass when you had so many irons in the fire.\n\nWe got into the elevator and the doors closed.\n\nBoth of us faced forward, neither saying a word.\n\n\"Makenna?\"\n\nI noticed he left off the \"dearest,\" \"lovely,\" or \"beautiful\" Makenna. Wise move.\n\n\"Yes?\" I asked.\n\nOut of the corner of my eye, I saw Rake's lips twitch upward at the corners.\n\n\"Well played.\"\n\n# 17\n\nALAIN Moreau met us when the elevator opened on the executive level.\n\nOkay, maybe I was in a little bit of trouble. Rake was a suspect, or at the very least a source of information we didn't have but needed, and I had shared elements of an ongoing investigation. I'd be finding out soon enough.\n\nVivienne Sagadraco's office door was open, a table had been brought in, and there was her formal silver tea service, china cups and saucers, and those little cakes and pastries from Kitty's that always looked too pretty to eat. Either the boss wanted to lull Rake into a false sense of complacency, or we were going to be here for a while and we'd need caffeine and sugary snacks to get through it\u2014Ms. Sagadraco's version of a civilized interrogation. I knew Rake could never be lulled into anything, but the boss was civilized, so I was going to go with the latter.\n\n\"Rake.\" Not Lord Danescu. Ms. Sagadraco said it as though the hand caught in the tea-cake jar had been his. But she still extended her hand for the requisite kiss. Rake didn't disappoint. \"You could not have paid us a visit at a more convenient time.\" Her sapphire-colored eyes narrowed ever so slightly. \"This chat is long overdue. Agent Byrne will be joining us momentarily. Alain, would you please close the door and ensure that we are not disturbed?\"\n\nAlain gave Rake a level stare. \"It would be my pleasure, madam.\"\n\nSo much for who was in trouble, or at least more of it than I was.\n\nIf there was tea involved, Vivienne Sagadraco would make pleasant small talk until everyone had been served. But now as she poured the tea, she made no effort at conversation: small, pleasant, or otherwise. She was like a Southern lady in that regard: if you didn't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all\u2014at least until the individual in question wasn't around to hear you.\n\nYep, this was going to be a civilized interrogation.\n\n\"In the interests of complete disclosure,\" she began, \"anytime an agent asks to use the Saga Investments conference room, video and audio recording is activated for the duration of the meeting.\"\n\nSo Karen had not only told the boss, she'd flipped the AV switch. I was kind of glad that she had. I wouldn't have wanted to summarize _that_ exchange for Ms. Sagadraco.\n\nThe door opened and Ian came in.\n\n\"Have a seat, Agent Byrne. We were just getting started.\"\n\n\"The lab's completed the first part of their analysis,\" he told her. \"Dr. Cheban sent the preliminary report to you. They're still isolating the individual ingredients, but they've determined enough to know what the drug is supposed to do. She'll forward the ingredient list as soon as it's complete. Though she did confirm that one of the ingredients is actual brimstone. And one of the murderers is a demon lord.\"\n\nI glanced at Rake to get his reaction.\n\nOne perfect eyebrow, slightly raised. He may have been shaken, but he wasn't stirred.\n\nMs. Sagadraco reached over to her desk for her tablet. She scanned through her e-mails and opened the report. We were silent as she read.\n\nIan typed a few words on his phone, then tilted it so I could see: Saw the tape. ; )\n\nJeez, had they been playing it in the break room? I didn't know what the boss thought, but Ian approved\u2014or at least he'd found it entertaining.\n\n\"Without the benefit of further testing, does Dr. Cheban believe the drug does what was intended by whoever made it?\" she asked Ian.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"How many doses are contained in the sample we obtained from Mr. Nadisu?\"\n\n\"Hundreds.\"\n\nRake made a low sound in the back of his throat.\n\nI didn't know if he'd intended it as a groan or a growl, but either way I think I understood why Jesin wouldn't want to see his uncle right now.\n\nMs. Sagadraco finished reading and put her tablet on the table next to her cup. \"Lord Danescu, in our laboratory is an impressive quantity of a drug that our chemists believe would enable any elf or goblin who inhaled it to see through glamours and read minds.\"\n\n\"Damn,\" Rake muttered. \"They did it. They actually did it.\"\n\n\"I take it you were aware of their efforts?\"\n\n\"I'd heard rumors about their efforts, but nothing about their success.\"\n\nIan spoke. \"According to Dr. Cheban, the drug works for elves, goblins, and humans. However, and fortunately for us, humans don't remember what they saw while under the influence.\" My partner gave Rake a less than friendly look. \"Goblins and elves would recall everything, which leads Dr. Cheban to believe that it was developed for use by either goblins or elves. For humans who aren't aware of the supernatural world, seeing through glamours could easily be misinterpreted as hallucinating and thinking you were seeing monsters, which is what happened in the restaurant yesterday.\"\n\nMs. Sagadraco took a sip of tea, and then carefully set the cup and saucer on the table, leveling her gaze on Rake Danescu. \"I believe it is time that you told us what you know.\"\n\nThe goblin had put his elbows on the arms of the chair and had carefully interlaced his fingers in front of him. Interrogation Posing 101.\n\n\"I had heard that the elves were attempting to develop a drug that could enable them to spot any undercover goblin agent by sight, and detect any goblin spies or elven traitors by thought. Conversely, it would also let goblins see and hear any elven agents.\"\n\nIt was said that elves and goblins originated from the same ancestors. Just never say that out loud to either one. Hate was a mild word for how most elves and goblins felt about each other. At least in our dimension they'd stopped trying to exterminate each other, settling instead for hostile corporate takeovers\u2014with only minimal bloodshed.\n\n\"I imagine both goblin and elven intelligence would give or do anything to get their hands on the Brimstone formula,\" Ian noted coolly.\n\nRake didn't take the bait. \"If it was a stable and viable formula, then yes, there would be considerable interest.\"\n\n\"And competition.\"\n\n\"What are you getting at, Agent Byrne?\"\n\n\"Only that you appear to be in a unique position to hear of any interest or competition\u2014and possibly even have a member of your family unwillingly pulled in.\"\n\nNice that Ian gave Jesin the benefit of a doubt. Might have even earned a point or two with Rake.\n\nAt that, Rake regarded Ms. Sagadraco, his expression unreadable. \"Vivienne, I would be willing to share what I know in exchange for my nephew's safekeeping here.\"\n\nWhat that implied about the situation in the city didn't bode well for any of us.\n\nBy all accounts, Rake was one of the most powerful dark mages in New York, perhaps _the_ most powerful. For him to ask for help protecting his nephew by keeping him in here meant the situation out there was even more dangerous than we could have imagined.\n\n\"While we were upstairs, Makenna alluded to a connection between the murders and properties I own, and by association, myself. Her suspicions may not be unfounded. If so, at this time, Jesin would not be safe outside of this complex. I know that Sar Gedeon was the first victim. Who was the second?\"\n\n\"Gedeon wasn't the first victim,\" Ian told him. \"The killers started at the bottom of the ladder and have been working their way up. The most recent victim\u2014at least that we know of\u2014is a goblin by the name of Kela Dupari,\" Ian said.\n\nRake closed his eyes for a moment.\n\n\"I take it you knew her?\"\n\n\"A foolish woman who routinely toyed with and taunted powers beyond her ability. The same actions can be ascribed to Sar Gedeon.\"\n\n\"What are their connections to you?\"\n\n\"Both were actively involved in the drug industry, not only in New York but down the entire East Coast to Miami. Contrary to what you may believe about me, I am _not_ involved\u2014actively or otherwise\u2014in any drug industry. Aside from Ms. Dupari and I both being goblins, we have no connection or association. That being said, an elf and a goblin, both prominent in locally based crime families, were brutally murdered in buildings that I own. This could be a coincidence, or an attempt to frame me, or at the very least cause me substantial inconvenience and embarrassment.\"\n\nI stared at him in disbelief. \"People get their hearts and souls ripped out and you're embarrassed because it happened in your buildings?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he said matter-of-factly. \"You must admit neither death was unwarranted given their past professional activities, and their removal will no doubt make the city a safer place.\"\n\n\"So now you're playing Batman?\"\n\n\"The costume would suit me, as would the nighttime activity, but no.\"\n\n\"Your nephew can stay here regardless of what information you share or do not share with us,\" Ms. Sagadraco said. \"We will care for him as if he were one of our own. It's called decency. I know you're at least familiar with the concept. Your cloak-and-dagger dramatics are affecting and endangering others, and one of those others is Makenna. I assume you have heard what happened yesterday afternoon?\"\n\nHis expression hardened. \"I did.\"\n\n\"My agents are charged with protecting the supernaturals and humans of this city from any and all threats. Brimstone is a threat\u2014both its manufacture and the battle among opposing forces for the right to sell it. My agents and the people of New York are caught in the middle. I arm my agents with what they need to do their jobs. A vital part of that armament is information. I believe you have this information, if not all of it, at least more than we have.\"\n\n\"Mac could have been killed yesterday in the same way as Gedeon and Dupari,\" Ian told Rake, his tone low and forceful. \"Or even worse, dragged through that portal.\"\n\n\"I am more than aware of that,\" Rake shot back. \"Which is precisely why we're having this conversation. Vivienne, from what I _do_ know, neither you nor your people want to be involved in this. It is beyond their abilities.\"\n\n\"This, as you so obliquely put it, is precisely why I founded SPI. This is my world, Lord Danescu. I live here, _all_ the time. I will defend it to my last breath. Can you say the same?\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"As to my agents' abilities, I know their capabilities, you do not. You know what they would face, I do not. You tell me what is happening in this city, and I will be the one most qualified to make that assessment. Though from what I know of my agents, you have seriously underestimated them.\" She glanced at me. \"All of them. You have yet to choose a side. It's understandable. One is the world of your birth, ours is merely a place of business.\"\n\nRake recoiled as if Ms. Sagadraco had slapped him, which I think was what she was going for.\n\n\"Or is it?\" she continued. \"If you have not made up your mind, it is time that you do so. You can help, or you can continue to hinder. You can no longer do both. Which will it be?\"\n\n\"Very well.\" Rake leaned back in his chair. \"Elves have been in your dimension far longer than goblins. Their established foothold forced us to play catch-up, strategically speaking.\"\n\nIan barked a humorless laugh. \"Strategically speaking? You make it sound like you're planning to take over.\"\n\n\"Not take over, Agent Fraser. Merely ensure that the elves don't gain access to a resource\u2014and thus an advantage\u2014that we do not gain for ourselves. Much of what is called magic in the Seven Kingdoms can be replicated by science and technology here. Some cannot be replicated. Elven extremists have worked to gain power and influence here to obtain such technology for use against my people. It pains me to say it, but there are similar groups among my own race. Goblins and elves have been at war off and on for thousands of years.\"\n\nI was dumbfounded. \"You're saying elf-terrorists-trying-to-get-nukes kind of advantage?\"\n\nRake actually smiled. \"That would be extreme even for these people. They want to annihilate the goblin race, not render their kingdom uninhabitable. In their minds, that would be a waste.\"\n\n\"Thank God for small miracles.\"\n\n\"Both of our races use the excuse that we're merely trying to stay ahead of the other to protect our own people.\"\n\nIan sat back. \"Brimstone's the source of the latest tug-of-war.\"\n\nRake nodded. \"There are more than a few companies and laboratories run by both elves and goblins that develop drugs, weapons, and technologies to use against the other. Such organizations are routinely infiltrated to steal formulas, sabotage research, copy new technology. Much like human industrial espionage. Brimstone would allow select people to see through the glamours these corporate spies use to hide their identities, as well as detect spies by their thoughts.\" Rake poured himself another cup of tea. \"Brimstone would be a valuable commodity for whoever has it. If it is effective, it would be worth killing for. From events of the past two days, apparently the drug is quite effective.\"\n\n\"Elves, goblins, and vampires have been killed by a demon lord and something worse than a demon lord,\" I said. \"So who made the drug?\"\n\n\"I suspect the individuals you need to pursue are not those who are physically manufacturing the drug. At least they wouldn't be your primary target. Brimstone\u2014the ingredient itself\u2014comes from the Hell dimension, making it particularly difficult to get.\"\n\n\"Not necessarily. Marty picked up a couple of rocks on a field trip,\" I noted.\n\nRake's teacup paused halfway to his lips. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\nIan regarded the goblin with a knowing expression. \"You know a lot about spies, espionage, and strategic advantages for a billionaire playboy, real estate mogul, and owner of an exclusive sex club.\"\n\nRake almost smiled. \"Successful and undetectable espionage isn't cheap, Agent Byrne. Some of the buildings I own have been leased to elven companies and research facilities. I made the financial terms and incentives impossible to pass up\u2014as would any developer vying to get a profitable client in a previously vacant building. Refitting the space to suit their needs presents all sorts of opportunities for installing undetectable surveillance equipment. The income from one building often pays for another; and the revenue from my other businesses funds the buying and bugging of those buildings. As you humans say, sex sells. It also makes an absurdly impressive amount of money. More than a few key elven power brokers spend time\u2014and their money\u2014in my club, little knowing that they're funding intelligence operations against themselves.\"\n\nRake Danescu. Sex broker and spymaster. I didn't know which was worse.\n\nOr if either one was truly bad.\n\n\"And you have bugs planted in the tables at Bacchanalia,\" I said, recalling my first night on the job when Ian had felt the need to distract those listening in on us by seriously distracting me.\n\n\"One can hear all kinds of interesting and valuable tidbits,\" Rake noted smoothly, knowing exactly what I was remembering.\n\nBastard.\n\nI glared at him. He smiled at me.\n\n\"Heard any interesting chatter concerning a new drug?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Not that my monitors have told me, but I will contact them when I leave here.\"\n\n\"And let us know?\"\n\nRake just looked at him. \"Yes, Agent Byrne. And let you know.\"\n\n\"I found a list of buildings that you own under Northern Reach Holdings fairly easily,\" I told him.\n\n\"Which is what makes me think the murders taking place in my buildings isn't a coincidence. I have allowed Northern Reach Holdings to trace back to me with relative ease. My other holdings are very well and deeply hidden. It's in a goblin's nature to hide your strategic advantages until they're needed\u2014or until you need someone to find them.\"\n\nGreat. So much for me being clever.\n\n\"So Northern Reach is like the outer threads of a spiderweb,\" I said. \"You're in the center, and if you sense movement, you know you've caught something.\"\n\n\"A nearly perfect comparison, Makenna. That is why I believe there is a very distinct possibility that someone is going to a lot of trouble to stage murders in my buildings.\"\n\n\"So I take it the elves know you're a spy?\"\n\n\"I'm more of a freelance consultant for goblin intelligence. They use me, and I use them. It's a mutually beneficial relationship.\"\n\nI remembered what Kylie had told me. I wanted to know the answer; not to mention, Rake had just gotten one up on me. I'm competitive, so sue me. \"In the coffee shop yesterday, you needed to leave fast to keep Baxter Clayton from seeing you.\"\n\n\"That is correct.\"\n\n\"It also wasn't necessary, at least not anymore.\"\n\n\"I don't follow you.\"\n\nOh yes, he did.\n\n\"The series Baxter Clayton was planning had its plug pulled last month,\" I said for Ian and the boss's benefit; Rake already knew damn well that it'd been canceled. \"You didn't really need to avoid him anymore. Though having heard more than a few Baxter stories from Kylie, I could understand why people wouldn't want to get cornered. But with the series canceled, you didn't _need_ to avoid him.\" I eyed him. \"Sitting at the center of the web like you do, I can't imagine you not knowing the series had been canceled. So that would mean that you were either avoiding someone else\u2014or you saw someone who was desperate to avoid you. Which was it?\"\n\n\"It had nothing to do with Brimstone.\" Rake's dark eyes were steady on mine. Eyes that said in no uncertain terms that he was not going to tell me or anyone else here what it was about.\n\nIf the boss had had a fireplace in her office, I'd have held his feet to it. Not only did I think she wouldn't have minded, but since she was a fire-breathing dragon, she could've done it herself. I glanced at her. From the hard glitter in her eyes, it looked like she wouldn't mind raising the temperature in the goblin's designer shoes.\n\n\"Rake, do I have your word that this incident isn't connected to this investigation?\" she asked.\n\n\"You have my word.\"\n\n\"And if it does reveal itself to be connected, I trust you will inform me immediately.\"\n\nMs. Sagadraco knew how the goblin mind worked.\n\n\"Of course, Vivienne. I will contact you immediately.\" He looked to each of us in turn. \"I have a question.\"\n\nMs. Sagadraco selected a pastry from the silver tray. \"Please ask it.\"\n\n\"Makenna mentioned that the two of you met with Alastor Malvolia this morning,\" he said to Ian. \"What were you attempting to learn from him, and were you successful? Though knowing Alastor, I would hazard to guess that you weren't, at least not after only one meeting.\"\n\n\"We're supposed to hear from Malvolia by eight o'clock tonight,\" Ian told him. \"But we're not holding our breath.\"\n\n\"Nor should you,\" Rake said. \"If his clients were able to give him any information he believed was useful to you, he would want to negotiate for additional benefits. What did you promise him?\"\n\n\"Not a damn thing,\" Ian said bluntly. \"I simply told him how Sar Gedeon was killed. In detail. He decided to cooperate.\"\n\n\"I would have enjoyed seeing that.\" Rake took a sip of tea, his dark eyes glittering with what I could only describe as delight over the rim of his cup. \"Dearest Vivienne, you are quite right, I have underestimated your agents.\"\n\n# 18\n\nONCE Ms. Sagadraco was finished with her tea-party inquisition, and extracted a promise of cooperation from Rake, she asked me to stay after Ian and Rake had been excused.\n\nThe tea and goodies were gone, but maybe the inquisition part wasn't over yet\u2014at least not for me.\n\nI decided to be proactive. \"You want to talk about what happened up in the conference room with Rake, don't you?\"\n\n\"I thought that would be a good idea, yes.\"\n\n\"From what you saw and heard, I didn't mess anything up, did I?\"\n\n\"If you're speaking professionally, no, you did not. What I wanted to bring to your attention is on a more personal note. You may have created more of a problem than you solved.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"If your intention was to discourage Lord Danescu from pursuing you, then you may have made a tactical error.\"\n\nMy eyes widened. \"What?\"\n\n\"Goblin men of Rake's caliber aren't attracted to intellectually passive women. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that your performance just now and upstairs has probably rendered you absolutely irresistible. If you want him to cease his attentions now, you may have to kill him.\"\n\nI recalled my violent urges toward Rake in the conference room, and thought it highly likely that before this was all over, I'd be feeling those same urges again.\n\n\"The day ain't over yet, ma'am.\"\n\nThe Dragon Lady smiled.\n\n* * *\n\nIan met me by the elevators.\n\n\"Well, that was interesting,\" I said.\n\n\"That's one way to put it.\"\n\nI waited a few moments before I spoke again. \"You don't believe Rake's involved anymore, do you?\"\n\nThe muscle in my partner's jaw flexed. \"No, I don't.\"\n\n\"But you'd like him to be.\"\n\n\"If it'd keep more people from dying, then yeah, I would.\"\n\n\"Nice dodge. That's not the question I asked.\"\n\nIan grew some silence.\n\n\"I'm still worried about you, Mac.\"\n\n\"Rake or being snatched through a portal?\"\n\n\"Yes. I can keep the second one from happening, but not the first.\"\n\nMy instinct was to tell him that I could take care of myself and that I didn't need his help or approval choosing the men in my life. But I didn't say any of that even though all of it was true. It wasn't Ian's fault for feeling the way he did about Rake, or any other man who kept his private life, business interests, and motives for nearly everything he did locked up tighter than Fort Knox.\n\nHeck, I was still circling Rake like he was a rattlesnake coiled in front of the only way out of a cave, and I planned to do that for the foreseeable future. When I got to the future, and Rake still wasn't guilty of anything, then I'd reevaluate my reasons for continued caution.\n\nNot blaming Ian one bit for his feelings left me with only one response to his statement. It was also the one I wanted to give him.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said simply.\n\nThat earned me a surprised look.\n\n\"Really,\" I added with a slight smile. \"There's no need to worry. I don't plan on diving into anything, but I know where your concern's coming from, and I know it's a good place. So thank you.\"\n\n\"It's not _your_ plans I'm worried about.\"\n\nI grinned. \"You sure you aren't part Southern? Sounds like you don't think my gentleman caller has honorable intentions.\"\n\n\"Rake Danescu is no gentleman, and it's beginning to look like honor isn't a concept many goblins are familiar with.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIn preparation for a meeting, Ian had rolled a big whiteboard into a conference room just off the bull pen that the Brimstone team had taken for our own. Photos of the victims were posted across the top of the board, with crime family affiliation listed beneath.\n\nThe NYPD had probably started a board like this, though theirs would only have three bodies, and there wouldn't be two additional bullet points under each victim's name noting their species and missing soul. And there certainly wouldn't be an asterisk next to Sar Gedeon's \"missing soul\" bullet indicating that \"The agency necromancer attempted contact but was bitch slapped by a demonic booby trap for trying.\"\n\nFortunately there was only the one asterisk.\n\nAll of the victims had had their chests sliced open with a scalpel-type instrument. Or claw. Their hearts had been torn from their chests, all while alive with a demon lord holding them to the floor with one hoof, branding its imprint into their breastbones. None had died without a struggle.\n\nThe details of Kela Dupari's murder had already been leaked online, and the public and press were having a field day, especially when they found out that her murder hadn't been the first. The NYPD had been the first to arrive on the scene of two more murders: one late last night, the other about the same time as Dupari's killing. As the medical examiner\u2014and a mage\u2014Dr. Anika Van Daal had kept Dupari's goblin features hidden. Either the two most recent victims were human, or Van Daal\u2014or one of her people\u2014had concealed the pointy ears from curious eyes, because there'd been no mention of odd ears or silvery skin, only missing hearts and branded hoofprints.\n\nWhen a murder was particularly gruesome, it didn't matter what security measures the city's medical examiner's office had in place, juicy details always found their way out. And they found their way onto home pages and front pages even faster when there'd been more than one murder with the same lurid MO\u2014and a photo. Yep, the person who'd stumbled onto the most recent body had taken plenty of pictures before they'd called the cops. Nowadays you didn't have to commit a crime to get your fifteen minutes of fame, just be the first person to take a picture of it.\n\nI was a big fan of the Internet, and it had it uses\u2014like the glorious world of online shopping\u2014but right now it sucked. As recently as a couple of decades ago, the three networks (yes, that was all there were) would have had it on their evening news, and the newspapers would have gotten hold of it, and it would spread only as far as their signal or circulation.\n\nNot anymore.\n\nAll it took was one tweet to turn a secret into worldwide news. Send that tweet with a bloody photo of a gaping chest and hoofprint brand, and within five minutes it'd have its own trending hashtag.\n\nOur not-so-secret-anymore secret had garnered itself three hashtags at last count: #devilmurder, #killerdemon, and\u2014my personal favorite for sheer dramatic impact\u2014#SatanInNY.\n\nI sighed. This was going to be a very long day.\n\nCrackpots, conspiracy theorists, religious nuts, and the tin-foil-hat crowd had started coming out of the woodwork, and Kylie and her department were busy as hounds in flea season.\n\nSo far, the focus was on the sensationalist details, which fortunately didn't out any supernatural creature the public didn't already know about. Nearly every major religion had more than its share of demons or devils, many of them even named. Hearing that one was making it his mission on Earth to slaughter people in the illegal drug trade was being met with cheers, not panic in the streets. Panic and terror were reserved for those in the illegal drug trade. The opinion of the average Jane and Joe on the street was \"Good riddance!\" and \"Give that demon a medal.\"\n\nRight now, Kylie O'Hara was doing the rounds of the local news programs as the founder of the internationally known website hoaxbusters.com. She'd made a name for herself online and beyond as a debunker of the supernatural. Heck, Syfy was still after her to host her own show. However, her \"secret identity\" job was SPI's director of media and public relations. The goal of both of her jobs was to have a mundane explanation for supernatural events and creatures. With the latest in CGI technology available to any kid with a computer, exposing anyone looking for their fifteen minutes of fame had never been easier. That being said, those photos of the latest victim hadn't been faked. Kylie had readily confirmed that. However, she'd added that they didn't need to be faked to be explained. There was a killer on the loose in New York. Unfortunately, that was nothing new. This one simply limited its work to a subset of criminals, and for some reason known only to it, carried a branding iron and liked to cut out hearts. That didn't indicate supernatural, just a deeply disturbed individual.\n\nKylie was doing a fine job of doing her job. It'd be nice if Ian and I could say the same. A board full of the names of dead drug dealers didn't equal success; it just meant we were organized. Success meant putting that demon lord and his mage partner permanently out of business.\n\nOur friendly neighborhood source inside the NYPD's drug enforcement unit, Detective Fred Ash, stopped by to share what they knew with us. The NYPD didn't know about SPI, but with supernaturals on the force, we had eyes and ears where we needed them. What Fred's eyes and ears had seen and heard in the last few hours was a bombshell to us; like we hadn't had enough of those ourselves.\n\nIan was incredulous. \"They want to do _what_?\"\n\nI was a mite stunned myself.\n\nThe NYPD was going to put the city's top drug lords and ladies under protective custody.\n\n\"Yeah, protecting the people who no one really minds seeing dead,\" Fred told us. \"Makes all kinds of sense. They're all drug-dealing, murdering, lowlife scum. But apparently they're _our_ drug-dealing, murdering, lowlife scum. Most importantly, drug kingpins are taxpayers, too. Taxpayers who haven't been convicted of a crime. In the eyes of the law that makes them innocent taxpayers. Gotta protect all of them.\" Fred took another bite of doughnut. \"This case is just chock full of irony.\"\n\nBefore coming over for a fact-sharing session with us, Fred had made a Krispy Kreme run. And before coming to the bull pen, he'd taken two raspberry-filled doughnuts up to Bert in his office. Our necromancer didn't want to let on, but he still wasn't back in fighting shape from the trap the murderer had set in what had been left of Sar Gedeon's mind. The favorite doughnut of the guy who worked with dead people was filled with gooey red stuff. Go figure.\n\nFor a Southerner like myself, Krispy Kremes were the holy grail of doughnuts. And when the \"HOT\" light on the sign was lit, that meant the sugary-glazed goodness had just come out of the oven. The first couple of bites would melt in your mouth. In my family, we held to the rule that the fresher the doughnut, the fewer calories they had. Fluffy when passing the lips, no fat on the hips.\n\nI knew it wasn't true, but I'd never let scientific facts get in the way of enjoying a good doughnut.\n\nI snagged a chocolate-iced one before they got gone. \"I'd ask if you were pulling our leg, but I know you're not.\"\n\n\"I think the big problem with the city hall people is the way the city's not-so-law-abiding citizens are getting killed,\" Fred noted. \"Chest branded, heart cut out, stink of hellfire and brimstone.\"\n\n\"Technically, it's just brimstone,\" I said. \"Hellfire doesn't stink.\" Jeez, I was starting to sound like Marty.\n\n\"Whatever. It's our job to make it stop. Now.\"\n\nIn addition to doughnuts, Fred had brought news of another murder. It had been committed on a yacht in the Hudson River. The NYPD had gotten to that one first, too. In our defense, the NYPD had an advantage\u2014we didn't have patrol boats on the rivers and in the harbor. And screams coming from an obscenely expensive mega-yacht wasn't something a patrol boat full of cops was likely to ignore.\n\nIt'd been a vampire. A high-ranking member of the B\u00e1thory family. Celeste B\u00e1thory had gotten scared and taken refuge on her yacht. She obviously hadn't heard that portals can be opened anywhere.\n\nThat murder scene had a deviation from the others\u2014the heart hadn't been stolen and\/or eaten; the vampire's heart had been staked to the teak wood floor next to her body.\n\nWe could now add \"dark sense of humor\" to the murders' descriptions.\n\n\"B\u00e1thory's people had checked every square inch of that boat,\" Fred told us. \"There was no one there but them. One swears Celeste B\u00e1thory had him check her cabin. Hell, I think she'd have had him looking under the bed if the thing had an underneath. Half an hour later, no sounds at all, the guard posted outside her door saw blood soaking the carpet under the door. Didn't hear a peep, no struggle, nothing.\"\n\n\"He smell sulfur?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Yeah, seemed to be coming from under the door. That's what made him look down. Wards had been set and locked. She even had battle mages on board, real heavyweights. Likewise, they didn't hear or sense a thing.\"\n\n\"Damn.\"\n\n\"Yeah, our gruesome twosome are good. They've got the local pharmaceutical distributors about to crap themselves at seeing their own shadows. Whatever they do to protect themselves, it's not enough. By the time B\u00e1thory's boys got through that door, it was all over except the cleanup\u2014and according to our guys that was some cleanup.\" He dug a manila folder out of his messenger bag. \"I brought you two eight by ten glossies of Celeste for your board\u2014undead and permanently dead.\" Fred read the \"bitch slapped\" comment next to the asterisk and chuckled. \"Who wrote that?\"\n\nI raised the hand not holding the doughnut.\n\n\"I like it,\" he said.\n\n\"My journalism degree at work.\"\n\n\"Your mom would be proud.\"\n\n\"I think so.\" I also thought I was getting the hang of using dark cop humor to relieve tension. Fred Ash was my spirit animal. Besides, Bert wouldn't mind; he'd laugh his ass off. In fact, I'd written it for him.\n\nIan added the photos to our board. \"You're a sick man, Fred.\" He gave me a look. \"And you're an enabler.\"\n\n\"Never claimed to be anything else,\" Fred said.\n\nI popped the last bite of doughnut in my mouth. \"Ditto.\"\n\n\"So what'd the first responders have to say about the heart staked to the floor?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"With that and her fangs, their first thought was vampire,\" Fred said. \"Their second thought was there's no such thing as vampires, and that Celeste must have had some kinky dental work done. My momma\u2014and my first sergeant\u2014always said that first impressions are important. Our boys and girls should've gone with what their gut was telling them they were seeing.\"\n\n\"They can't charge something with murder that doesn't exist,\" Ian noted. \"And as far as the NYPD is concerned, demons don't exist.\"\n\nFred snorted. \"Yeah, I'd like to see my precinct try to put one of those in the holding tank.\"\n\n\"They can try to protect those people all they want,\" Ian continued. \"It's not going to do any good, even if they believed the reason why. I wish them luck. If they could stop the killings, more power to them. But they won't because they can't. They can't because their minds won't let them believe. Their lizard brains know what's happening, but then they'll look at the modern city they live in and the primitive truth they know in their gut gets pushed aside. They're looking for mundane explanations, and this is magic, black and as dirty as I've ever heard of.\"\n\nFred waved his second doughnut. \"Yeah, yeah, I know. You're preachin' to the choir. The killer is a dark mage with a demon sidekick, who's using a portal to get in and out, so my brother and sister officers are gonna be seriously frustrated. The classic murder in a locked room. Damned media's already calling it the perfect crime.\"\n\nThe tabloids like the _Informer_ , which I used to work for, had gotten it right. Well, partially. Demons were involved, and while it was ironic that all of the victims were involved in the illegal drug trade, there was nothing divine about the retribution. Though it would be nice if God would do a little judicious smiting every now and then. Glean out the troublemakers. The world would be a better place for the rest of us.\n\n\"You can count us among the frustrated,\" Ian was saying. \"With your guys tailing our most likely future victims, we can't do the same ourselves. Though it's not like there's much else we've been able to do.\"\n\n\"Normally multiple vics killed in a freaky way means serial killer,\" Fred noted. \"Make those vics connected to some of the biggest names in the city's drug trade, and the folks downtown think we're seeing the beginnings of a drug turf war. New dealers come in, want a slice of the business for themselves, our existing drug lords and ladies say hell no, and the newcomers start making examples to get them to change their minds. Which is surprisingly close to the truth except it's the established lords and ladies who want a piece of the newcomers' action.\"\n\nThe NYPD had had Kela Dupari's home and office under tight surveillance due to an ongoing investigation that had nothing to do with Brimstone. When her body was discovered in her office with the heart missing and the chest branded, all of the doors and windows had been locked. The surveillance cameras from the building showed that no one other than Kela Dupari had entered or left the office.\n\nThe NYPD was stumped, embarrassed, and getting pissed.\n\nWe were just pissed.\n\nThe NYPD thought the killings were a new cartel moving in to make a name for themselves by simultaneously slaughtering the kingpins while scaring the bejeezus out of the survivors\u2014or as we were beginning to think of them, \"future heart donors.\"\n\nAside from the demon and actual Hell elements, Fred was right, they'd pretty much hit the nail on the head.\n\n# 19\n\nWHEN Dr. Cheban and her team released their final report two hours later, I seriously doubt there was any high-fiving in the lab.\n\nIt was bad enough that one of the ingredients in Brimstone was actual brimstone from Hell, but it was the form of the brimstone that turned just another evening at SPI into all hands on deck.\n\nAt least the hands experienced with portals and demons\u2014finding the former and battling the latter.\n\nThe brimstone in the drug had been combined with the other ingredients while still in its molten state. Martin DiMatteo's samples were rocks, dried and old. We were dealing with brimstone fresh from Hell itself.\n\nAccording to Marty, fresh, molten brimstone could be obtained from only one location.\n\nWe had a Hellpit open somewhere under New York.\n\nSome people would say that New York was the modern equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah, and more than deserved to have a Hellpit gaping open under it, and the sooner it fell in, the better for everyone else. Others would argue that dishonor went to Las Vegas. I'd have to disagree with both. The majority of New Yorkers were the best folks you'd ever want to meet. I'd never been to Vegas, but since the place had gone and gotten itself Disneyfied, I figured they were out of the running.\n\nRegardless of how those who didn't live in New York felt about the Big Apple, it didn't need or deserve to be swallowed into the bowels of Hell.\n\nOur job was still the same.\n\nFind it and close it\u2014without anyone finding out.\n\nAnd ensure that what happens in a Hellpit, stays in a Hellpit.\n\nWe'd had food sent up from the cafeteria, with Martin DiMatteo hosting a Lunch 'n' Learn on Hell and demons. Though since it was eight o'clock at night, it was dinner, but the concept was the same. Most of us hadn't had time for dinner yet, and with the Hellpit news, we were going to sit down and eat while we could. Fred had had to leave, but we promised to fill him in on what was said and decided.\n\n\"I know you say there is a Hellpit,\" I was saying to Martin DiMatteo. \"And it's _here_.\"\n\n\"Correct.\"\n\n\"The demon lord and his mage partner are launching their attacks here through a portal from a dimension _close_ to Hell, because there's no direct access to our dimension from Hell.\"\n\n\"Also correct.\"\n\n\"Then why can't the Hellpit be physically located in the same neighboring dimension where they're launching their attacks from rather than here, and the brimstone brought in through a portal? I'm not doubting your expertise,\" I hurried to add. \"I just want to understand what's going on and why.\"\n\n\"Never apologize for seeking knowledge, Agent Fraser.\"\n\nOur director of demonology didn't seem to be offended. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'd just asked him to talk about his favorite topic; no one minded doing that. Though asking did give me a bit of an unpleasant flashback to asking Bert for an explanation of what he'd been about to do with Sar Gedeon's corpse. I didn't like what I'd heard and seen then, and I didn't think I was going to be too fond of Marty's explanation, either. But I needed to know; we all did.\n\n\"Dr. Cheban reported that her team's analysis of the drug showed the chemical composition to be too complex to have been manufactured in any dimension with direct access to Hell. Therefore, it was manufactured here. In order to be manufactured here, the molten brimstone has to be harvested here. The magic necessary for creating, stabilizing, and maintaining a portal would have an undesirable side effect on any molten brimstone being brought through a portal, thickening it enough to be rendered unusable for the drug manufacturers' purpose.\"\n\nI think my mouth might have been standing open. \"How do you _know_ these things?\"\n\nDiMatteo actually looked a little embarrassed. \"I have tried to bring molten brimstone back with me on more than one excursion.\"\n\n\"To Hell and back.\"\n\n\"Yes. Passing through the two portals I had to navigate to get home turned my sample into a substance that can only be described as warm goo. Even when I took every precaution and put the samples in a container that can withstand a nuclear blast.\"\n\n\"That's one heck of a thermos,\" I muttered.\n\n\"Yes, it was,\" DiMatteo readily agreed. \"Since demons can't gain direct access to our dimension from Hell, they have to go through portals to get to a dimension closer to ours, and then from there to here. But even then, only certain sizes and classes of demons can get through. Dimensions that can be accessed directly from Hell aren't nice places to begin with. I've called the ones you experienced yesterday 'anterooms,' which is an accurate description. These dimensions are similar enough to Hell in terms of temperature, air composition, and pressure that a portal between the two can be opened with relative ease. The dimensions that can open directly into ours\u2014the elf and goblin realm, for example\u2014are near perfect matches for our own. All of that being said, there are times during the year when the barriers between all of the dimensions are at their thinnest. We just experienced one of those, namely All Hallows' Eve.\"\n\n\"How long do you think the Hellpit has been open?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"The optimal time to open one is at a combination of a full moon and a time like All Hallows' Eve, when our enterprising drug manufacturers wouldn't have had to work quite so hard.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd said there's no direct access to Hell from here,\" I said. \"Then again, when you told me, I'd just hit my head on concrete.\"\n\n\"You're correct, Agent Fraser. There is no direct access _from_ Hell to here. From here _to_ Hell is another matter.\"\n\n\"You're saying that some dumbass on _our_ side dug a pit to Hell?\" Roy Benoit was the commander of one of SPI's two commando teams. He was proud to be from the Louisiana swamps, from a long line of gator hunters, and a retired Army Ranger. Though according to Roy, Rangers not only didn't surrender, they never retired.\n\n\"Not dumb, Commander Benoit,\" DiMatteo replied. \"Greedy. In all likelihood, our demon lord offered them access to fresh brimstone. They had the other ingredients. All they needed was the brimstone. They either didn't know\u2014or didn't care\u2014that if a Hellpit is ever fully opened, it's open permanently, and any demon that ever wanted to come to our dimension and belly up to the all-you-can-eat human buffet could do just that. Since New York has yet to be overrun by demons, we obviously haven't reached that point yet.\"\n\n\"So the last time there was a Hellpit here,\" Roy began, \"how did they get rid of it?\"\n\n\"First of all, it's not a simple matter to open a Hellpit. There have only been a few documented instances, none of which have ever reached a state of being fully open. The first Hellpit was opened in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia in the 1320s. A Mongolian sorcerer sought the advice of a demon to destroy a rival tribe. The demon instructed him on how to conjure a small Hellpit in return for the sorcerer's soul after death, as well as those of his tribesmen. The sorcerer opened the Hellpit, the promised 'help' emerged, and the sorcerer closed it again. What emerged from that pit killed the rival tribe within a matter of days\u2014then did the same to the sorcerer and his tribe, netting the demon his promised souls a lot sooner than the sorcerer had anticipated.\" DiMatteo paused uncomfortably. \"The creatures were tiny, microscopically so. They spread throughout Mongolia to the Silk Road, and from there onto the fleas infesting the rats on merchant ships bound for Europe.\"\n\nHoly. Crap.\n\nRoy was incredulous. \"The Black Plague was caused by demons? I've heard a lot in my time, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Like all living creatures, demons come in all shapes and sizes,\" DiMatteo countered.\n\n\"In other words,\" I said, \"It doesn't take a big pit to make big problems.\"\n\nRoy took a deep breath. \"Okay, saying I believe 'demonic bacteria'\u2014and I might as well\u2014I wouldn't think whoever opened the Hellpit here would be inclined to close it again. When we find it, how do _we_ close it?\"\n\n\"We don't,\" DiMatteo told him. \"It would take a portalkeeper. Two of the officially documented Hellpits were closed by extremely powerful portalkeepers.\"\n\nRoy swore. \"Those are rare birds.\"\n\n\"They don't openly advertise their presence for good reason. People who have the gift of opening or closing dimensional portals or tears are in great demand\u2014and most often by individuals or organizations who you would not want to have notice you. Wars, invasions, and criminal acts of every sort can be greatly simplified with a strategically placed portal. Vivienne Sagadraco will hopefully know the name of a portalkeeper who is powerful enough to close our Hellpit.\"\n\n\"It can be yours,\" Roy said. \"'Cause it sure as hell ain't mine.\"\n\n\"I'm not that great with math,\" I said, \"so correct me if I'm wrong, but it's been four days since Halloween and two days since the full moon. Detective Fred Ash of the NYPD told Ian and me yesterday that they'd only found out about Brimstone a few days ago. That would coincide with Halloween, but wouldn't the manufacturing process take longer than that? Wouldn't that imply that the Hellpit was open before Halloween?\"\n\nAll eyes went to Dr. Claire Cheban, the SPI lab director. She didn't look old enough to be out of college, let alone have a PhD and be in charge of a lab like SPI's.\n\n\"We're still analyzing the drug sample,\" she said, \"but brimstone in its molten state is unstable, especially when combined with two of the other ingredients we found in the drug. As Director DiMatteo said, the composition of the drug itself is incredibly complex. From raw ingredients to finished product would take at least four days, and that's a conservative estimate.\"\n\n\"Sounds like whoever opened the Hellpit missed his window,\" Ian noted. \"Or didn't need one. Is it possible to open a pit anytime?\"\n\n\"It's not only possible,\" DiMatteo replied, \"but in the case we're faced with, I believe it is probable. Contrary to what Commander Benoit said, we're not dealing with a dumbass. Greedy, yes. Dumbass, no. To open a Hellpit regardless of dimensional thinness and moon phase would take an individual with a frightening level of power and skill.\"\n\nAn assessment like that coming from a man who took rock-hunting excursions to Hell meant a lot of scary.\n\nIan and I exchanged a glance.\n\nHalloween night had been the gala opening of the Mythos exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of the exhibits had been Viktor Kain's Dragon Eggs. Another had been a marble statue of three harpies. The real statue had been waylaid in London and had been replaced with three actual Grecian harpies that had been put into a state of stasis until the night of the gala when an unknown\u2014and scary powerful\u2014sorcerer or sorceress had reanimated the harpies to steal the Dragon Eggs. Before, during, and after the theft, they'd also killed a couple of security guards, terrorized the guests, and shattered a section of the window wall in the Met's Sackler Wing when they escaped into the night over Central Park.\n\nWe'd never found who was ultimately behind the diamond theft, but we strongly suspected it was the same individual who had enough magical mojo to put three harpies into suspended animation and disguise them as a marble statue.\n\nIt sounded like one of those mega-mages hadn't left town and was now working with a demon lord.\n\n\"Just because it's called a Hellpit,\" said Sandra Niles, our other commando unit commander, \"does that mean it's an actual, physical hole in the ground, or could it be similar to a door, like a portal?\"\n\n\"It'll be a hole in the ground,\" DiMatteo confirmed. \"But it can be closed like a portal\u2014unless it's completely open.\"\n\n\"When it's completely open, how can it be closed?\" Sandra asked.\n\n\"There's never been one completely open before, so I don't know if it can be closed.\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"Uh, Marty, there's a lot of holes in the ground under Manhattan.\" Leave it to Sandra to be able to ignore the bomb Marty just dropped and move on. \"Could you narrow it down for us?\"\n\n\"Brimstone solidifies within an hour after being exposed to surface air. It wouldn't matter how quickly it could be gotten into a sealed container. That would put the pit less than an hour from the lab, probably much closer. At the same time, it would need to be a location that could be easily secured.\"\n\nDiMatteo paused, his expression slightly disturbed. Again, coming from a guy who studied demons for a living, this was alarming.\n\n\"There is a rather concerning possibility,\" he said. \"I've compared it to black holes\u2014\"\n\nHellpits and black holes? This wasn't gonna be good.\n\n\"Humans have never been near a black hole, yet there are certain behaviors that scientists accept as fact. Once a Hellpit is open 'all the way,' there's no reason that it would be limited to a finite size. In theory, the size of the Hellpit opening would only dictate what size demons could gain access to our dimension. Smaller opening, smaller demons. Larger opening, larger demons. Unless the individual who opened the pit is remaining with it 24\/7 to control its growth, theoretically there wouldn't be a size limit.\"\n\nNo one moved. Those who were still eating stopped chewing.\n\n\"On the upside\u2014\"\n\n\"There's an upside to Armageddon?\" Roy muttered.\n\n\"Yes, there is. The presence at this time of any smaller-class demons could indicate probable proximity to the Hellpit's location.\"\n\n\"So, if people are being eaten in Midtown, chances are the Hellpit's in Midtown?\"\n\n\"Correct.\"\n\nThat confirmed it. Marty didn't get humor or sarcasm. Bless his heart.\n\n\"Regarding Dr. DiMatteo's comments on the proximity of the lab to the Hellpit,\" Claire Cheban began, \"understand that they would need to have enough distance between them to ensure that no heat or flame from the Hellpit would come in contact with two of the ingredients found in our dimension. Those two ingredients are highly unstable and flammable.\"\n\nNote the location in the city of any large explosion. Check.\n\n\"And Hell does have a well-deserved reputation for being flammable,\" DiMatteo noted, with complete sincerity.\n\n\"The lab where it's being manufactured would need to be state-of-the-art.\" Dr. Cheban proceeded to launch into a ten-minute, PhD-level lecture of the chemical properties of each ingredient she'd isolated, with an accompanying rundown of how contact with molten heat would make them go \"boom.\"\n\nWhen she'd finished, Roy spoke up. \"And that, boys and girls, is why there aren't any meth labs in Hell.\"\n\n\"So what kind of equipment are we talking about?\" Ian asked. \"And where would they get it?\"\n\nI knew where he was going with this. Some of Rake's real estate holdings were elven-owned laboratories and research facilities. We'd asked him to check if any had been working on any new drugs. He'd said he'd check and get back to us. It'd been a little over two hours. Nothing from Rake. Maybe his \"monitors\" had to check their records. Maybe not. Either way, I knew who Ian would be calling when we got out of this meeting.\n\n\"I'll e-mail you a list of the equipment, and where each item can be bought.\" Cheban was typing insanely fast on her phone. \"You can't get these things on eBay or off the shelf at Labs 'R' Us, and the companies that manufacture them don't let just anyone walk in off the street and buy them. And then there's the cost\u2014\"\n\n\"We suspect that our pharmaceutical entrepreneurs have a loaded angel investor,\" Ian told her.\n\n\"If money's no object, they could buy\u2014or pay to have stolen\u2014whatever they needed.\"\n\nThere were beeps and tunes around the room as Cheban's e-mail came through.\n\n\"Check for thefts of items one through five,\" she told us, referring to the numbered list she'd sent. \"One and two are the most expensive and hardest to get.\"\n\nWhen the meeting concluded, Ian made a beeline for the elevators down to the motor pool and motioned me to follow.\n\n\"We going to see Rake?\" I asked.\n\n\"Not yet. Now that we've had dinner, how about dessert?\"\n\n# 20\n\nBY the time Yasha stopped in front of Kitty's Confections on Bleeker Street in the Village, Ian had told me that we were here for more than a nighttime snack of red velvet cupcakes.\n\nApparently Kitty had a secret\u2014a big one\u2014and she'd kept it from everyone. Everyone except Vivienne Sagadraco, who, when the need proved great, had told Alain Moreau and Ian.\n\nKitty could close portals\u2014big ones.\n\nThat implied that Kitty had the same level of power as the mega-mage who'd opened the Hellpit in the first place. I was having a tough time wrapping my head around that one. I was betting that the mega-mage, who'd essentially put out the welcome mat for the denizens of Hell, couldn't bake an angel food cake that was reported to have made actual angels weep.\n\nToo bad this magical confrontation couldn't be settled with a bake-off.\n\n\"I take it from the personal visit, Kitty's going to be less than enthused about helping us,\" I said.\n\n\"Significantly less than enthused,\" Ian replied. \"She had a bad experience. Her last name, Poertner, is German for Porter. Most people with that name had a distant ancestor who was stationed at a castle door. Kitty's people opened and closed a bigger kind of door.\"\n\n\"Dimensional portals,\" I said in realization.\n\nIan nodded. \"The name's the same; the job couldn't be more different. For over a thousand years, Kitty's family have been the supernatural world's doorkeepers, or to be more exact, portalkeepers. Her specialty is stabilizing and closing dimensional rifts, which is essentially what we're dealing with here. We need to secure Kitty's help now, because it won't do us a damned bit of good to find the Hellpit if we don't have anyone who can close it.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't think that'd be a problem. Kitty's awesome. When she hears that the world will literally go to Hell in a handbasket if she doesn't help, I'm sure she'll be glad to slam a door in some demonic faces.\"\n\n\"It's a lot more complicated\u2014and dangerous\u2014than that.\"\n\nLately, it seemed like everything was.\n\nKitty was due to close the shop in another fifteen minutes. Yasha dropped us off out front.\n\nWhen we came in, Kitty took one look at our faces and motioned us straight back to the kitchen while she locked the door and turned off the lights in the front of the shop.\n\nI'd never seen Kitty with any expression other than happy and smiling.\n\nShe wasn't doing either one now.\n\nMind reading wasn't one of Kitty's talents, but she seemed to know why we were there. Then again, Ian had come by to get lemon-blueberry scones for me after the squid demon had tried to drag me through the portal in the parking garage. Ian had known about Kitty's ability, so I was sure he'd told her what had nearly happened to me. I realized that he'd known then that we'd be visiting Kitty for just this very reason, and he'd given her time to start thinking about her answer before he'd had to ask her the question\u2014and before there was the pressure of a critical need.\n\nA wise man, my partner.\n\nYep, Kitty knew exactly why we were here.\n\nBut it didn't change the fact that we were here to ask Kitty to do something that terrified her.\n\nIt sucked to be the bad guys.\n\nBeing the one who'd nearly been dragged through the garage portal, I suddenly felt like the visual aid for Kitty's impending guilt trip.\n\nKitty stuck her head in the kitchen and looked at me. \"Are we going to need cupcakes for this?\"\n\nI sighed. \"I could sure use one . . . or three.\"\n\nWhen life turned to crap, some people drank. I mainlined sugar.\n\nKitty returned to the kitchen, set a tray of miniature red velvet cupcakes down in front of us, and went to the big stainless steel refrigerator and brought out a gallon of milk. I found cups and a roll of paper towels and was good to go.\n\n\"And the people rejoiced,\" I murmured, eying the cream-cheese-iced mouthfuls of culinary perfection. The cupcakes in the cupcake shops that'd sprung up to rival Starbucks in their numbers all had a Mount Everest tower of icing. I'd admit (though not to Kitty) that when I hadn't been near her bakery and was hit with a craving, I'd gone in those shops. More than once, I'd ended up with icing up my nose. Kitty's cupcakes had a perfect cake to icing ratio. My ultimate cupcake test came when I took the paper off. If the cake couldn't support the weight of its own icing and fell over . . . no, thank you. It was possible to have too much of a good thing, and that included icing. I drew the line at what I called bobblehead cupcakes.\n\n\"Where is it?\" she asked us.\n\nI frowned around a mouthful of cupcake.\n\n\"The portal,\" Kitty clarified. \"Where is it?\"\n\nI glanced at Ian.\n\n\"It's not exactly a portal,\" he said. \"As to where, we don't know. Yet.\"\n\nShe regarded him with steady suspicion. It was an expression I'd never seen on her before. \"If it's not exactly a portal, what exactly is it?\"\n\nI glanced at Ian again. I was really grateful to have a mouthful of cupcake. It'd be rude to answer Kitty's questions while eating.\n\n\"It's a Hellpit,\" he told her. \"Open somewhere under the city.\"\n\n\"Full apogee?\"\n\n\"Getting close.\"\n\n\"Who opened it?\"\n\n\"We're trying to find out.\"\n\nIan told Kitty everything we knew so far. Sad thing was it didn't take long.\n\n\"And when you find it, you want me to close it.\"\n\n\"We would like your advice, and if you're willing, your help.\"\n\nKitty glanced at me. \"Your partner's becoming quite the diplomat.\"\n\nI tried a smile. \"I haven't noticed. He must like you more than he does me.\"\n\n\"He just wants something.\"\n\nI nodded thoughtfully. \"Hmm, I think that's a man thing.\"\n\nIan raised an eyebrow.\n\n\"Hey, I'm just trying to lighten things up. If any situation ever needed lightening, it'd be an impending demonic invasion.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Kitty asked.\n\nI puzzled over that one. \"Marty says demons have always wanted our world. Bert thinks it's the beaches.\"\n\nNow it was Kitty's turn to be baffled. \"I meant why would someone open a Hellpit?\"\n\n\"Other than access to molten brimstone,\" Ian said, \"we don't know.\"\n\n\"You said it was likely open before Halloween.\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"That means a lot of power was involved.\"\n\n\"We think that, too.\"\n\n\"Such beings of power would have a motive other than getting an ingredient for a drug.\"\n\n\"Even if they were being paid a lot of money?\" I asked.\n\n\"It's been my experience\u2014and that of my family\u2014that those who can open a portal at will are rarely lacking money, nor can the things they want be bought with money. If you can find out what that motivation is, you'd be a couple steps closer to finding them or the Hellpit.\"\n\n\"If we do find it, will you help us?\"\n\n\"If you don't find it soon, you'll be beyond my help or anyone else's. After a major portal has been open for a full cycle of the moon, nothing short of a team of archangels can close it.\"\n\n\"We're going to find it,\" I told her.\n\n\"A word of warning: it could very well be contained in a small pocket dimension to conceal it from anyone who might stumble onto it.\"\n\n\"I can see portals,\" I told her.\n\nKitty gave me a quick, startled look.\n\n\"You didn't tell her?\" I asked Ian.\n\n\"That information is need to know. When I was here yesterday, Kitty didn't need to know.\"\n\n\"As far as I'm concerned, she does now.\" I looked at Kitty. She was regarding me with something that looked almost like pity. \"What?\"\n\n\"If that gets out, you're in more danger than I am.\"\n\nI shrugged. \"I'm a seer. I already have a bull's-eye from that. I can be the same amount of dead from two bull's-eyes than one. I don't know how I picked up this portal-seeing thing, but I have a sinking feeling that knowing how I got it isn't going to help me get rid of it. Besides, from what I understand, it's quite the resume enhancer.\"\n\nKitty smiled. Now that was the Kitty I knew.\n\nI smiled back. \"Sucks to be us right now, doesn't it?\"\n\nShe glanced at Ian. \"I don't really have a choice, do I?\"\n\n\"You always have a choice.\"\n\n\"One option could save the world; the other definitely damns it. Not what I'd call much of a choice. I'll make you a deal\u2014you do your job\u2014 _and_ get me what I need\u2014and I'll do mine.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWe really couldn't have asked for more than that. If we found the Hellpit, Kitty would close it\u2014or at least she'd try. It wasn't like anyone, including her, had on-the-job experience slamming the stairway to Hell.\n\nKitty had sent us on our way with a dozen cupcakes in her bakery's trademark pink box.\n\nWe'd walked out with cupcakes _and_ a promise to help prevent demonic Armageddon. Now that was what I called a good night's work.\n\nI refrained from diving into the box. I had a question for Ian, and I knew Yasha would appreciate me not getting cupcake crumbs all over the backseat of his partner.\n\n\"What did Kitty mean by 'get me what I need'?\"\n\nIan blew out his breath and leaned his head back against the seat rest. \"An anchor mage.\"\n\n\"Which is?\"\n\n\"Pretty much what it sounds like. A mage who can anchor Kitty to this dimension while she works.\"\n\n\"From the 'sigh of eternal suffering' you just let out, I take it there's not a one eight hundred number for anchor mages.\"\n\n\"No, there's not.\"\n\n\"Difficult to get?\"\n\n\"Impossible to get,\" Yasha chimed in. \"There are none in this country\u2014at least not anymore. Only in Europe and Asia.\"\n\n\"So Ms. Sagadraco can't just send over a company jet and pick one up?\"\n\nThe Russian snorted. \"All are worthless cowards.\"\n\n\"Some aren't worthless, buddy,\" Ian said. \"And there's a few left who aren't cowards.\"\n\nYasha took a particularly sharp turn, and I clutched the cupcake box to keep it from flying into the window. \"Uh, a few left? Is there some kind of high job burnout rate for anchors?\"\n\n\"More like a high rate of getting sucked into dimensions they're helping to close along with the portal mage and not being able to get back.\"\n\n\"I can see why that'd make someone want to switch careers,\" I said. \"So what about the ones who are left?\"\n\n\"They have established partnerships with portal mages, and only work with them.\"\n\n\"So we fly a team over here. Kitty doesn't have to take the risk. A win-win.\"\n\n\"More like a lose-lose,\" Ian said. \"They only do smaller portals.\"\n\n\"Then what good are they?\"\n\n\"Not much. Plus, if the portal's on American soil, they believe it's an American problem, and that more than likely, we'd brought it on ourselves and can deal with it the same way.\"\n\n\"Bullshit. When those demons start pouring through, they may get us first, but I don't think they're gonna let a little thing like an ocean or two stop them. Not to mention, Europe and Asia have some amazing beaches.\"\n\n\"These people would say they'd deal with that problem when it came to them.\"\n\n\"And bit their faces off. I'm with Yasha. They're worthless cowards.\"\n\nFrom the driver's seat, the Russian werewolf vigorously nodded in approval.\n\n\"Even if there was a team who would be willing to help,\" Ian continued, \"Kitty's the last of her family line. She's the best, and some would say good enough to do it by herself, no anchor needed.\"\n\n\"What about anchor mages she's worked with in the past?\"\n\nThat question earned me some uncomfortable silence.\n\n\"Okay . . . let me rephrase that: Are there any _surviving_ anchor mages who she's worked with in the past?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nI let out a low whistle. \"Was she in some way responsible for that?\"\n\n\"From what I've heard, no. Just piss-poor luck on the part of her anchors, and the fact that they were working on big and nasty portals no one else would touch. Higher risk, higher mortality. Other portal mages and anchors call her the Black Widow.\"\n\n\"How did she survive when they didn't?\"\n\n\"Kitty is brave,\" Yasha said. \"They are cowards.\"\n\n\"I have to agree with you there,\" Ian told him.\n\n\"How do you know all this?\" I asked Yasha. \"I thought only the boss, Moreau, and Ian knew.\"\n\n\"Kitty is friend. She talks to me.\"\n\nI could understand that. Yasha was big, but once you got to know him, you realized his heart was as big as the rest of him. Our big werewolf was also a big teddy bear. I'd also told Yasha things I hadn't told anyone else at SPI. Now I knew I wasn't the only one. I was glad Kitty had realized she could trust him. Everyone needed someone they could tell anything to and not worry about being judged for it.\n\n\"So what happened?\" I asked them both.\n\n\"The last major portal Kitty closed was eight years ago,\" Ian said. \"The portal was to a previously unknown dimension that really wasn't that much better than Hell. A monster, for lack of a more descriptive word, started coming through. Kitty held on and kept working. Her anchor mage panicked and released the protective spell on both of them. The spell Kitty was using to close the portal gave her some protection; her anchor was defenseless\u2014\"\n\n\"Because he was coward and dropped shields on him and Kitty,\" Yasha said vehemently. \"Deserved to be eaten by blue monster.\" He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. \"My opinion.\"\n\n\"If Kitty hadn't been strong enough to shield herself and continue working, she'd have been eaten, too,\" Ian added. \"She doesn't trust anyone to have her back now.\"\n\nI snorted. \"With good reason. I take it this wasn't the first time it'd happened?\"\n\n\"Unfortunately, no.\"\n\n\"Then I can't blame her for telling people to close their own damn doors.\"\n\n\"If this were a normal portal, Kitty could probably do it alone,\" Ian said. \"But it's a Hellpit. There's no precedent on what could go wrong.\"\n\nJust everything.\n\n# 21\n\nWE were halfway back to headquarters when everything caught up with me and I was suddenly bone tired. As a result, I made a decision.\n\nI'd spent last night in SPI's infirmary. Tonight I was going to sleep in my own bed.\n\nI informed Ian of my decision.\n\n\"Sure, no problem,\" Ian said from the front seat.\n\n\"Did you hear me?\"\n\n\"Yes, you want to sleep in your own bed tonight. I completely understand.\"\n\n\"Uh . . . good. I appreciate\u2014\"\n\n\"Just as long as you understand that I'll be staying with you.\"\n\n\"Me, too,\" Yasha chimed in.\n\nMe getting snuggly in my own bed had just turned into a pajama party, with two coworkers who didn't have pajamas.\n\n\"Nice try,\" I told them both. \"Threaten to stay and get me to change my mind. It won't work. I'm not going to change my mind.\"\n\n\"I wasn't asking you to,\" my partner told me.\n\n\"Because I don't mind you guys staying.\"\n\n\"You have popcorn?\" Yasha asked. \"And other snacks? And movies? I like musicals. I will keep sound low; I have good hearing.\"\n\nWhy me?\n\nOn second thought, maybe I'd just grab some clean clothes and go back to headquarters.\n\nWhen we got to my building, Yasha turned his anger at Kitty's cowardly former partners into a hunt for a parking spot, while I hurried up the stairs to pack a bag with Ian doing his bodyguard thing.\n\nI lived in a fourth-floor walk-up in the East Village. The building was from the fifties, and a lot of the tenants were, too. The rest of us were young professional types. Thanks to rent control, the only way the seniors in the building were leaving was carried out on their flecked Formica kitchen tables.\n\nMy apartment was at the end of the hall, with two windows that gave me an occasionally entertaining view of Bainwick's Art Academy across the alley.\n\nIan looked out the window. \"I haven't noticed that before.\"\n\n\"Art school.\"\n\nHis face was profiled toward me. He was grinning. \"There's a platform in the middle of the room. They use any nude models?\"\n\n\"Guys when it's warmer, girls when it's not.\" I met his grin and raised him a smirk. \"Must be that whole shrinkage issue. With the cold snap, the only thing in the raw right now are bowls of fruit. The heat over there works as well as it does over here, which is when it wants to.\"\n\n\"Need me to help you pack?\"\n\n\"I got it.\"\n\nIn my bedroom I kept the usual arsenal that helped single women sleep at night, but I'd added a few of my own.\n\nIn homage to my Southern mountain-girl roots, I kept a seriously huge flashlight next to my bed. It had a trigger for a switch, a camo finish, and could blind a buck at fifty yards. While my intruder was having his retinas flash fried, I'd let him have it with a stream of Raid. Accurate for up to ten yards. Blind 'em with light and chemicals, then run like hell.\n\nIncapacitate while maintaining distance. That's what I'm talkin' about.\n\nThe best defense was avoiding contact in the first place.\n\nSince I'd joined SPI, I'd gotten plenty of training in defending myself. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, I knew I had to have been the most challenging trainee Ian had ever been saddled with. After the first few months, Ian had told me that my brain was probably going to end up being my best weapon, and that weapon told me not to go around writing checks I couldn't cash.\n\nI was smart enough to know and accept that I could be trained by the best and still never qualify as a badass. My goal was simply to make it to work each day and home every night. Ian was the badass-ninja-monster-fighter, not me. I did the best I could during our training sessions, and never stopped trying to improve, but I also accepted that the mayor or police commissioner would never shine the Bat-Signal in the sky to get my attention.\n\nI was good with that.\n\nI went into my bedroom and closed the door. I figured my duffel bag would be the right size for what I needed. My closet was the size of a phone booth, so I kept my luggage\u2014along with anything else that would fit\u2014under my bed. I got down on my hands and knees, stuck my arm underneath the bed, and started sifting and searching for something shaped like luggage.\n\nI found something squishy instead.\n\nI yelped and yanked my arm back, scrambling to my feet, tripping over my own legs in the process.\n\nThe back of my hand was bleeding from a two-inch gash. Must have raked my hand on the bed frame yanking it . . .\n\nMy eyes were even with the comforter on my bed, and they locked on the clear slime pooling in little indentations in the blanket. And on my pillow, a pool of wet filled the indentation that my head had made the last time I'd slept in it two nights ago.\n\nSince then, someone had been sleeping in my bed, and it wasn't Goldilocks.\n\nA raspy hiss came from under the bed . . .\n\n. . . and from the half-opened door to my closet.\n\nA door I always closed.\n\nI drew my gun and slowly backed toward the bedroom door, my eyes quickly flicking between bed and closet. I bumped into my dresser.\n\n\"Ian.\" It came out one notch above a whisper. I swallowed on a bone-dry throat and tried again.\n\n\"Ian.\"\n\nA thing came out from beneath the pillow, squirming through the slime to free itself, dropping from the bed to land with a wet plop on the floor.\n\nIt was maybe eight inches tall, with red skin hanging loose on a thin frame, its bald head topped with two tiny horns. A forked tongue came out from between thin rubbery lips as it opened its mouth, showing me a double row of jagged teeth. Its feet were hooves the size of a cat's paw, its hands thin, spidery fingers, curling and uncurling to reveal claws curved to razor points.\n\nIt looked like . . .\n\nIt couldn't be.\n\nA baby demon.\n\nClass Five, Class Seven, classless, who the hell cared? It was in my bedroom.\n\nAnd there wasn't a portal to be seen or smelled. If they hadn't come through a portal, then how the hell had they gotten in here?\n\nI opened my mouth, to shout, to scream, but nothing came out, not even a whimper.\n\nThe demon's yellow eyes focused on me and it hissed, its whip-like tail lashing the air behind it.\n\nI found my voice _and_ the volume dial.\n\n_\"Ian!\"_\n\nI fired at those teeth. The demon was gone before the bullet got there. My pillow exploded in a blast of memory foam, and wood splinters flew from my demolished headboard.\n\nSimultaneous attacks came from under the bed and out of the dark closet. Every kid's nightmare was now mine.\n\nA clawed hand shot out from beneath my dresser, clutching my ankle.\n\nI stomped on the hand, and fired at the demon skittering across the floor at me. It squealed as a spray of pink erupted from its side, but kept coming, its eyes brightly glowing.\n\nFour demons. Two more dropped out of the heating vent and scuttled on spindly legs off my bed and across the floor.\n\nSix.\n\nSquealing, hissing, eyes gleaming with a yellow light. They were fast. Too fast for bullets\u2014at least my bullets.\n\nBullets weren't working. Leaning against my dresser, behind my door, was my Louisville Slugger. I landed a solid midair hit on a demon that launched itself off my bed, and heard a gratifying crack of the wooden baseball bat on spindly bones for my effort. I didn't have time to confirm that I'd killed it or even knocked the wind out of the thing, as the remaining demons came at me.\n\nI'd never been more grateful to have a small bedroom. The demons leapt at me, and I dove for my bedside table, hitting the floor hard, but rolling onto my back with my can of Raid. The demon that reached me first took a direct hit in the eyes. Its shrieks were deafening. Any higher pitched and only dogs would have been able to hear it.\n\nA demon scrabbled out from beneath the bed and sank its jagged teeth into my shoulder. I screamed and beat it in the face with the can, frantic to get it off me. The can and my hand that death-gripped it were slick with blood, mine and demon.\n\nA flick of movement was all the warning I got of a demon jumping off my bed directly above me.\n\nIt exploded in a bullet-induced spray of red, the bits raining down on me.\n\nIan.\n\nThe other demons kept coming at me, completely ignoring Ian and his gun as if he didn't exist.\n\nIan had his gun in one hand, but was laying into the squealing swarm with a freaking machete. Where'd he been hiding that?\n\nIn a few seconds, my carpet went from beige to beyond able to be cleaned, as Ian and I hacked and bludgeoned our way through the remaining demons. When there were no more of the little monsters left to come at me, I just stood there, gasping for what air I could find, bat still held ready in a double-fisted, white-knuckled grip. Ian stalked around the room, checking for any survivors, and fortunately finding none. In the other room, Yasha all but took my apartment door off its hinges to get in.\n\nIan flicked his blade to clear it of gore. \"Maybe they knew I'd taste bad.\"\n\nI sucked in enough air to make words. \"Yeah.\" Gasp, wheeze. \"Right.\"\n\nThe Russian charged into my bedroom, sawed-off shotgun clutched like a toy in his big hands, eyes shining with an amber glow. The only sound was my ragged breathing. On my carpet was the sliced, smushed, shot, and sprayed proof that someone\u2014alive, undead, or demonic\u2014didn't want me finding the portal to that Hellpit.\n\n* * *\n\nDemon eggs.\n\nThat's what Yasha found under my bed. Six leathery and slimy eggshells. And they hadn't been left there by the Easter Bunny.\n\nSomeone had left me an early Christmas present. Now all I needed to do was find out who my Secret Santa was.\n\nThat, and have a screaming fit.\n\nThe three of us were at my kitchen table.\n\n\"If that squid demon hadn't gotten hold of me last night, I'd have come home to sleep,\" I told Ian and Yasha. \"So much for whether the murderer and his demon lord cohort know I can see portals.\" I gasped. \"Oh, shit. What about Kitty?\"\n\nIan held up his phone. \"Taken care of. I called this in and dispatched a team to Kitty's apartment. She's safe.\"\n\nMy shoulders sagged. \"We didn't try to hide that we were going to see her, and I don't think anyone would believe that we just had the late-night munchies.\"\n\n\"Which is why we have people staying with her.\" He frowned. \"She refused protective custody at headquarters. She insists on opening the bakery tomorrow, so our folks will stick close.\"\n\n\"Why isn't that reassuring?\"\n\nIan glanced back toward my bedroom. He didn't look full of confidence for Kitty's continued safety, either. He looked down at his phone's screen and scrolled down to a number then hesitated, his index finger poised over the screen.\n\n\"What?\" I asked.\n\n\"I really hate it when a situation's so completely in the can that I have to call the boss on her direct line.\" He sighed, tapped the screen, and put the phone to his ear. \"Ma'am, it's Agent Byrne. We have a Code Five. I wanted you to hear it from me.\" He listened, and glanced at me. \"Yes, ma'am, that's exactly where I'm calling from.\"\n\nI groaned and rolled my eyes.\n\nHe listened some more. \"Some cuts that'll probably need stitches, but other than that, she's fine. We just need containment, cleanup, and minor medical.\" He listened. \"Yes, ma'am, I'll hold.\"\n\n\"What?\" I asked.\n\n\"They're checking to see if we're about to have company from the police.\"\n\nI dropped my head into my non-bloody hand. I hadn't even thought of that. Though if the cops were on the way, they were taking their sweet time.\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am.\" Ian put his phone back in his coat.\n\n\"So . . .?\" I asked. \"Yes? No? Maybe?\"\n\n\"None of your neighbors called nine one one,\" Ian said.\n\n\"You're kidding?\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\nLately, SPI's biggest crime scene challenge was getting there before the cops. This time, no one had even called them. There'd been gunfire, screaming, and pounding coming from my apartment, and not one call went through to 911.\n\nConsidering the hour, half my neighbors were out drinking with friends, and the other half must have had their TVs turned up, or were in bed with their hearing aids turned off. All of the above kept the NYPD from being called. Luckier still, Mrs. Rosini, who shared a wall with me, was watching Fox News right now. We could hear it through the walls. There was no need to check on her; she was perfectly fine. Mrs. Rosini was one of those people who liked to argue with the TV. Fox News provided a constant stream of something to piss her off. But she made awesome cookies, though usually while talking back to the TV. We could hear her now, giving Bill O'Reilly hell. She'd never noticed when hell had broken loose over here.\n\nI slowly shook my head. \"Gunshots, screaming, and no one called the cops.\"\n\n\"Is good,\" Yasha said.\n\n\" _This_ time. What if I'd been on the receiving end of those bullets? Or had my face eaten off by . . . ?\" I waved my hand in the general direction of my bedroom. I wasn't going to say what they were out loud. I'd already visualized at least half a dozen alternate outcomes where I hadn't come out the winner.\n\nMac, when a murderer sends their newborn minions to kill you, can you in all honesty call yourself a winner in _any_ scenario?\n\n\"Got a first aid kit?\" Ian asked me. \"I don't want to wait for the medics to get some antiseptic on those bites on your shoulder.\"\n\n\"Yeah . . . in the bathroom.\"\n\n\"Got it.\" Yasha picked up my Louisville Slugger and disappeared into the bedroom, now known as the room with the slimy pillows and squishy carpet.\n\nI sighed. \"Damn, I really liked this apartment.\"\n\n\"The boss will have everything taken care of,\" Ian assured me. \"New carpet, paint, pillows, headboard, bed stuff. It'll be as good as new.\" He took a quick look around my less than Martha Stewartesque kitchen. \"Better even. Though I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but you're going to have to lose your shirt when the medic gets here.\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"Those bites on your shoulder look bad.\"\n\n\"You're just full of compliments today, aren't you?\"\n\n\"One of my many gifts.\"\n\nI peeled back the dish towel I'd been holding against my shoulder. While it was far from being soaked, it was a respectable amount of blood. But when I thought about what was attached to the jagged teeth that had made those marks, I wanted to strip and run naked through a rubbing-alcohol shower.\n\n\"Yasha,\" I called.\n\n\"Da?\"\n\n\"There's a tank top hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Could you get that, too?\"\n\nSilence.\n\nUh-oh. \"Finding everything okay?\"\n\n\"Find more than expected.\"\n\nI sighed and my shoulders sagged. \"But wait, there's more,\" I muttered. I pressed the towel to my shoulder and stood.\n\n\"Stay here,\" Ian told me.\n\n\" _My_ apartment, and an attempt on _my_ life.\"\n\nIan put up his hands. \"Okay. _Your_ blood on _your_ floor.\"\n\n\"Damn straight.\"\n\nWe carefully picked our way through the bedroom and into the bathroom where Yasha stood staring down into my bathtub.\n\nIan and I went to either side of him, looked down, and had a collective WTF moment.\n\nThere was a pile of raw chickens.\n\nOr what was left of them.\n\nThey'd been torn apart, meat stripped off, and then bare bones flung into the deep end of the tub. It looked like the aftermath of a successful tailgating party or the grandstand after a NASCAR race.\n\n\"Baby food?\" Yasha ventured. \"Maybe they need chicken.\"\n\nI just looked at him. \"Great. So now I'm not nutritionally complete?\"\n\n\"Maybe was appetizer for main course.\"\n\n\"That's not any better.\"\n\nI saw a new bedroom, refrigerator, _and_ tub in my future.\n\n# 22\n\nI was a lot less bothered by an entire SPI investigation team being in my apartment than I thought I would be. I had dead demon bits scattered around my bedroom, and before the hatchlings had eaten their first meal, there had been enough raw chickens in my bathtub to stock a KFC kitchen. That more than made up for dirty dishes in the sink.\n\nThe SPI team wore navy coveralls with patches that said \"Green Heating and Air Conditioning.\"\n\nDr. Stephens was sitting at my kitchen table, a suture kit spread out on a sterile white cloth. Just my luck, he'd confirmed Ian's assessment that I was going to need stitches. I was more than willing to go back to headquarters, but there was no way I'd sleep in the infirmary again. No _Groundhog Day_ time loop for me, thank you.\n\nI was used to eating meals at my table. Now here I was getting stitched up because a pack of baby demons tried to make a meal out of me.\n\n\"I'm ready to start,\" Dr. Stephens told me. \"I need for you to be still. Okay?\"\n\nI nodded tightly and found an absolutely fascinating mystery smudge on the wall to study while he worked. He'd given me a local, but I still had no desire to watch him take a curved needle and thread to my shoulder. However, I took a quick peek before I could stop myself. He was in the middle of his first stitch, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach.\n\nYour life had officially gone to crap when you knew you'd never feel safe in your own apartment again, regardless of how many guns, baseball bats, and cans of Raid you had. For security, most New York apartments made do with half a dozen locks and one or more of the following by the door: mace, a baseball bat, a butcher knife that was past its prime in the kitchen but just fine for puncturing anything trying to get through your front door, or a gun of dubious legality.\n\nI had all of the above, except my gun was legal.\n\nWhen Ian had talked to Ms. Sagadraco, I'd been promised more than that.\n\nWards.\n\nFierce, fry-you-where-you-stood wards.\n\nThree of our best security mages were on their way from headquarters to put the magical whammy on my abode. Creativity counted with wards, and Vivienne Sagadraco only hired the best. Nothing was getting inside my apartment. However, no mage's work was guaranteed against portals, but at least I'd know before I came in if one was or had been open in my apartment. It wasn't the ideal solution, but I'd take what I could get.\n\nIan quietly leaned against the frame of my open kitchen door, waiting for Dr. Stephens to pause in his work before speaking. I was sure the doc appreciated Ian's consideration. I appreciated it even more. He was just the stitcher; I was the stitchee.\n\n\"I went next door to Mrs. Rosini's,\" said Ian. \"Lucky she remembered me from the last time I was here and didn't shoot me.\"\n\nI smiled. \"By the way, Mrs. Rosini has a gun. Got it for her birthday.\"\n\n\"Thank you for telling me.\"\n\n\"If you'd told me you were going over there, I would have. Did she hear anything?\"\n\n\"No, but she saw plenty yesterday. You came home with a tall, skinny guy carrying what looked like a cooler.\"\n\nMy mouth gaped open. \"Another doppelganger?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. They just needed to get into your apartment without causing suspicion. Probably just a quick glamour.\"\n\n\"God, I hope so.\"\n\nIan gave me a crooked grin. \"And just so you know, Mrs. Rosini's money is on me. She said I'm way better looking than the guy you brought home yesterday\u2014and more polite, too.\"\n\nI felt a faint tug on my shoulder, and took another quick glance before I could stop myself. Dr. Stephens had finished and had just tied off the thread. My mouth went dry. The stitches were neat, but it looked like Frankenshoulder. \"Nice work,\" I managed. \"Thank you.\"\n\nHe quickly and efficiently bandaged my shoulder, gathered his things, and left the room.\n\nWhen he'd left, Ian's smile vanished.\n\n\"I just got a call from the team protecting Kitty.\"\n\nI froze.\n\n\"Don't worry, Kitty's fine. She couldn't sleep and wanted to get an early start on tomorrow's baking\u2014and she found something.\"\n\n\"Baby demons?\"\n\n\"Definitely not.\"\n\n# 23\n\nIT was nearly one o'clock in the morning when we got to Kitty's bakery.\n\nIan had told me and Yasha what had happened, and we all were silent from shock and rage the rest of the way there.\n\nBaby demons had been sent to eat me.\n\nKitty had been protected by a SPI security team, so the bastards behind this went for the next best thing. Make her such an emotional wreck that even if we found the Hellpit, she'd be in no condition to close it.\n\nA body had been baked in Kitty's big cake oven.\n\nThey had just brazenly and sadistically stepped over the line into painfully personal.\n\nWhat was her love and solace? This bakery.\n\nWhat was her torment? Her bat-shit crazy, evil three-greats-grandmother's legacy.\n\nWere the killers afraid of Kitty helping us? Oh yes. How to combine all of those into one soul-crushing deterrent?\n\nBake a body in her cake oven. Just like dear three-greats-grandmama would've done.\n\nThis wasn't personal. It had gone way the hell past personal. Whoever was behind this had made a monumental mistake by coming after Kitty.\n\nWe all loved Kitty. Ian's jaw clenched tight, taking even breaths to keep himself calm, and a deep growl had been rumbling out of Yasha's chest since he came through the bakery door.\n\nOur CSI team was there along with our cleanup crew, and Alain Moreau had dispatched another of our field units disguised as city workers to block off the area in front of the store, citing a sewer line break in the street outside. Kitty's customers didn't need to get a whiff of what our lab folks were taking out of that oven.\n\nKitty had two security cameras, one in front, the other in back. When the killer had opened that portal, both had been fried.\n\nBetween the sulfur stink of the portal and the leftover stench of burned flesh, there was no way the smell would ever come out of this place. Not that Kitty would want to keep her bakery here after what had happened; now I didn't see where she had a choice.\n\nThat is, if she stayed in business.\n\nShe'd always known she not only loved to bake, but she had a gift, and a good head for running a business. She'd started from almost nothing and grown a successful business for herself\u2014and a happy life doing what she loved. By New York standards, her business was only moderately successful, but it was beyond what Kitty had ever hoped, and now that had been ripped away from her.\n\nWhoever was behind this would pay, and pay dearly.\n\nKitty would never be able to go into that kitchen again without seeing what she'd found. Everything she'd worked for had been ruined.\n\nThinking from the killer's point of view, what they'd done in that kitchen had been a stroke of evil genius. They wanted to ensure Kitty wouldn't be emotionally able to close that Hellpit even if we found it.\n\nGood fucking job, asshole, my inner voice snarled.\n\n\"You said it, sweetie,\" I muttered.\n\nIan gave me a quizzical look. \"What?\"\n\n\"Where do you send someone who probably crawled out of Hell to begin with?\"\n\n\"Don't know.\"\n\n\"Let's find out and get this guy a one-way ticket.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe lab guys started removing the body. Ian and I stepped back and gave them plenty of room to work. I didn't want to be in the way. The baked body was curled in a fetal position, cooked until it looked more like a mummy from the Met than a man that'd been walking around mere hours before. A man Ian and I had talked to just yesterday.\n\nWe now knew why Alastor Malvolia hadn't called us back.\n\nI backed up until my shoulder hit the doorjamb, and my vision went white with pain.\n\nIan was there immediately. \"Dammit, are you all right?\"\n\nI nodded tightly and concentrated on hissing air out through my tightly clenched teeth.\n\nI swallowed and focused on pushing the pain away. Dr. Stephens had given me some painkillers. Groggy wasn't conducive to fighting for your life, so I'd stuck them in my purse. When I got out of here and back to headquarters, I might have to take one.\n\n\"Any idea how long he'd been in there?\" I asked. I knew time of death would be a bitch to determine when the only cooling the body had done was once the oven had timed out. It was a question Kitty's three-greats-grandma would've been able to answer off the top of her head.\n\n\"He's been baked at least five hours,\" said an emotionless voice from behind us. \"He was cooked elsewhere and brought here.\"\n\nKitty walked into her kitchen with calm, measured steps.\n\nThe lab techs froze.\n\nThey had the body on a gurney on an open body bag, but they made no move to zip it. They were frozen in place.\n\nKitty glanced at the body, and her throat seized.\n\nI wanted to take the steps that separated us, give her the biggest hug I could, and tell her everything was going to be all right.\n\nI didn't do that. I couldn't do that. Nothing I could say or do would make any of this right for Kitty.\n\nShe had to do it for herself.\n\nThat was why no one moved. At least it was why I didn't.\n\nThe next few seconds would determine how Kitty recovered from this. Just by setting foot in this kitchen, I knew she would recover, but the extent and speed of that recovery depended on what she did next.\n\nKitty sniffed and took a breath that I knew smelled like burned flesh. She didn't flinch.\n\n\"Who was he?\" she asked any of us who might know, never taking her eyes from the dead man.\n\n\"Alastor Malvolia,\" Ian told her. \"A goblin lawyer who was the attorney for most of the supernatural crime families in the city. He may have been brought here not only in an attempt to intimidate you, but because he was short enough to . . .\"\n\nHe stopped. If he could've sucked those last couple of words back in, he would've. Even I cringed at that one.\n\n\"Fit into my cake oven?\" Kitty finished.\n\n\"Yes. Sorry.\"\n\n\"It's okay.\" She took a shuddering breath, tears pooling in her eyes. She angrily wiped at them with the back of her hand. \"Dammit.\"\n\n\"We'll get him,\" Ian promised.\n\n\"Not unless you find that Hellpit, you won't,\" Kitty said.\n\nSilence.\n\nShe wiped her hand on her apron. \"And not unless I help.\"\n\nMore silence.\n\n\"He thought this would scare me, break me.\"\n\nThe clock ticked on the wall.\n\nHer eyes blazed with determination. \"He was wrong.\"\n\n\"We'll be there with you,\" Ian said quietly.\n\nKitty nodded once, tightly. \"I'll take that protective custody at headquarters now.\" She leveled those normally cheerful blue eyes on me. \"When you find that Hellpit, I want to be there and ready to work. I'll get my gear.\"\n\n# 24\n\nONE A Day wasn't just the name of a vitamin; it had also become the murder rate in the Brimstone case. We were guaranteed at least one, and for most of the days this week, there'd been more. Some we found first; the NYPD had been the first responders on others. In this case, I had no problem with sharing the wealth.\n\nI'd actually gotten a few hours' sleep before we were called to the latest crime scene. I'd slept better than I thought I would. Maybe it was my body preparing itself for what was to come. Maybe it was exhaustion after taking the world's longest shower when we'd gotten back to headquarters at two this morning, and washing my hair five times until I was absolutely positively sure I'd gotten all the baby demon bits out. Alain Moreau had met us in the SPI garage and had taken charge of me and Kitty, setting us up in the small but plush apartment SPI kept for visitors who needed to stay onsite for security reasons.\n\nWe sure as hell met those qualifications.\n\nUntil our cleaning crew finished their work, I didn't have a home and Kitty didn't have a business. Both of us were looking for payback.\n\nThis morning's corpse du jour was another vampire by the name of Dante Frontino. The demonic dynamic murdering duo apparently believed in racial diversity, or maybe they just wanted to ensure they equally scared the crap out of everyone.\n\nFortunately, SPI got to the murder scene first. I was sure Dr. Van Daal down at the medical examiner's office appreciated not having to hide the fangs on this one.\n\nIan and I hadn't been the first responders. I was completely fine with our CSI team having that honor. We stopped by long enough to confirm for our investigation that the other elements were the same. Dead drug lord? Check. Hoofprint brand on the chest? Check. Heart cut out? Check. Soul missing? Unknown.\n\nSome would claim that since the victim was a vampire he didn't have a soul to take. I couldn't have disagreed more. Anyone who believed that had never met Alain Moreau. Last week, when the seven diamonds that comprised the Dragon Eggs had been on the verge of activation, my vampire manager had steadfastly stayed by Vivienne Sagadraco's side and refused to leave, facing what would've been certain death, the permanent kind. He would have remained a faithful friend to the end and beyond.\n\nTry doing _that_ with no soul.\n\nOne other thing was the same as the other murders, and another was a notable difference. What was the same? The building was owned by Northern Reach Holdings. Who called in the crime and the ID of the victim? None other than the CEO of Northern Reach, Rake Danescu.\n\nThe goblin called Ian to tell him that he was at the hotel across the street having breakfast, and would be delighted if we joined him.\n\nI wouldn't describe Ian's reaction when he'd hung up as delighted, but I sure knew where we were gonna be having breakfast.\n\n* * *\n\nThe hotel manager was waiting just inside the front door to escort us to where Rake was seated, alone, in a small palm court with a lavish breakfast buffet laid out seemingly just for him. Two uniformed waiters hovered by the door, entirely too attentive for just one customer, regardless of how rich. They'd look human to anyone else, but I saw the waiters and the manager for the glamoured goblins they were.\n\n\"Danescu,\" Ian said.\n\nThat one word was weighed down with all of the other, unsuitable-for-public words that Ian really wanted to say.\n\nMy mood was even worse.\n\nRake stood and, with a flourish, indicated the two empty chairs at the table with him. It seemed that someone had been expecting us. \"Agents Byrne and Fraser. I hope you don't mind that I didn't wait. I wasn't sure how long you would be detained across the street.\" He gave me a quick, wicked grin. \"Makenna, you look positively effervescent this morning.\"\n\nThe only meaning for \"effervescent\" that I knew of involved Alka-Seltzer. I tried unsuccessfully to find the compliment in that. I gave up in favor of the question I had.\n\n\"Do you own this hotel, too?\" I asked.\n\nRake sat and began buttering a piece of toast. \"As a matter of fact, I do.\" He glanced at the nearest waiter. \"Carl, would you bring plates for my guests?\"\n\nIan started to object and Rake held up a hand. It only held a butter knife, but I had no doubt he could commit murder most elegant with it. Heck, Rake could probably kill in thirty ways with a plastic spork.\n\n\"I won't hear of it,\" Rake told us. \"You need to keep your strength up. Fighting the forces of evil and minions of darkness requires being at the top of your game. I promised Vivienne that I would do all in my power to assist you. A sumptuous breakfast is within my power.\"\n\nIan's phone rang, and he went back into the lobby to take it.\n\n\"This isn't the intimate breakfast for two I proposed the other day,\" Rake murmured, \"but it will suffice. For now.\"\n\n\"What the hell are you doing here?\" I wasn't going to tell Rake what had happened last night until\u2014or unless\u2014I had to.\n\n\"Other than enjoying a delicious and most satisfying repast?\"\n\n\"Yeah, other than that.\"\n\n\"Considering that, again, I own the building the murder was committed in, and knowing that you and your partner would want to speak with me regarding that increasingly tedious coincidence, I thought I would save time, and provide a nutritious breakfast while you asked the questions I knew you'd have.\" He gestured at the palms and orchids that filled the space. \"Isn't this a much more convivial setting for an interrogation?\"\n\nWith that, Rake took a quick bite of toast. The goblin's fangs were out and fully extended. He wasn't experiencing tedium, he was furious. It was gratifying to see a genuine emotion from him for once, even if he was still trying to hide it.\n\nI leaned closer and lowered my voice, though the goblin waiters would still be able to hear me perfectly well. As with Rake, it was all for show. \"Nice act. If the murderer walked through that door right now, you'd rip his throat out like that toast, wouldn't you?\"\n\n\"I am being toyed with.\" His voice was clipped with barely restrained anger. \"We're all being toyed with. I will see all of this\u2014and the person behind it\u2014permanently stopped.\"\n\nI poured myself an orange juice, and tried to calm the rage bubbling up inside. The juice had lots of pulp. Fresh squeezed. Nice. My gut told me that whoever Rake had seen outside that coffee shop was someone we needed to have a chat with. Now. \"You didn't say 'unknown' person. Does this mean you've decided to tell me who you saw outside that coffee shop?\"\n\n\"This doesn't have anything\u2014\"\n\n\"Save it!\" I snapped.\n\nRake's eyes widened in surprise.\n\nI kept going. Venting felt good, and right now Rake was a target who deserved it. _He_ had been toying with _me_ since the day we'd met, and I'd had it.\n\n\"You wouldn't be this pissed unless you knew who was behind this and you just haven't been able to get your hands around his throat yet,\" I snarled. \"I'm sure you have your reasons for not telling us\u2014like thinking we're in over our heads\u2014but as Ms. Sagadraco said, why don't you let us decide that? If you've been trying to catch this guy on your own, the body across the street tells us you obviously haven't had any luck. So does your nephew in our infirmary.\" And me and Kitty homeless and workless. \"You're not the only one being toyed with, and I've got news, _none_ of us like it!\"\n\nRake hesitated for the first time that I'd ever seen. He knew I was in a frothing rage, and had rationally determined that while some of it was his fault, all of it wasn't. He opted for caution.\n\n\"I thought I saw someone.\"\n\n\"You _thought_ you saw _someone_? You've got eyes that make us humans look like moles staggering around at high noon.\" I continued before Rake could throw up a wall of denial. \"You saw who was behind the Brimstone and the Hellpit, and you chased him. I'm guessing from all the portals, demons, and murders that have followed, you didn't catch him.\"\n\n\"No, I didn't.\"\n\n\"Care to give us a description for our wanted poster?\"\n\n\"I have no proof of his guilt.\"\n\n\"And we have no idea _who he is_. You've got more than we do, so start talking. I want answers, and I want him.\"\n\nIan's shadow fell over us both. \"Sounds like progress,\" he said cheerfully. No doubt my partner loved seeing me tear into Rake.\n\nI glared at the goblin. \"I'm hopeful.\"\n\nRake regarded both of us, his eyes still inscrutable. \"Yes, Agent Byrne. I believe we're about to discuss progress. Please be seated.\"\n\n\"Gladly, Lord Danescu.\" Ian sat and put a napkin in his lap as Carl poured him a cup of coffee. My partner smiled. \"I love the smell of cooperation in the morning.\"\n\n* * *\n\nI had to admit that Rake was right. Asking questions was ever so much nicer when you had a pair of waiters serving you the best breakfast you'd ever had in your life. But most of all, I was finally getting straight answers from Rake, which made it downright enjoyable.\n\nOnce again, Rake had been using goblin logic and evasion tactics. He hadn't seen a man outside the coffee shop, so he hadn't lied. He'd seen an elf. An elf and mage by the name of Isidor Silvanus.\n\n\"Isidor is of an older generation and prefers our home dimension,\" Rake was saying. \"To the best of my knowledge he does not maintain a permanent residence here.\"\n\n\"You might want to check any recent apartment leases with Northern Reach or your other holding companies,\" Ian suggested. \"You might have yourself a new tenant.\"\n\n\"It's being done as we speak.\"\n\n\"How old is he?\" I asked.\n\n\"One generation older than myself.\"\n\nI didn't repeat my question. Some things I was happier not knowing, and considering that the life spans of goblins and elves were longer than humans, Rake's age might very well be one of them.\n\n\"Why do you think Silvanus may be connected with the murders?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Because of family relation and past associations,\" Rake replied. \"And my firsthand knowledge of his level of power.\"\n\n\"You've tangled with him before?\" I asked.\n\n\"Our paths have crossed.\"\n\nHe didn't want to elaborate, and once again, it wasn't a question I needed an answer to, at least not now.\n\n\"Isidor's brother is the president and CEO of Hart Pharmaceuticals,\" Rake told us.\n\n\"Let me guess,\" Ian said, \"they lease a building from you.\"\n\n\"Correct. They insisted on handling the retrofitting of their space themselves, as well as hiring their own contractors to do the work. I have been unable to get surveillance equipment inside to monitor their activities.\"\n\nThat had to have annoyed the heck out of him.\n\n\"However, I had glamoured agents inside that reported to me from time to time. For the past year, a small team of their best chemists had been working on a secret project. It was so secret and well protected that my people hadn't been able to get any intelligence concerning it for me. Projects of that level require funding, so I followed the money. I also have agents at the bank Hart uses. They investigated for me and reported an influx of money from an organization that's known for being a front for elven intelligence. From other sources, I know that there's only one drug that interests elven intelligence at this time.\"\n\n\"Brimstone,\" I said.\n\n\"Correct.\" His expression darkened. \"My suspicions were confirmed last week when I lost all contact with my people inside Hart Pharmaceuticals. I had nine agents. One day they were there, the next they weren't.\"\n\nIan scowled. \"Around the time we think they perfected the Brimstone formula.\"\n\n\"That was my conclusion as well. I believe that one of their test subjects was given the drug with the instructions to find any goblin agents. I haven't heard from my people since.\"\n\nNo wonder Rake was furious. First his agents, then his nephew.\n\nSpeaking of which . . .\n\n\"I know Dr. Carey is keeping Jesin's visitors to a minimum,\" I said. \"Including us. We haven't been able to talk to him again. Have you\u2014\"\n\n\"Vivienne persuaded the good doctor to let me speak to him for a few minutes. We spent a little quality FaceTime.\" Rake smiled slightly. \"I do love humans' modern technology. When attempting to get an explanation for a young goblin's actions, it helps considerably to see their face. It's not a guarantee of getting an honest answer, but it helps.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"I maintain an office in the building where Kela Dupari was murdered. Jesin has recently begun managing it for me as well. And before you ask, yes he's in charge of only the two buildings. His hours in my office there are from eight until noon. A package was delivered that morning addressed to me. Jesin is naturally suspicious, recently even more so. The package was not delivered by a courier service our receptionist was familiar with. When the murder was reported in Kela Dupari's office five stories below, Jesin opened the package. Unfortunately, my nephew isn't qualified to check parcels for spells, but when he opened it, he knew he'd set something off. This one triggered a call to the closest precinct reporting a suspicious package. When he saw what was inside, Jesin took the Brimstone out of the box and quickly left the building with the intent of concealing it. He was trying to protect me.\"\n\n\"That's a very creative story,\" Ian noted. \"Do you believe him?\"\n\n\"Jesin has a head for business, but not a nature for lying.\"\n\n\"Not going to make it far in this town,\" I muttered.\n\nRake sighed, but there was genuine affection in it. \"No, he's not.\"\n\n\"Why would Isidor Silvanus want to involve you in three murders and frame you for drug possession?\" I stopped and thought. \"Let me rephrase that. Can you give us a _short_ list, in order of likelihood, of why Silvanus would want you to rot in prison?\"\n\nRake laughed. \"You are learning, my dear Makenna. Isidor and I have been adversaries for years. To be blunt, he hates me.\" The goblin smiled. \"I believe that any job worth doing is worth doing well, and I have more than earned his animosity. As to his motivation now, it could be any number of reasons ranging from damaging or destroying the operations goblin intelligence has in place in this dimension, to the demons offered Isidor a 'get out of death free' card for helping them gain access to this dimension, to he's simply bored and all of this amuses him. I assure you I am trying to ascertain his reasoning. No doubt you would find his thought processes nearly as convoluted as my own. I promise, if one option seems more likely than the others, I will tell you.\"\n\n\"You were telling us about Hart Pharmaceuticals,\" Ian said.\n\n\"Yes. In the city's supernatural criminal underworld, Hart is known for developing new recreational drugs that are then sold by the Balmorlans, an elven crime family in this dimension, a known name in elven intelligence in mine. Both they and the Silvanus family have been known to use Nightshades as enforcers. Hart Pharmaceutical's share of all profits is laundered through two offshore sources before it comes back to their bank accounts. From all reports, it's a lucrative partnership.\"\n\nI tried to follow the tangled trail. \"Okay, so Isidor's brother runs Hart. Hart has dealings with the Balmorlans, and both Hart and the Balmorlans have a connection to elven intelligence. So how do you know that Isidor opened the Hellpit?\"\n\n\"Because, lovely Makenna, Isidor Silvanus has contacts in Hell, and is so obscenely powerful that he could open a Hellpit in his sleep.\"\n\nI put my fork down. Appetite gone.\n\n\"How did you know about Dante Frontino being this morning's victim?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"I began an analysis of the properties I owned under Northern Reach Holdings, noting the location of each murder in relation to the Hart Pharmaceuticals laboratory. Then I put that analysis on hold when a more immediate clue presented itself. While on my way here for breakfast, I saw Isidor Silvanus exiting my building across the street.\"\n\nHoly crap. \"Did he see you?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. I received quite the jaunty salute.\" Rake smiled grimly. \"The bastard positively reeked of brimstone.\"\n\nI glanced at Ian. I wondered if Isidor Silvanus had delivered half a dozen eggs to my apartment\u2014and had been the figure I saw on the other side of that parking garage portal.\n\n\"What's this Isidor Silvanus look like? Tall? Skinny?\"\n\nRake gave me a quizzical look. He didn't quite know where I was going with this. \"Tall, yes. Skinny, no. Slender would be a better description.\"\n\nRake's \"slender\" might be Mrs. Rosini's \"skinny.\" She'd told me more than once that I needed to put some meat on my bones.\n\n\"Good-looking?\" I continued. \"Average? Ugly?\"\n\n\"The Silvanus family pride themselves on keeping their bloodline pure. They are high elves.\" Rake gave me a slight smile. \"He is nearly as handsome as I am.\"\n\nMrs. Rosini had said that Ian was better looking than the delivery guy. In my opinion, and probably most women's, Rake was better looking than Ian. Not by much, but there was no denying it.\n\n\"Silvanus wasn't the delivery guy,\" I told Ian.\n\n\"Thanks, partner. You know how to make a man feel good.\"\n\nSo much for Ian not following my train of thought.\n\n\"Besides, a high elf wouldn't be hauling a cooler,\" I quickly added.\n\nIan gave me an arch look. \"I can at least see that being true.\"\n\nRake's eyes were going back and forth between us as if he was watching a tennis match. \"If you continue, will this eventually make sense?\"\n\n\"No,\" we said together.\n\n\"That being said, any type of glamour is well within Isidor's abilities.\" Rake took a positively vicious bite of bacon. \"He could be anywhere now, and posing as anyone.\"\n\n# 25\n\n\"THAT could have been how he got close to Alastor Malvolia,\" Ian said.\n\n\"It appears I'm not the only party guilty of withholding information,\" Rake murmured.\n\n\"You had more to share,\" I told him. \"Ours is just icing on the cake.\" I felt suddenly queasy. \"So to speak.\" I looked at Ian. \"You wanna tell him? I'd rather not even think about it.\"\n\nIan told about the baby demons in my apartment and Al in Kitty's cake oven. Rake listened and didn't say a word. His expression was calm\u2014too calm. I didn't know if anyone could truly know Rake Danescu, but I'd learned enough to know that calm was the last thing he was feeling.\n\n\"Where are you staying?\" Rake asked me as soon as Ian had finished.\n\n\"At headquarters for now.\"\n\n\"I have apartments. _Secure_ apartments.\"\n\n\"Is that like your offer of an intimate breakfast?\" I asked. Ian was right there, but I was beyond caring.\n\nHis dark eyes were steady. \"No. It is an offer of a safe place to live. Full wards, and a full-time battle mage security staff on duty twenty-four seven.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't happen to be your building, would it?\"\n\n\"As a matter of fact, it's in Vivienne Sagadraco's building.\"\n\n\"You own the boss's apartment building?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Does she know?\"\n\n\"She does. The building where I live is equally secure, but I know you'd never accept my offer of an apartment there.\"\n\nAnd I knew I'd never be able to afford an apartment in either one.\n\n\"Last night, Ms. Sagadraco sent a security team to beef up the wards on my place.\"\n\nI said it, but I couldn't say I was thrilled about it. I could see it being a short-term solution, but the thought of living in a place where, despite the best wards, a portal to Hell's anteroom could still be ripped inside my bedroom closet . . . I knew I'd never be able to sleep there again. Not to mention, I refused to endanger my neighbors. Those demons had run out of chickens. If I hadn't come home there'd have been nothing to stop them from taking the air ducts over to Mrs. Rosini's. I felt the prickling of impending tears stinging my eyes. I would _not_ endanger her or anyone else.\n\n\"I'll think about it,\" I told Rake. And I meant it. \"For now, I'm going to stay at headquarters with Kitty.\" I tried a smile. \"It's like a pajama party. Tonight we could do mani-pedis.\"\n\n\"Tell her that I have several retail spaces in the Village and SoHo, should she want to relocate. Free of charge.\"\n\n\"No rent and no burned body stink? I don't see how she could turn that down. I'll tell her.\"\n\n\"And the apartment for you would likewise be rent free\u2014\"\n\nI was about to make a comment about that, but his uncharacteristically somber expression stopped me.\n\n\"And no obligation\u2014of any kind,\" he finished.\n\nWow. I wasn't entirely sure I trusted it, but wow.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said simply. \"When I have time to think, I'll give it some thought and let you know. It's a very generous offer.\"\n\n\"Agent Byrne has been working tirelessly to protect you since day one,\" Rake continued. \"You're now in the worst kind of danger, and I am at least partially responsible.\" His brow creased in confusion. \"Though I don't yet know why or even how. But I do know that I will do whatever's in my power to help him keep you safe.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Again.\" It was all I could think to say. Rake had complimented Ian, apologized to me, admitted he didn't know everything, and promised protection\u2014all in a few, short sentences. For Rake Danescu, that was a staggering achievement.\n\nIan and Rake exchanged solemn man nods.\n\nLooked like Ian was speechless, too.\n\n\"Is there a chance they're manufacturing the Brimstone at Hart Pharmaceuticals?\" I asked Rake.\n\n\"They would certainly have the equipment they needed, but I wouldn't think so.\"\n\n\"According to Dr. Cheban,\" Ian said, \"working with molten brimstone wouldn't be something you'd want to do in a multi-million-dollar facility filled with valuable, highly educated employees.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah.\" I spread my hands. \"Boom. No meth labs in Hell, and all that. Though if Hart is bringing in beaucoup bucks on illegal drugs, what would stop them from buying some property of their own? They've probably got some labs hidden away around town. Should we let Fred know that Hart's the likely manufacturer?\"\n\nIan nodded, took out his phone, and started texting. \"I don't expect they'll find anything, but since Hart operates as a human company, the NYPD and the feds would be the best qualified to at least make life difficult for them. Maybe they can dig up enough probable cause for a search warrant.\"\n\nI got my phone out, too. \"I'll text Kenji and have him start digging for property Hart and any of its C-levels might own around town.\" I glanced at Rake. \"Unless you have a list floating around in that goblin James Bond head of yours.\"\n\n\"Until now I haven't had a need to know.\"\n\n\"That's okay. Kenji probably already does. He's a collector: comics, movie memorabilia, dirt on supernatural-owned, multinational corporations. Like noticing that a drug company owns a run-down warehouse with state-of-the-art security. Things that jump out and wave red flags.\" My finger froze above my phone. Speaking of red flags . . .\n\n\"Just how badly does Isidor Silvanus hate you?\" I asked Rake.\n\n\"The level appears to be approaching obsession. Why?\"\n\n\"He's been going out of his way to murder people inside of buildings that you own. Why not open a Hellpit under one? What better way to humiliate a dark mage adversary than to open a Hellpit under a property they own without them knowing about it?\"\n\nThere was silence around the table. So much for whether I might be onto something.\n\n\"Is that possible?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"I own many properties, most of which I have no contact with on a day-to-day basis. This is why I have management companies.\"\n\n\"Then it is possible.\"\n\nThe goblin's dark eyes narrowed to angry slits. \"Isidor is exceedingly gifted in the magic arts. Unfortunately, yes. It is possible.\"\n\n\"Marty said brimstone loses its molten state after an hour of being exposed to our air,\" I said. \"That'd put the lab an hour\u2014probably much less\u2014from the Hellpit.\"\n\n\"We need a list of all of your real estate holdings in Manhattan,\" Ian told Rake. \"And not just Northern Reach.\"\n\nWhen a response wasn't forthcoming, Ian continued. \"The list will be kept in a secure database.\"\n\nRake's lips tightened into a thin line. \"A SPI database.\"\n\n\"If I'm right, then Isidor Silvanus already has that list,\" I said. \"So you can slam the barn door if you want, but that horse is long gone.\"\n\nThe goblin sighed, though I detected a hint of a growl. \"Very well. You shall have it within the hour.\"\n\n\"One more question,\" Ian asked him.\n\nThe goblin raised a brow. \"You mean one more question\u2014for now.\"\n\nIan ignored that. \"Do you know if Alastor Malvolia represented Hart Pharmaceuticals?\"\n\n\"He did.\"\n\n\"Did he represent you?\" I asked.\n\n\"He did not. Believe it or not, but I do have standards, and Alastor Malvolia was far beneath them. It was nothing personal; I merely didn't approve of his methods.\"\n\nI grimaced. \"So somebody at Hart stuffed their own lawyer in an oven?\"\n\nRake laughed, a genuinely happy sound. \"Believe me, it could not have happened to a nicer guy.\"\n\n# 26\n\nFRED was thrilled to hear about Hart Pharmaceuticals being the cause of all of his late nights and early mornings. Fred was thrilled because Hart was already under investigation by local, state, and federal authorities. Kitty and I weren't the only ones who wanted payback. There was a line.\n\nThe latest incident in Fred's busy schedule was that he'd just come from the scene of yet another murder that could be connected to Brimstone. This victim was displayed in just about the most public way possible. A human drug lord with a small but profitable Wall Street client base had been found impaled on the horns of the Charging Bull statue in the Financial District. His heart was gone, replaced by the statue's right horn. Fred was of the opinion that this was the guy who had been selling Brimstone to humans like the man in Caf\u00e9 Mina. Sounded logical enough to me. Who would want to read minds more than brokers, financiers, and other businesspeople? Fred said that this particular drug lord had been clued in to the supernatural world, which could connect him to what was really going on at Hart Pharmaceuticals. And it sounded like he'd either neglected to give his customers full disclosure on Brimstone's side effects, or simply told them that they might see things, but to ignore them until the mind-reading benefits kicked in.\n\nThat solved the mystery of how humans were getting their hands on Brimstone, but we still had the problem of no prosecutable evidence against Hart and its officers. Any that had been found had been refuted, and all potential witnesses had disappeared and had not been found\u2014all thanks in one way or another to the late, evilly great Alastor Malvolia.\n\nAs the brains behind Hart Pharmaceutical's continued legal maneuverings and evasion, Al was now out of the picture and in a stainless-steel drawer at SPI headquarters. The feds' prosecutors would be happy about that.\n\nIf Hart's CEO, Phaon Silvanus\u2014brother of Isidor\u2014had been in any way responsible for Al's demise, he'd just gotten the ball rolling on his own downfall. If it hadn't been done at his orders . . . well, for the murderer's sake, I hope they got a running head start for killing the person who'd single-handedly kept the cops and feds from hanging Hart Pharmaceuticals out to dry.\n\nI just loved it when the bad guys shot themselves in the foot, but it remained to be seen if it'd be too little too late.\n\nAlastor Malvolia had been baked, but the finished product was in one piece\u2014including heart and soul. Though with this particular goblin lawyer, one really had to wonder if there'd been a soul there to begin with.\n\nBert was determined to find out.\n\nAnd Rake wanted to be there when he did. He'd given us a list of his Manhattan real estate holdings. It was in the hundreds. Money had never impressed me, and it still didn't. But, damn. We didn't have enough agents to check out even a fraction of them. Rake was hopeful that Alastor Malvolia might be persuaded to point us in the right direction\u2014especially since his murderer was probably also located in that direction.\n\nI'd said I never wanted to be in SPI's morgue for another of Bert's corpse Q&A sessions, but if the goblin lawyer was going to say anything, I wanted to hear it. I was betting that being betrayed by one of his corporate clients was going to make for one seriously vindictive ghost. No retainer was worth that.\n\nI'd damned near been baby food for demons either directly or indirectly because of the Silvanus brothers. I was overdue for some fun.\n\n* * *\n\nThe autopsy room's recording system had been double checked and was ready to go. Human courts didn't consider the testimony of a ghost to be admissible in court, but as far as supernatural law was concerned, alive, dead, or undead, it was all good.\n\nThe autopsy room had two tables and not much room for anything else. Bert had to be in there as did Al Malvolia. Bert took up enough space for two people, and in his present condition, Al was literally half the man he once was. Now he really did look like Mr. Burns from _The Simpsons_ , if Mr. Burns had been baked into a mummy.\n\nDr. Carey and Bert had done an external examination of the goblin's body and determined that he had been knocked unconscious with a blow to the back of the head. I'd only met him once, and by all accounts Alastor Malvolia was as far from being a nice person as it was possible to get. I was still glad to hear that he'd been unconscious or already dead before he'd been shoved into Kitty's oven. After the questioning, Bert would guide the spirit to the other side, and there would be an official autopsy to determine the exact cause and time of death, as well as to look for any residue or fibers on the body that might provide clues to place of death and the murderer's identity\u2014something a human court would accept.\n\nMartin DiMatteo had been there to back Bert up in the past, and he was in there now. The rest of us were on the other side of the double-thick glass wall. Normal morgues didn't need that kind of reinforcement, but in the world of the supernatural, there were many kinds and levels of dead, and on occasion, they didn't need a necromancer to raise a fuss.\n\nIn addition to me, Ian, and Rake was Ms. Sagadraco, Alain Moreau, and\u2014not so surprisingly\u2014Kitty. After all, it was her oven the goblin lawyer had been found in; she wanted to know what had happened to him before he'd been brought there. I'd think it would help her considerably to know that Alastor Malvolia hadn't died in her oven.\n\nFred was busy with the Hart Pharmaceutical end of the investigation, but had made Ian promise to get a recording to him ASAP.\n\nBert was presently making a brief initial contact to ensure Malvolia's soul was still inside his corpse when the body's mouth dropped open and an enraged shriek damned near shorted out the sound system.\n\nHoly Mother of God.\n\nNormally spirits communicated through Bert. Not this time. Malvolia the dead lawyer wanted to do his own talking.\n\nThe lights might not have been on anymore, but the dead goblin was definitely home, and he was not happy.\n\nBert had shielded himself and wore a necroamulet to give himself even more protection. He wasn't taking any chances and I didn't blame him one bit. Contacting a newly dead angry ghost was like startling a big dog out of a sound sleep. Unpleasantness was likely to occur.\n\nThe necromancer glanced at Ms. Sagadraco and nodded.\n\nShowtime.\n\n* * *\n\n_\"Alastor Malvolia.\"_\n\nOnce again the boom of Bert's deep voice filled the morgue's four tiled walls. There was an intercom on our side, but we really didn't need it. The glass was also warded, so the force of Bert's necromantic magic didn't affect me and Ian as it had when we'd been in the room with Sar Gedeon's corpse.\n\nThe elf drug lord's soul had already been taken, so there'd been no response to Bert's command. Al Malvolia had been a lawyer in life; and in death, he couldn't wait to talk.\n\nAlmost immediately a silvery mist rose from the curled-up corpse.\n\nAnd it solidified, complete with a face, an angry face.\n\nOkay, that wasn't normal, either.\n\nEven Bert looked a little taken aback, though for Bert that meant briefly raising one eyebrow.\n\nThere were soul contacts that had been memorable enough to enter into Bert's office party story repertoire. I bet this was going to be one of them\u2014and I was getting to witness it firsthand.\n\nLucky me.\n\nIt was probably a good thing that Fred wasn't here, and that none of us were elves. The spirit that had once lived in the body of the goblin lawyer Alastor Malvolia hissed and spun, two glowing red orbs where his eyes had been, probably looking for the elves who'd killed him.\n\nI wondered if Bert was in charge in there anymore.\n\nHowever, Bert looked cool as a cucumber.\n\nThose glowing eyes didn't find any elves, but he saw his own burned body curled on the autopsy table.\n\nThe shriek he'd let out before paled in comparison to the roar that came out of that pissed-off poof of mist.\n\nAlain Moreau reached over and flipped the switch on the speaker. Either that or our ears were gonna bleed.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said. At least I think I did.\n\nThe roar came down to a gurgling hiss. It took me a minute to realize that the goblin was laughing.\n\nHe was looking directly at Rake Danescu.\n\nAnd laughing.\n\nI didn't think any of us\u2014especially Rake\u2014were going to find what was about to happen amusing.\n\nAlain Moreau flipped the switch again, turning the speakers back up.\n\n_\"Danessscu,\"_ Malvolia hissed.\n\n\"Alastor. You're looking well.\"\n\nMore gurgling laughter. At least he'd kept his sense of humor.\n\n_\"He isss coming for you.\"_\n\n\"Isidor?\"\n\n_\"Yessss.\"_\n\n\"I was beginning to get that impression.\" Rake nodded toward Malvolia's body on the table. \"Did he do that?\"\n\nThe glow in the red eyes faded a little, and his expression grew distant and puzzled. Both were impressive achievements for a mist you could see through.\n\nApparently he hadn't seen who'd killed him. Looked like Malvolia had been hit from behind like Dr. Carey said.\n\nBert stood next to the table, his hand resting lightly on the corpse's head, his eyes calm and steady on Malvolia's manifestation. Bert was still in control; at least I hoped so.\n\n_\"Isssidor made a deal with the devil.\"_\n\nRake's fangs flashed in a brief grin of delighted realization. \"And you drew up the contract.\"\n\nMore gurgling laughter. _\"Yessss.\"_\n\nNow it was Rake's turn to chuckle. \"You screwed them both over.\"\n\n_\"Filthy, arrogant elvesss. Deservesss to burn.\"_\n\n\"Alastor, if you weren't so crispy right now, I'd actually kiss you. Where's the contract?\"\n\n_\"Sssafe.\"_\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n_\"You will sssee.\"_\n\nThe mist that was Alastor Malvolia was beginning to fade.\n\n_\"Hurry,\"_ Bert mouthed to Rake.\n\n\"Where did Isidor open the Hellpit?\" Rake asked.\n\nI could clearly see Bert standing behind the goblin. What was left of Malvolia was confused, looking around as if he'd suddenly become aware of where he was and didn't recognize it.\n\nWe were losing him.\n\nRake leaned closer to the glass. \"Alastor. Listen to me. Where is the Hellpit?\"\n\n_\"Where the demonsss are coming from.\"_\n\n\"Yes, demons will be coming from the Hellpit. Where. Is. The. Hellpit?\"\n\nThe mist was drawn back into the burned shell of Alastor Malvolia's body.\n\nBert bowed his head, and took a couple of deep breaths.\n\n\"Can you get him back?\" Rake asked urgently.\n\nThe necromancer shook his head. \"There's a chance, but he'd be even more confused than he was now. Even if he could manifest, he would only be able to hold form for a few seconds. We need to let him go, Lord Danescu.\"\n\n# 27\n\nALASTOR Malvolia hadn't been able to tell us where the Hellpit was. We were running out of time. While we hadn't been able to pinpoint exactly when Isidor Silvanus had first cracked open the Hellpit, it'd been long enough since the Brimstone drug started showing up on the street that the pit had to be nearing a fully open state. Once it reached that, it couldn't be closed.\n\nSo far, all of the murders had been committed in properties owned by Rake through Northern Reach Holdings. Even the yacht that Celeste B\u00e1thory was killed on had been leased through a yacht brokerage owned by, you guessed it, Northern Reach.\n\nKenji was working on pinpointing property that Hart Pharmaceuticals or Phaon Silvanus owned and those properties' proximity to buildings owned by Rake Danescu.\n\nRake had identified Isidor Silvanus as one of the previously unknown, obscenely powerful sorcerers who had been at the Mythos gala opening. Just our luck, he'd decided to hang around after the party to make more trouble.\n\nIn the meantime, Roy Benoit and Sandra Niles had their commando teams on standby, and Martin DiMatteo had four people in his department ready to deploy with the commandos to search each potential Hellpit site.\n\nThe first hits on both Rake's property and Phaon Silvanus were two buildings one and six blocks from Times Square. Even in legendary New York traffic, getting from one to the other would still take less than an hour, making them viable Hellpit locations. Sandra's team with two of Martin's demonologists were checking the tunnels nearby and beneath Times Square. After last New Year's Eve, we were more than familiar with them. A Hellpit was different from a portal. It'd be standing wide open, glowing orange like molten lava, and probably guarded by demons.\n\nConsidering the attempts on my life, the Hellpit was probably concealed in a pocket dimension, the entrance to which was a small portal visible only to the mage who made it\u2014who would be Isidor Silvanus\u2014and yours truly.\n\nKitty had confirmed that it was possible, that the Hellpit could be concealed in a small pocket dimension. If that was the case, I would be able to detect the doorway to the dimension, like I had done with Alastor Malvolia's office.\n\nWorse still, if the Hellpit was being concealed inside a pocket dimension, it'd be highly likely that the Brimstone lab would be hidden the same way.\n\nI could see portals, but I couldn't open them.\n\nFortunately for us, Kitty could open an existing portal as well as slam one shut.\n\nAt least that problem was solved. Unfortunately we had plenty more to take its place, and a line forming behind those.\n\nWe were stretched thin enough as is. Ms. Sagadraco had told me that under no circumstances was either I or Kitty to leave headquarters until a viable location had been found. The risk was too great. If the Hellpit or Brimstone lab was concealed by a pocket dimension, I'd be the only one who'd be able to see it, and I couldn't go chasing after every possibility. The demonologists would be able to detect signs of demonic activity that even a pocket dimension couldn't hide.\n\nIf I had to stay at headquarters, there was one thing I could do and still possibly help.\n\nIt was time that Ord Larcwyde and I had a talk.\n\n* * *\n\nKitty and I had one of SPI's VIP apartments; Ord had the other one. Alain Moreau was in charge of assigning guests to accommodations. He liked me and Kitty more than he did Ord, so we got the larger apartment.\n\nIt didn't help Ord's cause that he was being an obnoxious asshat.\n\nIn the gnome's defense, he'd been brought here for protective custody and questioning, and while there was plenty of protection going on, there hadn't been time for any questioning.\n\nThe agent assigned to Ord told me that the gnome was in a foul mood, had been testing the patience of the SPI cafeteria's room service, and was presently binge watching _Game of Thrones_. Other than that, things had been relatively quiet.\n\nI couldn't leave headquarters, so I had plenty of time on my hands for finding out what Ord knew that was worth killing him for\u2014besides the number to room service.\n\nThe stacks of dishes were piled on a cart outside Ord's door. The SPI cafeteria's job was to keep agents fueled up so they could protect and serve. With the clock ticking on the Hellpit, our people had been working and eating overtime. Cleaning up after guests must be falling through the cracks. Though from the looks of the nearly pristine dishes on that cart, Ord had done everything but lick the plates. Our chefs were the best, and Ord was taking full advantage.\n\nI knocked. I'd called Ord as soon as I'd left the morgue, so he was expecting me.\n\nThe gnome opened the door and I was treated to a vision in a green velour bathrobe.\n\nHis feet were bare, his chest was exposed, and I think the only thing he had on underneath was his ever-present gold chains.\n\nYikes.\n\nMaybe I would have been better off spending more time with Al the Crispy Lawyer.\n\nOrd's little face lit up. \"Makenna, darling! I had begun to despair of ever seeing your lovely face again.\"\n\nOkay, Ord might be naked as a jaybird under that robe, but he had Al beat on the charm scale.\n\n\"Come in, come in!\"\n\nI did, and Ord closed the door.\n\nThe gnome grabbed the TV remote and muted the slaughter on _Game of Thrones_. \"To what do I owe this pleasure?\"\n\n\"First, my apologies if you've felt neglected. We've had several emergencies that had to be dealt with.\"\n\n\"More murders?\"\n\nI nodded toward the now silent slaughter. It looked like the \"Red Wedding\" episode. \"Not quite at that quantity, but it's getting there.\"\n\nOrd considered that comparison for a moment, and that he'd narrowly escaped being one of the slaughterees. \"I haven't had the opportunity to express my appreciation for allowing me to stay here until all this unpleasantness blows over. Thank you. And should you see Miz Sagadraco, please extend my heartfelt appreciation to her as well.\"\n\nYep, when properly motivated, Ord could definitely tip the top on the charm scale.\n\n\"You're most welcome. We're glad we can do it.\"\n\nActually, we weren't, and Ord knew it, but we were Southerners trading pleasantries before getting down to business. We both knew the game and the rules. It was older than the family pound cake recipe and just as revered.\n\nOrd hurried to clear a tumble of newspapers out of a chair. \"Please, make yourself comfortable. Could I order something for you?\"\n\nI waved a hand. \"No, no, I'm fine.\"\n\nOrd took his seat and arranged his robe modestly over his lap.\n\nThank God for the decency of a Southern gentleman.\n\n\"Do you really think I know something worth being killed for?\"\n\n\"I sure hope so.\" I cringed. \"Wait, that didn't come out right.\"\n\nThe gnome reached out and patted my arm. \"I'm here, safe and sound, so don't you worry yourself about it.\"\n\nThe job of the agent assigned to Ord had been to basically keep him out of trouble until either Ian or I had time to question him further. The guest rooms had occasionally functioned as fancy jail cells, so the TVs had Netflix, HBO, Showtime, etc., but that was it. There was no contact with the outside world, and even if a guest had managed to smuggle in a phone, it wouldn't work unless we wanted it to. Kitty and I had full outside communication; Ord Larcwyde did not. Until we knew who he knew that might want to kill him, cutting the gnome off from the rest of the world was a prudent security measure.\n\nThe long and short of it was that Ord didn't know diddly squat about what had been going on since our people had picked him up and brought him here.\n\nI brought Ord up to speed on the case, namely who had been killed, and who we suspected of doing the deeds. However, I left out the part about his unsuccessful assassin being a squid demon. I didn't think it had any connection to the information I needed to know, but most of all, I'd heard enough shrieking from Alastor Malvolia; I didn't want to have to listen to Ord's screams, too. My ears had had enough for one day.\n\n\"Do you know any of those people?\" I asked when I'd finished. \"Living or dead, victims or suspected killers?\"\n\n\"I've heard of most of them, but am glad to say I don't know any of them personally.\"\n\n\"So your pixies haven't brought you information on any of them worth killing you for?\"\n\n\"None.\"\n\n\"You're sure? This is really important. Like fate-of-the-world important.\"\n\n\"I sincerely wish I could help you, Makenna, but I've got nothing other than what I told you at my office. Between that gunman trying to kill me, and my pixies raising their prices, I'm considering an early retirement.\"\n\nHuh? \"Your pixies want a raise?\"\n\n\"Two weeks ago, they come to me and say that they're no longer comfortable in the neighborhood; and that if I insist on remaining there, they'll continue to work for me, but they'll be forced to increase their rates.\"\n\n\"Are they getting mugged by fairies for their lunch money or something?\"\n\nThe gnome drew himself up in righteous indignation. \"They said my office stinks, if you can imagine such a thing.\"\n\nI remembered the boxes of garlic falling on top of Ian. \"That garlic was a bit much. He must do a heck of a restaurant business.\"\n\n\"Some. But mostly it just sits there.\"\n\nThat was more than odd. \"So he stocks it, but doesn't sell it?\"\n\n\"I don't mind. I like garlic.\"\n\n\"When did he start stockpiling garlic?\"\n\n\"About a month ago. Pixies have extremely sensitive noses, though I've never heard of garlic bothering them\u2014or even bothering vampires for that matter. That only happens in the movies. It is such an annoyance when Hollywood doesn't even bother to get the details right. The industry is positively rife with supernaturals, so there's simply no excuse. All the vampires I know love Italian food. Well, at least smelling it. And many of my pixie employees are Italian-American. You wouldn't think they'd mind garlic in the least.\" The gnome finished with a dramatic sigh. \"I still may be forced to take the building's owner up on his offers of alternative accommodations. The noise the past few weeks has become tiresome.\"\n\nOdd just turned into a waving red flag\u2014two of them. \"The building's owner wants you to move, _and_ there's been noise?\"\n\n\"He offered last month, and again last week. As to the noise, it's mostly vibrations coming up through the floor.\" He waved a hand. \"There's a subway line running somewhere below. They must be using that track more often now.\"\n\nNervous pixies, stinking office, the owner wanted him out, plus noises\u2014all starting within the last month. And I'd be willing to bet the farm that the squid-demon gunman sent to kill Ord had been a last, desperate measure to get him out of there. As to the stockpiled garlic, was it meant to cover the stench of occasional wafts of brimstone coming from a brand-spanking-new drug lab below?\n\nI got my phone out and called Ian. \"Ord, honey, when this is over, I need to talk you out of retiring. You're a treasure.\"\n\n# 28\n\nSO much for our theory of Hart Pharmaceuticals owning the building housing the Brimstone lab. Hart didn't own the building the grocery store was in; the Balmorlan family did.\n\nThe store owner was a veritable gold mine of information once Ian and I walked through his front door\u2014and a SPI commando team silently came through the back and appeared directly behind him like supernatural ninjas.\n\nThe grocer hadn't been a willing accomplice. A Balmorlan family representative came to him a month ago and said that they required a few favors. In exchange, he would no longer need to make monthly protection payments. The grocer said the favors were simple, they weren't illegal, and weren't hurting anyone\u2014at least not until two days ago when the gunman paid the store a visit.\n\nKeep fresh garlic in stock at all times, and report who came to see Ord Larcwyde.\n\nTwo seemingly innocent favors, plus no more protection payments.\n\nThe grocer jumped at the chance.\n\nIf I'd been in his place, I would've done the same thing.\n\nIf he hadn't cooperated, another of Kitty's ovens might have had an occupant.\n\nVivienne Sagadraco had approved me leaving headquarters in case the lab was concealed in a pocket dimension. The reality turned out to be not nearly that fancy. In addition to the old walk-in freezer that served as Ord's office, the store had a trapdoor in the floor. The grocer knew about it. It'd been used in the past to store illegal liquor for a local speakeasy during Prohibition.\n\nIt had been expanded considerably since then.\n\nThe original storage room had been converted to house air treatment equipment. Brimstone stank, and regardless of how careful the lab folks in the even older chamber below had been with their main ingredient, stink had a way of getting out. That was where the garlic had come into play. One strong smell to hide the occasional whiff of another. And if Ord had ever gotten suspicious, rotten garlic didn't smell too good, either.\n\nThere could only be one reason why the drug lab had been under the store Ord Larcwyde used as an office.\n\nIt was close to the Hellpit.\n\n\"It's all clear below.\" Commander Sandra Niles was in full body armor. Yes, our target was a lab, but it was a drug lab, and one of the ingredients was being brought in fresh daily from your friendly neighborhood Hellpit\u2014neighborhood as in nearby. All that considered, I thought body armor was a simply wonderful idea.\n\nIan and I were in dark street clothes. We'd needed to come in through the front of the store, and body armor or fatigues would have attracted attention to say the least. Sandra had brought everything we'd need if all this panned out and we'd be going underground.\n\nShe showed us the surprisingly clear image on her tablet. Considering the combustibility of Brimstone's ingredients, she'd taken the prudent precaution of snaking a camera in through an air duct.\n\nI swore. \"There's no one down there.\"\n\n\"The store has security cameras, but there aren't any monitors up here,\" Sandra said. \"I have a feeling we'll find monitors when we go below.\"\n\n\"They knew when we got here,\" Ian said.\n\nThe commander smiled. \"And they ran like rats when you turn the lights on. Don't worry, it's an active lab.\" She swiped a finger across the screen, and it went from full color to infrared. Heat signatures flared on two of the chairs, four of the lab stools, and all of the equipment.\n\nIan's grin joined hers. \"Bingo.\"\n\n\"Where did they go?\" I asked. \"I don't see a door.\"\n\n\"We're hoping it's flush against a wall and just not visible on screen,\" Sandra said. \"As with the monitor, we'll find out when we get down there.\"\n\nDr. Claire Cheban and four of her team had suited up in biohazard suits in preparation for going into the lab, complete with gas masks and air tanks, and they were bristling with enough shielding spells to make my teeth hurt.\n\nChances were good that the air was breathable and there weren't any booby traps of the fatal kind waiting for them when they got there. The Brimstone techs had fled when we'd arrived in case we found the lab. That didn't mean they hadn't expected us to find it. They'd probably done this drill before. You wouldn't want to contaminate a lab you fully planned to return to.\n\nBut, just in case, Sandra's team would go in first with sealed body armor and full helmets with small oxygen tanks built into the back. The lab crew was probably waiting nearby, and you'd think at least a few of them would be armed, but regardless of what they were packing, they were nowhere near armed enough. If Lady Luck had finally decided to start talking to us again, the lab crew would have enough sense to not come back.\n\nThe trapdoor entrance wasn't the main way in or out. It functioned as an emergency exit only. They'd just had an emergency, and it hadn't done them a bit of good. As I'd found out the not-fun way on New Year's Eve, the underside of Manhattan was filled with tunnels and chambers. Most were for subway, sewer, water, and power\u2014both used now and abandoned. However, some of those tunnels and chambers hadn't been dug out by human hands.\n\nSomewhere down there was the way to the Hellpit. Martin DiMatteo had told us that the Hellpit would need to be no more than an hour away from the site of the lab, closer would be even better. Molten brimstone was unstable, so the quicker you could get it to where it needed to be, the fewer accidents of the \"boom\" variety you'd be likely to have. Since you couldn't exactly walk down the street in New York casually swinging a bucket of molten brimstone from Hellpit A to Drug Lab B, the tunnel leading to the Hellpit began somewhere beneath our feet.\n\nThe thought made my skin crawl and gave me a nearly overwhelming urge to find a chair and stand on it.\n\nWhat I wanted even more was about two weeks of sleep. Then to go on a vacation somewhere exotic and sleep there for two more weeks.\n\n* * *\n\nMinutes later, Sandra found the door from the lab out into the tunnel. It hadn't been hidden, simply set into the wall and out of sight of the camera. The other side of the door was camouflaged so well that you could have been standing in the tunnel right in front of it and you'd have never found it. Though the Brimstone lab techs must have had a way to get to work every day.\n\nThe tunnel beyond had been used at one time for sewer and rain drainage overflow. Fortunately for us and the AWOL Brimstone lab techs, it wasn't used for either anymore. Once the lab\u2014and its contents\u2014had been secured, it was my turn.\n\nDr. Cheban and her staff had taken over the lab and were working on documenting everything as well as downloading computer hard drives and securing ingredients. Because of the possibility of accidents, even when being handled by professionals, Ian and I had to suit up in hazmat suits, at least until we were through the lab and into the tunnel.\n\nAs we went single file down the narrow stairs that led from the air treatment room under the store and into the lab itself, the sound of my respirator was ridiculously loud in my ears.\n\n\"'Luke, I am your father,'\" I rasped.\n\nNo response from Ian.\n\n\"Really?\" I asked through the communicator. \"Nothing?\"\n\n\"It was only funny the first fifty times I ever heard it.\"\n\n\"It's my first time in a getup like this. It's new\u2014and funny\u2014to me.\"\n\nOnce down in the lab, there were glass-front storage cabinets with cylindrical stainless steel containers. Considering that the largest container said \"brimstone\" I half expected the others to be labeled like something out of a Grimm's fairy tale. I was disappointed.\n\n\"What? No eye-of-newt?\"\n\nThat earned me a snicker from one of Dr. Cheban's techs.\n\n\"That gets a laugh, but Darth doesn't.\"\n\n\"Eye-of-newt's funny,\" Ian said.\n\n\"But Darth's a classic.\"\n\nWe passed through the lab and into the tunnel beyond. For the first time, I was glad to be in one of New York's old drainage tunnels. It meant I could ditch the biohazard suit. If we stumbled onto the Hellpit, the suit wasn't intended for prolonged exposure to high temperature, and \"stumbled\" would be the first perfect description for what I'd do if I needed to run away from anything while wearing it; the second would be \"fall.\" So in the interest of self-preservation, Ian and I left the suits just outside the lab. Hopefully they wouldn't be needed by the time we came back.\n\nHopefully we'd be coming back.\n\nA few of Sandra's commandos would stay behind to guard the techs while they worked. Sandra and the rest of her team would be coming with us.\n\nI had a Hellpit to find.\n\n* * *\n\nThe tunnel stank, though not of brimstone.\n\nThat was both good and bad. Okay, mostly just bad. We needed to find the Hellpit yesterday. It wasn't something we could pretend didn't exist just because we couldn't smell it.\n\nThe tunnel's natural aroma wasn't strong enough to mask something as pungent as brimstone. The tunnel smelled like what it was coated in: damp and mold. I was allergic to mold and glad I'd taken my meds and done my spray this morning. A sneeze down here would echo forever. If we were going to be ambushed by demons, I'd rather it not be my fault.\n\nNo brimstone smell didn't mean there wasn't a Hellpit.\n\nIt simply meant there could be a portal between us and it.\n\nIf there was a portal, it could empty out next to the Hellpit, or into one of Hell's anterooms filled with demons just waiting for the dumb mortals (that would be us) to come bumbling through.\n\n\"Let's go to night vision, people.\" Sandra gestured and we silently moved out.\n\n* * *\n\nJust because there hadn't been any booby traps in the lab didn't mean the tunnel presumably leading to the Hellpit wasn't going to be thick with them.\n\nI could see through glamours and now portals. Half of the people on our commando teams could see wards, illusions, and magical traps of every known kind\u2014and a few that'd never been known before they'd seen them. They were the best. If Isidor Silvanus had left any surprises on the path to the pit, they'd find them before we tripped them. I had the utmost confidence in their skills.\n\nI had nearly none in the job I was being expected to do.\n\nFind the portal hiding the Hellpit.\n\nIsidor Silvanus may or may not have wanted me to see those two portals. But I couldn't imagine any scenario where he'd want me to find the Hellpit.\n\nBut you're not the one who has to close it, said the little voice inside my head. Normally it was the voice of reason; right now it was the voice of shame\u2014as in \"Shame on you, Makenna Fraser.\"\n\nMy job was over when I found the Hellpit.\n\nKitty Poertner's job was to close it.\n\nAlain Moreau was working to find an anchor mage who would help her. Last I heard, there'd been nothing to hear.\n\nKitty would be alone, facing not only closing the largest portal there was, but one that had been opened by a mage who Rake described as so powerful he could open a Hellpit in his sleep.\n\nKitty had to close that.\n\nIn addition to any traps Silvanus may have built into the magical mechanisms holding the pit open, Kitty would have to contend with demons determined not to lose access to our world. They wouldn't like a human _and_ a mortal slamming the door on their eternal beach vacation.\n\nSandra's team was with us now. When we found the Hellpit, Roy's team would join us. While Kitty worked, SPI's commandos would keep the demons under control.\n\nAt least that was the plan.\n\nI'd seen our guys and gals in action. They were beyond impressive. But these were demons we were talking about. Demons who had wanted our world for literal ages. They were closer than they'd ever been to having it all. If that didn't say motivated, I didn't know what did.\n\nMortals and former mortals going up against the combined might of Hell.\n\nAs good as they were, I really didn't want to bet on us.\n\nBut everyone else was.\n\n* * *\n\nThe tunnel curved and turned, but there weren't any branches off of it that the Brimstone lab techs could have used for escape.\n\nAt four places there were ladders leading to the street above. At each, Sandra's team \"navigator\" would note the position on a GPS device strapped to his forearm armor for later investigation. We wanted the Brimstone lab folks in custody for questioning at the very least, but we needed to know where the Hellpit was. Locating lab rats could wait. Finding an open Hellpit wouldn't.\n\nWe were just out of sight of the fourth ladder when the air began to thicken. The two commandos who had taken the lead slowed and then stopped. Sandra went up to where they were. I didn't have to leave my spot in the center of the main group to know what was going on.\n\nWe were getting close.\n\nI took calming breaths and told myself that what I sensed, what I thought I saw, none of them were there. None of them were real.\n\nThe ceiling wasn't closing in on us.\n\nThis was a major-league repelling spell.\n\nRepelling spells were flexible; not only in composition, but in how they affected each individual who encountered it. When you got to the outer rim of the spell's area of influence, you felt uneasy. If you went farther, you began to breathe faster and sweat, experiencing fear you couldn't explain. A sense of \"Get out!\" would start ringing through your head. If you managed to go farther, the visuals would start. We were in a tunnel, so the hallucinations would contain scary things that you'd find in tunnels: rats, snakes, spiders, and, in New York, the ever-popular alligator. Whichever one you were the most afraid of would be the one that you'd see. A buffet of nightmares, so to speak. Though in this case you'd be picking what you didn't want.\n\nEven though all of us knew this, what we imagined wasn't any less terrifying.\n\nBeing a country girl, I'd seen plenty of rats, spiders, and snakes in barns or under rocks. I'd never seen an alligator before, so my imagination wasn't up to reconstructing one of those for me to terrify myself with.\n\nHaving the walls and ceiling closing in on me? Now that I could imagine with no problem, and was doing a fine job of it right now.\n\nOne of the commandos quickly moved to the front, removed her gloves, and raised her hands as if she were putting them up against a wall. She pushed against it and a rush of words in a language I didn't understand filled our earpieces. Our commando teams dealt with the worst that the supernatural world could throw at them. They knew how to fight, but each and every member of both teams had unique skills specific to what they encountered on the job.\n\nAs the commando's words faded, the hallucinations stilled, and then began to fade. It took a few minutes to banish them completely, and the commando was breathing raggedly by the time she'd managed to completely disarm the repelling spell. The spell might be gone, but I was experiencing a whole new wave of uneasiness. I glanced at Ian. I wasn't the only one. We were getting close.\n\nAbout twenty yards later, we came to an old brick wall. The corners were rounded, and the finish was smoother than modern bricks. The tunnel continued to the left and right.\n\nOn the wall in front of me, about chest high, was what looked to be a spigot for a water hose that you'd see on the outside of any house in the suburbs\u2014except it was missing its handle. What it did have was protection. The air rippled in front of it from the effects of a shielding spell.\n\nThe spigot looked harmless enough, but I wasn't about to get any closer. And considering all the protection it had, I felt safe in saying that what would come out of it wouldn't be water. The drug lab techs had to get their supply somehow, and Martin DiMatteo did say that brimstone couldn't be taken through portals without going from molten to useless goop.\n\n\"Sandra, we're here.\" I pointed at the spigot. \"Brimstone source, right there. Well, behind a shielding spell.\"\n\nSandra turned to the commando who'd taken out the repelling spell. \"Deborah?\"\n\n\"On it, ma'am.\"\n\nIt must have been a tough nut to crack because it took her nearly ten minutes to get rid of those ripples concealing the brimstone spigot.\n\nBy that time, Sandra had dispatched scouts down both side tunnels, and both had returned to report that there was no sign of anyone\u2014human or demon. We dispensed with our night vision and had flashlights trained on that wall where one of Sandra's people was now scanning the pipe with some kind of device, while another scrapped a sample of the blackened and pitted concrete floor directly below the spigot. For me, what would come out of that spigot was a foregone conclusion. The water in the Hudson River was known to be nasty, but even that water wouldn't burn and eat holes in concrete.\n\nThe commando with the scanner glanced up from his display. \"Ma'am, some of these elements I recognize, but the rest . . . Your guess would be as good as mine as to where they came from. And the handle that fits this thing would be just as exotic. It'd function as much like a key as anything else.\"\n\n\"Would the metal stand up to high temperatures?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Judging from the elements that came from our world, that's exactly what it was made to do.\"\n\nWe had no intention of confirming that by finding a way to turn on that spigot. None of us wanted to go down in what'd be left of history as the modern-day Pandora if we released the next plague or an even worse disaster.\n\n\"What's on the other side?\" Ian asked.\n\nSandra studied her wrist-mounted GPS. \"We're below Ninth Avenue. Nearest cross street is West Thirteenth. We're about mid-block, directly below number thirteen.\"\n\n\"Why does that sound familiar?\" I asked Ian.\n\n\"Because it's Bacchanalia.\"\n\n# 29\n\nWHETHER building a successful business or opening a Hellpit, it was all about location, location, location.\n\nThis situation was more like setup, setup, setup\u2014and I could smell the stink of it from here.\n\nRake had wanted to open a business; Isidor wanted to open a Hellpit.\n\nIsidor Silvanus had opened a Hellpit directly beneath Bacchanalia. When the pit was fully open, the center of the goblin intelligence spy network would be the first to fall in.\n\nWe hauled ass back to the Brimstone lab and got back on the surface in record time.\n\nSandra got her team to the two trucks that'd brought them there. They looked like the thousands of other slightly dinged-up delivery, transport, or construction trucks that filled New York's streets every day. SPI had signage for both of them that would be appropriate for any situation or destination. Inside of the trucks was essentially a SWAT command center.\n\nIan and I had come with Sandra and her team. Yasha had stayed at SPI, ready to bring Kitty to the location of the Hellpit once we found it.\n\nIan called Vivienne Sagadraco and told her where we were, and what we'd found.\n\nThe boss then talked for at least a minute, and Ian listened.\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" he finally said. \"I understand.\" Then he hung up.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked, my patience long gone.\n\n\"Kitty's on her way here now with Alain Moreau.\"\n\n\"Not Yasha?\" Though the way Yasha drove, and how emotional he was bound to be right now because of danger to Kitty, having a cool vampire behind the wheel might be the best thing.\n\n\"She didn't say, just that Kitty had left with Moreau.\"\n\nMid-afternoon traffic would put her here in around twenty minutes.\n\n\"Is she going to call Rake?\"\n\nIan nodded once.\n\nThat was going to be a fun phone call. Ms. Sagadraco spoke goblin, so she'd know every word Rake blistered the phone lines with. An elf dark mage had opened a door from Hell directly into Rake's pride and joy.\n\nOne of the trucks carrying Sandra's team had gone around behind Bacchanalia to the loading dock area to wait. The other had by all miracles of nature found a parking place across the street and slightly down the block. They'd let us out two blocks before Bacchanalia so I could scout around.\n\nIan and I walked down the street, holding hands, just a couple on an afternoon stroll on a sunny but unseasonably cold day.\n\nHe lowered his head to my ear. \"See anything?\"\n\nWe were both wearing sunglasses to scan the people around us and up ahead without being too obvious about it. I was looking for glamoured lookouts. A villain wouldn't go to the trouble to open a Hellpit that would be unclosable in the very near future and not have people\u2014or not-people\u2014keeping an eye on his special project.\n\nI saw a lot of people, real people and a smattering of supernaturals, hurrying to get where they were going and out of the cold, but I didn't see any loitering evil minions.\n\n\"Nothing yet.\"\n\nBacchanalia occupied what looked like just any other four-story, brick-fronted building in the Meatpacking District. Unless you were a member, or the guest of a member, you didn't know what was beyond its doors.\n\nOn each side, flush up against Bacchanalia's walls was a six-story building filled with high-end condominiums, and a four-story, mixed-use office\/restaurant\/retail space. Across the street were two more restaurants and a coffee shop, with what appeared to be lofts on the three floors above.\n\nIt was three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon.\n\n\"People are gonna die.\"\n\n\"That's why we're here,\" Ian said, \"to keep that from happening.\"\n\nI gave my partner a double take.\n\n\"You said, 'People are gonna die.'\"\n\n\"I thought I just thought it.\"\n\n\"Unless I can suddenly read minds . . . ? No, you said it.\"\n\nCrap. I really needed a vacation.\n\n\"What about the people inside those buildings?\" I asked. \"If that Hellpit gets bigger than Bacchanalia's walls\u2014\"\n\n\"Those buildings are still standing, so it's obviously not that large yet. And Kenji's working on getting those buildings cleared now.\"\n\nThat made me stop in my tracks. \"Okay, Kenji's good, but\u2014\"\n\n\"It's a procedure we have in place.\" One corner of Ian's mouth curved into a brief smile. \"One of his superpowers is tapping into the monitoring system of any commercial or residential building and setting off his choice of alarms: fire, smoke, or gas. He's also good at calling in suspicious packages. I'm thinking in this situation, he'll go with gas. If he tripped a fire alarm, the people would evacuate, but after ten minutes of not seeing any fire or smoke, they'd start grumbling and want to go back inside. Especially when it's this cold.\"\n\n\"What about when the Con Edison guys show up?\" I asked.\n\n\"Kenji would make sure the call went in to one of Con Ed's clued-in or supernatural shift managers. The boss ensures that there are plenty of those in positions qualified to smooth over anything that needs to be covered up.\"\n\nI nodded at the simple brilliance of it. \"With gas, you can't see it or smell it unless you're in the room with it, so people could whine all they wanted to.\"\n\n\"Right. And not one of them would want to set foot back in those three buildings until the police and Con Ed gave the all clear to go back in. We'll be getting some NYPD crowd control, too. An open Hellpit couldn't be a more perfect fit for a fake gas leak. Natural gas is scented so that if there is a leak, people would know by the rotten egg smell.\"\n\n\"And brimstone smells like rotten eggs.\"\n\nIan flashed a smile. \"Like I said, perfect.\" His phone beeped with an incoming text. Ian took it out of his pocket. \"Fred says he's on his way to the party.\"\n\nI knew the elf detective wouldn't be working crowd control. I had to admit I liked the thought of him going in with us.\n\nA cab pulled up to the curb a few feet in front of us and Martin DiMatteo got out dressed like he was going on another rock-finding field trip to Hell, either that or a safari, complete with an old-fashioned camera hanging around his neck.\n\nHumor and sarcasm weren't all that he didn't get, apparently so was the need to blend in.\n\nOn the other hand, his priorities were in perfect order. If Isidor Silvanus didn't already know we were here, he would as soon as we crossed Bacchanalia's threshold. And if that Hellpit got out of control, no one was going to care how anyone was dressed.\n\nThanks to Kenji, those buildings would be evacuated and stay evacuated until the job was done.\n\nIf we didn't get that Hellpit closed, an explosion would be the nicest thing that would come out of those buildings.\n\nAll we could do now was wait for the rest of the team to arrive.\n\n* * *\n\nI wasn't worried about Kitty and Moreau getting in. The delay was probably due to the combination zoo and circus happening in a five block radius around Bacchanalia. Once Moreau got to the police barricade, he'd just do his vampire Jedi-mind-trick thing, and the two of them would be able to walk right through.\n\nMeanwhile, Kenji's gas leak story had taken on a life of its own. As people hurriedly left the buildings, I'd heard the word \"terrorists\" more than once, though since 9\/11 that probably happened every time something moderately big went wrong.\n\nRake arrived in a justifiably foul mood, and he quickly led me, Ian, and Martin to one of Bacchanalia's fire exits, conveniently hidden by a Dumpster, which I suspect was illegal in ten different ways.\n\nIan's phone rang and he stuck a finger in his ear and tried in vain to find a quiet place to take the call. I recognized the ring. It was Vivienne Sagadraco. After a few moments, he spat a word I didn't need to hear to recognize, and he sharply gestured Rake over. After Ian's first few words, Rake looked even more pissed than my partner.\n\nEven Martin picked up on the fact that something was very wrong.\n\nI sprinted over to where they were.\n\n\"Isidor Silvanus has Kitty,\" Ian snapped.\n\n\"But she left with Moreau\u2014\"\n\n\"Not Moreau,\" Rake said. \"Silvanus, glamoured.\"\n\nI forgot how to breathe. \"How the hell did he get into headquarters?\"\n\n\"He didn't,\" Ian said. \"He was just outside the complex. He called in and Kitty came right out to him.\"\n\nMy heart leapt into my throat. \"Yasha?\"\n\n\"Is fine. If damned near shredding the motor pool when he found out is fine. Silvanus called him using Moreau's voice and told him to stand down, he'd bring Kitty here.\"\n\nMy shoulders sagged. \"And Moreau's the voice of the boss.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\nIsidor Silvanus couldn't scare Kitty out of helping us, so instead he . . .\n\n\"I'm not getting this,\" I said. \"He kidnapped her. He couldn't scare her out of helping us, so he glamoured as Moreau so she'd go with him. Wouldn't he want to kill her? Why would\u2014\"\n\n\"It's me,\" Rake said.\n\nIan grabbed the front of Rake's leather jacket in his fist and slammed him up against the Dumpster, dark mage power be damned.\n\n\"What are you not telling us _now_ , goblin?\" he snarled. \"Another spy secret to play with? Kitty's life is not yours to\u2014\"\n\nA slender packet of papers fell out of the inner pocket of Rake's coat.\n\n\"That,\" Rake told him, eyes blazing, but making no other move against Ian. \"Was just delivered to me. It's the contract Alastor Malvolia wrote between Isidor and Hell.\"\n\nIan's breaths came in ragged gasps. He let Rake go, but he didn't step back.\n\n\"Isidor will want to use Kitty to bargain with,\" Rake continued. \"He wants the contract; we need Kitty.\"\n\n\"How did you get it?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Remember when Alastor told me in the morgue that the contract was safe? When I asked him where, he told me that I would see. Well, it took him being dead to keep a promise. He knew either Isidor or Phaon Silvanus would try to kill him. If that happened, he'd left several documents in a safe deposit box. They were to go immediately to me. I got them an hour ago.\"\n\nI bent to pick up the papers, but I didn't hand them back to Rake. \"You said he hates you, and it's mutual.\"\n\n\"I said I strongly disagreed with his methods. For goblins, hate is a personal emotion. I didn't care to get to know Alastor well enough to hate him.\" Rake glanced down at the packet of papers in my hand. \"We both feel the same about Isidor Silvanus. _That_ we agreed on. Alastor may not have liked me, but he trusts me to see to it that his last wish is carried out.\"\n\nIan took one step back, which in manspeak said he wasn't going to kill Rake now, but he reserved the right to do it later. \"And what would that be?\"\n\nRake bared his teeth in a sleek, vulpine smile. \"Use the contents of that contract to ensure Isidor Silvanus burns in Hell. Today.\"\n\nI handed him the papers.\n\n# 30\n\nWITHIN five minutes, our people had managed to get through the police perimeter.\n\nThe last time I'd been in Bacchanalia had been my first night at SPI. Ian and I had been undercover as a couple on a date. I'd really been there as a seer to locate a leprechaun prince and his four aristocrat buddies out for a night on the town before the prince's wedding the next day. The boys were drunk, they were danger junkies, and they'd intentionally gone to an upscale and highly exclusive sex club owned by a known, dangerous, and evil dark mage.\n\nThat would be Rake.\n\nBack then we'd thought that Rake would capture the leprechaun prince and torture him to force him to grant three wishes, and use those wishes to bring destruction on the city and the entire supernatural world.\n\nThat same dark mage was now fumbling with an absurdly large bunch of keys trying to find the right one to get us into Bacchanalia. To his credit, he'd only dropped them once.\n\n\"Fuck it!\" he snarled, slamming his hand flat against the center of the massive steel fire door.\n\nIt vanished.\n\nThe entire door. Gone.\n\nNo smoke around the edges, no tingle of magic, no boom.\n\nJust gone.\n\nAs if it'd never been there.\n\n\"I didn't know those two words were an incantation,\" Martin said.\n\nI think Rake was finished fumbling, and if Isidor Silvanus was somewhere inside with Kitty, he might want to consider leaving her and then leaving Rake's property. Now.\n\n* * *\n\nI'd only ever been in Bacchanalia through the front door during business hours.\n\nThe d\u00e9cor had been black. Completely, totally black. The floor was marble, the walls were black glass, and the ceiling appeared as a star-covered sky far from any city lights. There'd been constellations, stars, and even the Milky Way.\n\nOn the other side of the door that Rake had made go bye-bye, I heard the rapid click, click, click of three wall light switches.\n\nNothing.\n\nEven the emergency lights weren't working.\n\nNow the d\u00e9cor was _really_ black.\n\nDammit.\n\nThe power was out, and I knew Con Ed didn't have a thing to do with it.\n\nIan and I reached into our coat pockets and pulled out our night-vision goggles. Sandra's team already had theirs ready to go.\n\nFred had a flashlight big enough to double as a battering ram. \"We waiting on an engraved invitation?\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Rake told us all.\n\nHow did he see\u2014\n\nOh yeah, goblins could see in the dark.\n\nRake's low whispered incantation was like a warm breath against my ear, even though he was standing at least five feet away.\n\nThe words weren't for me.\n\nThey were for the soft glow that began around the edges of the floor and ceiling, a glow that grew brighter until even us humans could see.\n\n\"I never trust mortal lighting in an emergen\u2014\"\n\nWe all stared at what the lights revealed.\n\nBacchanalia's interior had gone from _Arabian Nights_ to Dante's _Inferno_.\n\nIt looked like my baby demon-infested bedroom times ten thousand.\n\nClear slime ran down the walls, and dripped from the ceiling, pooling on tables and the floor. The bar area was covered in slickly glistening webs, punctuated by what looked like cocoons. A few were pulsing with movement from inside.\n\nI couldn't see any demons, but I knew they were here, watching and waiting.\n\n* * *\n\nSandra got word that Roy's team had gotten inside the police perimeter just before it'd been closed off. We weren't going to wait for them. They knew where we were going. Bacchanalia didn't have a basement, but Rake had what I'd heard was considered one of the finest wine cellars of any club in the city. From the dimensions Rake had provided, there'd be only so much room to maneuver down there, and when dealing with a pit of demons, backup would be needed. I wanted to know that Roy's commandos were at our back, not more demons.\n\nI wasn't much for wine. Actually, I wasn't much for alcohol, aside from an occasional dark ale. And forget any kind of liquor. It didn't matter how long it'd been fermented in whatever fancy distillery, it all tasted like cough syrup to me. I could safely say I had an unsophisticated palette. Back home when I was growing up, we didn't bother with store-bought cough syrup. Moonshine, honey, and lemon juice worked just fine.\n\nI prepared myself to make impressed noises if it was still intact; sympathetic sounds if it was all over the floor\u2014or if the demons had drunk it all. What I knew about wine would fit on the top of a cork, but I'd heard that Rake had a small\u2014or maybe not so small\u2014fortune invested in the room and its contents. Now Isidor Silvanus had opened a Hellpit in the middle of it.\n\nAnd Isidor Silvanus had Kitty.\n\nWe had no way of knowing which way Alastor Malvolia's soul had gone when Bert had guided him to the other side. But wherever he was, I knew he'd approve of there being a long line of people who wanted to help make his last wish in life come true.\n\nThere were two ways down to Bacchanalia's wine cellar: an elevator and stairs.\n\nWe took the stairs.\n\nElevators were death traps on steel cables.\n\nRake took the lead, with two of Sandra's commandos far enough behind to give him space. They'd wanted to go first, but one scowl from the goblin who'd made a steel fire door vanish into thin air, and the boys backed off. Rake could take care of himself. Ian and I followed.\n\nThere wasn't that much information available on Hellpits, but Martin DiMatteo knew all of it. I was the lucky one who could see portals.\n\nIf Rake opened the wine cellar door and the floor had been turned into a bubbling hellfire-and-brimstone pit, Martin was officially in charge. If it looked to everyone else like a perfectly normal and intact wine cellar stocked with obscenely overpriced bottles of fermented grape juice, and only I saw the bubbling pit, it'd be my turn for Show & Tell.\n\nRake opened the door.\n\nIan and I were still on the stairs, so I couldn't see inside.\n\nMartin stepped up and looked in, then both he and Rake turned and looked at me.\n\nCrap.\n\nIan stepped in front of me to go down the last few steps first. While my partner turning himself into an immovable object between me and a Hellpit was chivalrous, it wasn't going to do anyone any good, or change what lay beyond that door.\n\nAs far as anyone else was concerned, everything beyond that threshold looked perfectly normal. I didn't want to see a Hellpit, but I hoped I did. Because if I didn't, we had no idea where else Isidor could have opened the thing. He would be there\u2014with Kitty\u2014and we had to find her.\n\nRake stepped aside and I looked into the room.\n\nI could see what Rake and Martin saw, and it was unexpected, at least to me. Rake had originally come from a Renaissance type of society, and I expected a wine cellar built to look like it came out of a European castle. Bacchanalia's wine cellar was a circular room, with pale woods and sleek brushed steel. The shelves and niches that held the bottles were glass, though it probably just looked like glass, and in reality was something more durable. Lighting radiated out like muted sunbeams from a circular central orb mounted in the ceiling. From the looks of the panel set into the wall with the gauges and flickering lights, it appeared Rake's cellar had the latest in wine storage technology. The room looked more like the bridge of a spaceship than a place to store wine. Rake was a techie. Who knew?\n\nThe room also had a portal slicing like an open wound down a narrow section of wall.\n\nIt wasn't like the portals at the scene of Sar Gedeon's murder and in the parking garage. For one, this thing stretched from floor to ceiling. The other two had been roughly man height. But the big difference was that this portal was red and it looked angry\u2014or at least like anyone stupid enough to get close to it would get themselves chewed up and spit out on the other side. Knowing what was on the other side, that was a chow line I wasn't about to get in.\n\nThough I didn't think I'd be risking life, limb, and soul just by crossing the threshold of the wine cellar.\n\nI stepped into the room and Ian, Rake, Fred, and Martin followed. Sandra stayed by the door.\n\nTime to break the bad news, but first I had a question. \"Director DiMatteo, you said that the Hellpit would be a hole in the ground, not a portal.\"\n\n\"That is correct.\"\n\nI nodded in the direction of the bloody and raw-looking gash in the wall. \"Then at two o'clock we have a portal that will presumably take us to the Hellpit.\"\n\n\"What's on the other side of that wall?\" Ian asked Rake.\n\n\"I had assumed it to be solid rock,\" the goblin replied. \"This room was already here when I bought the property. Since it naturally maintained a steady temperature of fifty-eight degrees, I assumed it to be enclosed on all sides by more or less solid rock, like a cave. My wines have been quite comfortable here.\" He glared at the wall with the portal that only I could see. \"At least they were.\"\n\n\"Apparently it's less solid than you thought,\" my partner noted.\n\nRake made a sound that under better circumstances would have been a chuckle. \"My insurance will never cover this.\"\n\n\"What, no Hellpit portal policy?\"\n\n\"It's one of those things you're sure will never happen to you. Like living in the desert and not getting flood insurance.\"\n\n\"At least this portal doesn't go into another dimension,\" I told them both. \"It's just a way to disguise the entrance to a Hellpit.\"\n\n\"And its exit,\" Martin told us.\n\nLike we needed reminding. Kitty wasn't here to close it, and as every minute passed, the Hellpit was opening wider, and the things inside were closer to being able to get out\u2014as in out here with us and the rest of the world.\n\n\"So . . . how do we get inside?\" I asked anyone who might have the answer. \"Not that I'm eager to do it, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Isidor wants the contract,\" Rake said. \"Since he has taken Kitty Poertner, apparently he knows that I have the only copy of the contract not in his possession.\"\n\n\"If he's as powerful as he would have to be to open a Hellpit,\" Martin began, \"couldn't he simply kill you and take it?\"\n\nRake smiled slowly. \"I welcome and eagerly anticipate his efforts. I would be most disappointed should he not try.\"\n\nEven Martin didn't know what to say to that. Rake was homicidal and suicidal at the same time. Must be a goblin thing.\n\n\"There has to be another entrance.\" Fred was standing off to the side, studying the rest of the room.\n\n\"Detective Ash raises a logical point,\" Rake said. \"Isidor Silvanus could hardly stroll into my establishment unnoticed. Not to mention access to the elevator and stairs down to this cellar is controlled by a coded keypad.\"\n\n\"Then why put a 'back door' here?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"For the same reason he has been staging most of his murders in buildings that I own,\" Rake said. \"Embarrass the goblin intelligence agency\u2014and me in particular. And for the coup de grace, should we fail to secure the Hellpit, the demons will emerge from here. It seems that Isidor now knows that the center of my web\u2014as Makenna so astutely described it\u2014is here at Bacchanalia. He wants it destroyed.\"\n\n\"You must have really pissed him off to get all this special attention,\" I said.\n\nOne side of Rake's lips curled upward. \"Many times and on numerous occasions.\"\n\n\"Has it ever occurred to you to stop pissing people off? Or at least be more discreet about it?\"\n\nHis crooked grin grew. \"I am the very soul of discretion, lovely Makenna. I was merely doing my job. It is no fault of mine that my job is a source of great annoyance for Isidor. Besides, to obtain a source of brimstone, he simply would have opened his Hellpit somewhere else in the city. The danger would be the same, and we would not have had the trail of bread crumbs that led us here. When you look at it that way, it was a good thing I did piss him off. It made him predictable.\"\n\nIan snorted. \"We haven't found him yet.\"\n\nI stood perfectly still as the sides of the portal slowly peeled apart.\n\nIan tensed. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"The portal's opening.\" Then I saw what lay beyond. \"And I think Isidor Silvanus just sent someone to let us in.\"\n\nA red-skinned and horned demon, no more than two feet tall, leisurely strolled toward the opening from the other side, swinging what looked like an old-fashioned key that was nearly as big as he was.\n\nThat was surreal. Like _Alice in Wonderland_ surreal.\n\n\"Any of you see the demon lord mini-me walking toward us from the other side?\" I asked.\n\n\"No,\" Ian and Rake said.\n\nWith a smile revealing a mouth entirely too full of jagged teeth, the little demon embedded the key like a spear into the right side of the portal wall\u2014or whatever it was that a portal had\u2014and stepped right through into the wine cellar with us.\n\nIan and Fred reached for their guns.\n\nRake reached for his magic.\n\nMartin reached for his camera.\n\nStill smiling, the little demon stopped in front of Rake and held out a folded piece of parchment complete with a red wax seal.\n\nRake took the parchment and instead of breaking the seal, he put his thumb in the middle and the wax vanished in a poof of rotten egg stink\u2014disarming whatever nastiness Silvanus had intended when the seal was broken.\n\nHe read it, then passed it to me and Ian.\n\nThe words began burning the paper as soon as it left Rake's hand.\n\nWe read fast then dropped the smoking parchment.\n\nThe instant it touched the floor, the demon disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the portal, and strolled away in the direction from which he'd come.\n\nSilvanus wrote that he had Kitty and was willing to release her in exchange for the contract. He wanted Rake to deliver the contract in person. He also wanted \"the seer, the human SPI agent, the half-elf law officer, and the demonologist.\"\n\nNo one else.\n\nAnd if all of us didn't step through that portal, the deal was off.\n\n\"I don't like it,\" Ian said.\n\n\"We've just been invited to Hell by an evil wizard,\" Fred said. \"And if we don't slam a Hellpit, demons invade and everyone dies. You'll have to be more specific, buddy.\"\n\nMy partner's face was set on perma-frown. \"You, Mac, and Martin don't need to be anywhere near here when this goes down.\"\n\n\"You go, I go,\" Fred told him. \"No arguments.\"\n\nI resisted the urge to roll my eyes. \"None of us want to be here, but we're on the guest list. Without Kitty, we don't stand a chance in hell . . .\" I stopped. \"If we live through this, that phrase is gonna have a whole new meaning.\"\n\n\"I have been to Hell,\" Martin told us. \"The rest of you have not\u2014with the possible exception of Magus Danescu. I must go as a guide, if nothing else.\"\n\nRake actually did roll his eyes. \"The Hellpit isn't getting any smaller while you argue. Once the demons of Hell pass into this world, every living thing will become food\u2014or worse. We can't help Miss Poertner, or close the Hellpit, if we don't get inside.\"\n\nRake Danescu had become the voice of reason. We didn't need Kitty to close the Hellpit. Hell itself had just frozen over.\n\n\"There were two more lines I couldn't read before it burned up,\" I said to Rake. \"What did they say?\"\n\n\"Isidor claims he cannot\u2014or more likely, will not\u2014guarantee our safety once we're inside. He claims to have limited influence over his hosts.\"\n\n\"He didn't say anything about weapons,\" Ian noted with grim satisfaction.\n\n\"It is likely that weapons from our dimension will not work there,\" Martin told us. \"Particularly automatic weapons.\"\n\nI couldn't believe my ears. \"You've got to be kidding.\"\n\n\"The closer we get to the Hellpit\u2014and therefore to Hell itself\u2014the less effective the technology from our world will be.\" Martin almost looked embarrassed. \"I discovered this through unpleasant personal experience during one of my excursions.\"\n\n\"What about your camera?\"\n\nThe demonologist actually smiled. \"Older technology such as this will not be affected.\"\n\n\"Since the Hellpit was opened by Isidor,\" Rake said, \"and presumably that portal was his creation as well, the very air on the other side will be filled with the influence of his magic. Different rules will most definitely apply.\"\n\nIan snorted. \"Silvanus's rules.\"\n\nRake shook his head. \"Dark magic rules.\" His eyes glittered in what I could swear was anticipation. \"I know this game.\"\n\n\"I don't know of any rules that would keep cold steel from doing its job,\" Ian said. \"You got knives?\" he asked me.\n\n\"Many,\" I assured him.\n\n\"Get more. Sandy?\"\n\nSandra turned to her closest commandos and then started passing me blades in sheaths, and I put them anywhere they'd comfortably go.\n\n\"Got an extra revolver?\" Ian asked the commander.\n\nSandra didn't say a word, just unclipped the old-fashioned six-shooter from her belt and passed it to him, along with a pouch of ammo.\n\nRake shook his head when Sandra offered him what I couldn't carry.\n\nIf dark magic would work, Rake should be armed for a demonic T-Rex. Hopefully we wouldn't have to find out.\n\n\"I'm fine, thank you,\" Martin said when one of the commandos offered him a wicked curved knife with a jagged blade.\n\nThe demonologist was smiling in gleeful anticipation.\n\nMarty was about to see his very first Hellpit.\n\n# 31\n\nTHE five of us stepped over the threshold of Bacchanalia's wine cellar and into a nightmare landscape, and we all got a good look at Isidor Silvanus's handiwork.\n\nI had to give him credit for creativity. The other side of the portal looked like a tunnel in a prehistoric cavern complete with stalagmites and stalactites. Along one side of the rock-strewn floor was a stream of what must have been molten brimstone flowing away from us and around a curve in the cave wall. I couldn't see what was around the corner, but I could sure see the bright orange glow.\n\nThere was no way all this was on the other side of the wall from Rake's wine cellar. You couldn't fling a dead rat below street level in New York without hitting subway tunnels and\/or water and sewer lines. There were a lot of things under the city streets, but a monstrous cavern complete with a brimstone creek shouldn't be one of them.\n\n\"This isn't right,\" was what I managed to say. \"This can't be here. It's too big.\"\n\n\"It's a pocket dimension,\" Rake said. The goblin turned back to where the portal opened, and his eyes shone with intent of murder most violent. \"And Isidor anchored it into the rock surrounding my cellar.\"\n\nI looked around. \"Jeez, how much room is on the other side of your wine cellar anyway?\"\n\n\"It couldn't be this much,\" Fred said.\n\n\"It's not,\" Martin told us. \"The size of the actual area outside of Bacchanalia's basement has no bearing on the size of a pocket dimension. In theory, it could be as small\u2014or as large\u2014as its creator wanted it to be.\"\n\nI stifled a whistle at the vault of the cavern ceiling far above our heads. \"Then Silvanus must be compensating for something.\"\n\n\"If it's a pocket dimension, then how does what's in here get out into the city when the Hellpit is fully open?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"Isidor's magic made it,\" Rake told him. \"Isidor's magic can unmake it. Once that Hellpit is completely open, he'll pop this pocket dimension like an overfilled water balloon.\"\n\n\"Sounds messy,\" Fred noted.\n\n\"If by messy you mean a cavern suddenly breaking through into our reality beneath the streets of this city, molten brimstone flowing through the sewers and subway tunnels, and demons hunting the streets\u2014then yes, it will be extremely messy.\"\n\nA swiftly flowing river of bubbling, molten brimstone ran beside a rock ledge barely wide enough for two of us to walk side by side. The altering landscape must have been a distortion of the pocket dimension\u2014or the landscape was shifting and changing as the Hellpit somewhere farther in the cavern continued to grow. Color was apparently distorted as well. When we'd first stepped through the portal, the rocks had looked, well, rock colored. In reality they were sulfuric yellow.\n\nAnd I'd always thought the Yellow Brick Road led to Oz.\n\nThat'd make Isidor the Wicked Witch of the West, Kitty would be Dorothy, and the contract Rake carried was the Ruby Slippers. Rake wouldn't qualify as Glinda the Good on his best day, more like the Wizard of Oz. At the end of the movie, Oz had floated away in a balloon, leaving Dorothy and company to fend for themselves.\n\nMy subconscious kept replaying _that_ part for me as a portent of impending doom.\n\nOurs.\n\nI'd only heard about Rake's power. Other than the fire door, I'd never witnessed anything big myself, and until now I'd never minded. One person I'd heard it from had been Vivienne Sagadraco. If the boss said Rake was powerful, I'd believe her without proof. However, she'd also said that he was dangerous. I'd always assumed she meant dangerous to anyone he went up against. Now was not a good time to have my assumption disproven.\n\nI pushed those thoughts out of my head, making myself focus on what was likely to get me killed now rather than later. When in enemy territory, a little noise to cover any sounds you might make was a good thing. Usually. The sounds we were hearing wouldn't be called good in anyone's estimation. A sharp snap and crack was repeating at irregular intervals, as if something that wasn't supposed to be breakable was being broken. Like I said, not good.\n\nWe walked and walked, but didn't seem to be getting any closer to the turn in the path and the Hellpit presumably beyond.\n\nIsidor Silvanus was playing with us.\n\n\"Does this qualify as the dark magic games you were referring to?\" Ian asked.\n\n\"It would,\" Rake replied. \"Isidor is attempting to control time here. He's trying to delay our arrival.\"\n\nFred wiped sweat from his face. \"Seems to be doing a damn fine job.\"\n\nThere was a grouping of sharp rocks not too far down the path. \"Those rocks haven't gotten any closer,\" I pointed out. \"It's like we're walking on a freakin' treadmill.\"\n\nRake nodded once. \"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Anything you can do about this?\" Ian asked Rake.\n\n\"There is. The question then becomes are you ready for a fight?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How much of a fight?\" Fred asked.\n\nA wise man, Fred.\n\n\"I know what you're capable of,\" Fred told Ian. \"No offense, Mac. You're feisty, but we _are_ approaching Hell.\"\n\n\"Thanks for the vote of confidence.\"\n\n\"Nothing personal.\" The half-elf cop jerked his thumb at Martin. \"Then we've got the Professor back there doing a _National Geographic_ photo shoot.\"\n\nThe demonologist was squatting down on the very edge of the ledge, clicking off shots of a fat, pale worm-like demon that was using six caterpillar-like legs to pull itself up against the ledge like it was the edge of a swimming pool, and was curiously studying Martin with a pair of round, black eyes.\n\nMartin must have sensed us all watching him in complete disbelief. He stopped clicking.\n\n\"Don't let me keep you. I'm fine. Merely taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.\"\n\n\"Isidor is attempting to delay us by controlling time here,\" Rake told him, \"so I'm going to teleport the five of us closer to the Hellpit. I need you to move closer.\"\n\nMartin glanced down with concern at the chubby foot-long worm. \"Manipulating time can adversely affect these larvae's development. Since it's occurring, the parent must not be aware of it. Isidor Silvanus may be able to slow the passage of time, but he's still a guest here, so he really shouldn't. Would you like him to stop?\"\n\nThe goblin raised one perfect eyebrow. \"That was my desired solution.\"\n\n\"I think I can help with that.\"\n\n\"If so, your assistance would be much appreciated.\"\n\nI didn't say a word. I couldn't. There were way too many WTFs in that exchange for me to process. Fred and Ian were likewise afflicted. This was approaching a _Twilight Zone_ level of strange.\n\nMartin reached out with his index finger and touched the larva right on top of its squishy little head. Neither moved for at least ten seconds, then Martin stood and came over to where we waited.\n\n\"The larva will relay our predicament and request to its parent.\" The demonologist looked back to where the worm\/larva had disappeared back into the molten brimstone with a plop. \"It shouldn't take long. This particular demon at this early stage of development is still telepathically linked to the parents.\"\n\n\"How can you be sure he . . . it will relay the message?\" Ian asked.\n\nMartin shrugged. \"Demon larva like me. I guess you can say I'm good with children.\"\n\nI had no response for that, either.\n\n\"Thank you, Dr. DiMatteo,\" Rake said. \"Let's continue and pick up the pace. When Isidor realizes his efforts have been thwarted, he'll attack us in another way.\"\n\nWe walked faster, and after a few minutes, we began making progress.\n\n\"Let's hear it for Marty's tattle-worm,\" Fred muttered.\n\nRake and Ian had slowed, their full attention on a patch of shadow ahead of us, that, judging from Ian's hand hovering above Sandra's six-shooter, wasn't simply another harmless spot of dark.\n\nThe shadow moved and\u2014\n\nWait. It _moved_?\n\nWhat looked to be just another shadow started moving all by its lonesome and spread to cover the hallway from side to side. If we wanted to get past it\u2014and we had to\u2014we needed to go through it.\n\nNope.\n\nI didn't even have to consult my lizard brain on that one. My entire brain was in agreement\u2014no way was I stepping into that.\n\nFred took one step back, sharing my misgivings.\n\nNaturally, Ian didn't budge. My partner was the poster boy for determination.\n\nThe corner of the cavern wall was visible through the apparently sentient shadow.\n\nRake picked up a chunk of brimstone rock and threw it through the shadow.\n\nThe rock vanished.\n\nIt went in, but it didn't come out the other side.\n\nNope. Definitely nope.\n\n\"Alternate route?\" I asked.\n\nNo sooner were the words out of my mouth than the shadow began flowing down a narrow path, away from us, in the direction we needed to go.\n\nToward the Hellpit.\n\nFred let out the breath we'd all been holding. \"And that, boys and girl, is our engraved invitation.\"\n\n* * *\n\nWe'd all seen the glow of the Hellpit the entire way here. But even the glow and the overwhelming stench couldn't prepare us for what lay around that last turn.\n\nWe were hit with a wall of heat and sulfuric fumes coming off a Hellpit the size of my granddaddy's catfish pond that was bubbling with molten brimstone\u2014and all of it irrationally located just outside of Bacchanalia's wine cellar.\n\n\"Isn't a pit more like a hole in the ground?\" Fred asked.\n\n\"That's what I've always thought,\" I said.\n\n\"Then that's a big damn pit.\"\n\nEven more disturbing was finding the source of the snapping and cracking we'd been hearing. It was the rock floor breaking and giving way under the pit's relentless expansion.\n\nThe floor trembled beneath our feet as another few inches of the cavern floor crumbled and fell into the lagoon.\n\nThere were bones lying around the shoreline. Humanoid. Meaning human, elf, goblin, or vampire. With the exception of fangs on the vampires and goblins, the only way to know for sure would be to get them in a lab.\n\nDeath was the great equalizer.\n\n\"I think we found the missing drug dealers,\" Ian murmured.\n\nI had an unwanted flashback to the chicken bones in my bathtub. This was what the aftermath of baby demon mealtime looked like when they got hold of something big. I focused on the closest skeleton. That could have been me, except my remains would've been in my apartment and not on the shore of a Hellpit, but that was small comfort.\n\nContrary to how most humans envisioned it, the entrance to Hell wasn't in the bowels of our Earth. It was on another plane of existence. It could just as easily have opened like a door behind us, but in my opinion, nothing was a more appropriate entrance to Hell than a stinking, molten, sulfuric pit.\n\nWhen we got out of here\u2014 _if_ we got out of here\u2014the clothes I was wearing were history. No amount of washing would get the rotten egg stink out.\n\nSPI offered hazard pay to its agents. I'd been told in HSR (Human and Supernatural Resources) on my first day that since all of our work was considered dangerous, rarely did a situation arise that qualified for hazard pay. Even hunting two adult grendels and their dozens of spawn in the pitch-dark tunnels underneath Times Square didn't qualify.\n\nStill, I had to ask.\n\n\"Does storming what's basically the gates of Hell qualify for hazard pay?\"\n\nIan nodded. \"Yeah, it does.\"\n\nOh goody.\n\nNow we just had to live long enough to collect.\n\n# 32\n\nI scanned the opposite shore of the brimstone pond.\n\nWe'd been expecting demons throwing a beach party to celebrate their imminent invasion\u2014at least that's what I'd expected to see. All we'd actually seen was the demon lord's mini-me, Marty's demonic toddler, and the shadow that had a mind of its own. Not that I minded reaching the Hellpit with zero attempts on our lives, but I didn't trust it. Not that I'd know what to do if one of the locals jumped out at me. Considering what the locals were, the first thing I'd do was probably wet my pants. While embarrassing, I didn't think anyone would blame me.\n\n\"Mac,\" Ian said.\n\nThat one word contained a world of communication.\n\n\"I'm looking. Nothing and no one yet.\"\n\nI continued to scan what dry land remained that wasn't covered by brimstone. Ian didn't have to say he didn't like it. I didn't like it, either. None of us did. This setup had trap written all over it.\n\nA stalagmite wavered.\n\n_Huh?_\n\nI blinked to clear my vision. It could be the heat. It was like a sauna in here, but nothing else around the stalagmite was wavering.\n\n\"Wavy rock formation at high noon.\"\n\nIan and Rake stepped up next to me, one on each side. Fred was a solid presence at my back. Though considering what I most wanted to do was turn and run, a solid Fred right behind me wasn't good for either one of us, unless he wanted to get trampled.\n\nIf it was a veil or shield, it was the best one I'd ever seen or heard of. I wouldn't expect anything less from an elf dark mage strong enough to have opened a catfish-pond-sized Hellpit.\n\nRake's hands were at his side, glowing with the bright red of a defensive spell held in check. If this had been a dirt street in the Wild West, Rake would have been the gunslinger with his hands hovering over his six-shooters.\n\nIan had Sandra's actual six-shooter in his hand.\n\nAn elf stepped away from the front of the stalagmite, his face and form shifting from a perfect camouflage match for the rock back to his own features.\n\nDamn.\n\nHe'd been standing in plain sight the entire time like a chameleon. His breathing was what had made what I was seeing waver.\n\nIf Isidor Silvanus hadn't been about to release literal Hell on Earth, I would have been impressed.\n\nAnd yes, I knew it was Silvanus standing on the other side of the Hellpit. I didn't need an introduction. I'd seen him before. Twice. On the other side of the portals in Sar Gedeon's apartment and in the parking garage.\n\nTall, dark, pale, and evil.\n\nHis hair was black, his skin alabaster, and his eyes bright blue.\n\nRake was right. The elf was good-looking, pretty, even. Too pretty. And too perfect. If he'd been human, I'd say he'd had work done. Since he was an elf, I'd say their highborn family tree needed to add some new branches for variety.\n\nSilvanus had framed himself in front of an arrangement of thin stalagmites that bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain throne on Ord's favorite show.\n\nSomeone thought highly of himself.\n\nRake had called him obscenely powerful. Alastor had called him arrogant. I'd suggest adding vain, narcissistic, self-appointed special snowflake to that growing list.\n\nEmerging from behind the throne to stand next to him was exactly what Bert had described to Martin.\n\nA demon lord.\n\nSeven-foot tall, red skin, tail as long as I was tall, smooth back, swimmer's build, horns curved and slightly tilted toward the back. Then there was the one thing Bert had left out: glowing, yellow eyes. I don't know how he missed that.\n\nIsidor Silvanus spoke, his voice like warm honey. \"I provide you with the safest passage it is in my power to grant, and what thanks do I get?\"\n\nRake's hands glowed even brighter; now they were the color of freshly spilled blood. \"More restraint than you deserve.\"\n\nThe elf smiled. \"You took your time getting here, Rake.\"\n\n\"No, we took yours.\" The goblin met his smile and raised him two fully extended fangs. For the first time since I'd known him, Rake's fangs weren't for display only. He planned to use magic to defeat Isidor Silvanus, but if the fight got up close, I had no doubt that Rake would get personal with his incisors.\n\n\"You brought the individuals that I requested,\" Silvanus noted. \"And I didn't think you would grant even the simplest of my requests. I was wrong.\" The elf turned his attention to me. \"Miss Fraser.\"\n\n\"That would be _Agent_ Fraser to you and yours.\" My voice didn't quaver in the least. Good for me.\n\n\"Ah yes. Agent. A member of that misguided organization that passes for supernatural law enforcement on this world. And Detective Ash. You chose to ally yourself with the mortal police.\" The elf mage smiled in a show of perfect teeth, a smile that actually reached his eyes. \"I will enjoy watching your comrade-in-arms' feeble attempts to defend this city's citizens once brimstone\u2014and their blood\u2014is flowing through its streets.\" His sharp, blue eyes regarded Ian. \"Agent Byrne I have heard about from a mutual acquaintance. He sincerely regrets that your reunion was cut short on New Year's Eve, and would very much like to\u2014how do you humans say\u2014'reach out' to you in the very near future.\"\n\nIsidor Silvanus didn't say anything else, and he didn't need to. Ian knew exactly who the elf was referring to, and so did I.\n\nThat night, years ago, when Ian had first encountered the creature, it had taken the appearance of a ghoul. The creature had killed\u2014and eaten\u2014Ian's partner in the NYPD in an interrupted robbery gone wrong. Ian had joined SPI soon afterward to hunt down the thing that'd eaten his partner. When I'd seen the creature in the subway tunnels beneath Times Square last New Year's Eve, my seer vision told me that the ghoul face he'd worn then was but one of many faces and identities he'd taken over the centuries. I had seen each face, each identity, layered on top of one another, stretching back into infinity. And only last week, according to SPI surveillance, he'd been seen at the Metropolitan Museum gala.\n\nSo I believed Isidor Silvanus when he said the ghoul was still in town, waiting for the chance to get his claw-tipped hands into Ian.\n\nIan didn't move or show any sign that the elf's words had affected him in the least.\n\nI knew they had, but my partner was pushing down his emotions until he could deal with them in the way he wanted. The ghoul wasn't here to be on the receiving end of those emotions, but Isidor Silvanus was. My partner was a practical man; he'd make do with what he had.\n\n\"And Dr. DiMatteo,\" Silvanus said. \"Last, but far from least. The mortal who knows so much more about the darker realms than he should. You have been quite inconvenient.\"\n\nFred slapped the demonologist on the back. \"Hear that, Doc? You're inconvenient. Way to go.\"\n\n\"My partners and I have been forced to accelerate our plans. I requested your presence since each of you, in your own way, is to blame for that. You will be the first to experience what your world will soon become.\"\n\n\"That wasn't what\u2014\" Martin began.\n\n\"That was precisely what you agreed to, Dr. DiMatteo. In exchange for the contract, I will release Miss Poertner to you. However, I have no intention of closing the Hellpit.\" He gazed around. \"At this point, closing it would be more of a challenge than even I could overcome. Though it will be entertaining to watch the little mortal woman try.\"\n\n\"If you can't close this pit,\" Rake began, \"then what is my incentive to give you the contract?\"\n\n\"Give me the contract and you will not have to watch Miss Poertner die in one of the worst ways you could imagine.\"\n\nRake wasn't moved. \"One life saved over the lives of millions lost. You'll have to do better than that, Isidor. Again, what is my incentive?\"\n\n\"You will have a _chance_ , goblin. A chance that Miss Poertner might actually succeed where I might fail\u2014should I be inclined to attempt to close my masterpiece, which I am not. A chance was more than you had before I allowed you through that portal. Humans are such optimists, even in the face of miserable odds. It will be\u2014how do you say\u2014a 'win-win.' You and your companions die a noble death, and my partners gain unlimited access to this world.\"\n\n\"That's a crappy win,\" Fred muttered.\n\n\"For you, but not for Lord Danescu. This goblin has survived every attempt to end his life, and there have been many, including my own.\"\n\nRake shrugged. \"Everyone has an off day.\"\n\n\"But you won't be having an off day today, will you, goblin? Once again, you will fight to save your own life.\" The elf mage smiled. \"But in the next few minutes, will you fight for the lives of your companions\u2014even if it will mean losing your own?\"\n\nRake's dark eyes narrowed. \"You've wasted enough of our time.\"\n\n\"Oh, but I believe it is a fine use of time.\" The elf began walking around the Hellpit toward us. \"Your companions should know what they have welcomed into their fold.\"\n\nIan snorted. \"I wouldn't say 'welcomed.'\"\n\n\"Then you are a wiser man than I would have thought, Agent Byrne. I have been observing Lord Danescu and Agent Fraser, and have noted that the goblin goes through the motions of considering her more than merely a temporary human amusement. His performance was quite impressive at the museum last week and the caf\u00e9 a few days ago. He nearly made a believer out of me, and I know Rake far too well to be fooled. You've known him for little more than a year, Agent Fraser, and as a human, you can hardly be faulted for being deceived.\"\n\n\"Nice try,\" I said.\n\nTruth was it was a damned fine try. It was also the oldest trick in the book. Sow doubt, weaken the enemy. There were many levels of trust, and I still didn't know which ones, if any, Rake was good for. It probably depended on which way the wind was blowing. Isidor Silvanus knew we had to rely on Rake and his magic whether we wanted to or not, and he wanted to weaken what little trust we did have.\n\nThe question \"Did I trust Rake?\" had two answers: yes, and not as far as I could throw him.\n\nBoth were true. Both were Rake.\n\nGoblins were complicated.\n\n\"You and Miss Poertner are valuable commodities,\" Silvanus was saying. \"Being a businessman, Lord Danescu is quick to identify and exploit any asset he may find. Tell me, Agent Fraser, has he offered you employment?\"\n\nOnly within two minutes of meeting me.\n\n\"And when you did not accept, did his attentions turn to more of a romantic nature?\"\n\nWithin two and a half minutes of meeting me.\n\n\"Our Rake can be most persistent\u2014and patient\u2014in acquiring the things he wants.\"\n\nNot people. Things.\n\nEvery word Isidor Silvanus said was true. However, there were also grains of truth in every lie. Rake may have started out wanting me because of my seer gift, but over the past year, that had changed.\n\nOr had it?\n\nI knew what my gut told me, and my gut had never been wrong. But when it came to Rake, my heart was reserving judgment.\n\nI'd never been in love. I suspected if Rake ever had been, once he'd realized what'd happened, he'd probably run in the opposite direction like he was on fire. I think Rake liked me. I know he lusted after me\u2014and any beautiful and breathing woman. I was breathing, but I wasn't beautiful.\n\nThe only thing left was what I could do, the reason Rake had wanted to hire me the first night we'd met. The thing he lusted after.\n\nI was a seer. A good one.\n\nA valuable commodity, as Isidor Silvanus had put it.\n\nRake's motives were a mystery.\n\nBut right now, his motives didn't matter. Perhaps he truly cared what happened to our world beyond losing a strategic outpost against the elves, or he was simply too stubborn and proud to accept defeat on any level.\n\nRake Danescu was a goblin. He could balance motives like a plate spinner. But there was one thing that I did trust. Rake would never hurt me. If he thought he had a good reason, he would tell me white lies, black lies, and every-color-of-the-rainbow lies, but I knew in my gut, heart, and head that Rake would never hurt me.\n\nFor now, that was enough.\n\nIsidor Silvanus and the demon lord arrived on our side of the Hellpit.\n\nThe elf beckoned Rake to him with a wave of his hand. \"The contract, if you please.\"\n\nThe goblin made no move. \"Miss Poertner?\"\n\nSilvanus impatiently waved a hand, illuminating an area directly over the Hellpit, and dropping yet another veil.\n\nWe all looked up.\n\nOh my God.\n\nKitty was imprisoned inside a clear stalactite suspended only a few feet above the bubbling surface. Whatever it was made of, it was melting, dripping with sizzling plops into the Hellpit.\n\nShe didn't look frightened. She was furious.\n\nGood for her. Better for her if we could get her out of there without either her or us getting flash fried in brimstone.\n\n\"As you can imagine, ice\u2014especially hollow ice\u2014doesn't last long in a place like this,\" Silvanus was saying. \"I can only do so much to slow the melting.\" He held out his hand. \"The contract, Danescu. Now.\"\n\nRake casually strolled toward them, stopping less than ten feet away. It was entirely too close for comfort. Knowing Rake, that was precisely why he did it. \"I find it difficult to believe that your partner failed to put his master's copy in a safe place.\" He paused and smiled slowly. \"Or did he put it in a place that was safe _from_ his master?\"\n\nThe demon lord's eyes were glowing bright yellow.\n\nRake hit a sore spot with that one.\n\n\"You toy with your betters, goblin,\" Silvanus warned. \"There was another goblin dark mage who, astonishingly enough, approached my level of skill, but he recently got himself carried off by a particularly large demon. He only conjured demons to force them to do his will. I prefer networking.\"\n\n\"Networking? Or collusion?\" Rake looked to the demon lord. \"You, Lord Zagam, desired a way out of your realm and into that belonging to the humans. I say 'your realm' only in the sense that you reside there. You neither rule nor own it.\" The goblin smiled broadly. \"I think we all know who does. And since you do not own it, you are legally ineligible to sell, lease, or rent brimstone mining rights to anyone. And you, Isidor, along with your brother, Phaon, needed access to molten brimstone. You dislike me intensely; your brother wanted to disrupt goblin intelligence, so you chose my wine cellar to anchor the pocket dimension containing your Hellpit. I am the legal owner of that property. You sought neither my permission nor offered me an owner's share in drug profits.\" Rake's smile was slow and confident. \"Anchoring your Hellpit on my property is trespassing. Selling mining rights to a mineral you do not own is outright theft. I don't own Hell, so I have no legal recourse. I do, however, own this property. I could charge you rent, Lord Zagam. Or I could evict you.\" Rake glanced around with exaggerated distaste. \"At the very least, I want to redecorate,\" he muttered. \"But for now, I'll go with eviction.\"\n\nThe demon lord smiled as he gazed around the ever-expanding pit and cavern, ending with Kitty imprisoned in the ice. \"You are welcome to try, mortal.\"\n\n\"As a very wise teacher well-known in this dimension once said: 'Do or do not. There is no try.' I fully intend to 'do.' Alastor Malvolia was hired and paid to draw up a contract between the two of you. You call yourself partners, but there is no trust between you, hence the contract. Alastor did as he was paid to do\u2014and more.\" Rake shook his head in admiration. \"To the two of you, contracts are merely words written with ink, and aren't worth the paper they're written on if you choose to go back on your word.\" He regarded the envelope and its contents with something close to pride. \"But this little document is truly a marvel of evil magic and legal genius. Alastor not only drafted the words, he crafted the paper from both demonic and elven skin, then he mixed his own goblin blood into the ink. His words, in his blood, paper from your people, and your signatures to soul-bind you to every word on this document.\"\n\nThe demon lord smiled, showing even more sharp teeth than his mini-me. \"This is a pocket dimension, created and owned by myself and Magus Silvanus. I am not in violation of the contract as we are not in Hell.\"\n\n\"Speak for yourself,\" Fred muttered under his breath.\n\n\"You may own the pocket dimension,\" Rake continued, \"but you do not own the brimstone that is now flowing through it. You have misrepresented your rights of ownership to all of this brimstone. According to the contract, that means the brimstone's true and legal owner is entitled to collect damages or recompense in any manner he chooses. I don't believe His Dread Majesty will be pleased to discover that his trusted chancellor profited from the sale of his property.\" Rake's dark eyes landed on Isidor Silvanus, and a faint smile curled one corner of his mouth. \"Or that an outsider knowingly purchased said property and exploited its use for additional gain, making you both equally guilty of grand theft. Only later did you discover Alastor's trickery in drawing up the contract\u2014and you killed him for it.\"\n\n\"I should have ensured the goblin lawyer was conscious and then cooked him at a lower temperature.\" Isidor Silvanus smiled indulgently. \"But what's done is done. Now here you are with the original\u2014and sole remaining\u2014copy. As usual Rake, you do far too little, too late.\"\n\nThe pointed base of Kitty's icicle prison ran water in a steady stream. Silvanus's concentration was wavering, and Kitty's prison was melting faster.\n\n\"You say you prefer networking,\" Rake continued as if Kitty had all the time in the world. Son of a bitch. \"Networking has its place, but so does rendering mutually beneficial favors.\" He raised his voice to a ringing shout. \"Have you heard enough, Dread Majesty?\"\n\nA red forearm the size of Rake's entire body emerged from the brimstone right beside the rock he was standing on. It rippled with lean muscles, and each long finger was tipped by a sharp, black nail. Thankfully we couldn't see the rest of it, but from elbow to fingertip, it looked just like the demon lord, albeit ten times his size.\n\nIf size meant higher on the power ladder in Hell, then Isidor Silvanus's demon lord pal was this big guy's bitch\u2014or if he wasn't already, he was about to be. The thumb and forefinger extended toward Rake like he was about to pinch the goblin's head clean off his shoulders.\n\nRake didn't flinch, but coolly reached out and put the contract between the two fingers.\n\nThe demonic fingers pinched closed and submerged beneath the bubbling surface.\n\nA collective, disbelieving gasp came from all of us.\n\nIsidor Silvanus's was more on the horrified end of the spectrum.\n\nThe demon lord looked ready to faint.\n\nOh yeah, someone was in trouble.\n\n\"No need for concern,\" Rake told us. \"The paper content is seventy percent demon skin, making it hellfire and brimstone proof.\"\n\nConsidering that Kitty was inside a melting icicle over a Hellpit, I didn't give a rat's ass that the paper was seventy-percent recycled demon.\n\n\"Dammit, Rake, hurry up!\" I whispered.\n\n\"While your master is reviewing the contract,\" Rake said, \"apparently for the first time\u2014do be reasonable and release Miss Poertner.\"\n\nThe demon lord inhaled, turned to Kitty's icicle, and blew freaking fire directly at her. What was left of the ice kept Kitty from bursting into flames, but the icicle was history.\n\nKitty fell, screaming.\n\nRake caught her.\n\nHe didn't run across the surface of the brimstone and catch her as she fell\u2014though that would have been impressive, too. He extended his arm, spread the fingers of his hand, and her fall stopped.\n\nThat would be magic.\n\nKitty's eyes were as wide as saucers at the sensation of dangling in midair over a pit of molten and popping brimstone.\n\nIsidor Silvanus threw a fist full of acid-green fire at her only to have it deflected by the bubble-like shield Rake had wrapped around her.\n\nKitty screamed again.\n\nI didn't blame her. Though this scream was less fear and more rage at being held in the air and used for target practice.\n\nThe elf dark mage simply chose another target.\n\nUs.\n\nIsidor Silvanus clenched his hands into fists, brought them sharply together, then wrenched them apart.\n\nAnd the rock beneath our feet snapped apart like slabs of ice from an iceberg, putting me, Ian, and Martin each on a hula-hoop-sized personal island, surrounded by, and floating\u2014not so well\u2014in, boiling brimstone.\n\nThe jolt knocked me off my feet, and the sudden shift in weight tipped my slab of rock and nearly tossed me over the side. I desperately grabbed the edge, brimstone spitting like Hell's bacon grease on my hands and face.\n\nI screamed. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it.\n\n_This_ was why Isidor Silvanus wanted us here. Rake couldn't save all of us, and the elf knew\u2014despite what he said about Rake only caring about himself\u2014that he'd try to save some of us. More hostages, more distractions, more chance of success for Silvanus. He'd thought about what could go wrong and he'd covered all of his bases.\n\n\"This is an unwanted complication,\" Martin noted.\n\nRake quickly gave the elf a taste of his own medicine.\n\nThe ledge where Isidor Silvanus was standing suddenly broke away from the cavern floor and tilted sharply down toward the Hellpit. The elf mage had to scramble to stay on his feet. Rake used the distraction to pull his extended hand to his chest, bringing Kitty with it. This time, he did catch her in his arms. Kitty didn't look any happier now than she had while dangling.\n\nThe demon lord bellowed in rage and flicked his clawed hand at Rake and Kitty. A sickly green blur formed in the air, coalescing into a massive snake, its head rearing far above Rake's head. The snake launched itself at them.\n\nRake barked a single word, and a shield of shimmering red appeared between he and Kitty and the snake. The serpent's head struck the shield with a frustrated hiss. The shield buckled but held. Barely.\n\nEven if Rake hadn't had his arms and hands full, we had a worse problem that even the most hotshot mage couldn't magic away.\n\nI thought my eyes had to be playing tricks on me, but they weren't. The brimstone's level was going down.\n\nThe Hellpit was draining.\n\nInto Hell.\n\nAnd taking us with it.\n\n\"This is bad,\" Martin said. \"Once the pit drains, we'll be in Hell and any demon that wants to come into this world can do so.\" For the first time I saw fear in Martin DiMatteo's eyes. \"And the Hellpit will be permanently open.\"\n\nThere were only a few feet between us and the rim of the Hellpit. The newly exposed rock steamed at the contact with the cooler air, rock that only seconds before had been under molten brimstone. Martin was closest to the rim. He could make it if he jumped now.\n\n\"Dammit, Marty!\" Ian roared. \"Jump!\"\n\nWith a defiant squeak, Marty leapt, just clearing the distance between his sinking slab and the cavern floor, both feet making a surprisingly solid landing.\n\nIan's slab was a few feet behind Marty's. There was no way I could make that jump, but Ian could. Both of us didn't have to die.\n\n\"Go!\" I shouted over the chaos. \"You can't help me from there!\"\n\nIan jumped. One foot made it over the top. His left boot caught in the steaming rock, and the leather caught fire. Fred grabbed a double-handful of Ian's leather jacket and pulled with everything he had. He and Ian landed in a heap on the cavern floor.\n\nThe slab that was taking me down to Hell like my own personal elevator had moved too far from any shore. There wasn't any direction that was a jumpable distance. Even if I could clear the distance, any part of my body that touched that shoreline would be instantly flash fried. Once the brimstone drained, I'd be an appetizer for the demons waiting at the bottom for the feast that was New York.\n\nWe had guns, we had knives, but we didn't have a fire-proof climbing rope.\n\nMy line of vision was now below the rim of the pit, but gunfire and flashes of red and acid green light accompanied by explosions and falling rock told me that everyone else was busy simply staying alive. The heat was overwhelming. I had to keep breathing, but each breath seared my mouth, throat, and lungs. I felt like I was cooking from the inside out. My grip on the slab began to slip.\n\n\"Mac!\" came a shout from above.\n\nI weakly raised my head.\n\nIan was on his hands and knees, leaning out over the pit. \"Help's coming, Mac! Hang on!\"\n\nA moment later all I could do was stare in openmouthed horror as Rake Danescu\u2014protected only by the red glow of his personal shields\u2014dove into the molten brimstone surrounding me.\n\nHe surfaced seconds later next to my slab, intact and not burned to a crisp, though he was sweating.\n\nI was beyond words, not only because I couldn't breathe for the heat, but from seeing Rake treading brimstone like water. I must have been dying _and_ delirious.\n\nRake reached up and grabbed my forearm, his hand cool and soothing. How could . . .?\n\nI blinked the sweat out of my eyes and looked down.\n\nRake's hand was glowing with his shielding spell\u2014and now, so was my arm.\n\nThe glow spread until my entire body was encased in its protective field.\n\nMy vision began to clear, and I could breathe again.\n\n\"Let go of the rock, Makenna,\" Rake was saying.\n\n_What?_ \"Are you\u2014\"\n\n\"Crazy? Kidding? Neither. I can't hold against this vortex for long. I'll swim us over to the wall.\"\n\nMy only other choice had me waiting to be sucked into Hell. Die in Rake's arms or be ripped apart by demons that never learned to share their food?\n\nI let go of the slab and slid into Rake's arms.\n\nAnd into the brimstone. Brimstone that amazingly felt no hotter than hot bathwater.\n\nRake flashed a quick grin as he held me tightly against his chest. \"Like being in a hot tub, except we're not naked.\"\n\nMy mouth was parched. I swallowed and panted. \"If that hot tub . . . was draining into Hell.\" I thought for a moment. \"Why didn't you pull . . . me out like you did with Kitty?\"\n\n\"That trick's one shot only.\"\n\nThe goblin was breathing heavily from keeping our heads above the brimstone and fighting the force of the whirlpool at the center of the pit that was beginning to pick up more speed.\n\nRake had expended an incredible amount of magical energy. Catching Kitty, fighting Silvanus, shielding the two of us\u2014it all picked that moment to catch up with him. The current grabbed us both, sweeping us away from the walls and toward the pit's now churning center.\n\nI couldn't think, I couldn't react, and I had no air to scream.\n\nRake's grip around my waist and back never lessened.\n\nA swell of brimstone passed between us and the vortex. Something was swimming just beneath the surface. Something huge.\n\nA white worm as big around as a pair of fifty-five-gallon drums breached the surface like a whale. The massive head swiveled and two pitch-black eyes the size of a man's fist focused on us.\n\nIt was a larger version of Marty's demon toddler.\n\nOne of the parents. Or _the_ parent, depending on how demonic white worms reproduced.\n\nI'd given up trying to make sense of anything I'd seen since stepping through that portal. I stared in dumbfounded amazement. It was all my stunned mind could do.\n\nRake's cough sounded like a laugh.\n\nThe giant worm submerged, and my stomach tightened at what I knew it was going to do.\n\nOh crap, crap, _crap_!\n\nRake tightened his grip on me. \"Hang on, darling.\"\n\nThe worm surfaced again right next to us, gently but forcefully nudging us away from the vortex and toward the nearest wall. I'd heard of dolphins supporting drowning swimmers and pushing them toward shore. I never expected to experience it with a dolphin in the ocean, much less with a demon worm in a brimstone whirlpool.\n\nThe worm held us against the wall with its broad head until we could get a few much needed breaths.\n\n\"Get on my back,\" Rake told me.\n\n\"What\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm climbing out . . . you on my back.\"\n\n\"How can you\u2014\"\n\n\"Muscle . . . and magic.\"\n\nAt least the last part made sense.\n\nI looked up at the jagged Hellpit wall. There were enough hand- and footholds, but it was completely vertical. Goblins were stronger than humans, so Rake would have been able to do it if he was at full strength, but he wasn't. Plus, he'd be carrying me like a backpack and maintaining the shields that were all that was keeping both of us from bursting into flames.\n\nI looked from the wall into Rake's eyes. The reasons why this was impossible were limitless. The other options we had were none.\n\nI chuckled, though it sounded like some kind of vocal spasm. \"Do or do not.\"\n\nRake gave me a crooked grin. \"There is no try.\"\n\nI got on Rake's back, wrapping my legs around his waist, my right arm around his middle, my left arm over his left shoulder, clasping my hands over the center of his chest. It wouldn't do either one of us any good if I choked him on the way out of here.\n\nThe momma worm submerged, leaving us.\n\nWith his hands and feet glowing even brighter than the rest of him, Rake Danescu actually climbed out of Hell carrying me on his back.\n\nIan and Fred were there along with Kitty and Martin to pull us out, but there was no sign of Isidor Silvanus or his demon lord partner.\n\nIan pulled me to my feet and didn't let go.\n\n\"Where's Silvanus?\" I asked him.\n\n\"He ran. Rake could have either chased him down, or gone after you.\"\n\nIf Silvanus hadn't run, Rake would have been forced to stay and fight\u2014and I would have been sucked down a brimstone vortex into Hell.\n\nThank you for being a coward, Isidor Silvanus.\n\nI gave a little sickly grin. \"I like his choice.\"\n\n\"It was a damned fine one.\" Ian's gaze searched my face. \"You okay?\"\n\n\"Better when we get out of here.\"\n\nIan hadn't said a word about not being able to help me. I knew he didn't like Rake Danescu, but there were times like now when personal feelings had to be tossed to the curb.\n\nSuddenly my ears popped. Painfully. I could actually feel the hot air around us pressing down on my body. I took a quick glance around. Everyone looked similarly pained and confused.\n\nRake put his hands to his ears. \"Isidor has used his 'back door,' as Agent Byrne called it, to leave this pocket dimension.\" He snarled in frustration at not having the elf's neck between those hands. \"He just took the first step in collapsing it.\"\n\nFred swore. \"We'll be trapped.\"\n\nRake shook his head. \"It'll simply force the demons out of the Hellpit faster. They won't miss their chance to get out into the world.\"\n\nI had news, neither would we.\n\n\"I have to close the pit now,\" Kitty said. \"Quickly.\"\n\nWe'd all done everything we'd come to do and could do. Taking in our singed, burned, and battered selves, it was obvious that hadn't gone too well for us. Now it was Kitty's turn. Stop the worst demons that Hell could hork up from invading New York and then the world. All the little baker had to do was close a pond-sized Hellpit. A Hellpit that within minutes, if not seconds, would be drained and permanently open, with demonic hordes streaming out of it.\n\nAnd she had to do it all without an anchor. Vivienne Sagadraco may have located one, but they were somewhere out there, and we were in here.\n\nNo pressure.\n\nRake turned back to face the Hellpit.\n\n\"Go,\" he told the rest of us, including Kitty.\n\nAs much as all of us would've loved to have done just that, none of us did.\n\nKitty quickly stepped in front of Rake and strode to the rim of the Hellpit. She extended her arms out over the pit, palms down.\n\nThe goblin was incredulous. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"My job.\"\n\n\"It's too big now for you to close.\"\n\nKitty's glare was withering.\n\n\"By yourself,\" Rake added.\n\nRake could be wise, too.\n\n\"Are you offering to anchor me?\" she asked.\n\n\"I am.\"\n\nKitty hesitated. \"What are your qualifications?\"\n\n\"I'm here.\"\n\nKitty looked at me, her question there but unspoken.\n\nYes, Rake was here, but could she depend on him? He'd been there for me, but would he stay there for her?\n\nThe anchor mages who had worked with her in the past either didn't have the strength for the work or the balls for the danger.\n\nWould Rake Danescu stand with her until the end\u2014whatever that end might turn out to be\u2014or would he bolt like all the others when she needed him most?\n\nShe needed to know if she could trust him.\n\nShe wanted to know if _I_ trusted him.\n\nRake's eyes were on me. So were Kitty's.\n\nI nodded to them both.\n\n* * *\n\nIf Kitty had been able to turn the incredible power she was using now to close the Hellpit against Isidor Silvanus, the elf mage would've been a greasy spot in SPI's parking lot, she wouldn't have been kidnapped, and we never would have had to set foot inside the pocket dimension. We could have done all this from Rake's wine cellar, and then celebrated by popping open a couple of bottles. Heck, after this was over, even I wanted a drink.\n\nThe Hellpit was about half the size that it had been, when Kitty went pale and started shaking, and the sounds from below increased in volume and intensity: howls, shrieks, roars, and screams. After being kidnapped by an elf dark mage and spending who knew how long encased in an icicle, Kitty's body was only human, and it had had enough.\n\nRake stepped up behind her and simply placed his hands on her shoulders.\n\nMy seer vision couldn't detect what was passing between them, but I assumed Rake was boosting her power with what remained of his own.\n\nHowever, as the Hellpit continued to close, the distance between us and the wine cellar portal grew.\n\nIan saw the same thing I did and scowled, his only reaction to possibly being trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension with an only mostly closed Hellpit. Neither of us said a word or moved, doing nothing that could distract Kitty and Rake from their task of what was the magical equivalent of world-record powerlifting.\n\nMartin DiMatteo was fearfully looking up at the cavern ceiling.\n\nWhen a man who took field trips to Hell was afraid, the time to panic had officially arrived.\n\n\"Lord Danescu,\" he said on the barest whisper, \"the dimension is being elongated.\"\n\nKitty never took her eyes and focus off of the work in front of her, but Rake took a quick glance up, and bared his teeth in a silent hiss.\n\nThe realization of what Martin meant sank in and suddenly there wasn't nearly enough air.\n\nIsidor Silvanus had created this pocket dimension, so he could manipulate it. The rules in here were his rules\u2014and basic physics. The dimension was anchored in two places: Hell and Bacchanalia. Two ends of a long and narrow balloon.\n\nAs we watched, the stone ceiling of the cavern was being stretched as if the two ends of that balloon were being simultaneously pulled apart. It was what you did to make balloon animals. The balloon started off as a snake, which was the only kind of animal I'd ever been able to make. But in experienced hands, it could be twisted into a poodle. I had no doubt that Isidor Silvanus and his demon lord partner were master manipulators. Yes, they'd cut their losses and run, but if they couldn't release demons into our world, they'd cut us off from any hope of getting home, trapping us with what demons managed to escape the Hellpit before Kitty and Rake could get it closed. Or if they got it closed, the elf would be fine with trapping us in a tiny pocket dimension, forever cut off from any help, until our air ran out or we cooked from the heat, whichever came first.\n\nThen another ugly realization hit. As badly as he wanted revenge against Rake, that just might have been his plan all along.\n\nLure us in, cut us off.\n\nI didn't want to die inside of a poodle ear.\n\n\"Rake,\" Martin said, dropping formality and the goblin's title. \"We need to run. Now.\"\n\n\"It's not closed,\" Kitty managed between clenched teeth. \"They can still get out.\"\n\n\"It's close enough,\" Rake said. \"And in a few moments, it won't matter.\"\n\nKitty was aghast. \"I can't just let it go!\"\n\n\"Just drop\u2014\" Fred began.\n\n\"The recoil,\" Rake said in realization. He readjusted his grip on Kitty's shoulders. \"Let's ease back on it\u2014\"\n\nMartin was still looking up. \"No time.\"\n\n\"No choice!\" Rake snapped. \"All of you go. We'll be right behind you.\"\n\nNone of us moved.\n\n\"Stubborn humans,\" the goblin hissed.\n\n\"That would be us,\" Fred drawled. \"Well, at least half of me.\"\n\nI wanted to run, but I'd settle for pacing, except it might distract Kitty and Rake. So I just stood there, twitching. I couldn't get any sense that they were doing anything except standing like statues staring at a Hellpit.\n\n\"Hurry,\" Martin told them, his voice amazingly calm.\n\nRake murmured a few words in Kitty's ear as she slowly lowered her arms.\n\nAnd a triumphant howl from countless demonic throats came out of the smaller\u2014but not small enough\u2014pit and filled the cavern.\n\n\"Run!\" Rake shouted.\n\nWe all did. Rake and Kitty included.\n\nWe didn't look back. I didn't want to. If a demon was going to catch up with me, it'd happen. I couldn't run any faster, and if a demon did catch me, I'd get a good look at him while he killed me.\n\nI had yet another in a long line of horrible thoughts. What if Isidor Silvanus had closed the portal into Bacchanalia's wine cellar? Sandra and her team were there, but if the elf wanted to slam the door in their faces, there'd have been nothing they could've done about it.\n\nI shoved that thought aside. I'd tear into that portal with my teeth if I had to. Besides, we had Kitty. If she could close a Hellpit, there hadn't been a portal made that she couldn't rip open.\n\nAn unearthly shriek came from right behind us, immediately followed by a ground-shaking impact, Ian's shouts, and Rake's snarls. I stopped and turned.\n\nIan and Rake had been bringing up the rear, and now they were paying the price.\n\nA demon had Rake on his back pinned to the path, holding the goblin down with only one massive clawed hand. The demon was blue, bald, and had biceps the size of the goblin's head.\n\nNormally, big wouldn't have mattered with Rake. He had enough preternatural strength and speed to give that demon a run for his money.\n\nBut Rake was exhausted, physically and magically; still, he wasn't giving up.\n\nI drew a knife. I couldn't kill it, I probably wouldn't even hurt it, but I wouldn't stand by while Rake was ripped\u2014\n\nNeither would Ian.\n\nMy partner had long run out of bullets for his six-shooter, but he had a pair of long knives in his hands and was moving faster than I'd ever seen him move, darting in, striking, and making each cut count. I knew what he was doing. The demon's nails were basically five-inch-long claws, and he knew how to use them. Ian couldn't get close enough for the kill, so he was trying to do enough damage to force the demon to turn and defend himself, giving us enough time to drag Rake out of there.\n\nThen Ian would be facing the demon's full wrath.\n\nThe stone path shook, and it wasn't from the collapsing pocket dimension.\n\nDemons, a wall of demons, were charging toward us.\n\nAnd my partner had his back to them.\n\n\"Ian!\" I screamed.\n\nThe blue demon half turned, and seeing his comrades bearing down on us, smiled in a show of elongated shark-like teeth.\n\nHe shouldn't have stopped to be happy.\n\nRake had one knife left, and he used it, slicing the demon's wrist, nearly severing it from the clawed hand still holding him down. The demon howled, and Ian dove under his guard, and with two slashing motions, hamstrung him.\n\nThe demon went down, and Ian pulled Rake to his feet.\n\nWe got Rake's arms across our shoulders and our arms around his waist, and together we dragged the goblin and ourselves through the portal Kitty was holding open for us.\n\nNo one had told us what to expect when escaping from a Hellpit inside a collapsing pocket dimension. Then again, I didn't think anyone knew.\n\nAll things considered, being in Hell's anteroom one second and stepping with a gooey plop onto the floor of Rake's fancy wine cellar the next was a small price to pay. I could have done without being coated in exit portal ecto-goop, but I wasn't going to quibble.\n\nRake couldn't see through the blood that'd run into his eyes from the gash on his forehead.\n\n\"Are we out?\" he asked weakly.\n\n\"You bet,\" Ian told him.\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Our muscles,\" I told him, smiling. \"No magic.\"\n\nWithin a minute, the goblin was more or less on his feet, insisting to us and Sandra's team medic that he was fine.\n\nWe stubborn humans had nothing on stubborn and proud goblins.\n\nRake leaned against the wall beside a wine rack, the front of his leather jacket and the shirt underneath hanging in shreds from the demon's claws. There was a lot of blood, but the cuts appeared to be superficial. Lucky for Rake, the demon that attacked him wanted to play with his food first.\n\nHe would have stayed on his feet if it hadn't been for the truly bad combination of ecto-goop on a marble floor.\n\nRake's feet slipped out from under him and he stumbled against the glass wall of one of his wine racks.\n\nHis shoulder barely bumped it, but it was enough.\n\nPride goeth before the fall.\n\nHe was fine. The wine? Not so much.\n\nThe bumped wine rack tilted and tapped against the first section of glass wall holding dozens of bottles of his priceless wine. That section of wall fell, triggering a domino effect until the entire cellar was a sea of wine and broken bottles.\n\nIt looked like every bottle of wine was broken, and Rake had done it himself.\n\nThe goblin started to laugh, but Fred had beat him to it.\n\nAbove it all, I could swear I heard the hissing laughter of Alastor Malvolia.\n\n# 33\n\nBACCHANALIA was still standing\u2014at least on the outside.\n\nWhen we'd all gotten out of the building, we could hear the rumblings of the club's marble floors collapsing into the hole that had opened where Rake's wine cellar used to be. Even though the pocket dimension hadn't occupied much physical space outside of the wine cellar's wall, its implosion caused enough of a disturbance to bring on a partial collapse.\n\n\"What I'm saying is that all demons aren't bad,\" Martin was telling Fred. \"They just live in a bad place.\"\n\nThe Con Ed folks were calling it a sinkhole. The supernaturally clued-in Con Ed people had \"discovered\" the gas leak on the other side of the wall from Bacchanalia's basement in an old drainage tunnel. The line had broken as a result of the sinkhole that had opened beneath the tunnel and spread into the exclusive sex club.\n\nBaxter Clayton was broadcasting live from a block away. The corner of Bacchanalia's building was just visible in the background. Baxter had his cameraman keep both him and the building in the shot as he talked. The anchor was probably praying to God that Bacchanalia collapsed while he was on the air.\n\nBaxter Clayton's prayer wasn't answered.\n\nThe Hellpit was gone, and the pocket dimension along with it, but it'd left its stench behind, which was being explained by a sewer line break.\n\nThat was one hell of a sewer line.\n\n* * *\n\nA few weeks later, Kitty's Confections was back in business. Same building. New kitchen equipment courtesy of Rake Danescu.\n\nI was glad she'd stayed put.\n\nIt helped that Dr. Carey had determined in the autopsy that Alastor Malvolia hadn't died in her oven.\n\nI was on my way to Kitty's shop. She and I were going to do a much-deserved girls' night out. I was still staying in the VIP apartment at headquarters while my apartment was being cleaned and repaired. It was almost finished, but I hadn't decided whether to accept Rake's offer of a no-strings-attached apartment, or to stay in my old place. After SPI's cleanup crew was done with it, no one would ever know that it'd been temporarily sublet by a pack of carnivorous baby demons. I would know, but I hadn't decided if knowing and remembering was enough for me to pack up and take my worldly goods elsewhere. It was a nice apartment in a good neighborhood. I liked my neighbors. It was home. But it didn't matter how much that bedroom had been scrubbed, how many coats of paint had been put on the walls, or how plush the new carpet was, if Ian hadn't been there . . .\n\nI pushed all that out of my head. I didn't have to decide tonight. Tonight was about fun.\n\nRather than meet at headquarters, Kitty asked me to come over to the shop. She said she had something to show me.\n\nI took the subway and walked the block to the shop. It had just started to snow.\n\nWhen I walked around the corner onto Bleeker Street, I stopped in my tracks, not believing what I saw in Kitty's front window.\n\nGingerbread.\n\nNot just one house. An entire Victorian Christmas village filled the shop-front window. The details were incredible. The houses even had tiny translucent sheets of sugar for windows.\n\nA young family had stopped to admire Kitty's masterwork. A little boy and girl, who couldn't have been more than five years old, and were just tall enough to see the village at eye level.\n\nThey were mesmerized.\n\nWhile the children's attention was occupied, Kitty caught the mother's attention from inside the shop, and quickly held up two cookies with a questioning look.\n\nThe parents smiled and nodded.\n\nWhen Kitty came out of the shop with two gingerbread cookies in her hand, the kids went from mesmerized to jumping-up-and-down thrilled.\n\nKitty was pretty thrilled herself. Actually, she was better than thrilled; she looked content, the glowing kind.\n\nI grinned. \"Gingerbread,\" I said when the family continued down the snowy sidewalk, the kids biting the heads off the gingerbread men.\n\n\"Gingerbread.\" She smiled and shrugged. \"It was time.\"\n\n\"The perfect time.\"\n\n\"I'm a baker. It'll be Christmas before we know it. It needed to be done.\"\n\nTruth wasn't all that could set you free. Gingerbread worked wonders, too.\n\nYes, her three-greats-grandmother had been _that_ witch, but Kitty had faced her demons\u2014literally\u2014and had accepted that gingerbread baking was part of her heritage, and one bad cookie in the batch wasn't reason to abandon what you were good at.\n\n\"Come on in,\" she said. \"I have a few things to finish up in the back, and then we can go. I'll fix you a hot chocolate while you wait.\"\n\nKitty opened the door and went inside. I paused, sensing someone watching me.\n\nI turned to look across the street.\n\nA tall figure in a long, dark coat stood beneath a streetlight. The young family crossing the snowy street saw a tall, dark, and absurdly handsome man. I saw a tall, dark, and absurdly handsome goblin.\n\n\"Your new partner's here,\" I told Kitty.\n\nAgain that mysterious smile. \"He's not mine.\" She continued inside. \"Hmm, I'd better make that _two_ hot chocolates.\"\n\n\"Rake likes hot chocolate?\"\n\n\"I found that out last week while he was helping with the installation.\"\n\n\"Helping?\"\n\n\"Helping. And he's mad for double chocolate chip cookies.\"\n\nI waited by the door as Rake crossed the street.\n\nIt wasn't his usual big cat, predatory stalking walk. Rake Danescu crossed the street like a normal man. Hands in the pockets of his coat, dark head slightly down against the snow that was coming down harder now.\n\nAfter what I'd witnessed under Bacchanalia, I knew Rake was as far from normal as it was possible to be.\n\nThat knowledge didn't bother me. I smiled. Though I was going to have trouble reconciling the mage who hauled me out of a Hellpit and then helped Kitty close it, and the mage who just might know Lucifer\u2014or at least one of his generals\u2014with the man who loves hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies.\n\n\"Hi,\" I said.\n\n\"Hi, yourself. Is Kitty inside?\"\n\n\"Oh . . . um, yes.\" No come-ons? No bedroom eyes? If we SPI agents are anything, we're adaptable. Just go with it, Mac. \"She said she had some things to do in the back.\" I opened the door. \"She was going to fix us some . . .\"\n\nTwo steaming mugs of hot chocolate were waiting at a small corner table with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. The store lights were off. The window lights were on, illuminating the gingerbread village, and one of those tiny lamps that you'd find in those romantic restaurants glowed beside the plate of cookies.\n\nKitty was fixing things, all right.\n\nRake's dark eyes gleamed in the dim light. \"You think it's a trap?\"\n\n\"Oh, I know it's a trap.\"\n\n\"Shall we trip it?\"\n\n\"If Kitty went to all this trouble, we'd better. Besides, I want that hot chocolate.\"\n\nRake didn't say what he wanted, but his eyes were doing a fine job of saying it for him.\n\nNow _that_ was the Rake I knew.\n\nI took an exploratory sip of the hot chocolate. Too hot. I blew on it. \"Thank you for taking care of Kitty's kitchen.\"\n\nRake nodded. \"I offered another store location, but she wanted to stay here.\"\n\n\"I'm glad she did. Don't let anyone run you out of a place you love.\"\n\n\"Have you decided what to do about your apartment yet?\"\n\n\"I figure I'll wait until the work's finished, then go over and see what kind of vibes I get. Homey vibes or _Amityville Horror_ 'Get Out' vibes.\"\n\n\"My offer still stands.\"\n\nI reached for a cookie. \"I know. And I appreciate it.\"\n\n\"But you won't accept it.\"\n\n\"Probably not.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nHe seemed genuinely confused. Maybe a goblin woman wouldn't feel odd about accepting an apartment from the playboy owner of a sex club. Then again, I didn't have any evidence about Rake's playboy status. I'd always just assumed. Maybe I should ask.\n\nI felt suddenly awkward. \"I think I'm still a small-town girl. Old-fashioned. At least when it comes to accepting a luxury apartment from a mysterious goblin billionaire.\"\n\nThe edge of a smile appeared. \"I'm mysterious?\"\n\n\"And that's putting it nicely.\"\n\n\"What if I told you that deep down I'm an old-fashioned guy.\"\n\n\"Don't make me choke on my cookie. You're a spymaster. I'm sure you've had practice being just about everything.\"\n\n\"What if I told you I wanted to have more practice being someone your grandmother would approve of?\"\n\n\"You couldn't practice enough to fool her. Advance warning: her favorite weapons are a shotgun, a cast-iron skillet, and a butcher knife. Usually two at the same time.\"\n\nHe didn't even bat an eye. \"Duly noted.\"\n\nIt didn't look like Rake was afraid of Grandma Fraser. He should be. Passing a contract to the devil himself for his reading enjoyment was one thing, ticking off Grandma Fraser was just plain dangerous.\n\nI smiled. If that ever happened, I wanted a front-row seat.\n\n\"I've had plenty of experience persuading women not to kill me,\" Rake said.\n\n\"I'm sure you have.\" I took a sip of hot chocolate. \"What about Bacchanalia?\"\n\nRake shrugged. \"It'll go down as another New York club that had its time in the spotlight and then faded away.\"\n\n\"Or in this case was swallowed by a Hellpit.\" Then I snorted a laugh. \"I'm sorry; I can't help it.\"\n\n\"You're not in the least bit sorry. Yes, I know. The irony is priceless. A den of sin gets swallowed by Hell itself.\"\n\n\"So you're taking that as a sign and aren't rebuilding?\"\n\n\"No, I'm taking it as what you would call 'a blessing in disguise.'\"\n\n\"Pardon?\"\n\n\"The reason that Hellpit wasn't found until it was nearly too late was because I hadn't been to the club in over a week. Businesses like Bacchanalia require hands-on management.\"\n\n\"Pun intended?\"\n\n\"Actually, no. If I had been there like I should have been, I would have known the moment that pit first started to open. But I wasn't, so I couldn't, and as a result . . .\"\n\n\"Hell ate your building.\"\n\n\"Quite so.\"\n\n\"So what are you going to do now?\"\n\n\"After my lawyers and I fight with the insurance company over a settlement, I'll take my money and invest it in a business or a building that I don't have to be personally involved in with day-to-day operations.\"\n\n\"How about your employees?\"\n\n\"Those who need assistance, I'll see to it that they find alternate employment, but most of them have already been offered well-paying jobs. I spent a good deal of time while running Bacchanalia fending off other nightclub owners who were constantly trying to steal my staff.\" He shrugged. \"Now, they have what they wanted.\"\n\n\"I think you also gave Alastor Malvolia what he wanted.\"\n\nI hadn't been the only one who'd heard the goblin lawyer laugh in Rake's late, great wine cellar.\n\n\"Isidor got away.\"\n\n\"For now. And thanks to you and Al, he's got bigger trouble than you hunting him down.\"\n\n\"I want confirmation.\"\n\n\"So call up His Dread Majesty again and ask.\" I hesitated, suddenly uneasy. \"Do I want to know how you contacted him to let him know to eavesdrop?\"\n\n\"It didn't involve a virgin sacrifice, if that's what you're asking.\"\n\n\"You'd have never made it to Bacchanalia in time if you'd had to run around looking for one of those.\"\n\n\"Probably true. Let's just say I have a few highly placed connections in warm climates, and leave it at that.\"\n\n\"Fine with me.\"\n\n\"Though I'm going to be busy enough with all of Alastor's other instructions.\"\n\nI gave him a questioning look.\n\n\"In addition to seeing to it that his copy of Silvanus's contract was brought to me, Alastor named me the executor of his estate\u2014and then left me most of it.\"\n\nI barked a laugh. \"Not bad from a guy who didn't like you when he was alive.\"\n\nRake wearily leaned back in his chair. \"I haven't put a dint in wading through Alastor's corporate holdings.\"\n\n\"A lot?\"\n\n\"Oh yes. I'm certain I'll find things he willed to me that would be the last thing I would want to own. A man who hated you will leave you some nasty surprises.\"\n\n\"Do you really think he hated you?\"\n\n\"I may have had his respect on occasion\u2014\"\n\n\"That wasn't what I asked. Did he have any family?\"\n\nThat earned me a puzzled look. \"None that were referenced in the will.\"\n\n\"No family, no children. He had a lot but no one to leave it to.\" I smiled. \"We can't pick our family, but we can pick our friends. I think Al Malvolia just might have considered you a friend, or perhaps even the son he never had. He obviously respected you. That's one small step from admiration. You're just as sneaky as he was, maybe even more so. He had to admire that. It's something to think about.\"\n\nRake's lip curled. \"I'd really rather not.\"\n\nHe said it, but I didn't think he really meant it. I was certain Rake had done plenty of thinking since last Wednesday, about a lot of things.\n\n\"I think Al's fixed it so you won't have any choice. Sneaky and manipulative from beyond the grave. But deep down, he knew he could depend on you to do what needed to be done. So did Kitty.\"\n\n\"Once you told her.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, once I\u2014\"\n\n\"I have sisters. I know all about nonverbal communication between women. Kitty wanted to know if she could trust me. That nod of yours assured her that she could.\"\n\n\"Kitty was looking for trust, but she needed bravery. You dove headfirst into a Hellpit of brimstone, and then carried me out like a backpack. I'd call that brave.\"\n\nRake gave me a sheepish grin. \"Or insane. I'd used that shielding spell before for fire, but brimstone isn't exactly something you get an opportunity to practice with.\"\n\nI blinked. \"You didn't know if it would work?\"\n\n\"I suspected it would. Strongly suspected.\"\n\n\"Maybe that makes you insanely brave. Either way, any man who'd dive into a Hellpit is certainly up for a little Hellpit slamming.\"\n\nRake's sheepishness spread into a full grin. \"I didn't slam that Hellpit, either. That was all Kitty.\"\n\n\"But you\u2014\"\n\n\"Didn't give her a power infusion. For one, by then I didn't have it in me to give. I barely had enough to stay on my feet. Kitty needed to do as much by herself, unaided, as possible. Magic takes strength, but it also takes confidence. You have to believe that you can do it. Kitty had had too many anchor mages fail her. That affected her confidence in her own ability. Soon thoughts began to run through her mind. Maybe she hadn't been good enough. Or if she'd been stronger, her anchor would have survived. Doubt is like poison. Once it gets in, unless stopped, it will run its course and kill you. In Kitty's case, it wasn't her body that was in danger, but her spirit. I gave her just enough of a boost to make her feel secure and confident in her own power. To let her know that I was there and that I wouldn't leave.\" He glanced toward the kitchen door. \"Kitty has enough power of her own, a truly astounding amount.\" Then he leaned forward. \"You say you trust me, but you don't.\"\n\n\"I trust you.\" I paused. \"Your motives, not so much. On the other hand, you could say that I do trust your motives. I trust them to be devious. That is on those rare opportunities when I even know what the hell they are.\"\n\n\"I'm a goblin. It's how _we_ are. Though I promise you, I swear to you, that I have no ulterior motive when it comes to you. What Isidor said\u2014\"\n\n\"What Isidor said doesn't matter,\" I lied.\n\n\"Oh, yes, it does. It's what you've thought since we met. I am being honest with you. I need you to be honest with me.\"\n\n\"I have been.\"\n\n\"No, you haven't. You've been avoiding me.\"\n\nI folded my hands on the table in front of me. \"Okay, then. I'm here. No avoiding. Why are you interested in me? I'm a small-town girl. I clean up well, but I'm not beautiful.\"\n\nRake started to interrupt.\n\nI held up a hand. \"Let me finish. You could have any woman you wanted, and you probably have. Yet you want me. The one thing I am that they aren't is a seer. You tried to hire me that first night.\"\n\n\"And you said no.\"\n\n\"And you've been after me ever since. I want to know why.\"\n\n\"Do I have to have a reason?\"\n\n\"Goblins always have a reason.\"\n\nI reached for another cookie. Rake's hand arrived at the same time. He let go of the cookie and took my hand. He started to cover it with his other hand, and then stopped.\n\nHe was giving me the option to pull away.\n\nI didn't.\n\n\"Makenna, I don't know what it is that we have, or what I feel. Believe that, believe _me_. What I really want is a chance, a chance to get to know you, to find out what we do have, what we _could_ have. And I promise not to ravish you.\" He gave me a slow, wicked-sexy smile. \"Unless you want me to.\"\n\nI gave him a flat look. \"Rake.\"\n\n\"Sorry. Old habits, hard to break and all that.\" Rake gazed at me a moment across that small table, his expression unreadable. \"I jumped into a pit of brimstone wearing a shield that might have failed. If that had happened, we wouldn't be here having this conversation. I wouldn't jump into a pit of fire for a potential employee.\"\n\nIf that shield had failed, Rake would have been burned to death, and I would have been . . . well, whatever would have happened to me in Hell. He was right; we most definitely wouldn't be talking now.\n\n\"The only reason I dove into that pit was because you were there,\" he said. \"I had a chance to save you and I took it.\" He gave me an exaggerated frown. \"I was really glad it worked. I wasn't keen on being vaporized. It would have only hurt for an instant, but still. I'm not ready to die yet. I have things to do.\"\n\nI couldn't help it. I felt a smile coming on. \"And seers to acquire for mysterious reasons?\"\n\n\"There are other seers. Who knows? Maybe even better seers.\" His eyes lit with mischief. \"And I only hire the very best.\"\n\n\"I probably wouldn't even make the final interview.\"\n\nRake raised my hand to his lips, his eyes solemn. \"There are other seers. There is only one Makenna Fraser.\"\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\n**Lisa Shearin** is the _New York Times_ bestselling author of the Raine Benares novels, a comedic fantasy adventure series, as well as the SPI Files novels, an urban fantasy series best described as _Men in Black_ with supernaturals instead of aliens. Lisa is a voracious collector of fountain pens, teapots, and teacups, both vintage and modern. She lives on a small farm in North Carolina with her husband, three spoiled-rotten retired racing greyhounds, and enough deer and woodland creatures to fill a Disney movie.\n\nVisit her online at lisashearin.com, facebook.com\/LisaShearinAuthor, and twitter.com\/LisaShearin.\n\n**Looking for more?**\n\nVisit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.\n\n**Discover your next great read!**\n\n 1. Cover\n 2. Praise for Lisa Shearin\n 3. Ace Books by Lisa Shearin\n 4. Title Page\n 5. Copyright\n 6. Contents\n 7. Chapter 1\n 8. Chapter 2\n 9. Chapter 3\n 10. Chapter 4\n 11. Chapter 5\n 12. Chapter 6\n 13. Chapter 7\n 14. Chapter 8\n 15. Chapter 9\n 16. Chapter 10\n 17. Chapter 11\n 18. Chapter 12\n 19. Chapter 13\n 20. Chapter 14\n 21. Chapter 15\n 22. Chapter 16\n 23. Chapter 17\n 24. Chapter 18\n 25. Chapter 19\n 26. Chapter 20\n 27. Chapter 21\n 28. Chapter 22\n 29. Chapter 23\n 30. Chapter 24\n 31. Chapter 25\n 32. Chapter 26\n 33. Chapter 27\n 34. Chapter 28\n 35. Chapter 29\n 36. Chapter 30\n 37. Chapter 31\n 38. Chapter 32\n 39. Chapter 33\n 40. About the Author\n\n 1. Contents\n 2. Cover\n 3. Start\n\n 1. \n 2. \n 3. \n 4. \n 5. \n 6. \n 7. \n 8. \n 9. \n 10. \n 11. \n 12. \n 13. \n 14. \n 15. \n 16. \n 17. \n 18. \n 19. \n 20. \n 21. \n 22. \n 23. \n 24. \n 25. \n 26. \n 27. \n 28. \n 29. \n 30. \n 31. \n 32. \n 33. \n 34. \n 35. \n 36. \n 37. \n 38. \n 39. \n 40. \n 41. \n 42. \n 43. \n 44. \n 45. \n 46. \n 47. \n 48. \n 49. \n 50. \n 51. \n 52. \n 53. \n 54. \n 55. \n 56. \n 57. \n 58. \n 59. \n 60. \n 61. \n 62. \n 63. \n 64. \n 65. \n 66. \n 67. \n 68. \n 69. \n 70. \n 71. \n 72. \n 73. \n 74. \n 75. \n 76. \n 77. \n 78. \n 79. \n 80. \n 81. \n 82. \n 83. \n 84. \n 85. \n 86. \n 87. \n 88. \n 89. \n 90. \n 91. \n 92. \n 93. \n 94. \n 95. \n 96. \n 97. \n 98. \n 99. \n 100. \n 101. \n 102. \n 103. \n 104. \n 105. \n 106. \n 107. \n 108. \n 109. \n 110. \n 111. \n 112. \n 113. \n 114. \n 115. \n 116. \n 117. \n 118. \n 119. \n 120. \n 121. \n 122. \n 123. \n 124. \n 125. \n 126. \n 127. \n 128. \n 129. \n 130. \n 131. \n 132. \n 133. \n 134. \n 135. \n 136. \n 137. \n 138. \n 139. \n 140. \n 141. \n 142. \n 143. \n 144. \n 145. \n 146. \n 147. \n 148. \n 149. \n 150. \n 151. \n 152. \n 153. \n 154. \n 155. \n 156. \n 157. \n 158. \n 159. \n 160. \n 161. \n 162. \n 163. \n 164. \n 165. \n 166. \n 167. \n 168. \n 169. \n 170. \n 171. \n 172. \n 173. \n 174. \n 175. \n 176. \n 177. \n 178. \n 179. \n 180. \n 181. \n 182. \n 183. \n 184. \n 185. \n 186. \n 187. \n 188. \n 189. \n 190. \n 191. \n 192. \n 193. \n 194. \n 195. \n 196. \n 197. \n 198. \n 199. \n 200. \n 201. \n 202. \n 203. \n 204. \n 205. \n 206. \n 207. \n 208. \n 209. \n 210. \n 211. \n 212. \n 213. \n 214. \n 215. \n 216. \n 217. \n 218. \n 219. \n 220. \n 221. \n 222. \n 223. \n 224. \n 225. \n 226. \n 227. \n 228. \n 229. \n 230. \n 231. \n 232. \n 233. \n 234. \n 235. \n 236. \n 237. \n 238. \n 239. \n 240. \n 241. \n 242. \n 243. \n 244. \n 245. \n 246. \n 247. \n 248. \n 249. \n 250. \n 251. \n 252. \n 253. \n 254. \n 255. \n 256. \n 257. \n 258. \n 259. \n 260. \n 261. \n 262. \n 263. \n 264. \n 265. \n 266. \n 267. \n 268. \n 269. \n 270. \n 271. \n 272. \n 273. \n 274. \n 275. \n 276. \n 277. \n 278. \n 279. \n 280. \n 281. \n 282. \n 283. \n 284. \n 285. \n 286. \n 287. \n 288. \n 289. \n 290. \n 291. \n 292. \n 293. \n 294. \n 295. \n 296.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\n\nE-text prepared by MWS, ellinora, and the Online Distributed Proofreading\nTeam (http:\/\/www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by\nInternet Archive (https:\/\/archive.org)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n file which includes the original illustrations.\n See 53733-h.htm or 53733-h.zip:\n (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/53733\/53733-h\/53733-h.htm)\n or\n (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/53733\/53733-h.zip)\n\n\n Images of the original pages are available through\n Internet Archive. See\n https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/fiddlersdrinkinw00meea\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n Italic text is represented by underscores surrounding the\n _italic text_.\n\n Bold text is represented by equal signs surrounding the\n =bold text=.\n\n Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPITALS.\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE FIDDLERS\n\nDrink in the Witness Box\n\nby\n\nARTHUR MEE\n\n\n _If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and\n those that are ready to be slain;\n If thou sayest, \"Behold, we knew it not;\" doth not he that\n pondereth the heart consider it?\n And shall not He render to every man according to his works?_\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPublished by Morgan & Scott, Ltd\n12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. 4\n\nFirst Hundred Thousand May 15, 1917\nSecond Hundred Thousand June 1, 1917\n\nReprinted in the United States by\nThe American Issue Publishing Company\nWesterville, Ohio\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n[Illustration:\n\n DRINK LEADING FAMINE IN\n\n The Drink Trade gave Germany her greatest weapon in the war by helping\n to make the bread famine.\n\n It was the wilful destruction of 4,800,000 tons of food, depriving the\n nation of her reserves, that led to the appalling gravity of the\n submarine menace.]\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n[Illustration:\n\n Drink, What did You do in the Great War?\n\n This impressive picture of Britannia is from\n the splendid 1916 issue of Bibby's Annual]\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n[Illustration:\n\n THE ALLIES AND PROHIBITION\u2014STOPPING DRINK TO WIN THE WAR\n\n The Drink Map before the War and on the 1000th day of the War\n\n CANADA\u2014Prohibition almost from Sea to Sea\n FRANCE\u2014Total Prohibition of Absinthe\n RUSSIA\u2014Prohibition Everywhere\n BRITAIN\u2014120,000 Drink shops open daily]\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Wages of Sin\n\n\nThe time has come when it should be said that those responsible for our\ncountry now stand on the very threshold of eternal glory or eternal\nshame. They play and palter with the greatest enemy force outside\nBerlin. The news from Vimy Ridge comes to a land whose rulers quail\nbefore a foe within the gate.\n\nNot for one hour has the full strength of Britain been turned against\nher enemies. From the first day of the war, while our mighty Allies have\nbeen striking down this foe within their gates, Britain has let this\ntrade stalk through her streets, serving the Kaiser's purposes, and\npaying the Government \u00a31,000,000 a week for the right to do it.\n\nShe has let this trade destroy our food and bring us to the verge of\nfamine; she has let it keep back guns and shells and hold up ships; she\nhas let it waste our people's wealth in hundreds of millions of pounds;\nshe has let it put its callous brake on the merciful Red Cross; she has\nlet it jeopardize the unity and safety of the Empire\u2014for it may yet be\nfound, as Dr. Stuart Holden has so finely said, that the links that bind\nthe Pax Britannica are solvable in that great chemist's solvent,\nalcohol.\n\nThe witnesses are too great to number; we can only call a few. There is\nno room for all those witnesses whose evidence is in the House of\nCommons Return 220 (1915), showing the part drink played in the great\nshell famine, in delaying ships and guns, and imperiling the Army and\nthe Fleet.\n\nBut the indictment is heavy. I charge this trade with the crime the King\nlaid at its door two years ago, the crime of prolonging the war; and the\nwitnesses are here at the bar of the people. The verdict is with them,\nand the judgment is with those who rule.\n\n_The wages of sin is death: What are the wages of those who fail in an\nhour like this?_\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Fiddling to Disaster\n\n We are not going to lose the war through the submarines if we all\n behave like reasonable human beings who want to save their country\n from disaster, privation and distress.\n\n _The Prime Minister_\n\n\n_What are we to say of a Government that plays with war and drink and\nfamine while these brave words are ringing in our ears?_\n\nIf the situation is so desperate that we must all go short of food, it\nis desperate enough for the Government to be in earnest. But what are\nthe plain facts? No reasonable man who knows them can say that the\nGovernment is in earnest.\n\nIt is not denied by anybody who knows the facts that drink has been the\ngreatest hindrance of the war. There is not a doubt that it has\nprolonged the war for months and cost us countless lives. It is the duty\nof the Government to face a dangerous thing like this; it is its duty to\npursue the war with a single eye to the speediest possible victory. But\nthe records of our war Governments in dealing with drink have been\nrecords of fiddling and failure, and we stand in the third year of the\nwar with a Government fiddling still.\n\nOne thing will be perfectly clear if disaster and famine come. It will\nbe known to all the world that the Government knew the facts in time to\nsave us. We are in the war because we would not listen in times of\npeace. We are in the third year of the war because we would not listen\nin the first. We are faced with famine because we would not listen in\ntimes of plenty, when drink was breaking down our food reserves. And we\nare drifting now, nearer to disaster every day, because the Government\nsurrenders to the enemy worse than Germany.\n\nIt does not matter where you look, or when; the evidence of the fiddling\nis everywhere about you. Take the week before the Prime Minister's grave\nspeech about submarines\u2014ending May 19.\n\n _Submarines destroyed 27 British cargoes, mostly over 1600 tons._\n\n =Brewers destroyed 27 British food cargoes, totaling 9000 tons.=\n\n _The granaries of Canada were crammed with wheat waiting for British\n ships, but there were no ships to bring this people's food._\n\n =The rum quay at London Docks was crammed with casks of rum to last\n till 1920, but a ship arrived with 1000 Casks more.=\n\n _A woman was fined \u00a35 for destroying a quartern loaf._\n\n =Brewers were fined nothing for destroying millions of loaves.=\n\n _Poor people waited in queues to buy sugar in London._\n\n =Cartloads of sugar were destroyed in London breweries.=\n\nAnd so we might go on, looking on this picture and on that till the mind\nalmost reels with the solemn farce. The Prime Minister has suggested\nthat the farce does not end because those who demand its end cannot make\nup their mind. It is the Government that cannot make up its mind.\n\n It tells Parliament that no more rum is to be imported, and goes on\n importing rum for years ahead.\n\n It forbids the use of spirits less than three years old, and reduces\n the three years to 18 months.\n\n It restricts beer to 10,000,000 barrels, and tells us one day that\n it is all-inclusive, and the next day that the Army Council can\n order as much extra beer as it likes.\n\n It issues a report saying that hops are not food, and gives up\n hundreds of thousands of feet to shipping them; 23,000 cubic feet\n the other week.\n\n It tells us that not an inch of shipping is wasted, and wastes\n shipping on bringing brewers' vats from America and taking gin to\n Africa.\n\n It tells us that the Drink Trade gave up its distilleries\n patriotically, and leaves us to discover that it was made the\n subject of a bargain by which bread was being destroyed for whisky\n as late as May this year.\n\nIt is quite clear that the Government is desperately in need of a\nscapegoat, and desperately in need of a defense. Prohibition Russia is\nnot mightily impressed with our drinking; serious Canadians are asking\nhow long they are to sacrifice their manhood to our brewers; America is\nasking already why she should go short of bread in order that England\nmay drink more beer.\n\nA Government must clearly say something in view of these things, and it\nhas put its defense in the care of one of the sanest and cleverest men\nin the United Kingdom, Mr. Kennedy Jones. If Mr. Jones does not make out\na case for it, there is no case to make. What does he say?\n\n1. _We are told that only five per cent. of malt can be mixed with flour\nfor bread._\n\nAll over the country this explanation is supposed to satisfy those\nsimple, honest people who know little about percentages but ask plain\nquestions at Food Economy meetings. It is preposterous nonsense. If we\nhave 200,000 tons of malted barley, what on earth does it matter whether\nwe mix it at fifty, or five, or two per cent., so long as we do mix it?\n_It adds 200,000 tons to our bread in any case._ This talk of five per\ncent., puzzling to people who think it means that only one-twentieth of\nthis malted barley can be used, is pitiful evidence, surely, of the\nstraits to which the Food Controller's Defense Department is reduced.\n\n2. _We are told that the barley destroyed for beer would give the nation\nonly ten days' bread._\n\nIt would actually last us a fortnight. Drink, which has taken a quartern\nloaf from every British cupboard in every week of the war, is taking\nstill a quartern loaf a month from every cupboard, and the desperate\nappeals of Mr. Kennedy Jones will be more effective in saving crumbs\nwhen he can tell us that he has stopped this monstrous destruction of\nover 1,000 tons of grain a day.\n\n3. _We are told that our munition workers are dependent on beer._\n\nIt is an astounding slander. However true it may be of Governments, it\nis not true of our workmen. For four months the workman has been the\nscapegoat of this Government in its surrender to this trade, and we are\nasked at last to believe that these men who saved us from the Shell\nFamine are willing to drink us into a Bread Famine. Does the Government\nnever pause to ask how millions of munition workers in America and\nCanada and the United Kingdom manage without beer? Does nobody in the\nGovernment know that the greatest steel furnaces in America are under\ntotal Prohibition, and that two million American railwaymen are subject\nto instant dismissal if they touch drink while on duty? Has the\nGovernment not read its own report of the Royal Society Committee which\nhad this point in mind six months ago, and told us, on the highest\nauthority in this country, that soldiers march better and keep fitter\nwithout alcohol; that men do more work on less energy without alcohol;\nand that \"the records of American industrial experience are significant\nin showing a better output when no alcohol is taken by the workmen\"?\n\n4. _We are told we need this trade for yeast._\n\nWe need not bother overmuch about that. Industrial alcohol will give us\nall we want, and there is no need to carry on this dangerous trade for\nthe sake of yeast. We do not need a single ounce of brewer's yeast, and\nwe can do without distiller's yeast as well by setting up a thousandth\npart of the machinery we have set up in the last two years. Or, while we\nmust have yeast, we need about 30,000 tons a year for the whole United\nKingdom, and since the prohibition of hops in June last year _we have\ngiven enough shipping to hops every fortnight to bring in enough yeast\nfor a year_. A Government with shipping to spare like that, with room on\nits ships for mountains of hops, for enormous brewers' vats, and for rum\nfor 1921, can find room for 100 tons a day of the people's bread. It is\na monstrous perversion of the facts to suggest that we must maintain\nthis food-destroying trade, with all its hideous tragedy and ruin, in\norder to make bread.\n\nIt cannot be said that a Government with such desperate excuses is in\nearnest. We do not wonder that a great American farmers' paper, with no\naxe to grind except that it is sane and patriotic and believes in the\nwar, is asking plain questions as America prepares her Prohibition Army,\nher Prohibition Navy, and stops the destruction of grain for drink in\norder to enter the war at full strength.\n\nLet the Food Controller, the Prime Minister, and every responsible\ncitizen of the United Kingdom read this\u2014it is from the most influential\nflour-milling paper in the world, the \"North Western Miller,\" published\nin Minneapolis:\n\n\"=Since the United States will be called upon to make food sacrifices on\nbehalf of the Allies, it is certainly in order to call to account the\nstewardship of Great Britain in regard to food supplies. Ordinarily\nAmerica would have no right to demand such an account, but Americans are\nnow asked to deny themselves that Britain may have sufficient.=\n\n\"=Britain has not seen fit to prohibit the use of cereals in the\nmanufacture of drink, notwithstanding that the world's food supply was\nobviously short. Are Americans required to forego a part of their\naccustomed ration of bread in order that their British Allies can\ncontinue to have a plentiful supply of beer and whisky? If not, then\nBritain should lose no time in putting its house in order, quitting the\ndrink to add to the common store of food upon which the safety of all\nthe Allies depends.=\n\n\"=The food supply for the Allies is no longer a purely local\nproposition, to be used as a football in British politics; it deeply\nconcerns the people of the United States, who are certainly not called\nupon to deny themselves bread in order that Britain shall have drink.=\"\n\nWhat is the Government's answer to this? \"We owe a very considerable\ndebt of gratitude to the great American people for the effective\nassistance they are rendering us,\" says the Prime Minister. _Is this the\nway we pay them back?_ It is an ugly question for our great Ally to have\nto raise as she comes into the war, flinging her Prohibition Navy in to\nsmash the drink-made menace of the submarine. It is unthinkable that the\nGovernment can read these bitter words unmoved, or can leave this stain\non our history in the face of all these questionings.\n\nThere is another question, too, that comes across the Atlantic. What is\nthe Government going to do with the soldiers of America's Prohibition\nArmy, and the sailors of America's Prohibition Navy, when they come over\nhere? Are they to be broken in their thousands, made useless and\ndegraded as thousands of men from Prohibition Canada have been, by the\nenemy that traps them before they reach the war?\n\nThey are questions for the Government and the nation, and they must be\nanswered in the interests of the nation, and not to please the trade\nthat helps the Germans every day. We cannot afford to pay the appalling\nprice the future will demand unless our fiddlers change their tune.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Drink Trade and Our War Services\n\n\n=It is not possible to measure the strain the Drink Traffic has imposed\non our war services.=\n\nThe Food Controller's Organization, with its great offices and staffs,\nwould not have been needed had we saved the food destroyed by drink.\n\nRationing already involves 1,200 committees, and may mean 50,000\nofficials and 50,000,000 tickets weekly. It could all be avoided.\nProhibition would save more bread without food controlling than all the\nfood controlling can save without Prohibition.\n\nThe National Service, with its network of officials, its costly\nadvertising, its absorption of paper and printing, could all have been\navoided under Prohibition. About 200,000 men have enrolled, but\nProhibition would give us twice that man-power any day.\n\nThe strain on a host of men and women looking after soldiers' children\nneglected through drink, soldiers' wives spending allowances on drink,\nis incalculable.\n\nThe strain on war charities and the strain on the police arising from\ndrink are both very great.\n\nThe strain of drink on doctors, nurses, and hospitals is beyond belief.\nProhibition would set free for the Red Cross thousands who waste their\ntime on the great drink trail.\n\nThe strain on transport is seen in the long lines of wagons drawn by\nstrong horses carting beer to public-houses. This year alone the\nhandling of drink must equal the lifting of at least 9,000,000 tons, and\nthe barrels of beer would fill nearly all the railway wagons in the\nkingdom. As to ships, drink materials during the war have used up 60\nships of 5,000 tons working all the time.\n\nOn Lord Milner's estimate of 19 barrels to the truck it would require\n4,500,000 railway trucks to carry the 17,000,000 tons of beer\nmanufactured in the United Kingdom during the war.\n\n=It can be proved from official figures that the weight of drink-stuff\ncarried about since war began has been equal to the weight of solid\nmaterial carried by the Navy to all our fighting fronts.=\n\nIt is a crying shame that the strength of Britain should be destroyed\nlike this in such an hour as this.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The War-Work of the Food Destroyers\n\n\nThere are hundreds of great Food Destructors in the United Kingdom. The\nman-power at their service, spread over our breweries and distilleries,\nnumbers hundreds of thousands of men; their capital is hundreds of\nmillions. This is a summary of the work they did in the first 1,000 days\nof the war:\n\n=They sacrificed 4,400,000 tons of grain and 340,000 tons of sugar,\nenough to ration the whole United Kingdom with bread for 43 weeks and\nsugar for 33 weeks.=\n\n=They took from every kitchen cupboard in the land 600 pounds of bread\nand 76 pounds of sugar.=\n\n=They destroyed bread and sugar to last every child under fifteen for\nevery day of the war.=\n\n=They took from our people over \u00a3512,000,000.=\n\n=They used up labour and transport for lifting over 50,000,000 tons. By\nsea they used up 60 ships of 5,000 tons; by rail their raw materials and\nthe finished products would make up a train long enough to reach nearly\nround the world.=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Food Now Being Destroyed for Beer\n\n\nLook at the actual facts about beer alone. We will ignore distilling, as\nit gives us munitions and yeast. Had the Government tried to solve the\nyeast question it could have solved it easily in these three years; it\nwould have had no more trouble with that problem than Russia and Canada\nand America have had. But as the Government is still investigating the\nyeast question, we will confine our figures to beer.\n\n=Brewers are destroying 450,000 4-lb. loaves a day.=\n\n=This year's food destruction for beer alone will equal five weeks'\nbread rations and four weeks' sugar rations for the whole United\nKingdom.=\n\n=We have seven critical weeks in this summer, and this year's\ndestruction of food would carry us through.=\n\n=Beer alone is taking 10 pounds of sugar a year from every kitchen\ncupboard, and an ounce of sugar a day from every soldier.=\n\nThat is what drink is doing at this moment with the shadow of famine\ncreeping on.\n\n \"_He who withholdeth the corn the people shall curse him._\" Proverbs.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Shadow of Famine\n\n\nThe Government came into office with the food shortage in sight; it was\nits first duty to build up the great reserve of food we might have had\nnow in our granaries if the drink trade had not destroyed it. We could\nhave laughed at submarines, for our barns would have been filled to\noverflowing, and we could have lived in comfort for a year if no ship\nreached us.\n\nLet us see how much food drink has destroyed during the war. We will\ntake it from August 4, 1914, to April 30, 1917. It is 999 days of the\nwar. The grain and sugar destroyed for drink have been:\n\n Grain 4,400,000 tons\n Sugar (for beer alone) 340,000 tons\n\n[Illustration:\n\n How Canada sees it\u2014A Canadian cartoon of the callous destruction of\n bread for beer and whisky]\n\nIt is not easy to realize what this means, but it will help us if we\nthink of one or two examples.\n\n=The biggest thing ever set up on earth is the Great Pyramid. It is\n80,000,000 cubic feet. The food destroyed by drink during the war would\nmake two Great Pyramids, each bigger than the Pyramid of Egypt.=\n\n=The longest British railway is the Great Western; it is over 3,000\nmiles, but it would not hold the food destroyed by drink since war\nbegan. If every inch of it were crammed with wagons, the Great Western\nRailway would need hundreds of miles more line to hold the train-loads\nof food destroyed.=\n\n=There are about 750,000 railway wagons in the United Kingdom, but if\nthe Drink Trade had them all they would not hold the food it has\ndestroyed.=\n\n=There are about 30,000 engines on our British railways, and if the food\ndestroyed were made up in trains of 125 tons apiece, all our engines\nwould not pull them; we should still want 10,000 more.=\n\nSo vast is this incredible quantity of food destroyed by an enemy trade\nwhile famine has been coming on. We should have saved it all if\nParliament had followed the King, and it would have given the whole\nUnited Kingdom its flour rations for nearly a year. Take it at its\nminimum scientific human food value, and on the basis of our rations in\nMay, 1917, it would have given us:\n\n Flour for the whole United Kingdom 43 weeks\n Sugar for the whole United Kingdom 33 weeks\n\nOur three war Governments, confronted with the increasing certainty of\nat least a three-years' war, have allowed the Drink Trade to destroy\nthis vast reserve of food.\n\nThe full toll of this trade upon our scanty food supply, growing shorter\nand shorter while the queues outside our food shops grow longer and\nlonger, is staggering indeed, even now with drink about three-quarters\nstopped. We must remember that it makes no difference that the barley\nhas been malted; it is still good human food, and every ounce of it\nshould be mixed with grain for making bread. Let us remember, also, that\n_brewer's sugar is a good pure sugar_, the objection to it being largely\nthe objection most of us have to standard bread\u2014its colour. Malt or\nsugar, every ounce a brewer destroys is food stolen from the people. Let\nus take expert opinion on the subject.\n\n\n The Food Value of Brewer's Sugar\n\n We do not, of course, use this dark sugar when white sugar is cheap\n and easily procurable, but during the war we have used it for\n coffee, cocoa, and tea; and for puddings where colour did not\n matter. We have used it a good deal in our bakeries for chocolate\n goods, where colour again does not matter. It is a good, pure sugar,\n and the colour is the principal drawback.\n\n _Letter to Arthur Mee from a London caterer_\n\n\n The Food Value of Brewer's Malt\n\n Malt flour can be used to make excellent cake with 50 per cent.\n wheat flour. It is sweet and pleasant to taste without the need of\n any sugar. Good scones can be made with 25 per cent. of malt flour.\n Its use in bread made with yeast causes too much fermentation in the\n bread, but it has no effect on baking-powder. The Food Controller's\n Department is aware of the practicability of using malt flour, but\n the sale is restricted in order to limit its use for making beer.\n Brewers and maltsters are too patriotic to wish to use for beer what\n could be applied to food in case of a serious shortage, and the\n large stocks of barley and malt can supplement the supply of wheat\n flour.\n\n _Letter from a Brewer in the \"Times,\" April 11, 1917_\n\nYet we have seen our Government holding up sugar for brewers; we have\nseen our Food Controller refuse to release a caterer's sugar unless it\nwere sold to a brewer; we have seen a Government short of food-ships\nbringing in brewers' vats and casks of rum; and we see the Government\nstill holding up this malt that would feed a people asking for more\nbread.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Tunes They Play\n\n\nStrange tunes we hear the fiddlers play, but their music does not charm\naway the troubles of a famine-threatened land. From morning till night\nthe prayer of the people rises, \"Give us this day our daily bread,\" but\nthe heart of Downing Street is hardened, and the nation's bread goes day\nby day to the destroyer.\n\nBut all the time we see the measure of the courage of our rulers on the\nhoardings in the streets. We know their posters by heart.\n\n_Defeat the enemy's attempt to starve you_, by\u2014not by stopping the\ndestruction of food, but by joining the National Service, and probably\nhelping to pick hops. There was a man in a co-operative store who\nvolunteered for National Service, and last month he received\ninstructions _to leave the grocery store and take up duty in a brewery_.\n\n_Sow your window-boxes and plant your back gardens_\u2014and Mr. Prothero\nwill see that the soil of a million back gardens is wasted on hops.\n\n_We have not enough food to last till the harvest_\u2014why not go out and\ncatch rabbits, asks Lord Devonport\u2014and sit and wait for sparrows?\n\n_We must save every pound of bread we can to get over our critical\nweeks_\u2014not by saving the quartern loaf that beer is taking every month\nfrom every British cupboard now, but by going hungry so that drinkers\nmay not thirst.\n\n_We must not eat more than our share, on our honour_\u2014but the man across\nthe table can eat his share of bread and drink somebody else's too.\n\n_We must eat less and eat slowly_\u2014so that brewers may waste more and\nwaste quickly.\n\n_We must keep back famine_\u2014but not by using malt, says Captain Bathurst:\nthat would cost three times as much as letting famine come. _But why not\nkeep the malt till bread is as dear as gold?_\n\n_Let all heads of households abstain from using grain except in bread_,\nsays the King's Proclamation. But let the brewers waste 8,000 tons a day\nfor beer, says the Government.\n\n_God speed the plough and the woman who drives it_\u2014yes, and God help the\nwoman who drives the plough to feed the brewer while her little ones cry\nfor bread.\n\n_Let us fine \u00a35 whoever wastes a loaf_, says the Food Controller\u2014but\nnot, of course, the brewers who waste 450,000 quartern loaves a day.\n\nHops are no use as food to anybody, says the Board of Trade Scientific\nCommittee. \"_Then let us grow only half as many_,\" said Mr. Prothero.\n\nMr. Lloyd George says Mr. Prothero is working \"in a continuous rattle of\nmocking laughter and gibes.\" Yes, it is the mocking laughter of a nation\nthat is not really amused by sights like this. The nation does not like\nto see the bread rations of 70,000 men in France cut down while the\nDrink Trade is destroying every week bread enough to last these men a\nyear. It does not like to see the Government sending letters out to\nmanagers of factory canteens, begging them to be careful of bread, while\nfood flows through our beer canteens like a river running to waste. It\ndoes not like to see Y. M. C. A. canteens denied supplies of sugar while\nbarrels of beer are stacked in great piles outside. It does not like the\ncalling up of discharged soldiers while thousands of strong men are\nworking hard all day destroying food or carting beer about the streets;\nand it does net like the tragic comedies of Captain Bathurst, who warns\nus that it really may become necessary in the national interest\u2014and\nthen, perhaps, he drops his voice to break it very gently\u2014it really may\nbecome necessary, if these cake shops are not very careful, _to\nwhitewash the lower part of their windows_.\n\nOh, these fiddlers! And now we have a new idea from the Food Control\nDepartment; it is a poster of a Union Jack and a big loaf on\nit, and \"Waste not, Want not,\" printed in big type. It was being printed\non the day the Prime Minister told the nation that America had found it\nis no use waving a neutral flag in the teeth of a shark. It is an\neloquent and true saying, but it is also true, that it is no use waving\nplatitudes from copybooks in the teeth of a wolf at the door. The Prime\nMinister says he is taking no chances. Let us be quite sure. We once had\na Government of which men said its motto was \"Wait and See.\" _Are we\nbetter off, or are we worse, with a Government that Sees and Waits?_\n\nBut there is no end to the fiddling. With Food Controllers who hold up\nfood for Food Destroyers; with Food Economy Handbooks that cry out loud\nto save the crumbs but have no word to say about the tons we fling away;\nwith a Prime Minister praying for window-boxes and a Board of\nAgriculture consecrating hopfields, we need not be surprised if the\nnation is not mightily impressed.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n How the Allies Did It\n\n\nAll the world knows, except, apparently, the world that goes round at\nWestminster, how Prohibition has helped the Allies.\n\n_With the Shell Famine at its height\u2014largely made by Drink\u2014the\nProhibition Army on the East held up the enemy while Britain fought the\nDrink Trade for her shells._\n\n_With the Bread Famine looming in sight\u2014largely made by Drink\u2014the\nProhibition Navy from the West flings in her power against the\nsubmarines._\n\nOh, for the spirit of our Allies in this land! If France wants to rouse\nthe spirit of Verdun she strikes down her foe at home and puts absinthe\naway. If Russia wants to be great and free she stops this drink and\norders out the Romanoffs. If Canada wants to give her utmost help to\nBritain she stops this drink from sea to sea. If Australia wants to make\nher soldiers fit she trains them in her Prohibition camps. If America\nwants to beat the whole world at making shells she drives drink from her\nworkshops. If San Francisco has an earthquake she stops drink while she\npulls herself together. If Liverpool has a dangerous strike she shuts up\npublic-houses and keeps the city quiet. Oh, for a Government of Britain\nthat will see what all the world can see!\n\nHistory will do justice to the part the Prohibition policy of the Allies\nhas played in saving Europe, but a pamphlet has no room for these\nthings. We can take only one or two great witnesses to the mighty\nachievements of our Prohibition Allies. Let us begin with France, and\ncall our own Prime Minister to tell us what they did. Mr. Lloyd George:\n\n One afternoon we had to postpone our conference in Paris, and the\n French Minister of Finance said, \"I have to go to the Chamber of\n Deputies, because I am proposing a bill to abolish absinthe.\"\n Absinthe plays the same part in France that whisky plays in this\n country, and they abolished it by a majority of something like ten\n to one that afternoon.\n\nAnd how did Paris take this prohibition that men said would cause a\nrevolution? Let us ask Mr. Philip Gibbs, whose splendid letters home\nhave made his name a household word. Mr. Philip Gibbs:\n\n Absinthe was banned by a thunderstroke, and Parisians who had\n acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment\n which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks. But the edict\n was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation.\n\nAnd now we come to Russia, to these mighty Russian people who in the\nlast year of vodka saved \u00a36,000,000 or \u00a37,000,000, and in the last full\nyear of Prohibition saved \u00a3177,000,000. We will call our own Prime\nMinister again:\n\n Russia, knowing her deficiency, knowing how unprepared she was,\n said, \"I must pull myself together. I am not going to be trampled\n upon, unready as I am. I will use all my resources.\" What is the\n first thing she does? She stops drink.\n\n I was talking to M. Bark, the Russian Minister of Finance, and I\n asked, \"What has been the result?\" He said, \"The productivity of\n labour, the amount of work which is put out by the workmen, has gone\n up between 30 and 50 per cent.\"\n\n I said, \"How do they stand it without their liquor?\" and he replied,\n \"Stand it? I have lost revenue over it up to \u00a365,000,000 a year and\n we certainly cannot afford it, but if I proposed to put it back\n there would be a revolution in Russia.\"\n\nHow completely teetotal Russia became we read long ago in the _Daily\nMail_, to which Mr. Hamilton Fyfe sent this message from Petrograd:\n\n Try to imagine all the publichouses in the British Isles closed; all\n the restaurants putting away their wine cards and offering nothing\n stronger than cider or ginger ale. That is the state of things in\n Russia. Strange it seems indeed, yet there is one thing stranger.\n Nobody makes any audible complaint.\n\nEverywhere in Russia it was the same: a nation was made sober by Act of\nParliament.\n\n \"Without a murmur of protest,\" said the Moscow correspondent of the\n _Times_, \"the most drunken city in Europe was transformed into a\n temple of sobriety, and we felt that if Russia could thus conquer\n herself in a night, there was indeed nothing that might not be\n accomplished.\" And two years later, when the revolution came, we\n read in the _Times_ this note from Odessa: \"Perfect tranquillity\n continues to prevail here, although for the moment Odessa is\n practically without police. The satisfactory absence of crime may\n largely be attributed to the sealing up of spirituous liquors.\"\n\nWe need not be afraid of Drinkless Revolutions.\n\nBut the truth about Russia is almost too incredible to believe, for it\nis Prohibition that made the revolution possible; it was stopping drink\nthat set 170,000,000 people free. We will let a business correspondent\nof the _Times_ give evidence; here is what he said on April 21, 1917:\n\n In one respect it must be said that the Reactionaries saw clearly.\n They always claimed that the Tsar had ruined himself by decreeing\n the abolition of vodka. None but a sober people could have carried\n out the Russian Revolution.\n\n The police were, on the other hand, the victims of drink. They had\n seized the vodka at the order of the Government, and had kept\n plentiful supplies for themselves. Thus the Revolution was in part a\n struggle between drunken reaction and sober citizens. Sobriety\n triumphed.\n\nThe Russian people will not bow down and tie their hands to the thrones\nof Europe: do we wonder if they scorn our quailing before this trade?\n\nFree Russia flings off the dynastic yoke: do we wonder Prohibition\nRussia is not much impressed by a nation with a Drink Trade round its\nneck?\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Soldier's Home\n\n\nThe things that will be told against this trade when all the truth is\nknown will break the heart of those who read. It is well for us that we\ncannot know the full truth now; the burden would be too grievous to be\nborne in days like these. But if you will go into your street, or will\ntalk of these things with the next man you meet from one of our pitiful\nslums, or will pick up one of those local papers that still have space\nto print the truth, you will find the evidence close about you.\n\nWe are the guardians of our soldiers' homes; we are the trustees of the\nhope and happiness of their little children; but we let this drink\ntrade, that takes our people's food out of their cupboards, turn that\nfood into the means of death, and sow ruin and destruction through the\nland.\n\nBut we will call the witnesses to these drink-ruined soldiers' homes,\nthese homes that the enemy worse than Germany has shattered and broken\nwhile our men have been fighting for your home and mine. We will call a\nfew here and there, knowing that for every one called are hundreds more\nthat can be called, and that beyond all these that are known there is in\nthis little land a countless host of tragedies as secret as the grave.\n\n A Tooting soldier whose wife had sent him loving letters to the\n trenches came back to surprise her after 18 months. He found another\n man in possession of his home and a new baby; and, overcome by the\n discovery, he gave way to drink and killed himself.\n\n _Records of Balham Coroner, March 1916_\n\n A soldier who had left a comfortable home behind returned from the\n Front to find it ruined, with not a bed to lie on, his children\n never sent to school, his wife all the time in publichouses. \"I wish\n I had been shot in the trenches,\" he said when he arrived.\n\n _Facts in \"Cork Constitution,\" December 10, 1915_\n\n Outside a publichouse in Liverpool a man was dragging home his\n drunken wife, the mother of eleven children. They rolled over and\n over on the ground, the drunken women violently resisting the\n maddened man. Then came up the eldest son, home from the Front, with\n five wounds in his body.\n\n _Facts in \"Liverpool Post,\" March 2, 1917_\n\n A soldier came back to his home in London to find his wife drinking\n his money away, harbouring another man; one of his children cruelly\n neglected and the other in its grave, perished from neglect; and a\n drunken carman's baby about to be born in his home.\n\n _Facts in Shaftesbury Society Report_\n\n A Lance-Corporal heard in the trenches of his wife's misconduct. His\n commanding officer wrote to make inquiries, and the soldier wrote to\n the Chief Constable a pitiful letter: \"What have I to look forward\n to at the end of the war?\" he said. \"Nothing, only sorrow. I never\n get a letter to know how my loving son is getting on; I think it\n will drive me mad.\"\n\n He came home, opened the door of his house, threw his kit on the\n floor, and declared that he would kill his wife. He put a razor on\n the table, and his little boy hid it in a cupboard, but a week later\n this boy of 12 went home and found his father and mother lying on\n the floor, the father drunk, the mother dead. The soldier, drowning\n his misery in drink, had strangled his wife. Rousing himself beside\n her, he said, as the police found them, \"Kiss me, Sally. Aye, but\n tha are poorly.\"\n\n He had been the best of fathers, said the little boy; the best of\n soldiers, said his commanding officer; and the judge declared that\n such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals.\n\n _Record of Huddersfield Assizes, Autumn 1916_\n\n A soldier asked a London magistrate if he could draw the allowance\n instead of his wife, who was in prison for drunkenness and was\n neglecting his four children. The magistrate said the only thing was\n to send the children to the workhouse.\n\n The Soldier: \"So I am to be a soldier for my King and country while\n my children go to the workhouse?\" The Magistrate: \"That is so,\n because you have a drunken wife. I am sorry for you.\"\n\n _Facts in \"Sunday Herald,\" June 1916_\n\n A seaman gunner, who had been torpedoed and had fought in the\n trenches, arrived home to find his wife, in his own words, \"filthy\n drunk,\" and his children utterly deplorable. He reclothed them, but\n his wife pawned the clothes, though she had \u00a37 a month. He took his\n children away, but a crowd of women interfered with him, and the\n police were powerless against the mob.\n\n _Facts in \"Western Daily Mercury,\" July 23, 1915_\n\n A soldier just back from the Front was found in the street weeping\n bitterly on discovering that his wife was in gaol through drink, and\n his child, through her neglect, had been burned.\n\n _Statement by Marchioness of Waterford_\n\n A soldier came home from the Front to find that drink had ruined his\n home, and his children were being cared for by Glasgow Parish\n Council. \"Hour after hour we sit on this council,\" says the\n chairman, \"listening to case after case, and the cause is\n drunkenness, drunkenness, drunkenness. There are 2300 children under\n the council, and two thousand of them have parents living.\" \"Our raw\n material is the finished product of the public-house,\" says one of\n these workers.\n\n _Facts from Glasgow Councillors_\n\n A motor mechanic at the Front, hearing that his wife, hitherto a\n sober woman, had given way to drink, obtained leave to come home. He\n found his wife, very drunk, struggling home with the help of the\n railings in the street, and neighbours described her horrible life\n with other soldiers. The husband obtained a separation for the sake\n of his children, and went back to France.\n\n _Full facts in \"Kent Messenger,\" July 31, 1915_\n\n A young soldier came from the trenches to spend Christmas in his\n home in Sheffield\u2014a teetotal home before the war. He found that his\n wife had given way to drink, had deserted one child and disappeared\n with the other, and that a baby was to be born which was not his.\n\n _Facts known to the Author_\n\n A miner fighting at the Front came home to find his wife at a\n publichouse, his home filthy, and his children cruelly neglected. He\n was heartbroken. His young wife frequently left the house from\n tea-time till midnight, and in order to keep the children from the\n fire she had burned them severely with a piece of iron. A\n respectable-looking woman, the mother pleaded for a chance, and was\n led from the dock sobbing bitterly.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Independent,\" February 21, 1917_\n\n A young Yorkshire miner enlisted and left his wife, hitherto sober,\n with three children. She took to drink, neglected the home, and is\n now a dipsomaniac, with two children not her husband's.\n\n _Facts known to the Author_\n\n A soldier came home ill from France, hurried from Waterloo to his\n home, and found the door locked. He knocked, and his little boy's\n voice came\u2014\"Is that you, mother, and are you drunk?\" Hearing his\n father's voice the excited lad opened the door. \"Where's mother?\"\n asked his father. \"Mother?\" said the boy; \"she's drinking. She comes\n home drunk night after night now and knocks the kids about. She\n daren't hit _me_; I'm fair strong, dad; but the other.... And as for\n baby, she never does nothing for her. I and Freddy takes turns, but\n I dunno what to give her to eat sometimes.\"\n\n Midnight passed before the mother appeared, helplessly drunk. \"Did\n you expect me to sit at home weeping for you?\" she said. The next\n morning, broken with tears, she promised to mend her ways. The\n soldier went into hospital, and there he had a letter from his boy.\n This is part of it:\n\n \"Dear Dad, I write to let you know mother is going on awful. She has\n took all Fred and Timmy's clothes to the pawnshop, and she hit\n Selina on Saturday with the toasterfork and cut her face. She cried\n all night, it hurt her so. She is drunk every night and some nights\n dussent come back at all. She daren't hit me, but I am getting\n afraid about baby. We are all very hungry and miserable.\"\n\n The soldier got leave, found his wife had disappeared, and, finding\n charity for his four little ones, he left his ruined home and went\n back to the hospital.\n\n _Facts in possession of the Author_\n\n A working-man at Gravesend went to the Front, leaving behind a wife\n and three children, the baby lately born. His wife started drinking\n away her allowance, neglected her home, and, full of remorse and\n shame for the disgrace she had brought on the man who was in the\n trenches, she hanged herself. The man came home to find waiting for\n him three motherless children, and one of the most pathetic letters\n a man has ever had to read.\n\n _Records of Gravesend Coroner, 1916_\n\n\n Mothers and Children\n\nIt is easy to understand the pitiful appeal of 500 women out of Holloway\nPrison who begged the Duchess of Bedford to help to close all\npublic-houses during the war. They know in their hearts of tragedies\nsuch as these, in which mothers and children die while the fathers fight\nand the Drink Trade goes on merrily.\n\n A soldier's wife in Sunderland drew \u00a312 arrears of Army pay, and she\n and her mother began to drink it away. She drew her pay on Friday,\n was carried home drunk on Saturday, gave birth to twins on Sunday\n morning, and died on Sunday night. The twins died a week or two\n after, and a week or two after that the soldier came home from the\n trenches to find his family in the grave.\n\n _Facts in Sunderland papers, 1917_\n\n Two women went drinking in Chester on a Sunday night, a soldier's\n mother and a soldier's wife. They had five whiskies each, and fell\n drunk in the street. One slept all night on a sofa, and the other\n lay on the floor, shouting and swearing. Her husband propped her up\n with a mat, and for hours she lay shrieking. In the morning she was\n dead. The publican was fined \u00a35.\n\n _Facts in \"Chester Chronicle,\" February 17, 1917_\n\n The wife of a Yorkshire soldier was drowned while drunk at\n Sheffield. She started drinking with another soldier's wife\n disappeared with a drunken man, and her death was a mystery.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Independent,\" April 26, 1916_\n\n At an inquest on the bodies of a soldier's twin children, both dead\n from chronic wasting, it was stated that the mother had 34_s._ a\n week, and both she and her husband drank. The mother had had four\n children in fifteen months, and all were dead.\n\n _Records of Battersea Coroner, October 1915_\n\n In one street in London where there were one day four convictions\n for drunkenness, a woman carried a sick baby into a public house. As\n she stood at the bar the little baby died, but the mother went on\n drinking, with the dead child in her arms.\n\n _Records of Charity Organisation Society_\n\n The wife of a highly-esteemed sergeant-major fighting in France was\n found lying drunk. Her four children, shockingly neglected, were put\n in a home, but she took them out, went on drinking, and received\n soldiers at her house. In a few weeks her husband heard in the\n trenches that his wife had died from drinking.\n\n _Records of West Surrey Coroner, March 1917_\n\n A soldier left three children at home. He had been earning \u00a31 a\n week, but his wife received 32_s._ 6_d._ a week. She drank it away,\n neglected the children, and died in an asylum while her husband was\n in France.\n\n _Records of Claybury Asylum_\n\n The little child of a soldier in France died in Guy's Hospital from\n burns. The mother said she could not buy a fireguard. While she was\n absent the baby was burned, and the mother, returning in a drunken\n state carrying a can of beer, said, \"A good job!\"\n\n _Records of Southwark Coroner, December 1915_\n\n A soldier's widow with six children, an Army pension of 30_s._ a\n week, and her eldest boy's wages of 30_s._, drinks every night with\n a married man who has a respectable, clean, and sober wife with\n eight children and a ninth lately born\u2014born prematurely as a result\n of her husband's beating her. The child bore the marks of his\n violence, and died in two months.\n\n _Records of Shaftesbury Society_\n\n The young wife of a soldier was brought from prison to be tried for\n manslaughter of her baby, who had died in the infirmary from\n neglect. She spent her time in the publichouses, and laughed when\n the children were taken to the infirmary. She went out one day to\n fetch a bottle of whisky and as she drank with a neighbour she said\n she knew the baby would die. The doctor said the child's skin was\n hanging in folds on the bones.\n\n _Facts in the \"Observer,\" January 23, 1916_\n\n A soldier's wife drank continuously while her child wasted away,\n left the tiny baby alone in the house while she went for beer, and a\n policeman found her lying drunk across the dead child's body.\n\n _Records of Barnsley Coroner, November, 1916_\n\n The mother of two children whose father was fighting in France gave\n way to drink in his absence, neglected her children and left them in\n grave moral danger, and committed suicide.\n\n _Records of an Orphan Home_\n\n A soldier's baby starved slowly to death as the mother drank away\n his pay, and while the child lay in its coffin the mother was out\n drinking.\n\n _West Bromwich Police Records, June 1915_\n\n A munition worker at Newcastle was grievously upset by the drinking\n habits of his wife. The police left a summons for her and she\n disappeared. Two days later her body was found in the Tyne. The man\n broke down at the inquest, saying, between his sobs: \"She was such a\n good wife to me for 20 years, and reared a good family before she\n took to drink.\"\n\n _Records of Newcastle Coroner, Summer 1916_\n\n The wife of a corporation workman at Sheffield, home from the\n trenches with six gunshot wounds and three pieces of shell in his\n body, found that his wife had given way to drink and starved her\n five children. She was sent to prison for six months.\n\n _Police Records of Sheffield, November 3, 1915_\n\n A soldier's wife who had spent the greater part of \u00a3100 Army money\n in drink was sent to prison for neglecting her children. Almost\n everything in the house was pawned, including the children's\n clothes; and the woman began to drink at five o'clock in the\n morning, and went on drinking all day.\n\n _Facts in \"Cork Constitution,\" December 10, 1915_\n\n A soldier's wife in Monmouthshire, with \u00a33 9_s._ a week, was found\n sodden with drink, while the soldier's eight children were in rags\n starving by day and huddling up in one bed by night.\n\n _Facts in \"Westminster Gazette,\" July 22, 1916_\n\n A smart tidy woman in a London suburb, whose husband is fighting in\n Mesopotamia, has \u00a32 10_s._ 6_d._ a week. She used to love her\n children and had a happy home, but she drinks away her Army pay,\n lives with a married man who has six children, and has become a\n drunken slattern. The other wife is beaten and neglected, and the\n soldier's children have gone to the workhouse.\n\n _Records of Shaftesbury Society_\n\n The four children of a soldier in Dublin were found hungry and\n shivering with cold while the mother was drinking. Several times she\n had let her baby fall while reeling with it in the street.\n\n _Facts in \"Dublin Evening Herald,\" October 20, 1916_\n\n At the trial of a soldier's wife for drinking and neglecting seven\n children, it was stated that a child of eleven was left in charge of\n a baby a fortnight old while the mother was drinking. At night all\n the children were heard screaming. The house was in utter darkness,\n and there was an escape of gas. Some men went in and turned off the\n gas, and at last the mother came stumbling out of a publichouse\n across the road.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Star,\" November 25, 1915_\n\n \"Your husband is fighting for his country, and his children have the\n right to be protected,\" said the Chairman of the Chesterfield Bench\n to a soldier's wife. Her children were found starving while she was\n drinking, and one day the little boy of three was found crouching\n naked inside the fender, trying to get warm. The police described\n the house as foul from top to bottom, with a heap of horrible rags\n for a bed, and a food cupboard that made the house unendurable when\n the door was opened.\n\n _Facts in \"Yorkshire Telegraph,\" March 24, 1916_\n\n The wife of a missing soldier was sent to prison at Chesterfield for\n neglecting three children between 13 years and 16 weeks old. She had\n gone astray through drink, and the youngest child, born under\n terrible conditions, was not her husband's. It was found lying on a\n filthy bed, and its drunken mother, to satisfy its pangs of hunger,\n had given it pennyworths of laudanum. Eleven people slept in two\n foul bedrooms.\n\n _Chesterfield Police Records, October 9, 1916_\n\n Five hundred children of soldiers are being cared for in the great\n Homes founded by Mr. Quarrier in Scotland, and most of them are\n there because of drinking mothers.\n\n _Facts in Reports_\n\n A soldier's wife at Biggleswade spent her allowance on drink and\n left her three children locked up in the house for days at a time.\n\n _Police Court Records of Biggleswade, September 1915_\n\n A soldier's wife was found reeling in the streets of Dublin with a\n baby in her arms. At her home were found four other children,\n cruelly neglected.\n\n _Facts in \"Dublin Mail,\" August 16, 1916_\n\n Nineteen hundred children of soldiers have come into the care of the\n N.S.P.C.C., mainly through drink, since the war began.\n\n _Records of the N.S.P.C.C._\n\n\n The Ruined Wives\n\nWho does not remember the terrible rush for the last drop of drink when\nProhibition seemed to be coming with the New Year? Long queues of women\nbesieged the whisky shops in Glasgow. There were women of all ages, said\nthe _Daily Mail_, tottering in grey hairs, young wives with babies in\ntheir arms, and men of the loafer type. \"There was not a respectable\ncitizen,\" says the _Mail_, \"who did not deplore this discreditable\nscene, but the remarks of passers-by provoked only torrents of insult.\"\nThe promise of the new year and the new Government, alas, was not\nfulfilled, and now in place of Drink Queues we have Food Queues. Let us\nsee what drink is doing among our soldiers' wives:\n\n Of 3000 soldiers' wives being cared for in South London, 2000 are\n splendid, while 1000 are sinking daily to lower and lower levels\n through drink.\n\n _Records of Shaftesbury Society_\n\n A soldier's wife, with a separation allowance of 32_s._ 6_d._ a\n week, drank most of it away, ruined her home, neglected her\n children, and became a lunatic.\n\n _Records of Claybury Asylum_\n\n A young soldier's wife, hitherto \"quite an elegant type,\" is rapidly\n becoming a drunkard. Women hitherto sober have not the courage to\n keep from women's drinking parties, and young girls come out of\n factories and go to publichouses in little groups.\n\n _Records of Charity Organisation Society_\n\n Outside a public house in Dublin 15 small children were crying in\n the cold, waiting for their mothers. Ninety-four drunken women came\n out in 25 minutes. There were ten drunken soldiers, and two girls of\n 15 were thrown into the street hopelessly drunk.\n\n _Facts in \"Irish Times,\" April 20, 1915_\n\n In Dundee over 170 wives of soldiers gave way to drink last year,\n and cruelly neglected their homes.\n\n _Records of the N. S. P. C. C._\n\n A soldier in the trenches received a letter from his little boy,\n which he sent to London with a pitiful appeal for help.\n\n \"Kindly do what you can for me and the well-being and welfare of my\n four beautiful children,\" the poor soldier wrote. \"I am enclosing a\n fearful letter I have received from my poor little lad, 14-1\/2, the\n first and only letter I have received from him. Sir, I shall be most\n anxiously awaiting your reply, for this letter is the greatest blow\n I have ever received.\"\n\n This is the little boy's letter:\n\n Dear Dad: Just a line to let you know how everything is at home.\n Mother is drunk for a fortnight and sober for a week for months\n and months. I've stuck it now for seven months, and can't stick\n it any longer. I tried to get into the Navy and passed all the\n tests, but mother would not sign the papers, for which I am\n sorry. If mum would sign I could go away to Portsmouth on\n Thursday, but she will not. At the present moment she is half\n drunk and keeps jawing me so that I could knife meself. I've\n lost my new job because mum would not wake me in the morning,\n and nothing for breakfast, and had to get mine and the\n children's tea at tea-time. It pains me to write like this, but\n I can't help it. I now seek your advice as to what to do. I hope\n _you_ will enjoy Xmas, although there is not much hope for us. I\n now conclude with fondest love, X. Your heartbroken Son, Leslie.\n\n A stream of nearly 15,000 men and women poured into 58 publichouses\n in Birmingham in less than four hours; over 6,000 were women. Into\n one house the people streamed at nearly 500 an hour.\n\n _Facts in \"Review of Reviews,\" October 1915_\n\n For months some wives of soldiers and sailors in Scotland were never\n really sober. \"We have done our best,\" says a worker among them,\n \"going to their homes and doing all in our power, but it beats us.\"\n In 23 families, with 178 children born, 61 were dead.\n\n _Facts told to Secretary for Scotland, July 1916_\n\n Will some Member of Parliament please ask\n\n=whether the ships that have brought in food for destruction by the\ndrink trade could not have brought in a large proportion of the\n3,500,000 tons of wheat now waiting for ships in Australia and the\n2,000,000 tons waiting in Canada?=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Roll of the Dead\n\n\nNo more pitiful record of the war is there than that unnumbered roll of\nmen lured from our armies by this liquor trade, and cast into\ndishonoured graves. We can take only a few of them.\n\n A number of soldiers at Ormskirk came into camp drunk on Christmas\n night. A request for quiet led to a fight, and one of the men was\n struck two blows and was dead the next morning.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Mail,\" December 28, 1915_\n\n A Liverpool soldier, drinking continuously, had overstayed his\n leave, and in a quarrel about this he stabbed his brother dead.\n\n _Facts in \"Liverpool Courier,\" April 20, 1917_\n\n A soldier invalided from France, having recovered from his wounds,\n gave way to drink, assaulted an officer, and hanged himself in his\n prison cell.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" April 11, 1916_\n\n A young lieutenant shot himself in an hotel near Trafalgar Square,\n and among the documents read at the inquest was a letter striking\n him off his battalion for drinking and gross carelessness.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" October 27, 1916_\n\n A captain in the Army ruined by drink, with a fine record of\n military service, started drinking on his way to a shooting range in\n London, and in a struggle he shot a detective dead.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" September 20, 1915_\n\n In the Scottish Express, between Doncaster and Selby, a drunken\n corporal of the Coldstream Guards was showing his rifle to a friend\n when it went off, the bullet killing a munitions works director in\n the next compartment, and narrowly escaping a lady in the\n compartment beyond. The corporal had in his pocket a bottle of\n whisky, which was freely handed round.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" December 3, 1915_\n\n A soldier who had been drinking heavily was placed in the guard\n room, and died after a night of groaning, evidently as the result of\n a fall.\n\n _Records of Greenwich Coroner, January 1, 1915_\n\n A young soldier arriving from India on Christmas morning was\n arrested three days later, after a drunken fight in which a man was\n killed.\n\n _Westminster Police Records, December 28, 1914_\n\n A soldier spent a day's leave in Manchester, ate and drank very\n heavily, and was found dead the next morning from choking.\n\n _Records of Manchester Coroner, December 28, 1914_\n\n A soldier home on leave was found drunk with his wife. They had been\n throwing pots at one another, and on Christmas morning the woman was\n found dead with a wound in her head.\n\n _Records of Oldham Coroner, December 24, 1914_\n\n Three gunners had four drinks each of rum, and at midnight lay down\n to sleep in a garden at Lee, where one was found dying from alcohol.\n\n _Facts in Local Papers at Lee, June 1915_\n\n A soldier died from alcohol in a house where drink was unlawfully\n sold.\n\n _Facts in \"Manchester Guardian,\" April 8, 1915_\n\n A private in the Welsh Fusiliers died from alcohol, cold and\n exposure. He left a publichouse with a 4_s._ bottle of whisky, and\n was found dead on the roadside next morning, with the bottle almost\n empty.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" April 13, 1915_\n\n An old man who was said to be in a drunken condition was wounded in\n a fall with a soldier from Gallipoli, and died a few days after.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Mail,\" January 17, 1916_\n\n An elderly man, seeing a drunken soldier lying in the street, went\n to his assistance, and was killed in a disturbance that followed.\n\n _Record of Yorkshire Assizes, November 21, 1916_\n\n A soldier was found drowned in the Trent. He was described as a good\n man at his work, but not steady, and had been drinking.\n\n _Facts in \"Newark Advertiser,\" August 4, 1915_\n\n A terrible disturbance occurred in a camp at Portland Reservoir\n after the closing of the canteen one Sunday night. A large number of\n men who had been drinking created a disturbance, in which bricks and\n stones were used, a tent collapsed, and the officers were called to\n quell the riot. The captain, drawing his revolver, rushed with two\n lieutenants into a hut where men were shouting and struggling, but\n appeals had no effect\u2014the men \"did not appear to hear or recognize\n their officers,\" and one man raised his rifle and took aim at them.\n At least fifty shots were fired, and a young corporal fired many\n shots through the window into the darkness. In the morning a soldier\n was found dead. Nobody knew who shot him, but the corporal thought\n he must have done.\n\n _Records of Dorset Assizes, Spring 1915_\n\n Will some Member of Parliament please ask\n\n=whether it is true that more food is being destroyed each week in\nbreweries and distilleries than by submarines?=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The New Drinkers\n\n\n\"_No complaints have reached the War Office of youths who were total\nabstainers having become confirmed drunkards since enlistment._\"\n\nSo we are told in the House of Commons. The records of the War Office\nare clearly incomplete, and the information from the camps may here be\nsupplemented by unchallengeable witnesses of what happens in the\nhorrible drink canteens run by the Army Council.\n\n A soldier who was wounded at La Bass\u00e9e, a total abstainer until\n then, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for killing his uncle while\n drunk. He was a newsvendor, aged 21, and had no memory of the\n tragedy in which he killed his uncle at a Christmas party.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" January 13, 1916_\n\n A private in the Royal Scots Fusileers, aged 17, was charged with\n murdering a bugler boy, aged 16, in his regiment. The private became\n mad drunk in the camp canteen, went back to his hut, locked himself\n in and fired two shots, one of which entered another hut and killed\n the bugler. \"Was there no one with power to say how much drink\n should be given?\" asked the judge, and an officer said there was no\n one. \"Then it was high time power was given to the commanding\n officer,\" said the judge. \"Was there to be no restraining hand to\n prevent young boys from fuddling themselves in canteens?\"\n\n _Facts in the \"Times,\" November 21, 1916_\n\n An old man sat in a tram in great distress. He had lost his boy at\n the Front. When he joined the Army he had never tasted alcohol, but\n when he came home on leave to see his mother he was drunk every\n night. He was drunk the night he went away, and in three days he was\n dead. \"The last we saw of him,\" said the poor old man between his\n sobs, \"was his going away drunk, and his mother, who is\n old-fashioned in her faith, cannot get it out of her mind that no\n drunkard can enter the Kingdom of God.\"\n\n _Facts told by Dr. Norman Maclean_\n\n Many young officers, called upon to share the wine bill at mess,\n naturally say, \"If I have to pay I may as well drink my share,\" and\n one man accounted for ten glasses of champagne. On a Guest night in\n his mess several more \"were under the table.\"\n\n _Facts in \"Dublin Daily Express,\" April 1916._\n\n A boy got his V.C., and came home wounded. The publican in his\n street sounded his praises in the taproom, where they subscribed to\n the bar for 120 pints for him when he arrived. He came home and\n began to drink it, and was nearly dead with it before he was\n rescued.\n\n _Facts related by Bishop of Lincoln_\n\n When the Scottish Horse Brigade were at Perth whisky was literally\n forced down the men, and they were inundated with floods of bad\n women.\n\n _Brigadier-General Lord Tullibardine_\n\n A teetotal household had two boys in an officers' training camp, and\n they gave pitiable accounts of drinking. Boys from school had a\n drunken sergeant put over them, and a canteen in the midst of them.\n \"Our boys never saw drink before,\" one father wrote.\n\n _From a letter to Dr. Norman Maclean_\n\n A boy of 17, discharged from the Navy, spent 8_s._ one night on beer\n and rum, and created a disturbance in a workshop at Sheffield.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Star,\" November 11, 1916_\n\n Mr. Justice Atkin, charging the Grand Jury at Bristol, said that in\n nearly every case where a soldier was tried in the Western Circuit\n the defence was drink. One lad of 18 was treated to eight pints of\n beer in two hours, and did not know what happened. That sort of\n thing, said the judge, must seriously impair the efficiency of the\n troops when sent to the Front.\n\n _Record of Bristol Assizes, Autumn 1914_\n\n Two boys, 15 and 17, were fined for being drunk in munition works.\n One was discovered just in time to save him from carrying molten\n liquid.\n\n _Birmingham Munitions Tribunal, Dec. 1916_\n\n \"A boy joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter, living in barracks and\n working on shore. Every day he was given 'grog' for his rations,\n although he never asked for it and never took it.\"\n\n _Facts in letter to the Author_\n\nSuch are the tragedies of boys handed over in our camps to drink and its\ntemptations. What of the girls in our munition shops? They have learned\nto drink in thousands since the war began\u2014respectable girls leaving home\nto go into munitions, respectable young wives alone at home. With no\nrestraining hand upon them, with new companionships and pocket-money\nflowing freely, it is not surprising the temptation should be too strong\nfor them. We can take only one or two cases.\n\n The girl-wife of a Cardiff seaman died in the street from exposure\n after drinking in publichouses with other girls.\n\n _Records of Pontypridd Coroner, December 27, 1916_\n\n A publican at Lincoln was fined \u00a35 for allowing children to be drunk\n on his premises. Ruth Onyon, 14, and Rose Herrick, 16, were found in\n his house with a soldier. They had been in five houses and had ten\n drinks each and reached home helplessly drunk.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Daily Telegraph,\" Sept. 1, 1916_\n\n A number of cartridge workers were summoned for taking drink into a\n munition works. One young woman was led to the surgery drunk at\n half-past four in the morning; another was discharged because she\n could not stand. Sixteen girls subscribed for four bottles of wine\n and whisky.\n\n _Records of Leeds Munitions Tribunal, April 28, 1916_\n\n Two girls of 16 and 17 were fined for being helplessly drunk in an\n explosive works, the magistrates pointing out that their conduct\n imperilled the lives of other workers.\n\n _Records of Coventry Munitions Tribunal July 24, 1916_\n\n The men and girls at a large armament works drank all night. Girls\n would lurch into the dormitory dead drunk at 2 a. m.; one lady was\n up till 4 a. m. letting in drunken girls. As a result of drunkenness\n there was an explosion at these works, two men being killed and six\n injured.\n\n _Facts in \"Spectator,\" Jan. 20, 1917_\n\n A Dublin publichouse was found full of girls and soldiers, all\n drunk. Three drunken girls were taken away by six soldiers.\n\n _Facts in \"Irish Times,\" April 20, 1916_\n\n In half an hour 367 girls entered Birmingham publichouses, scores\n under 18. Stout and beer were chiefly drunk, but whisky and water\n also, and some port wine. Ten young girls were quite drunk.\n\n _Facts in \"Birmingham Daily Post\"_\n\n Will some Member of Parliament please ask,\n\n=in view of the fact that American soldiers are not to touch alcohol,\nwhat arrangements the Government proposes to make for them in this\ncountry?=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Back to the Homeland\n\n\nEverywhere we hope and pray for peace, for the day when the men will\ncome home; but we may dread the day if the men come home to drink and\nits temptations. The sudden release of millions of men, the certain\nreaction after the terrible stress of these three years, is fearful to\ncontemplate with the door of the tap-room open. There would be an end of\ncivilization itself for days and weeks and months, and for many a town\nat home the Peace would be worse than the War.\n\nWe owe it to these men to listen to the warning of the Prison\nCommissioners who printed these words in their report last year:\n\n=When war is succeeded by peace there will come a time of trial for\nthose who have never turned their backs to a bodily enemy. With the\npassing of military discipline our brave fellows will be tempted to\nforget the hardships and miseries of the trenches in a burst of\nuncontrolled pleasure and license, and, if trade be bad and work\ndifficult to obtain, the lapse may, if not checked, become a step on a\ndownward career.=\n\nIt is not imagination merely. Judges, coroners, police, and all who face\nthe crime and misery of life, know well the bitter things that happen\nwhen men come home without restraint. There are witnesses innumerable.\nLet us hear a few of them.\n\n A captain in the Royal Flying Corps drove a motor-car through\n London, knocked a man down, drove on, and ignored the police, who\n eventually mounted the footboard and found the officer drunk.\n\n _Bow Street Police Records, June 3, 1916_\n\n A lance-corporal on Chesterfield station was so drunk that he walked\n off the platform and fell on the line as a passenger train came up.\n\n _Chesterfield Police Records, June 2, 1915_\n\n A corporal of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, leaving the\n Front with 150 rounds of ammunition and his service rifle, came out\n drunk into the streets of West Ham and began firing his rifle.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" July 10, 1915_\n\n A soldier who had received a cartridge from his son at the Front,\n put it in his rifle, and while drunk fired it in the streets of\n Manchester.\n\n _Manchester Police Records, January 27, 1915_\n\n In the early hours of the morning two unarmed soldiers were fired at\n in Woolwich by a drunken soldier, who chased them for a long\n distance, firing shots all the time, until he was arrested.\n\n _Facts in \"Alliance News,\" February, 1915_\n\n Drunkenness among soldiers and sailors is appalling. Unoffending\n travellers are delayed by drunken sentries. Sailors landing after\n weeks of arduous toil in the North Sea find it easy to get so drunk\n that some are drowned, some die from exposure, and many return to\n their ships in a condition of helpless inebriety.\n\n _Facts in \"Inverness Courier,\" May 1915_\n\n Two drunken soldiers entered the parish church at Codford, set fire\n to the vestry, threw down the altar cross and candlestick, broke a\n stained-glass window, and tore leaves out of a Bible 200 years old.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" April 3, 1916_\n\n A drunken soldier at Cannock was imprisoned for drawing his bayonet\n in the streets. \"If I meet a policeman I will murder the dog,\" he\n said, and, meeting one, he threatened to cut off his head.\n\n _Police Records at Cannock, March 1916_\n\n 400 soldiers tried to get a drunken man from the police in Grantham.\n\n _Facts in \"Grimsby News,\" July 30, 1915_\n\n A drunken sergeant was found forcibly detaining a girl at Hornsey.\n On the police interfering, the drunken soldier drew his bayonet.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" September 7, 1916_\n\n Three splendid-looking fellows, minesweepers, were traveling on the\n Highland Railway. \"All were married men,\" said a fellow passenger,\n \"happy and proud of their homes, and they spoke with ache still in\n their hearts something of their lives and work. Well, these men\n succumbed during the journey. A change of trains was their\n opportunity, and I left them in a nearly helpless condition.\"\n\n _Facts in \"The Spectator,\" April 8, 1916_\n\n A lady visited a soldier's wife and found her at home with all her\n clothes in pawn. Her husband and brother had both been home from the\n Front, and in one week had spent \u00a38 on drink.\n\n _Facts in the \"Cork Constitution,\" Dec. 10, 1915_\n\n A labourer, home from tunnelling work at the Front, was fined 13_s._\n for drunkenness on his 33rd appearance, having spent \u00a345 in seven\n days.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" Oct. 11, 1916_\n\n A disabled soldier was selling papers in Kingsway, London. He was\n proud of his military record and the character his colonel gave him.\n He was trying to compound for a pension; he thought he would settle\n for \u00a350. \"Mind you,\" said he \"there is not a better character in\n London than mine, and I shall get the \u00a350. Then I shall have a\n month's booze.\" \"What, with that fine character of yours?\" a\n gentleman said to him. \"Yes,\" said the man, \"when I came home, and\n could leave the hospital, there was \u00a350 due to me, and I had a\n regular booze.\"\n\n _Facts known to the Author_\n\n A soldier with twelve years' clean record in the Army was sentenced\n for felony after being made drunk by his friends.\n\n _Police Records of Southport, January 9, 1915_\n\nNo Government has ever received more warnings than the three war\nGovernments have received concerning drink. There is no room for them\nhere, but we may call a few witnesses such as cannot be ignored by a\nnation looking forward to the day when millions of men will be home\nagain.\n\n A house in Westminster reeked with filth and drink and drunken\n overseas soldiers, \"and it would be better,\" said the Crown\n Solicitor, \"if power were given to the police to sweep such places\n off the earth.\"\n\n _Westminster Police Records, Aug. 1916_\n\n A sapper seaman was found dead at the quay. Another seaman said his\n friend had seven drinks. They left the publichouse arm-in-arm, and\n went to the quay. There he saw a corporal, who was boatswain for the\n night, and was drunk. Leaving the sapper, he got the corporal into\n the boat, and went back for his friend, but the sapper had\n disappeared.\n\n The lieutenant: \"The deceased was one of the quietest boys who had\n ever been on the ship, and one of the best oarsmen. The whole\n trouble was that it was pay day.\"\n\n The Coroner: \"Prohibition during the war would be a blessing to all.\n It seems to be a very rotten state of affairs.\"\n\n The foreman: \"Drink.\"\n\n The lieutenant: \"Prohibition would be the best thing.\"\n\n The Coroner: \"This poor man, unfortunately, is one of many.\"\n\n _Facts in \"Western Daily Mercury,\" January 8, 1917_\n\n A publican at Dover was fined \u00a320 for selling a bottle of whisky to\n a sailor. The Admiral said drink undermined the efficiency of the\n patrol vessels, and those who supplied it directly assisted the\n enemy, and might be the cause of the loss of very many lives.\n\n _Police Records of Dover, October 6, 1916_\n\n A private in the Northumberland Fusiliers, aged 23, was charged with\n burglary while drunk. His father and three brothers were in the\n Army. He took part in the battle of Loos, was wounded at Salonika,\n and was recommended for distinction for helping to save a wounded\n officer.\n\n During the whole of Christmas leave he was drinking, made drunk by\n his friends who were probably proud of his having held part of a\n trench against a German bombing party. His captain described him as\n a good soldier in peace, and brave in action\u2014a man whose disgrace\n would be felt by the regiment.\n\n Mr. Justice Rowlatt said everyone was hoping for the time when\n millions of brave men would come home after facing incredible\n dangers, and we must look forward almost with terror to having these\n men exposed to drink and its temptations. What would be the state of\n the country in such a case unless we could make a clean sweep of\n drink? We should have to face this question over and over again, and\n the sooner we faced it the better.\n\n _Records of Derbyshire Assizes, February 1917_\n\n Whoever allowed soldiers or sailors to drink to excess, said the\n Mayor of Tynemouth, should be tried by court-martial for treason. He\n would be recreant in his duty to God, to himself, and to the\n citizens, if he did not call attention to the brutalising of so many\n townspeople and the callous conduct of the \"waster\" element in the\n drink trade. He had no quarrel with those who conducted their\n business properly.\n\n _Facts in Tynemouth papers, February, 1915_\n\n The Aldershot command appealed for the closing of half the\n publichouses, to save the men from temptation when the troops are\n demobilised and return with their pockets full of money.\n\n _Record of Workingham Licensing Sessions, 1917_\n\n The _Army and Navy Gazette_, in an article disapproving of the\n Prohibition Campaign, issues a terrible warning which should be\n printed on the door of the room in which the Army Council meets.\n These are its words:\n\n \"It is on record that towards the end of the siege of Sebastopol rum\n was made too regular an issue, with the result that almost every\n soldier who survived to return home became a drunkard.\"\n\nThe siege of Sebastopol lasted less than a year, and that is the work of\nthe rum issue for a few months. If rum does that in months, what will it\ndo in years?\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Into the Firing Line\n\n\nLord Kitchener is dead, but there are two things that are with us\nstill\u2014that rare little note that he gave to his men as they went out,\nwarning them of drink; and that infamous note sent out by a drink firm\nin London, begging our people to send out drink to our men. They can\nguarantee it right up to the firing line, they say, and even when our\nshells could not get there through drink, drink seems to have found its\nway. It can get on to transports when the Ministry of Munitions is\nwaiting urgently for shipping space; it can commandeer our vans and\nhorses and trains when these mean life or death to us; it seems to get\npast any regulation; it goes about with the power of a king, doing its\nwork where it will.\n\n It is regrettable that our troops at the Front cannot get more\n British Beer.\n\n Managing Director of Allsopps, July 14, 1916\n\n Dear Sir, In answer to your inquiry, the only limitation in the size\n of cases consigned to officers in the Expeditionary Force is that\n they must not exceed 1 cwt.\n\n We can guarantee delivery right into the front trenches. The cases\n are handed over at Southampton to the Military Forwarding Officer,\n and the A.S.C. see them right through. We are shipping hundreds of\n cases weekly. Yours faithfully,\n\n _Letter from a Wine and Spirit firm in London_\n\nSo drink finds its way to the front, to weaken our troops, with all\ntheir matchless heroism. Let us call the witnesses who have seen the\nwork it does.\n\n Soldiers at the front, tried for drunkenness, have declared that\n they have received drink from home. Men sometimes receive flasks in\n the trenches. They are exhausted, the stimulant revives them for a\n minute or two, and the harm is done. \"And then (says Col. Crozier)\n they get about two years' hard labour.\"\n\n _Letter from Colonel Crozier, commanding 9th Royal Irish Rifles_\n\n As a result of a Court-martial investigating charges of excessive\n drinking among the officers of a regiment at the Front, the Army\n Council removed the commanding officer from his post.\n\n _Records of Court-martials, 1916_\n\n In the torrid climate of Mesopotamia, in defiance of all military\n medical history, rum was issued to the men instead of food and\n sterile water, and the presence of cholera, dysentery and other\n diseases, was attributed to this by Sir Victor Horsley. \"Our gross\n failures and stupidity,\" he said, \"are in my opinion due to whisky\n affecting the intellectual organs and clearness of our leaders. They\n do not realise that alcohol in small doses acts as a brake on the\n brain.\"\n\n _Facts in a letter from Sir Victor Horsley, May 13, 1916_\n\n[Illustration: THE JUNKER'S LITTLE BROTHER]\n\n Battalion Headquarters\u2014colonel and chaplain present. Enter Adjutant:\n \"The rum ration is due tonight, sir; am I to distribute it?\" The\n colonel (nobly and in a voice audible all over the trench): \"No!\n Damn the rum! To hell with the rum!\"\n\n _Chaplain's letter in \"Alliance News,\" June 1916_\n\n At a court-martial in Newcastle, a sergeant-major, charged with\n misappropriating funds of the sergeant's mess, pleaded that during\n this period a resolution of the mess had come into effect, providing\n free drinks during Christmas and the New Year.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" April 17, 1916_\n\n \"In the Flying Services one has seen more than one good man go to\n the dogs through drink, or become fat and flabby and useless through\n just the excess of alcohol which falls short of taking to drink in\n the usual acceptance of the term. More men take to drink because of\n the 'have another' custom than because they like or need alcohol,\n and simple Prohibition would stop all this nonsense straight away.\n This kindly note is not the outpouring of a teetotal fanatic, for I\n suppose I have paid in my time rather more than my share of the\n nation's drink-bill; it is merely a perfectly sound argument in\n favour of increasing the nation's efficiency at the expense of its\n chief bad habit.\"\n\n _The Editor of \"The Aeroplane\"_\n\n A lieutenant in the trenches, knowing that the rum ration made him\n cold, threw his rum on the ground. His captain saw him, and\n threatened to report him. \"You do, sir,\" said the lieutenant, \"and I\n will report you for being drunk on duty.\"\n\n _Facts in possession of the Author_\n\n A seaman serving on a ship in Cork Harbour died from alcohol. Found\n drunk and unknown, he was put on a stretcher and died.\n\n _Facts in \"Cork Constitution,\" December 9, 1915_\n\n \"Over three-quarters of the court-martials I have had anything to do\n with are due directly or indirectly to drunkenness. Many thousands\n of competent N.C.O.s and soldiers have been punished, and become\n useless to the nation during their punishment, as a result of drink.\n\n \"I have never been a teetotaler, and have rather opposed the radical\n temperance agitation, but am now changing my views as I see our\n success over here hampered and our progress towards victory retarded\n so obviously by drink.\"\n\n _Letter from a Lieut.-Colonel at the Front, seen by the Author_\n\n The captain of a British merchant ship, drunk on the bridge, ordered\n his chief gunner to fire 50 rounds of shell at nothing. The gunner\n fired four rounds to appease him. Going through the Mediterranean,\n the drunken captain ordered his gunner to fire at a British hospital\n ship, and the incident led to a struggle for life, which ended in\n the captain's being put in irons, tried, and sentenced to five\n years' penal servitude.\n\n _Record of Devon Assizes, Exeter, February 2, 1917_\n\n An officer was left in charge of a British ship. Mad with drink, he\n went among the men and shot one dead. He is now in an asylum.\n\n _Case reported to the Admiralty_\n\n The crew of a Dutch ship arriving in the Tyne was placed under a\n naval guard after a drunken riot in which three were killed.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" September 14, 1915_\n\n The captain of a Norwegian barque mysteriously disappeared, and the\n vessel arrived in port from the North Sea. The mate, who had been\n drinking heavily, was seen, with a hammer in his hand, with the\n captain in a corner, bleeding from wounds about the head.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" April 8, 1916_\n\n A seaman ashore in Glasgow, \"wild with drink and passion,\" was\n terribly wounded in a quarrel in a public-house, and died the same\n night. A youth of 19 was sentenced to five years' penal servitude.\n\n _Records of Edinburgh High Court, Dec. 1916_\n\n A barge-loader at West India Docks died from alcohol, and three\n other men were removed in an ambulance after drinking rum.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" May 9, 1916_\n\n Orders were given on a steamer for the boats to be swung out in\n readiness for submarines. The first and second officer, having been\n drinking, could not do their duty.\n\n _Records of Liverpool Marine Board, April 13, 1917_\n\n The jury returned a verdict of murder against a youth of 19 who,\n after drinking one night, went on to his ship and killed the second\n officer.\n\n _Records of Hull Coroner, April 24, 1917_\n\n A drunken captain in command of a drifter landed with an armed party\n on the Isle of Man. He posted the men on the quay, and gave them\n orders to allow no one to pass. Declaring he would shoot every\n person who came within reach, he fired twice, and threatened to kill\n two police officers.\n\n _Facts in \"Times,\" October 6, 1916_\n\nSuch is the work of drink wherever it finds a soldier to entrap\u2014the\ndrink the Navy carries free from Southampton to the trenches; and from\nAmerica comes the news, as this page is being written, that the Army and\nthe Navy of our Western Ally, like the Army and the Navy of our Eastern\nAlly, are to be under Total Prohibition.\n\n Will some Member of Parliament please ask\n\n=how much bread is destroyed each week to make beer for German\ninternment camps in this country?=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Drink and the Red Cross\n\n\nIf the full story could ever be told of the national tragedy of drink\nand the war there would be no more ghastly chapter than that which would\ntell how drink fought the Red Cross; how, without pity, it hindered the\nwork of mercy that is the general consolation of the world in days like\nthese.\n\nWe are coming to a famine not only in food, but in doctors. The\ndeath-roll has been heavy beyond all parallel; the strain on the medical\nservices has been almost too great to be borne, and we look anxiously\nround to know where the doctors and nurses will come from. With\nProhibition the problem would be largely solved, for the ordinary burden\nof life would be largely lifted from our doctors and hospitals, and\nthousands of men and women would be free to give themselves to the war\ninstead of mending up and patching up the sordid effects of drink. A\nrich brewer gave a donation for extending a hospital. \"Ah! but we should\nnot have to extend if he would shut up his public-houses,\" said a\ndoctor.\n\nIt is easy to see how drink is telling all the time against our doctors,\nour nurses, and our hospitals everywhere. Let us call a few witnesses.\n\n Somebody gave a glass of neat whisky to two wounded men at a garden\n party in Tottenham. Both were drunk when the brake came to take them\n home, and one died on the way.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Telegraph,\" September 3, 1915_\n\n Three wounded soldiers at Oxford were overcome by four bottles of\n rum smuggled into the hospital by visitors, and one of the men died.\n\n _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 1916_\n\n A wounded soldier asked for two hours' leave, came back in four\n hours drunk with whisky, and died after a terrible night in the\n hospital.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Mail\"_\n\n Two limbless soldiers were found helplessly drunk on the pavement at\n Brighton. A publican was fined \u00a320.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" November 25, 1916_\n\n A wounded soldier, mentioned in despatches, was charged with causing\n the death of a soldier with whom he had been drinking. Reeling under\n a heavy blow, the injured man was helped to bed, but when the bugle\n sounded in the morning he was dead.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Mail,\" December 21, 1915_\n\n A soldier, aged 29, with a gunshot wound in his arm, died from\n alcohol at Oxford. One Sunday night he and two other wounded\n soldiers consumed four bottles of rum brought into the hospital.\n\n _Records of Oxford Coroner, January 10, 1916_\n\n Three soldiers in hospital uniform were found lying helplessly drunk\n on the tramlines of Sheffield. Two were back from the Dardanelles.\n\n _Facts in \"Sheffield Star,\" March 2, 1916_\n\n Seamen on a ship bringing wounded to England from Boulogne were so\n drunk that they interfered with the stretcher bearers, and one fell\n across a wounded soldier lying on deck.\n\n _Police Records of Southampton, May 14, 1915_\n\n There was a paralysed and helpless man who was found hopelessly\n drunk in hospital after his friends had visited him.\n\n _Statement by Lieut.-Col. Sir Alfred Pearce Gould_\n\n An officer who has trained hundreds of men for the ambulance corps\n declared that a large percentage of wounded are in a very nervous\n condition, in which alcohol means collapse and almost certain death.\n\n _Quoted in \"Daily Mail\"_\n\n Lying helpless at a London station, moaning on the ground in drunken\n delirium, was a lad in hospital blue who had, in truth, been wounded\n by his friends. Drink was taking him again through the worst of his\n experiences, and his mental pain was pitiable to see.\n\n _Facts in the \"Globe,\" January, 1917_\n\n Two drunken soldiers from Gallipoli made what a doctor described as\n the most savage attack he ever saw on a civilian. They held a young\n man's head against a wall and pounded him unmercifully.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" August 19, 1916_\n\n A party of soldiers were seriously injured in a struggle to arrest a\n drunken private at Pontefract. The publican called on the men in his\n taproom to rescue the private, but the sergeants drove them off.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" October 5, 1914_\n\n A sergeant of a Welsh regiment, invited to drink by friends in\n Waterloo Road, was picked up as he lay senseless, his pulse beating\n feebly, his eyes wide open, and his body starving with cold.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" February 14, 1916_\n\n A drunken man rushed from a publichouse and kicked a soldier\n unconscious. The military police, chasing the man, were stoned. Four\n soldiers were injured, one having his head cut open, and the\n military were ordered to clear the place with fixed bayonets.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" August 11, 1915_\n\n The medical officer in charge of the Mental Block of a large\n military hospital said to the Colonel: \"I have the worst job of all,\n and it is through Drink, Drink, Drink! Men recover fairly soon from\n shell shock, but officers, especially the younger ones, who\n habitually take wines and spirits, are subject to relapses every few\n days. It is awful!\"\n\n _Facts in \"National Temperance Quarterly,\" May 1917_\n\n Of the thirty war hospitals in Hertfordshire, with 8000 men passing\n through them in the first thirty months of the war, there is not one\n that has not had trouble with drink.\n\n _Facts known to the Author_\n\n A doctor from a Canadian hospital said a large percentage of their\n troops had had to be sent back to Canada rendered permanently insane\n through the action of alcohol.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" October 31, 1916_\n\nOne terrible truth remains to be told of the crime of drink against the\nRed Cross. The most blessed thing in all the world today is alcohol, for\nit makes chloroform and ether, which soothe the pain of men. We cannot\nget enough of either of these consoling drugs, yet we go on wasting\nprecious food to make more alcohol _to add to the sum of misery and\npain_.\n\n Will some Member of Parliament please ask\n\n=whether the bread ration applies equally to all; or if it may be\nexceeded if the excess is drunk instead of being eaten?=\n\n and\n\n=how many brewers' vats have been imported this year on ships which had\nno room for urgent munitions of war?=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Stabbing the Army in the Back\n\n\nAll the world is learning now that the drink trade is the great\nconfederate of venereal disease. It leads a man into temptation,\ndestroys his power of resistance, and s his chances of recovery.\n\nWe can never know the truth about the extent of this disease, about the\nway in which the liquor trade, by breaking down tens of thousands of our\nmen, has stabbed the Army in the back. But the number of soldiers\nincapacitated by this disease through drink is enormously greater than\nthe number incapacitated by the most subtle or dramatic stroke devised\nby the German staff.\n\nThe lost man-power of the Army through this disease must be equal to the\nwhole of the original British Expeditionary Force. The Government has\ngiven us figures for the Army at home last year, and they are 43 per\n1,000\u2014or over 100,000 cases for an army of 2,500,000 men. There were\n7,000 cases in one Canadian camp alone.\n\nHere are the black facts revealed in a debate in Parliament on April 23,\n1917, when two distinguished Army officers, speaking with great\nrestraint, sought to open the eyes of the nation to this plague fostered\nin our camps by drink:\n\n \"During the war we have had admitted into the hospitals of England\n over 70,000 cases of gonorrh\u0153a, over 20,000 cases of syphilis, and\n over 6000 cases of another disease somewhat similar. I am quite\n openly prepared to state that of these 20,000 cases of syphilis you\n do not get much work out of them under two and a half years. I know\n from what I have seen of the modern conditions of this War that you\n may absolutely wipe them out, except for a few handfuls.\n\n \"When you come to the great mass of casualties under this head ...\n the figures mean that you have =a Division constantly out of\n action=. If you have anything like 70,000 men enfeebled, you find\n that you suffer to that extent also. It is not only that you lose\n the men, and not only the men who are partially cured are suffering\n for many months to come, but their chances of recovery from wounds\n are not nearly so good.\n\n \"I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found\n necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up\n to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British\n hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is\n that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of\n syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come\n to gonorrh\u0153a, the figure given me which covers that is between\n 150,000 and 200,000 cases.\"\n\n _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_\n\n \"Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not\n only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed\n and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact\n that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000\n of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal\n disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any\n Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can\n assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home\n Country, and does not make for what we all desire\u2014Imperial Unity.\"\n\n _Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917_\n\nThose are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself;\nthey stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be\ndenied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful\nproportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few\nexamples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the\npublic-house.\n\n It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language\n in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised\n country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been\n court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit\n unspeakable offences against animals.\n\n _Facts in Records of Court-Martials_\n\n A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes\n how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make\n them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with\n disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey\n upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.\n\n _Letter in the \"Times\"_\n\n One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our\n soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was\n receiving 15_s._ a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916,\n and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men\n seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.\n\n _Police Records of Lambeth_\n\n A soldier from the Front with \u00a318 was taken by a married woman to\n her home, where he was found after a drunken bout with eight women,\n all drunk. The woman's children were terribly neglected.\n\n _Police Records of St. Helens, November 30, 1915_\n\n If you describe the Waterloo Road and the back streets as an open\n sewer you will be somewhere near the truth. Not a day goes by\n without bringing some soldier who has been waylaid.\n\n _Facts in the \"Times,\" February 22, 1917_\n\n A soldier came from the Front to go home to Scotland. He got drunk\n near Waterloo, losing all his money and his railway pass. He spent\n his leave living on charity, and returned to the Front without\n having been near either his home or his friends.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" February 14, 1916_\n\nHere is the official proof of the relation of the drink trade to this\ntraffic in disease. It is from the Report of the Royal Commission:\n\n Abundant evidence was given as to the intimate relation between\n alcohol and venereal diseases.\n\n Alcohol renders a man liable to yield to temptations which he might\n otherwise resist, and aggravates the disease by diminishing the\n resistance of the individual.\n\n Alcoholism makes latent syphilis and gonorrh\u0153a active.\n\n Our evidence tends to show that the communication in disease is\n frequently due to indulgence in intoxicants, and there is no doubt\n that the growth of temperance among the population would help to\n bring about an amelioration of the very serious conditions which our\n enquiry has revealed.\n\n We desire, therefore, to place on record our opinion that action\n should be taken without delay.\n\n Will some Member of Parliament please ask\n\n=if, in view of Lord D'Abernon's statement that Prohibition has failed\nin Canada, the Government will issue the figures showing the decrease of\ncrime and the increase of wealth?=\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Price the Empire Pays\n\n\nIt is a bitter irony that while the men of the Empire have come to\nFrance to fight the enemy of mankind, this foe within our gates has\nstruck a blow at the British Empire that generations will not heal. How\nmany Empire men this private trade has slain we do not know, but we know\nbeyond all challenge that it has weakened the bonds that bind our\nDominions to the Motherland. This trade that throttles us at home can\npull the Empire down, and it has started well. It has struck its blow at\nCanada.\n\nLet us look at the plain facts which in other days than these would have\ncaused a storm of anger that Parliament could not have ignored. Canada\nhas followed the King; arming herself with her full powers, flinging\nherself upon her enemies with her utmost strength, she has swept drink\nout of Canada almost from sea to sea. But even before she did this\nCanada saw that alcohol must go from her camps if her men were to be fit\nto fight for England, and long before the Prohibition wave swept across\nthe country, the Canadian Government removed all alcohol from the\ntraining camps. It was the deliberate choice of a Government and its\npeople, and from that day to this there has been no reason for regret.\n\nSo the young manhood of Canada, rallying to the flag, was guarded from\nalcohol. She poured out her men in hundreds of thousands; they came to\nus from Prohibition camps; they came in Prohibition ships, and even here\nthis trade that has us in its grip was not allowed at first in the\nCanadian camps; the only condition that Canada made\u2014a condition implied\nbut clearly understood\u2014was properly regarded and obeyed.\n\nWe respected the desire of Canada, and kept her soldiers free from drink\nin their own camps. But a soldier cannot keep in camp, and in the\nvillages around the Drink Trade waits in every street. The military\nauthorities were willing for the Canadian Government to have their way\ninside the camps, but drink was free outside, and in these public-houses\nthere was sown the seed that may one day break this Empire. The Drink\nTrade was so rampant outside the Canadian camps that Prohibition inside\nwas almost in vain. We had to decide between breaking the word of the\nCanadian Government to its people or dealing with this trade as Canada\nherself has done; as Russia has done; as France and America are doing.\nIt was the Empire or the drink traffic, and the drink traffic won, as it\nalways wins with us.\n\nIt came about in October, down on Salisbury Plain. During one week-end a\nnumber of Canadian troops gave way to drinking in villages around the\ncamps, and it was then that the grave decision was come to that the\ndrink trade should be allowed to set up its horrible canteens in every\nCanadian camp. The change was made at the request of a British General,\nand we have the assurance of the Prime Minister of Canada that the\napproval of the Canadian Government was neither obtained nor asked. In\nhanding the Canadian Army over to the drink canteens, in deliberately\nreversing the policy of the Canadian Government and its people, there\nwas no consultation with Canada.\n\nIt is important to remember that this decision, fraught with tragic and\nfar-reaching consequences for the Empire, was a pure and simple English\nact. We may imagine the Canadian view from the remark of a Canadian\nGeneral, who said, \"I know drink is a hindrance, but I can do very\nlittle, because in military circles in this country drunkenness is not\nconsidered a very serious offense.\"\n\nIt would have been surprising if there had not poured in upon our\nGovernment a stream of protests, and from all parts of the Dominions\nthey came. The Dominion of Canada, giving freely to the Motherland\n450,000 boys and men, was moved to passionate indignation that England\nshould scorn her love for them, should ignore the pleadings of their\nmothers and sisters, and should put in their way the temptations from\nwhich they were saved at home. Canada does not want our drink trade; she\nlives side by side with the United States, she sees that great country\nbuilding up its future free from drink, and she sees America, splendid\nally in war, as a mighty rival in peace.\n\nAnd Canada is ready for the Reconstruction. She has followed the\nProhibition lead of the United States, and already she has ceased to be\na borrowing country. The very first year of Prohibition has seen this\nyoung Dominion, for the first time in her history, financially\nself-sustaining. Crime is disappearing; social gatherings are held in\nher gaols; she has set up vast munition workshops, and instead of\nborrowing money for her own support she has made hundreds of millions'\nworth of munitions for which this country need not pay until the war is\nover, and then need never pay at all for the munitions the Canadians\nhave used. Canada is in deadly earliest. She kept her men away from\ndrink to make them fit; she has swept it away to make a clean country\nfor those who go back.\n\nAnd what is England's contribution to this Imperial Reconstruction? _We\nhave scorned it all._ The Prime Minister has said that this drink trade\nis so horrible that it is worth this horrible war to settle with it, yet\nwe have sacrificed the love of Canada on our brewers' altar. We can\nbelieve the Canadian who declares his profound conviction that but for\nthis Canada would have sent us 100,000 more recruits; we can believe it\nis true that where responsible Canadians meet together in these days the\ntalk is of how long the tie will last unbroken that binds the daughter\nto the Motherland. We can understand the passion that lies behind the\nresolutions that come to Downing Street from Nova Scotia; we know the\ndepth of the yearning of those 64,000 mothers and wives of Toronto who\nsigned that great petition to the Government of Canada begging it in the\nname of God to intervene.\n\nWe can understand it all; but let us call the witnesses, and let us see\nthe price the Dominion pays for our quailing before this Kaiser's trade.\n\n\n Those Who Will Not Go Back\n\nIt is the great consolation of Canada that, though their sons may fall\nbefore this tempter's trade in Britain, they will go back to a Canada\nfree from drink. But some will never go back, and they are not on the\nRoll of Honour. They have been destroyed by the enemy within our gate,\nthis trade that traps men on their way to France and digs their graves.\n\n A young Canadian who had never tasted alcohol came from a\n Prohibition camp in Canada, came to England on a Prohibition ship,\n and was put in a camp with a drink canteen. He started drinking and\n contracted venereal disease. Ordered home as unfit, in fear and\n shame he sought a friend's advice about the girl he was to marry.\n \"You can never marry her,\" said his friend, and that night in his\n hut the young Canadian blew out his brains.\n\n _Facts in possession of the Author_\n\n A young Canadian officer was sent home disgraced. Sodden with\n alcohol, he left the train and shot a railway clerk dead.\n\n _Facts in Montreal \"Weekly Witness,\" October 24, 1916_\n\n A Russian soldier in the Canadian forces, described as a clean,\n soldierly man, with a splendid character from his officer, was\n charged with the murder of a Canadian private who tried to separate\n two quarrelling soldiers in a bar. The prisoner had drunk much\n whisky and remembered nothing of his crime, and was sentenced to\n twelve months' hard labour for manslaughter. The judge hoped he\n might be used as a soldier _in the Russian Army_.\n\n _Record of Hampshire Assizes, February 1916_\n\n A man from Prohibition Russia enlisted in Prohibition Canada, and\n came to England. He spent 9_s._ on drink one day, and that night he\n crept from his bed and killed his corporal at Witley Camp.\n\n _Police Records of Godalming, February 1917_\n\n A Canadian soldier, aged 26, after a publichouse quarrel with\n another soldier, was found dying on the pavement in Hastings. His\n throat had been cut, and he died on entering the hospital. The other\n soldier was charged with murder, and sentenced to 15 years.\n\n _Record of Hastings Assizes, March 1917_\n\n A young Canadian soldier, aged 20, died from alcohol while in\n training at Witley. He had a bottle of stout followed by nine or ten\n \"double-headers\" of neat whisky in about two hours. He was carried\n back to camp, laid unconscious on his bed, and died.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" March 22, 1917_\n\n A Canadian lieutenant was tried for the murder of a canteen\n sergeant. They arrived together at a house at Grayshott, where the\n lieutenant asked for some strong drink and took a bottle of whisky\n and two glasses. The sergeant was afterwards found dead in the\n cellar, and the lieutenant carried the body into the stable.\n\n _Records of Grayshott Coroner, December 1915_\n\n A man leaving a publichouse in company with a woman, with whom he\n had been drinking, met a Canadian soldier not far from Charing\n Cross. The soldier spoke, and the man struck him. The soldier was\n carried to the hospital, where he died soon afterwards from a wound\n two inches deep, caused by a knife.\n\n _Police Records of Bow Street, January 1, 1917_\n\n The wife of a gunner in the South African Heavy Artillery died at\n Bexhill from alcohol. The soldier said he bought 12 bottles of stout\n and 12 bottles of beer, one of whisky, and one of port, which they\n drank between Saturday night and Monday night.\n\n _Records of Bexhill Coroner, December 1915_\n\n A soldier from Toronto, having been drinking away his pay in a\n Carlisle publichouse, with another Canadian soldier and some married\n women, failed to appear the next morning, and was found dead on a\n footpath with a bottle of whisky in his pocket\n\n _Records of Carlisle Coroner, April 14, 1917_\n\n A Canadian soldier, having drawn \u00a320 from the Canadian office,\n visited several publichouses, and was killed in a scuffle in London.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily News,\" December 2, 1916_\n\n\n The Men From the Prohibition Camps\n\nAgain and again we have seen the peculiar temptations of drink among\nCanadians. Officers, chief-constables, chaplains, newspapers, the men\nthemselves, have all borne witness that to these men from Prohibition\nCanada the sudden temptations of our drink trade come with terrible\npower, and often they fall not knowing. The finest manhood of the Empire\nour tap-rooms and canteens destroy, not in isolated cases, but in a host\nwe dare not number.\n\nOf the soldiers who first came over from Canada, says a great Canadian\npaper, many were emigrants from England, not yet securely planted in\nCanada, and for their sakes especially drink should have been withheld\nfrom them. Of the larger number of Canadian troops that followed them,\nmany were youths who had never known drink, and they were taken from\nhome at the most social and reckless age, to face drink with all the\ntemptations induced by the nervous strain, the hardships and social\nabandon of the camp and the trench, and the free pocket-money when on\nleave.\n\n In an officers' mess of two double companies of Canadians only one\n officer drank on his arrival in a canteen camp in England; within\n three months there was not an abstainer in the mess.\n\n _Facts told at Society for Study of Inebriety, Jan. 10, 1916_\n\n These men come mostly from districts in Canada where intoxicants are\n prohibited by law, and many of them, being young lads, who perhaps\n have never tasted liquor before their arrival, fall easy victims.\n\n _Chief Constable of Godalming_\n\n Overseas soldiers come to our hospitals astonishingly cheerful and\n fit in a general sense, and wonderfully receptive to treatment. Only\n three per thousand die in our great hospitals. This is largely due\n to the hardy life of the men and the fact that they are removed from\n the danger of taking too much alcohol. The home troops have a much\n higher mortality, partly because their use of alcohol diminishes\n their chances. Re-admissions are largely due to drink on furlough.\n\n _Major Maclean, M.D., of the Third Western General Hospital_\n\n A Canadian soldier, who had been wounded at the Front, was taken to\n a house by women and left alone drunk. An officer gave him an\n excellent character, and said he was on his way back to Canada.\n These men experience temptations here (he said) that they would not\n find in Canada, and there was too much of this going on.\n\n _Hastings Police Records, February 19, 1917_\n\n I heard a sad account of the havoc of the wet canteen and a private\n in a Canadian A.M.C. told us of a lad of 17 who is made so drunk\n that there is rarely a night when he has not to be helped up to bed.\n One of the soldiers here told me of his son in Canada being anxious\n to join up, but after seeing the condition of things over here he\n was doing all he could to discourage his son.\n\n _Letter to the Author_\n\n The Canadians in most cases are entirely lost when they arrive in\n this country, and are much more liable to the temptation which is\n thrown in their way, but when you give a figure such as this\u2014that in\n one camp during last year, and two months of the previous year,\n there were 7,000 cases\u2014it seems to me that it is about time we\n realised the magnitude of the evil. I do not know what has happened\n to them, except that I imagine a large number have gone back to\n Canada, and have not been able to play the part they had hoped to\n play.\n\n _Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_\n\n\n In Camp and On Leave\n\nEverywhere we find the trail of drink among Canadians\u2014in camp and on\nleave.\n\n A Canadian corporal, wounded in the Battle of Ypres, was found\n terribly drunk after being missing all day from hospital. Confronted\n with the surgeon after violent acts of insubordination, the corporal\n broke down and cried like a child.\n\n _Facts in \"Western Mail,\" February 18, 1916_\n\n In the first weeks of the war 42 Canadian soldiers disgraced\n themselves, by excessive drinking, insubordination, and disorderly\n conduct, to such an extent that they had to be sent back to Canada.\n\n _Facts in \"Canadian Pioneer,\" December 4, 1914_\n\n A Canadian soldier, helplessly drunk, was seen at King's Cross\n station eating, tearing, and crumpling up \u00a31 notes, and would have\n lost about fifteen pounds but for kindly help from passers by.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Chronicle,\" September 28, 1916_\n\n A gunner from Montreal, missing from camp for several days, drank\n himself delirious, and cut his throat with a razor.\n\n _Facts in \"Canadian Pioneer,\" December 4, 1914_\n\n A Canadian soldier spent \u00a370 in three weeks on drink and bad\n characters.\n\n _Facts in \"Daily Mail\" August 10, 1915_\n\n A Sergeant-Major from Canada declared that he had lost 20 per cent.\n of the men of his battery through venereal disease. They had a\n little drink, and were captured by the swarm of bad women at\n Folkestone.\n\n _Facts in Letter to Author_\n\n A woman was imprisoned for placing young children in moral danger.\n Every night the girls brought soldiers home, and colonial soldiers\n were frequently so drunk that they were carried in.\n\n _Records of Central Criminal Court, April 25, 1917_\n\n\n The Rising Storm in Canada\n\n =The thing cannot be justified. It is the blackest tragedy of this\n whole war that, in fighting for freedom in Europe, the free sons of\n the British breed have to face this war-time record of waste at\n home, with its inevitable toll of debauchery and crime.=\n\n _Editorial in \"Toronto Globe\"_\n\nWhile this book was being written one of the greatest meetings ever held\nin Manchester was cheering a Canadian in khaki who declared that he was\nnot going hungry while brewers were destroying food, and he went on to\nsay, this soldier and sportsman well-known in the Dominion:\n\n \"Great numbers of our men never saw France. Canadian boys cried\n because they had not munitions. England reeled and beer flowed like\n water while thousands of our boys went down into their graves. We\n will never forget it in Canada.\"\n\nWe may be sure Canada will not forget. She will not forget her dead: she\nwill not forget that the Drink Traffic she has swept away at home struck\ndown her sons in the land for which they fought. \"We must know who is to\nblame,\" says a Canadian paper; \"we presume they will have no objection\nto have their names placarded before the country, that every mother may\nknow.\" Col. Sir Hamar Greenwood, M. P., has lately returned from Canada,\nand this is what he tells us:\n\n \"I met many fathers and mothers whose boys had been sent back to\n Canada debilitated and ruined for life because they had been\n enmeshed by harpies, and again and again these parents have said to\n me, 'We do not mind our boys dying on the field of battle for old\n England, but to think that we sent our sons to England to come back\n to us ruined in health, and a disgrace to us, to them, and to the\n country, is something the Home Country should never ask us to\n bear.'\"\n\n _Letter from a Solicitor in Ontario to the Author_:\n\n I wonder if the advocates of the drink traffic in Britain appreciate\n the contempt in which they are held in Canada. Before the war I had\n a class of ten young men. Every one of them is now at the Front, and\n one writes that when I told them of the drink conditions in England\n he did not believe half of it; now he says I did not tell him half.\n Letters from our Canadian soldiers are appearing in our papers, and\n they are all amazed at the drinking habits of Britain.\n\n _From a Resolution received by Mr. Lloyd George from the Social\n Service Council of Nova Scotia_:\n\n That we, representing the social, moral, and spiritual forces of\n this part of the British Empire, who have proved our loyalty by the\n thousands of men this small province has sent overseas, do record\n our most earnest protest against Britain's inaction in this matter,\n which we are sure must result in longer and increased suffering for\n the men we have sent to help her win the war; and do most\n insistently plead with the British Government and the British\n Parliament that they at once exercise the power vested in them to\n strike the blow that will dispose of this enemy at home, and so give\n mighty reinforcement to those who are bleeding and dying for Britain\n and human liberties on the battlefields abroad.\n\n _Sermon by Dr. Flanders in London, Ontario, Feb. 25, 1917_:\n\n Canada has the right to make this demand on the Motherland from the\n simple standpoint of political economics. That we might put the\n Dominion into the best possible shape to give the utmost of our\n strength in men and munitions, we have an almost Dominion-wide\n Prohibition, and no intelligent person will deny that our\n contributions to the war from the first have been multiplied and\n intensified by that action. Why should little Johnnie Canuck abolish\n drink that he might conserve his manhood and material resources in\n the interest of the Empire's war, and big John Bull refuse to\n abolish the traffic to the great waste of his material resources and\n the undoing of his efficiency?\n\n _A public man with three soldier sons wrote to the Toronto Globe_:\n\n Canada, for efficiency in war, casts out the drink evil. Is it too\n much to expect Britain, in fairness, to do the same? Is it not a\n mockery for the British Isles to face our common struggle with this\n palsy in her frame?\n\n Here is the bitter pill, the embittering thought for many a Canadian\n parent. Let me be a type. Three of my sons are in khaki. I gave them\n a father's blessing when they enlisted. But this thought strains,\n most of all, the ties of my loyalty to the cause\u2014to see my sons\n fight and fall for a Britain that at home is saddled by distillery\n interests, and misguided by a Press silent as the grave on this\n entrenched evil. Why should our sons go from a country where booze\n is banished to spend months on the way to the trenches in England,\n where the vices of the liquor traffic are legalised?\n\n _We see the spirit of Canada in those great words of the Premier of\n Ontario, Mr. Hearst, speaking of the giving up of drink_:\n\n In this day of national peril, in this day when the future of the\n British Empire, the freedom of the world, and the blessings of\n democratic government hang in the balance, if I should fail to\n listen to what I believe to be the call of duty, if I should neglect\n to take every action that in my judgment will help to conserve the\n financial strength and power and manhood of this province for the\n great struggle in which we are engaged, I would be a traitor to my\n country, a traitor to my own conscience, and unworthy of the brave\n sons of Canada that are fighting, bleeding and dying for freedom and\n for us.\n\n _A letter from one of the most eminent public men in Canada_:\n\n \"British Canada is intensely loyal to the Empire and the Allied\n Cause, but at present recruiting is almost at an end. Why? Partly\n because of considerable dissatisfaction with many of the conditions\n which prevail. Suffering, wounds, death, are expected as inevitable\n in war, but the evil influences, the lavish temptations of liquor\n and bad women which sweep down upon our boys in England, are not\n felt to be necessary, and the hearts of multitudes of Canadian\n parents are hot with indignation at the apparent indifference of the\n authorities to the moral welfare of our troops.\"\n\n _Captain John MacNeill, with the Canadian troops in France_:\n\n \"I say to you solemnly, if England should lose this war because of\n drink, or if England should unnecessarily prolong the war with great\n sacrifice of life in her effort to protect drink, or even if England\n should win the war in spite of drink, you will have put upon the\n bonds of Empire such a strain as they have never known before, and\n such a strain as we cannot promise they will be able to survive.\"\n\n _From the petition presented to the Prime Minister of Canada, signed\n by 64,000 mothers and wives in Toronto_:\n\n 1. That Mothers and Wives of Canada in giving their sons and\n husbands for King and Empire, asked and received from your Minister\n of Militia this only assurance that, in sending them into the ranks,\n we were not hereby irrevocably thrusting them into the temptation of\n Strong Drink.\n\n 2. We appreciated from the depths of our hearts, your action in\n abolishing the Wet Canteen from the Canadian Militia. We believe the\n Wet Canteen established in the ranks of the front to be a double\n danger, robbing our King of the success in arms which in these days\n comes only to the brave heart that is controlled by a clear head,\n and robbing us and our Canada of the Manhood which we gave into our\n Empire's keeping.\n\n 3. We do not believe that the King will refuse the aid of Canada's\n sons; nor that he will appreciate your patriotic efforts the less,\n if you keep faith with us and make known to His Majesty, his\n Ministers and Commanders, that our boys are sent forth on the one\n condition that the dispensing of intoxicating liquors shall be\n prohibited in the ranks.\n\n _From a Sermon preached in Ontario, February 25, 1917_:\n\n \"Thank God, if any of our Canadian soldiers return to us with the\n drink habit formed and raging, we can welcome them to a land nearly\n purged of the liquor traffic, where they may have a chance to\n recover their manhood.\"\n\n _Letter on the effects of Prohibition, from a business man in\n Ontario, published in the \"Spectator:\"_\n\n \"Men I have known for years to be regular promenading tanks have\n given it up, and are starting a decent life again. The Police Court\n is empty. England should try it. It would be, after the first heavy\n initial loss, the best thing that ever struck the nation. I cursed\n these temperance guys as hard as any, but all the same it cannot\n blind you from the truth.\"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n Your Share in the Food Crisis\n\n\n The Food and Money Wasted on Drink in Our Great Towns\n\n ESTIMATED FROM AUGUST 1914 TO APRIL 1917 INCLUSIVE\n by GEORGE B. WILSON, B.A.,\n Compiler of the National Drink Bill\n\n \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u252c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u252c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u252c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\n \u2502 Drink Bill \u2502 Grain Lost \u2502Sugar in Beer\n \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u253c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u253c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u253c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\n \u2502 \u2502 Tons \u2502 lb.\n United Kingdom \u2502 \u00a3510,000,000\u2502 4,400,000\u2502 762,000,000\n London \u2502 \u00a383,000,000\u2502 693,000\u2502 120,000,000\n Edinburgh \u2502 \u00a33,200,000\u2502 31,000\u2502 5,300,000\n Dublin \u2502 \u00a32,600,000\u2502 29,000\u2502 5,000,000\n Glasgow \u2502 \u00a310,500,000\u2502 101,000\u2502 17,400,000\n Manchester and Salford \u2502 \u00a311,000,000\u2502 92,000\u2502 15,900,000\n Birmingham \u2502 \u00a39,900,000\u2502 82,000\u2502 14,200,000\n Liverpool \u2502 \u00a38,800,000\u2502 73,000\u2502 12,600,000\n Sheffield \u2502 \u00a35,400,000\u2502 45,000\u2502 7,800,000\n Leeds \u2502 \u00a35,300,000\u2502 44,000\u2502 7,600,000\n Bristol \u2502 \u00a34,200,000\u2502 35,000\u2502 6,000,000\n West Ham \u2502 \u00a33,400,000\u2502 28,000\u2502 4,900,000\n Bradford \u2502 \u00a33,300,000\u2502 28,000\u2502 4,800,000\n Hull \u2502 \u00a33,300,000\u2502 27,000\u2502 4,700,000\n Newcastle \u2502 \u00a33,100,000\u2502 26,000\u2502 4,500,000\n Nottingham \u2502 \u00a33,100,000\u2502 26,000\u2502 4,500,000\n Portsmouth \u2502 \u00a32,800,000\u2502 23,000\u2502 4,400,000\n Stoke \u2502 \u00a32,800,000\u2502 23,000\u2502 4,000,000\n Leicester \u2502 \u00a32,700,000\u2502 22,000\u2502 3,800,000\n Cardiff \u2502 \u00a32,100,000\u2502 18,000\u2502 3,100,000\n Bolton \u2502 \u00a32,100,000\u2502 18,000\u2502 3,000,000\n Croydon \u2502 \u00a32,100,000\u2502 17,000\u2502 3,000,000\n Sunderland \u2502 \u00a31,700,000\u2502 14,000\u2502 2,500,000\n Oldham \u2502 \u00a31,700,000\u2502 14,000\u2502 2,500,000\n Birkenhead \u2502 \u00a31,600,000\u2502 13,000\u2502 2,200,000\n Blackburn \u2502 \u00a31,500,000\u2502 13,000\u2502 2,200,000\n Brighton \u2502 \u00a31,500,000\u2502 13,000\u2502 2,200,000\n Plymouth \u2502 \u00a31,500,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,100,000\n Derby \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,100,000\n Middlesbrough \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,100,000\n Stockport \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,100,000\n Norwich \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,100,000\n Southampton \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,000,000\n Swansea \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 12,000\u2502 2,000,000\n Gateshead \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 11,000\u2502 2,000,000\n Preston \u2502 \u00a31,400,000\u2502 11,000\u2502 1,900,000\n Coventry \u2502 \u00a31,300,000\u2502 11,000\u2502 1,900,000\n Huddersfield \u2502 \u00a31,300,000\u2502 10,000\u2502 1,800,000\n Halifax \u2502 \u00a31,200,000\u2502 10,000\u2502 1,700,000\n \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2534\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2534\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2534\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\n\n\n PLAY THE GAME\n\n There is one week's bread in 18 pints of beer\n There is one week's sugar in 16 pints of beer\n\n The man who drinks 3 pints a day drinks another man's rations.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n THE FOOD PYRAMIDS DESTROYED FOR DRINK\n\n\n[Illustration:\n\n The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the biggest construction in stone ever\n made by the hands of man\u201480,000,000 cubic feet of masonry]\n\n[Illustration:\n\n The Great Pyramids of Food, the biggest wilful destruction of food\n ever known\u2014180,000,000 cubic feet of food destroyed for the Drink\n Trade during the war]\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n How the Brewer Gets Our Food\n\n\nTHE MEN WHO BRING IT\n\nIt is easy to talk of a mine-sweeper. I wish the whole nation could\nunderstand what these men are doing. They are feeding the whole\npopulation, battling with the elements as well as with the enemy,\nbattling with dangers overhead and dangers under the sea. The\nmine-sweeper is like the soldier daily over the parapet\u2014he carries his\nlife in his hand.\n\n _First Lord of the Admiralty._\n\n\nTHE PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR IT\n\nA London caterer ordered a quantity of sugar from the Philippines. The\nmine-sweepers cleared the way for it and it reached the docks. The\ncaterer sent for it, and was informed that it could only be delivered if\nit was for a brewer.\n\nA provincial caterer ordered sugar _and paid for it_, but was told by\nthe Food Controller that it could only be released if _it was sold to a\nbrewer_.\n\nA working man was discussing rations with his minister in the street.\n\"It is very hard,\" he said, \"to keep to your rations when you have five\nstrapping lads, but we are going to try it.\" Then a drunken man lurched\npast. The workman pulled himself together, and said, in great passion:\n\"I tell you what it is, sir, I am not going to let my boys starve as\nlong as there is food to make beer for men like that.\"\n\n\nTHE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT\n\nImmense quantities of food are used for beer and spirits. All this grain\nis lost for food purposes. _If this grain were available for food, the\nprices of bread and meat would be lowered._\n\n _War Savings Committee._\n\n\nTHE POOR WHO SUFFER FOR IT\n\n\"Rationing bread could not be undertaken without grave risk to the\nhealth of the poor.\"\n\n _Capt. Bathurst, M. P._\n\n By what right does the Government\n\nuse our mine-sweepers to bring in food for brewers to destroy? allow\nbrewers to increase the cost of living for every household? and allow\nthe willful destruction of food supplies to imperil the health of the\npoor?\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n The Way for the Government\n\n\nWe do not want to be amused by fiddlers while our heroes fight and die.\n\nWhat are the things we see? We see the Government silent in the presence\nof what the greatest paper in our greatest overseas Dominion calls \"the\nblackest tragedy of the war.\" We see a trade which the King declared to\nbe prolonging the war in the crisis of 1915, prolonging it still in the\ncrisis of 1917. We see our Prime Minister, who has declared this trade\nto be worse than Germany, allowing it to have its way. We see our Prime\nMinister, who has said we cannot settle with Germany until we have\nsettled with drink, fearing to settle with drink. Then are we not to\nsettle with Germany, and are we to surrender to the greatest enemy of\nthe three?\n\nThere is one clear way before the Government; it is the only way of\nstraightness and patriotism and honour. It is to wind up this enemy\ntrade and move from our path the greatest hindrance to the winning of\nthe war. It is to take our side honourably with our great Allies, to\nbring to an end the shameful isolation of Great Britain in the drink map\nof the great free countries that appears on the back of this book.\n\nIt is the sign of weakness everywhere that it seeks a scapegoat for its\nsins, and we hear the everlasting talk of Labour. But it will not do. It\nis time these slanders on our workmen ceased.\n\nIf the Government is afraid of the working man, let it say so, or let it\ntry him. If it is afraid of temperance people, let it rally them to its\nside as one man on the platform where they meet. If it is afraid of the\nDrink Trade, then the time has come to say so, for we who send out our\nmillions to fight a foreign foe are not going to starve for bread\nthrough fear of enemies within our gate. The Prime Minister gave the\nArmy its munitions; the Army will use them in vain unless the munitions\nof life come into our homes.\n\nWorking men are tired of men who fool with food and liberty. They do not\nobject to any equal sacrifice: they believe in the democratic policy of\nthe King, who based Prohibition, not on class distinction as the\nGovernment did by closing tap-rooms 15 hours a day and leaving cellars\nand Parliamentary bars open always, but on the principle of the King's\nown words that \"no difference shall be made, so far as his Majesty is\nconcerned, between the treatment of the rich and poor in this respect.\"\nLet the Government follow the King, and the people will follow the\nGovernment.\n\nIn the highest interests of the nation and the war let this be said as\nplain as words can make it\u2014_that there is no body of temperance opinion\nanywhere standing in the way of Prohibition_, but that the united moral\nforces of the nation would rally to the Government instantly on an act\nof a few words such as this:\n\n=That the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages be totally\nprohibited in the United Kingdom for the period of the war and\ndemobilization, and that a committee be appointed to deal with all the\nprivate and public interests concerned; and that it be resolved upon,\nhere and now, that reconstruction be accompanied by universal local\noption.=\n\nThere would be no opposition the Government need count to a proposal\nlike that.\n\n[Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION LABEL WESTERVILLE O.]\n\n\n\n\n * * * * * *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nObvious typographical and punctuation errors were corrected.\n\nInconsistencies in hyphenation were retained.\n\n\n\n***","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}} +{"text":"\n\n**For Mel,**\n\n**who knows why**\nCONTENTS\n\nA NOTE ON CITATIONS\n\nHOW MANY ROADS MUST A MAN WALK DOWN?\n\nBOB DYLAN\n\nDO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME?\n\nBAND AID\n\nARE THERE 4,000 HOLES IN BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE?\n\nTHE BEATLES\n\nHOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?\n\nPATTI PAGE\n\nCAN YOU KILL SOMEONE WITH A SONG?\n\nROBERTA FLACK\n\nHOW SOON IS NOW?\n\nTHE SMITHS\n\nCAN I KICK IT?\n\nA TRIBE CALLED QUEST\n\nHOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO APOLOGIZE A TRILLION TIMES?\n\nOUTKAST\n\nVOULEZ-VOUS COUCHER AVEC MOI CE SOIR?\n\nLADY MARMALADE, LABELLE ET AL\n\nWHO RUN THE WORLD?\n\nBEYONC\u00c9\n\nIS THIS BURNING AN ETERNAL FLAME?\n\nTHE BANGLES\n\nWAR \u2013 HUH \u2013 WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?\n\nEDWIN STARR\n\nHOW LIKELY IS RIHANNA TO NEED HER UMBRELLA?\n\nRIHANNA\n\nIS THIS THE REAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?\n\nQUEEN\n\nARE YOU CALLING ME 'DARLING'?\n\nTHE TING TINGS\n\nHOW MUCH WOULD IT TAKE TO CRY A RIVER?\n\nVARIOUS ARTISTS\n\nWHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?\n\nPETER, PAUL AND MARY\n\nSHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?\n\nTHE CLASH\n\nDOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW THAT YOU'RE OUT?\n\nABBA\n\nDO YOU GIVE ME FEVER?\n\nPEGGY LEE\n\nWHAT WOULDN'T MEAT LOAF DO?\n\nMEAT LOAF\n\nARE FRIENDS ELECTRIC?\n\nGARY NUMAN\n\nHOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA?\n\nTHE SOUND OF MUSIC\n\nHOW MANY GENERATIONS WILL HAVE PASSED BY THE YEAR 3000?\n\nBUSTED\n\nWHEN WILL I BE FAMOUS?\n\nBROS\n\nARE WE HUMAN, OR DANCER?\n\nTHE KILLERS\n\nYOU WALK 500 MILES. YOU WALK 500 MORE. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?\n\nTHE PROCLAIMERS\n\nWHERE IS MY LARGE AUTOMOBILE?\n\nTALKING HEADS\n\nDID THOSE FEET IN ANCIENT TIMES WALK UPON ENGLAND'S MOUNTAINS GREEN?\n\nWILLIAM BLAKE\n\nARE WE OUT OF THE WOODS YET?\n\nTAYLOR SWIFT\n\nI WILL SURVIVE \u2013 BUT FOR HOW LONG?\n\nGLORIA GAYNOR\n\nIF YOU DON'T LOVE ME NOW, WILL YOU NEVER LOVE ME AGAIN?\n\nFLEETWOOD MAC\n\nHOW MUCH SPACE DO A MILLION PHOTOGRAPHS TAKE UP?\n\nTHE VAPORS\n\nIS ANNIE OKAY?\n\nMICHAEL JACKSON\n\nHOW MANY HONEYS MAKE THEIR MONEY?\n\nDESTINY'S CHILD\n\nIS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM?\n\nJOE JACKSON\n\nWILL THIS BE THE DAY THAT YOU DIE?\n\nDON MCLEAN\n\nCAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?\n\nELTON JOHN AND TIM RICE\n\nCALL ME, MAYBE?\n\nCARLY RAE JEPSEN\n\nWERE THE BOYS OF THE NYPD CHOIR SINGING 'GALWAY BAY'?\n\nTHE POGUES\n\nIS MONEY THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL TODAY?\n\nPINK FLOYD\n\nWHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?\n\nTHE BEATLES\n\nDO THE DRUGS WORK?\n\nTHE VERVE\n\nARE THERE NINE MILLION BICYCLES IN BEIJING?\n\nKATIE MELUA\n\nDO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOS\u00c9?\n\nDIONNE WARWICK\n\nHOW WORRIED SHOULD YOU BE IF SOMEONE'S WATCHING YOU WITH THE EYE OF THE TIGER?\n\nSURVIVOR\n\nWOULD I LIE TO YOU?\n\nCHARLES & EDDIE\n\nHOW MUCH WOULD YOU HAVE TO EARN TO BE 'BARELY GETTIN' BY' IN LA IN 1980?\n\nDOLLY PARTON\n\nWHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED?\n\nJIMMY RUFFIN\n\nWHO'S TO BLAME: THE SUNSHINE, MOONLIGHT, GOOD TIMES OR BOOGIE?\n\nTHE JACKSONS\n\nWHAT ABOUT ELEPHANTS \u2013 HAVE WE LOST THEIR TRUST?\n\nMICHAEL JACKSON\n\nAM I A CREEP?\n\nRADIOHEAD\n\nDID WE USED TO KNOW WHITE CHRISTMASES?\n\nBING CROSBY\n\nARE YOU TELLING ME THIS IS A SIGN?\n\nSNOOP DOGG\n\nWHAT COMPARES TO YOU?\n\nSINEAD O'CONNOR\n\nDO YOU LIKE PI\u00d1A COLADAS, AND GETTING CAUGHT IN THE RAIN?\n\nRUPERT HOLMES\n\nARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?\n\nELVIS PRESLEY\n\nWHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?\n\nYLVIS\n\nISN'T IT IRONIC, DON'T YOU THINK?\n\nALANIS MORISSETTE\n\nWHAT IS LOVE?\n\nHADDAWAY\n\nWILL IT BE LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS?\n\nMUD\n\nWHY'D YOU HAVE TO GO AND MAKE THINGS SO COMPLICATED?\n\nAVRIL LAVIGNE\n\nWHERE ARE YOUR FRIENDS TONIGHT?\n\nLCD SOUNDSYSTEM\n\nWHAT'S COOLER THAN BEING COOL?\n\nOUTKAST\n\nWHY DO YOU ONLY CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE HIGH?\n\nARCTIC MONKEYS\n\nWHERE IS 24 HOURS FROM TULSA?\n\nGENE PITNEY\n\nOH CAN'T YOU SEE YOU BELONG TO ME?\n\nTHE POLICE\n\nWHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?\n\nREM\n\nDO GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN?\n\nCYNDI LAUPER\n\nWHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?\n\nWHITNEY HOUSTON\n\nWHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE RAIN?\n\nTHE SEARCHERS\n\nSON, CAN YOU PLAY ME A MEMORY?\n\nBILLY JOEL\n\nWHY?\n\nANNIE LENNOX\n\nDOES EVERYBODY WANT TO RULE THE WORLD?\n\nTEARS FOR FEARS\n\nHOW MANY INCHES ARE IN A MILE?\n\nSELENA GOMEZ & THE SCENE\n\nHAVE GUILTY FEET GOT NO RHYTHM?\n\nWHAM\n\nHOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO LEAVE?\n\nUSHER\n\nIS THERE LIFE ON MARS?\n\nDAVID BOWIE\n\nWHAT'S GOING ON?\n\n4 NON BLONDES\n\nWHO LET THE DOGS OUT?\n\nBAHA MEN\n\nIS THIS SONG ABOUT YOU?\n\nCARLY SIMON\n\nWHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF IT WERE CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY?\n\nWIZZARD\n\nWHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY APPEAR?\n\nTHE CARPENTERS\n\nWHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US?\n\nJOAN OSBORNE\n\nWHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME?\n\nTRAVIS\n\nWHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?\n\nSPICE GIRLS\n\nDO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME?\n\nPULP\n\nWHO STARTED THE FIRE?\n\nBILLY JOEL\n\nSONG CREDITS\n\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\nA NOTE ON CITATIONS\n\nWhere we've made significant use of a particular study or article, we've included it wherever possible in the text. However, to avoid a notes section as long as the book itself, these have sometimes been omitted. If there's any figure you'd like the source of \u2013 or if you think you've spotted an error in the maths \u2013 do get in touch, ideally via Twitter, where I can be found @jamesrbuk.\nHOW MANY ROADS MUST A MAN WALK DOWN?\n\nBOB DYLAN\n\n**There have been various rituals around manhood throughout history: for the Bukusu tribe of western Kenya, it is the sikhebo circumcision ceremony; for the people of Vanuatu in the South Pacific it is the yearly harvest ritual of 'land diving', as they leap a hundred feet from crudely built wooden towers with vines tied around their ankles.**\n\nDylan, B characteristically chooses an unusual measure of child development, contemplating how many roads a man must walk down, before you can call him a man. Despite significant research effort, we have been unable to find evidenced answers to this matter 'blowing in the wind' (unless the cryptic answer to his question is: 'nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and other trace gases') and so have focused instead on what Dylan surely must have been driving at: childhood physical activity.\n\nThe lack of any standardized road length, plus ethical (and insurance) considerations prevented us proposing that young children walk down actual roads, so instead we have focused on recommended step counts for children. While adults are advised to walk 10,000 steps a day, children \u2013 at least those aged five or over; for hopefully obvious reasons younger kids are excluded \u2013 are advised to walk more.\n\nGirls should be aiming to walk 12,000 steps a day, but boys need to average 15,000 steps each day. Therefore, a simple bit of maths suggests a boy should have walked 71,175,000 steps between his fifth and eighteenth birthday, when we can (legally) call him a man. However, most children fall short of this: the average boy will have walked just 52,195,000 steps by this point.\n\nThe Dylan, B study sadly is vague on practical advice on what to do at this point should we wish to maintain our current age of majority. We could either reduce the requirements for roads (or steps) walked down, or, if we wish to protect the 71-million-step goal, we can instead begin to call boys 'men' at the average age of just over twenty-two-and-a-half. It is of course likely that this additional exercise would cause them to be blowing in the wind.\n\nDO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME?\n\nBAND AID\n\n**It is somewhat puzzling that large groups of individuals have gathered to ask this question at various points spanning more than three decades, as it is one that is almost trivial to solve.**\n\nThis question was first posed as part of a huge charity drive in 1984, and was collectively sung by no fewer than thirty-seven vocalists, who seemed very keen to get an answer to this question. However, it was then asked again by a fresh group a few years later, and a third and fourth time by different groups in 2004 and 2014.\n\nOn the face of it, answering this question is very simple: the latest estimates suggest that Africa has a Christian population in excess of 500 million out of a total population of 1.2 billion, meaning that even if Africans didn't follow the customs of people living on other continents, it's still extremely likely that they have a very good idea indeed that it's Christmas time, as almost every other person is a Christian.\n\nHowever, if we were to look more specifically at Ethiopia \u2013 the initial fundraising target for the commendable Band Aid initiative \u2013 the answer is slightly less clear. Almost two-thirds of Ethiopians, some 45 million people, identify as Christian and so could clearly be expected to know when Christmas is. However, of this figure, more than 30 million identify as Orthodox Christians, meaning they would not celebrate Christmas on the same day as their Protestant or Catholic brethren. This, perhaps, solves the mystery of this question's persistence: clearly the celebrity fundraisers have struggled to understand the differences in how various Christian groups in Ethiopia mark Christmas.\n\nOne thing that is beyond doubt is that there will be snow in Africa every Christmas. Africa is a huge continent with mountain ranges including Kenya's Mount Kenya, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, Uganda's Rwenzori Mountains and, even more specifically for the purposes of this study, Ethiopia's Semien Mountain \u2013 all of which are covered in snow for almost the entirety of the year.\nARE THERE 4,000 HOLES IN BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE?\n\nTHE BEATLES\n\n**Some thinkers tackle love, some tackle betrayal, and some tackle politics \u2013 but few have tackled a pressing issue which causes fury among drivers everywhere: potholes.**\n\nPerhaps their willingness to address this issue is why Lennon, J and McCartney, P have endured in the public imagination for so long.\n\nIn their 1967 address, they not only note that there are 4,000 'small' holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, but also that someone had to count them. Today, trying to assess whether their estimate at the time was accurate is impossible, but it is still the case that someone in contemporary Blackburn has to try to calculate the number of potholes and deal with them.\n\nA recent estimate of potholes in Blackburn can be gathered from the local council's figures. In 2018 the council received \u00a3178,000 from a central government fund to tackle potholes. The average cost of fixing a pothole in Britain is \u00a353, which means Blackburn got enough funds to tackle 3,358 potholes \u2013 not too far from Lennon and McCartney's historical estimate, especially given that budget measures in Britain mean the council was likely underfunded in its efforts.\n\nIt seems like in the case of Lennon and McCartney science's gain may have been road maintenance's loss.\n\nAs to how many holes it would take to 'fill' the Albert Hall: we know its internal volume measures 86,650 cubic metres, so if all the holes were the same size they would be 21.66m3, which is roughly two-thirds of the size of a standard shipping container. It is unlikely that there were 4,000 holes this size in the roads of Blackburn, Lancashire, especially as the study itself says they are 'rather small', so though one may have led to the calculation of the other, we must reluctantly conclude that the collaboration may have made some serious errors in their maths.\n\nHOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?\n\nPATTI PAGE\n\n**There is a serious concern we must address about Page, P's 1953 study of pet economics.**\n\nBuilding upon original research by Merrill, B, we can't avoid the fact she is clearly a horribly irresponsible purchaser of pets. Firstly, as numerous charities have tried to teach us, dogs are for life and not just for Christmas; purchasing decisions should not be made on the whim of seeing a dog in a window.\n\nSimilarly, to avoid issues of animal cruelty, you should never buy a puppy if you haven't seen it with its mother (in person, photos don't count). Page also seems torn over what she's looking for in a puppy: one moment she's referring to its cute 'waggly' tail, the next she says it needs to be a guard dog to keep her lover safe. It's almost as if the missive doesn't want to be taken seriously as a purchasing guide to pets.\n\nThat's no reason not to answer the economic question the study poses, of course. If the dog in question is a mongrel, then its purchase price shouldn't be too high, likely not much more than \u00a3300 to \u00a3500 \u2013 though if it's pedigree it could cost several thousand off the shelf.\n\nDon't let that price lull you into a false sense of security, though. The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) says that depending on the size and lifespan of the dog that you choose, over its lifetime it could set you back between \u00a316,000 and \u00a331,000. In light of this, the short answer to the question is 'between 5,000 and 10,000 per cent more expensive than you think'.\n\nWe earnestly ask Ms Page to undertake much more serious thought before she again ponders whether that dog is for sale.\nCAN YOU KILL SOMEONE WITH A SONG?\n\nROBERTA FLACK\n\n**Flack, R repeatedly makes a number of serious accusations against an unnamed individual over the course of this report, most notably alleging attempted murder, softly and with a song.**\n\nGiven the damaging nature of such allegations \u2013 they could easily result in lifetime imprisonment \u2013 it's important to examine the evidence behind Flack's claim. Initially, Flack's claims stand up well: it is entirely possible to kill someone with a song, or any other appropriately loud noise. Anything over 150 decibels is enough to rupture an eardrum, while anything rising to around 200 decibels is enough to prove fatal to most of us. For comparison, a pneumatic drill is around 100 decibels, and chainsaws are only around 120 decibels \u2013 to hear a fatal level of noise you'd generally need to be near an explosion.\n\nFlack, however, specifies she is not being killed by volume: her accusation is that she is being softly killed. Here too, though, she may have evidence to support her claims. In 1933, a Hungarian composer penned a song called 'Gloomy Sunday', initially about the despair of war, then rewritten to be about contemplating suicide. The song provoked a (badly evidenced) international media panic through the decade that it was provoking a swathe of suicides \u2013 and the composer did eventually kill himself, although decades later. An examination of the case of 'Gloomy Sunday' in Gizmodo \u2013 we assume this to be a peer-reviewed journal \u2013 noted that Hungary has a historically high suicide rate, as do other countries with its cultural history, leading to speculation about genetic causes of the phenomenon.\n\nThe effect of a piece of music or another suicide provoking a copycat act is known as the 'Werther Effect', after the 1774 novel _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The book's eponymous protagonist kills himself over doomed love, and its publication was followed by a spate of suicides, provoking huge debate as to whether they were related.\n\nSo, if Flack's lover is softly singing 'Gloomy Sunday' into her ears, she may have a good case against them for attempted murder.\n\n**A MATTER OF TIME**\n\nFementosecond | 10-15s | Pulse time on fastest lasers.\n\n---|---|---\n\nSvedberg | 10-13s | Time unit used for sedimentation rates (usually of proteins).\n\nPicosecond | 10-12s | A picosecond is to one second as one second is to approximately 31,689 years.\n\nNanosecond | 10-9s | Time for molecules to fluoresce.\n\nMicrosecond | 10-6s | Symbol is \u00b5s.\n\nMillisecond | 0.001s | Shortest time unit used on stopwatches.\n\nSecond | 1s | Si base unit.\n\nMorrissey | 5s | The length of time into reading a contemporary interview with him that fans start to feel a bit sad.\nHOW SOON IS NOW?\n\nTHE SMITHS\n\n**Anyone who's had to sit in and wait for a delivery knows just how painful it can be, and so it's not difficult for us to empathize with Marr, J and Morrissey, S when they plaintively seek detail on what their interlocutor means when they promise that something is going to happen right now.**\n\nLesser investigators may be willing to just accept 'now' as a period of somewhere between two and three seconds, but Marr and Morrissey are clearly not prepared to be fobbed off by such lengthy and vague periods, asking 'when exactly do you mean?' They can and should expect a far greater level of precision on just how instantaneous 'now' should be. What they are clearly asking is 'what is the soonest that now can be?'\n\nWe may have heard of a millisecond, which is one-thousandth of a second, or a microsecond, which is one-millionth of it, but even these are clunky and extended units of time versus 'now'. We might even start to think about an attosecond \u2013 a unit of time so small that it's been noted that an attosecond is to a second what a second is to the entire age of the universe. These things are quick.\n\nBut even an attosecond is an eternity compared to the one unit we can really say is 'now' \u2013 the Planck unit, which is the time it takes for light to travel, well, a really really short distance, and is the smallest possible measure of time (and far smaller than we can measure yet).\n\nSo, Marr and Morrissey, how soon is now? It's just a Planck unit away.\nCAN I KICK IT?\n\nA TRIBE CALLED QUEST\n\n**This is a question that has taxed many thinkers since it was first posed by A Tribe Called Quest in 1990, as it's since been asked again by persons ranging from Zed, J to Williams, R, among many others.**\n\nIt's not a surprise that this is a question they feel a need to re-visit, as answering it requires us to make use of complex concepts around the laws of consent and the laws of property rights.\n\nAs a first principle, if the 'it' you're referring to is a living being, you're being rude and should use better pronouns. But in this instance then you absolutely cannot kick 'it' in the absence of consent: in kicking a person you could break laws relating to assault and bodily harm. If an animal, then there are welfare rules. If you are considering kicking an adult person with their consent \u2013 this is a judgement-free zone \u2013 then do it gently as there is a maximum level of harm to which someone can legally consent.\n\nIn the circumstance that the 'it' under consideration for kicking is an object, things get simpler. You might want to think carefully first if the object is a brick or a glass window, as while you may have a legal right to kick something, that does nothing to help your greatly injured foot.\n\nHowever, if you own the object, or have rights to use it (and insurance against damage to it), or permission from someone who does \u2013 and have checked it's unlikely to cause you harm \u2013 then we have good news: yes, you can.\n\nHOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO APOLOGIZE A TRILLION TIMES?\n\nOUTKAST\n\n**Relationships are never straightforward, and the relationship between a man and his partner's mother is a notoriously tricky one.**\n\nIt's commendable, then, that Outkast \u2013 and Andr\u00e9 3000 in particular \u2013 are keen to make amends to Ms Jackson after problems with her daughter.\n\nKnowing that one apology is never enough, Mr 3000 repeatedly reassures Ms Jackson he is so sorry that he apologizes 'a trillion times'. But new analysis suggests he might not be telling the truth. If we generously assume that Mr 3000 can say 'sorry' once a second, 24 hours a day, with no break, he will after one full year have apologized just 31 million times.\n\nTo reach a full trillion apologies, Mr 3000 will have to continue apologizing once a second, 24\/7, for just over 31,688 years. However, at the time of the song's release, he was just over twenty-five years old \u2013 meaning that even if he had begun apologizing the moment he was born, he would have said sorry just 775 million times \u2013 less than a thousandth of his claimed total of sorrow.\n\nAs a result of all that, it seems like we owe Ms Jackson an apology of our own: we're sorry, but the evidence suggests Mr 3000 was in fact not for real, after all.\nVOULEZ-VOUS COUCHER AVEC MOI CE SOIR?\n\nLADY MARMALADE, LABELLE ET AL.\n\n**This question has frequently been investigated over the years and research published in 1989 by two American psychologists, Russell D Clark and Elaine Hatfield, might help us answer it definitively.**\n\nThey asked a group of five female students and four male students to approach people of the opposite gender on a college campus, introduce themselves, say they found the stranger attractive, and then ask one of three questions: 'would you go out with me tonight?', 'would you come over to my apartment?', or 'would you go to bed with me?'\n\nFor the first question, going on a date, the success rate for both men and women was about the same \u2013 a surprisingly high 50 per cent (roughly) said they were willing to go on a date with a total stranger. As soon as we shift to the second question \u2013 going to an apartment \u2013 the success rate with women drops to almost nothing, but with men the success rate jumps to a pleasing 69 per cent.\n\nAnd as for the 'would you go to bed with me tonight?' question, not a single woman in either of the original studies said yes to this question \u2013 but almost three-quarters of men did. So, if you want to ask this question and get a positive response, ask a man.\n\nAs to why the question is posed in French \u2013 a global survey carried out by Durex in 2005 found that the French had an average of 8.1 sexual partners, lower than the global average of 9 and way behind the Turkish, who had an average of 14.5. And though they were above the average of 103 for the number of times they had sex each year, they were still trailing way behind Greece, who had sex 138 times a year.\n\nSo statistically, if you're looking for the answer to be yes, you're much better off asking _Tha koimithe\u00eds maz\u00ed mou ap\u00f3pse_ or _Bu gece benimle uyuyacak m_ \u0131 _s_ \u0131 _n?_\n\nWHO RUN THE WORLD?\n\nBEYONC\u00c9\n\n**No human being takes pleasure in correcting Knowles, B but alas on this issue we are forced to do so.**\n\nDespite the fact that a boy once ascended to become a head of state at the age of six months (Egypt's Fuad II, who took the throne in 1952, only to be deposed eleven months later \u2013 before his second birthday), there are few under-eighteens at the top of global politics, and no girls \u2013 by which of course we mean women under eighteen \u2013 running any country within the world at present.\n\nIf the answer isn't 'girls', then who does run the world? The answer may disappoint Beyonc\u00e9, and feminists everywhere, but it probably won't surprise them as it is of course middle-aged men. Of the 193 member states of the UN, at time of writing, only fifteen have a woman serving as head of state or head of government \u2013 that's fewer than one in ten. Only around one in three countries analyzed had ever had a female at the top of their politics.\n\nThings don't get any better in the business world: research in 2017 into the UK's hundred biggest companies found there were more major corporations led by men called David (eight) or Stephen (seven) than there were companies led by women (six). Things are no better in America: in early 2018, only twenty-seven of the USA's 500 biggest companies were led by a woman.\n\nIt is not for the authors to judge why this reality was not reflected in Beyonc\u00e9's published research, but one hypothesis is that it's a bit bleak really.\nIS THIS BURNING AN ETERNAL FLAME?\n\nTHE BANGLES\n\n**This is an important case file of three patients who presented together with a very similar set of symptoms in 1988.**\n\nIn the interests of patient confidentiality, we shall refer to them by the case name of 'The Bangles'. These three women reported 'burning' that was so persistent as to lead all three to worry at length that the symptoms would proceed persistently, if not eternally.\n\nWhile explaining their problem, The Bangles encourage their doctor to take their pulse (somewhat oddly with their eyes closed and referring to them as 'darling', but this is clearly bound up in their nervousness of the clinical diagnostic process); express hope that someone would be able to ease their pain; and explain their symptoms had been causing loneliness, suggesting the burning sensations were a barrier to normal romantic relationships.\n\nGiven the stigma around such conditions, it is perhaps not surprising that The Bangles were willing only to describe their symptoms euphemistically, and that all three were worried the problem would prove insoluble.\n\nHowever, there are multiple possible diagnoses which bode well for the women: rather than being an eternal flame, the burning experienced by all three is far more likely to be a symptom of thrush \u2013 or given the women are assumed to be sexually active, could be a symptom of treatable STDs such as chlamydia or gonorrhoea. All of these infections respond well to the proper treatments, and so The Bangles serve as an excellent example to others of the benefit of seeking early treatment, rather than worrying for too long.\n\nAlthough their hope that just having a doctor say their name will be enough to banish the symptoms is rather unlikely, we know that often, because of the placebo effect, just having a clinician pay attention can lead to improvements in patients' symptoms. Interestingly, a recent study by doctors at the University of York found that the use of copper bangles for treating arthritic pain 'had no statistically significant therapeutic effect among patients'.\n\nWAR \u2013 HUH \u2013 WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?\n\nEDWIN STARR\n\n**Starr, E's provocative framing of this question forces us to reassess something the majority of us believe to be a bad thing, which should be avoided at almost any cost, and consider instead its upsides.**\n\nAs he no doubt expected us to realize, there is a long list of potential good outcomes from war, in the right circumstances.\n\nFirstly, as evidenced in the most extreme case of the Second World War, and more recently in Kosovo, war serves as a backstop against genocidal dictators and helps preserve the rights and freedoms of minorities, and as countries through history have found, war can serve as an effective way of preserving territorial integrity against aggressors.\n\nAdditionally, wars \u2013 at least in their early days \u2013 can serve to hugely boost the popularity of democratically elected leaders. Margaret Thatcher's approval ratings shot from 41 per cent to 59 per cent in the three months of the Falklands War, while George Bush's ratings leapt from 51 per cent to 86 per cent following 9\/11 and the US's subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.\n\nResearch from the State University of New York suggests such gains take a long time to fall back, making it a worthwhile proposition for the leaders. Though the research is out on the long-term economic benefits, it's clear that in the short term it has a positive impact, especially boosting the manufacturing sector.\n\nMr Starr would surely, though, also not wish us to forget the inventions that have come out of war \u2013 or at least military-backed research \u2013 which include the early internet, plastic surgery, superglue, chemotherapy and even tinned food. While we wish Mr Starr had asked us to consider the horrors of war at greater depth, he does make a compelling case for its upsides.\n\nWar \u2013 huh \u2013 what is it good for? Democracy, political popularity, technology and the short-term economy.\nHOW LIKELY IS RIHANNA TO NEED HER UMBRELLA?\n\nRIHANNA\n\n**Rihanna would like it to be known she's a supportive friend: she repeatedly makes it clear that while she is there for you when the sun shines, she also intends to be there when it is raining, and will bring an umbrella to shelter you.**\n\nClearly, this is to be commended, but if we are to examine how useful Rihanna's strategy of umbrella-carrying is in practice, we need to collect some data to see whether or not her approach is effective. This, of course, is complicated by Rihanna's move from the city she grew up in \u2013 Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados \u2013 to Los Angeles.\n\nIn Bridgetown, despite the warm weather it rains 153 out of the year's 365 days. So on any given day her umbrella has a 42 per cent chance of being useful \u2013 meaning she's a friend you would likely be glad to have around for that reason alone.\n\nHowever, in her new home of Los Angeles the situation is very different: several months of the year average between zero or one day of rain in the month, and across the year there are only typically thirty-seven rainy days. This means that on 89.9 per cent of days of the year, Rihanna will be carrying an umbrella for no reason, which may even begin to look eccentric.\n\nAs a result, we recommend that Rihanna adapts her friendship strategy to better suit the pleasant climate of her new home. We have every confidence in her success.\n\nIS THIS THE REAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?\n\nQUEEN\n\n**Mercury, F begins his 1975 investigation into the nature of reality by imagining a figure guilty of murder before quickly moving through a dizzying invocation of cultural knowledge, from meteorology to dance, theatre to religion, and whether someone will let someone else go.**\n\nThis is clearly an early foray on the part of guitarist Brian May into astrophysics, in which he later obtained a PhD from Imperial College, London.\n\nThe fields of physics and philosophy have both wondered whether it could be possible that the universe in which we all live could be a Matrix-style simulation, or even just a game on someone's computer. When scientists run simulations in our \u2013 apparently real \u2013 universe, they often simplify some of the physics, treating some things as constant, to help save processing power. However, in the universe we live in, physics has lots of apparently arbitrary constants, such as the speed of light in a vacuum. That's not reassuring.\n\nThe technologist Elon Musk \u2013 the man behind Tesla and Hyperloop \u2013 believes the simulated universe theory is correct, and given that there are likely millions or billions more simulated universes than real ones, statistics suggest we're probably not in a 'base reality'. Whether this leads you to decide, as the authors of this study did, that 'nothing really matters' is more complicated. If our existence can only be said to exist through our perception of it, then this is still as meaningful as any other explanation for consciousness. As to the stability of our possibly simulated universe, science has yet to determine how likely it is that someone might kick out the power cable.\nARE YOU CALLING ME 'DARLING'?\n\nTHE TING TINGS\n\n**In her lamentation on being regularly addressed by the wrong name, The Ting Tings' singer menacingly asks an unknown interlocutor whether he \u2013 we assume it's a he \u2013 is referring to her as 'darling'.**\n\nWe do not have enough evidence to rule on whether he was or not \u2013 but we do have good evidence to suggest that unless he knows her well, he should not be doing so. The polling organization YouGov asked 4,191 adults whether or not it was acceptable for a man to call a woman he doesn't know well 'darling', and only 11 per cent responded that they thought it was \u2013 with men and women both agreeing the word was unacceptable. 'Babe' scored slightly lower, at 7 per cent, while 'love' did better, with 25 per cent thinking that was acceptable.\n\nHowever, The Ting Tings may also wish to ponder why their names are forgotten. Experts offer reams of psychological explanations: when learning new names we're often also socially anxious; names get lost in our short-term memory, and names are just hard to remember \u2013 they're totally arbitrary collections of syllables, after all.\n\nHowever, we can note one specific issue in this instance: in a five-minute thesis about name recollection, at no point does The Ting Tings' singer mention her name. For the record, it's Katie.\n\nHOW MUCH WOULD IT TAKE TO CRY A RIVER?\n\nVARIOUS ARTISTS\n\n**For more than sixty years, people have issued public decrees to their former lovers to cry them a river, and claiming that they have done the same.**\n\nThese range from Julie London, to Shirley Bassey, to Barbra Streisand, to Justin Timberlake. This story has been allowed to go unchallenged, and it shouldn't have: distressingly, the singers of these songs may not be telling the truth.\n\nRivers move a lot of water. The Amazon discharges 209 million litres of water every single second. The rather more sluggish and far smaller Thames river in London discharges around 66,000 litres each second. So, how many tears would we need to try to match the slower river? Research published in 1966 showed the average tear is 6.2 microlitres in volume, suggesting that for a single litre we need around 161,000 tears.\n\nHowever, not many of us could manage much more than one tear per eye, no matter how hard we're trying. This means that to achieve even one second of discharge from a river as sluggish as the Thames, you'd need more than 5.3 billion people sobbing away. And given that to create a river people would have to keep up this output for quite some time, things are not looking good for Timberlake et al. Not only are they making deeply implausible claims to their former lovers, they're being somewhat over-demanding.\n\nPerhaps their breakups were for the best?\nWHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?\n\nPETER, PAUL AND MARY\n\n**Despite being seen by some as a rumination on mortality and war, Yarrow, P Stookey, P and Travers, M's 1962 release, which builds on original research by Seeger, P, is in many ways a reflection on the economics of the global flower trade \u2013 which does indeed see thousands of tonnes of flowers traverse the globe every year.**\n\nThese days, the place most of the flowers are leaving is the Netherlands, which is where almost half the flowers sold globally originate, followed by Colombia, Kenya and Ecuador. But as to the trio's core question \u2013 where have they gone to? \u2013 the answers lie close to home: the United States imports more than 80 per cent of the flowers sold there, and in the UK that figure rises as high as 98 per cent. Given that Yarrow, P, Stookey, P and Travers, M are from the US, the flowers are heading in their direction, which suggests that perhaps they'd have been better placed asking where the flowers were coming from. Their concern, however, may have been premature rather than misplaced: a peer-reviewed international botanical study in 2010 found that 25 per cent of existing flowering plant species in the world are at risk of extension. For example, 97 per cent of wild-flower meadows in the UK have disappeared in the last hundred years. The flowers may not have gone yet, but many of them are at substantial risk of doing so \u2013 Messrs Yarrow and Stookey and Mme Travers were simply ahead of the curve with their fears. However, the complex mix of environmental, sociological and climatological factors behind this aren't really contained in their proposed answer that girls have picked every one.\n\nSHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?\n\nTHE CLASH\n\n**The problem presented by Mr Jones and his associates in The Clash is a dilemma over the best way to avoid a difficult situation, or 'trouble'.**\n\nThe Clash have done well at identifying two courses of action \u2013 staying or going \u2013 and have reflected on the level of trouble each would cause, but repeatedly fail to decide on either over the three minutes ten seconds they allow themselves to make a decision.\n\nThankfully, a simple mathematical model helps us solve the trouble they're facing. Setting out their issue, The Clash state that there will be trouble if they go, but if they stay it will occur at twice that rate.\n\nDefining trouble as t, we know that for any given value of trouble: t(go) = x, but, t(stay) = 2x.\n\nAfter this, it's simple maths to say that for any level of trouble above zero \u2013 in which situation The Clash could do whatever they liked \u2013 they should clearly go, for a maximum of half as much trouble versus the alternative. We have also demonstrated that paying attention to algebra in school can prove useful in adult life after all.\n\nHowever, we should stress the above analysis is all done under the hypothesis that Mr Jones and co. wish to minimize the trouble they face, which may not be the case. They are, after all, named The Clash.\n\n**_t(go) = x_**\n\nbut\n\n**_t(stay) = 2x_**\nDOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW THAT YOU'RE OUT?\n\nABBA\n\n**Everyone has had a moment during an evening out when things suddenly escalate quickly, whether into a potential pub fight, a blazing row, or just some quite maudlin talk.**\n\nBut ABBA certainly take no prisoners with their conversational gambits, rapidly switching from lightly flirting and dancing with the person their remarks are addressed to, to then asking them whether their mum knows that they're openly gay.\n\nYou might hope a band with such a significant LGBT following would know not to broach this topic so lightly, but this may be a consequence of the band's experiences amongst the often more liberal attitudes pervasive in Sweden. Then again, it's possible they are aware of significantly improving attitudes towards LGBT equality and are looking for confirmation that young people are benefitting from those trends. In 1983, four years after this song was released, only 11 per cent of British people said same-sex relations were 'never wrong'. The latest repeat of that survey found two-thirds of Brits now say this.\n\nSurvey evidence from the LGBT rights group Stonewall suggests ABBA may have been onto something with their question. People in their sixties said they had come out at an average age of thirty, while people in their thirties said they came out around twenty-one \u2013 but under-twenty-fives who had come out said they'd done so at an average age of seventeen. Turns out their mothers knew after all.\n\nOf course, it's also possible ABBA were simply asking the teenager with whom they were dancing whether their parents were aware they were outside the house. That theory seems a little unlikely to the authors, though.\n\nDO YOU GIVE ME FEVER?\n\nPEGGY LEE\n\n**Lee, P made her definitive contribution to this ongoing public health investigation in 1958, popularizing warnings against the dangers of contracting a fever from kissing, touching and being held tight.**\n\nHowever, it appears that Lee's public health message wasn't backed up with especially strong evidence \u2013 certainly if she was referring to some of the more common ways in which fever is spread, such as the common cold.\n\nAs a key example, Lee is unlikely to get a fever through the common cold when she is kissed. Research conducted at the University of Wisconsin found that if someone with a cold infection kissed a number of other healthy volunteers for up to ninety seconds, just one in sixteen caught the infection. When it comes to this, no one is likely to give Lee fever.\n\nLee's other examples are much likelier to give her fever, though. If someone with a cold is holding her \u2013 tight or otherwise \u2013 they have a significantly higher chance of passing on their illness than through kissing, thanks to proximity to infected droplets in their breath. Lee's also right to spot that staying through the night is especially risky: eight hours sleeping with the possibility of coughs and splutters in close proximity to your face really might give you fever.\n\nPeggy Lee's reputation as a public health expert comes out of the analysis pretty intact, with a small modification: you give me fever when you stay through the night, but not with a kiss.*\nWHAT WOULDN'T MEAT LOAF DO?\n\nMEAT LOAF\n\n**Loaf, M's extended profession of love has raised questions throughout the two decades since its release: scholars have asked time and again exactly what it is he is pledging that he would not do.**\n\nThis is puzzling: Loaf is actually extremely specific in his treatise on what he would or would not do for love, specifically pledging just two things he would not do to his unnamed lover \u2013 he pledges never to lie to her, and never to screw around.\n\nHowever, we should question whether Loaf's claim for unfailing honesty in this extended pledge stands up to scrutiny. Loaf variously claims in his song that the woman he loves sometimes 'breathes fire' and is sometimes 'carved in ice' \u2013 both claims that would revolutionize medical science if supported, as it is certainly unlikely that such extremes of temperature could be produced by one organism.\n\nLoaf also claims he would run to hell and back \u2013 perhaps unaware that the strongest evidence for the physical existence of hell was a microphone supposedly lowered into Russia's Kola Superdeep borehole, which supposedly picked up screams of the anguished dead.\n\nLoaf may be unaware the story was eventually exposed as a hoax. Either way, it's not possible to run in a vertical borehole.\n\nFinally, we must examine Loaf's claims to love his partner as long as planets are turning, stars burning, and other similar hyperboles extending into the billions of years. While Mr Loaf managed twenty-five years of marriage before divorce \u2013 an admirable feat \u2013 this falls far short of his stated targets.\n\nReluctantly, we are forced to conclude that Loaf may in fact, on occasion, do just that.\n\nARE FRIENDS ELECTRIC?\n\nGARY NUMAN\n\n**While experiencing difficulties with a 'friend' \u2013 he describes how his friend appears to have 'broke down' \u2013 Numan wonders whether friends might be electric, a question fairly easily addressed by biological science.**\n\nMany of us will have experienced uncomfortable electric shocks when in the proximity of our friends, but these are typically the result of static electricity, caused by friction against certain types of clothing and other materials. While this is undoubtedly 'electric' (and painful), it is more a result of our friends' sartorial choices than our friends themselves.\n\nHowever, assuming that our friends are human \u2013 though much of this would hold for any live animal \u2013 they are at least capable of generating electricity, even if they cannot be said to be electric themselves. Neurologists have detected that each neuron inside a human brain is capable of carrying a voltage of around 0.07 volts.*\n\nThis voltage appears small \u2013 it's only 1\/20th of the voltage of an AA battery \u2013 but may be more impressive than it first appears. For one, a typical human has around 80 billion neurons in their brain, and for another, neurons are far smaller than AA batteries. Neurons carry their 0.07 volts across a tiny distance of just 0.000000005 metres, meaning that metre-for-metre they hold more than four times the electrostatic force involved in producing thunderstorms.\n\nHuman friends, therefore, are considerably electric \u2013 and if Numan's are not, he should perhaps seek urgent medical assistance for them.\nHOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA?\n\nTHE SOUND OF MUSIC\n\n**The nuns of Nonnberg Abbey appear to have a long list of problems with Maria, who is studying there to become a nun.**\n\nMaria, they complain, climbs trees and tears her clothes, whistles, dances, wears curlers, runs late, doesn't listen and behaves unpredictably. These concerns \u2013 many of which may seem quite petty to a modern audience \u2013 are enough to make the group conclude that she is detrimental to the affairs of the abbey.\n\nTo look at how the issues with Maria could be addressed in the present day, the nuns could turn to feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez \u2013 but she firmly concludes that the problem does not lie where the nuns believe it does.\n\n'Maria isn't the f---ing problem here,' she argues. 'The problem is a sexist society that has constructed a world around male bodies and male needs \u2013 and that then has the gall to blame women for not fitting into it as expected. 'Maria is a perfectly well-adjusted human being who just wants to be free to live according to her own rules and spin around in mountains singing at the top of her lungs; she doesn't care for your misogynistic expectations that she quietly acquiesces to being a member of the subordinate sex class. And if that's wrong, then I don't want to be right.'\n\nHow do you solve a problem like Maria? You adjust your institutional expectations to properly accommodate her. A simple answer might be a more precise job description, allied with a rigorous appraisal structure and regular contact with a line manager. As with many questions, the answer is 'better HR'.\n\nHOW MANY GENERATIONS WILL HAVE PASSED BY THE YEAR 3000?\n\nBUSTED\n\n**In their oddly taunting 2002 account of their time-travelling experience, Busted are told that their 'great-great-great-granddaughter' is 'pretty fine' \u2013 information that is undoubtedly less useful to them than blueprints for advanced technologies, medicine or even the results of events that can be gambled upon.**\n\nNonetheless, the exchange raises an interesting question: at present, the average age for a woman to have her first child in most Western countries is in her mid-to-late twenties. Assuming this pattern held, we would expect Peter to encounter Busted's* great-(repeated 33 times) granddaughter, come the year 3000.\n\nTo suggest that they have instead met their companion's great-great-great granddaughter and found her not only alive, but also conforming to 2002's standards of attractiveness suggests either that the average generational span rapidly grew from around thirty years as it stands now to around 200 years. Even the most optimistic predictions for increased lifespan currently stand at 125 years over the next fifty years, with some researchers arguing that it will plateau at 115 years. Another solution could be that the final of the five generations attained infinite longevity, perhaps by downloading their consciousness into a powerful computer. In a future in which this is possible, perhaps that would be viewed as 'pretty fine'.\nWHEN WILL I BE FAMOUS?\n\nBROS\n\n**In the title of this study, Goss, L and Goss, M directly pose a complex statistical question \u2013 when can a typical person expect to become famous? \u2013 but it is one that they immediately give up any hope of answering.**\n\nIndeed, initially we are obliged to challenge the fundamental premise of their question \u2013 in the world as it stands, despite there being hundreds of TV channels and thousands of reality shows, it is still possible, even probable, that many people will never become famous.\n\nIf we look at data from imdb, an online repository of almost every film and TV show ever made, the site lists around 8.7 million people \u2013 but of those around two-thirds work behind the scenes, and so largely cannot be said to be famous. The Gosses specify that it's the sort of fame that results in their picture in the paper that they are interested in, and it is extremely unlikely that anyone but the most famous director or producer would be pictured in a newspaper. Neither would extras and actors in non-speaking roles.\n\nEven using a generous definition of fame that includes anyone credited for any speaking part in any show ever, still only 0.04 per cent of us (or one in 2,500) will ever become famous.\n\nBros, however, treat fame as a certainty; it is after all 'when will I?' not simply 'will I?', which possibly refers to Andy Warhol's assertion that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.\n\nHowever, this gets difficult: if everyone is to be famous for fifteen minutes, we would need 199,771 years just to get through everyone alive right now. Or, to allow each person on the planet their allotted fifteen minutes in their lifetime, each person would have to share their fifteen minutes of fame with 2,496 others. That may not make you feel all that famous.\n\nFor the members of Bros themselves, however, the answer to the question posed by their song is simpler. This was their breakthrough hit, eventually reaching number two in the UK charts. It was released on 16 November, first charted on 28 November and Bros first appeared on _Top of the Pops_ on 21 January 1988. So the answer to the Goss brothers' question specifically is between twelve and thirty-five days after release.\n\nARE WE HUMAN, OR DANCER?\n\nTHE KILLERS\n\n**Flowers, B urgently wants to know an answer to this question: he has sought it on his knees, and through the course of this thought experiment seems willing to cast aside many aspects of his life and character \u2013 including grace, virtue, soul, romance and devotion \u2013 in his search.**\n\nIt is unclear from the context how Flowers believes these aspects would have hindered him.\n\nLeaving aside the implication in his question that dancers are somehow other than human, Flowers could have found an answer with far fewer sacrifices had he taken a more methodical approach to his research. Assuming that he means 'dance professional', rather than simply someone who has ever danced in some way, which we can assume is close to everyone who has ever lived, then we can begin to build an answer.\n\nIn the UK, for example, Flowers could have examined data from the Office for National Statistics, and found 21,000 people are employed (or self-employed) as dancers and choreographers. Following that, we need only look up UK population estimates derived from the country's census to see that those 21,000 come from a population of around 65,600,000,000.\n\nThis lets us work out a possible solution to Flowers' question, if we accept his fundamental premise that the category dancer supersedes that of human: 99.7 per cent of us should answer 'human', but 0.03 per cent are in the fortunate position of being able to answer 'dancer' (or choreographer).\nYOU WALK 500 MILES. YOU WALK 500 MORE. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?\n\nTHE PROCLAIMERS\n\n**The intended route of Reid, C S and Reid, C M's audacious 1,000-mile walk has been the subject of scholarly debate for the three decades since the release of their account.**\n\nWorking from the assumption that the brothers are starting from their hometown of Leith \u2013 a suburb of Scotland's capital, Edinburgh \u2013 people have tried to calculate how far they would get if they walked '500 miles' and then '500 more'.\n\nIn 2014, Hazel McKendrick made an estimate on Twitter that 500 miles would take the brothers as far as northern France, or north-eastern Germany, while the promised additional 500 would allow them to reach Poland, Austria or Italy. However, as South Carolina-based cartographer Kenneth Field noted, this took no notice of obstacles such as mountains or oceans, or even of the curvature of the Earth. Using estimates based on Europe's existing roads (though assuming the brothers could walk on water), he came up with more modest travel distances: 500 miles would only get them to two points of mainland Europe, while with 500 more they could begin to reach the south of France.\n\nEven this more rigorous calculation, though, missed out two important considerations: firstly \u2013 unless they have covered up this fact superbly \u2013 the Proclaimers cannot walk on water. Secondly, during the course of their song, they say the purpose of their 1,000-mile walk would be to fall at the door of the person they're singing to. If we work on the assumption that door is also in Leith, the Proclaimers wish can realistically come true: if they walk to Land's End in Cornwall \u2013 the furthest they can walk without hitting ocean \u2013 they will have travelled 545 miles. So if they want to end where they began, they can walk 500 miles, then 500 more, but then they would have to do an extra 90.2 miles before falling down right where they started, in Leith. If however they wanted to only walk 1,000 miles exactly, but still visit mainland Britain's most westerly point, they would be able to make it back up to the north of England to somewhere in the vicinity of the Currock area, just south of Carlisle.\n\nWHERE IS MY LARGE AUTOMOBILE?\n\nTALKING HEADS\n\n**This is a song that has been characterized as being perhaps the ultimate musical rendition of a mid-life crisis \u2013 and so concern about the size and presence of the family patriarch's car was an almost vital ingredient.**\n\nRepeated psychological studies have found happiness correlates not just with our own income and status, but with how we are doing compared to those around us. For example, a 2009 US-wide study found that people were happier when they lived in a rich neighbourhood in a poor county than in a similarly rich neighbourhood in a rich county \u2013 suggesting the issue for Talking Heads is not so much the size of their car, but whether or not it's bigger than other people's.\n\nThis is where time has acted against Talking Heads since they recorded the song in 1980: despite climate change and air pollution suggesting cars should get smaller, they have instead got bigger across the decades. Figures from automotive.com show a modern Porsche 991 is eleven inches longer than a 1980 Porsche 911. A modern VW Golf is seven inches longer than a 1983 model; Honda Accords have grown twenty inches since 1982, and a modern Mini Cooper is twenty inches longer than the original.\n\nHerein lies a possible cause for Talking Heads' social anxiety: their automobile might have been large by 1980 standards, but now it's bound to seem small.\nDID THOSE FEET IN ANCIENT TIMES WALK UPON ENGLAND'S MOUNTAINS GREEN?\n\nWILLIAM BLAKE\n\n**In his rather confused 1804 investigation into a potential site for Jerusalem in a northern English location, Blake sets out a number of questions that are easily answered and dismissed.**\n\nThe song also includes a number of actions that would likely be impossible, or dangerous if attempted, warranting a full safety and fact-checking effort.\n\nWhile there is a period of Jesus's life about which the bible says nothing, all of Jesus's recorded activities occur within what is modern-day Israel \u2013 in Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem \u2013 with no evidence he came to England. We now tackle Blake, W's other questions and issues in turn.\n\n_And was the holy Lamb of God \/ On England's pleasant pastures seen? \/ And did the countenance divine shine forth \/ Upon our clouded hills?_ Blake is fooling no one here: these are repetitions of his first question, to which the answer is still 'no'.\n\n_And was Jerusalem builded here \/ Among those dark Satanic mills?_ No. Jerusalem is located in the Middle East and claimed by Israel and Palestine as their capital \u2013 it does not need England staking a claim, too. Additionally, it was established there since at least four centuries before Christ, whereas the 'dark Satanic mills' did not appear until two millennia later.\n\n_Bring me my bow of burning gold._ If you see a bow of burning gold, do not touch it: it will burn you.\n\n_Bring me my arrows of desire._ Desire is intangible and therefore would not be suitable material for arrows.\n\n_Bring me my chariot of fire._ Please see the warnings on the bow of burning gold.\n\n_Till we have built \/ In England's green and pleasant land._ Jerusalem, as has been repeatedly stated, has already been built. And not in England. Whether or not Blake, W was advocating a kind of biblical proto-theme park as a means of kickstarting the northern British tourist trade is unclear.\n\nARE WE OUT OF THE WOODS YET?\n\nTAYLOR SWIFT\n\n**The question posed here by environmental scientist Swift, T in her 2014 study is clearly one of deep concern to her, as she repeats it no fewer than thirty-eight times in her four-minute-sixteen-second video.**\n\nYet it should come as no surprise that Swift regards it as so important, as the issue of deforestation is crucial to the future of the world. Not only can deforestation lead to mudslides and other localized catastrophes, but the absence of forests reduces the Earth's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change. Swift is rightly drawing our attention to such things.\n\nFortunately, we are not entirely out of woods and forests yet, but we are running out of them rapidly. Around 10,000 years ago, according to UN data, the planet had 6 billion hectares of forest, covering around 45 per cent of the Earth's land area. Today, that's down to around 4 billion hectares, or just 31 per cent of the world's land.\n\nIt's also disappearing faster each year: over the last 5,000 years we've lost around 360,000 hectares of forest a year. In the current decade we lose more than five million hectares every year. We might not be out of the woods yet, but the situation is certainly not improving \u2013 so no wonder Swift, T is so worried.\n\nIronically though, we know that each 10-minute YouTube view produces 1g of carbon, so her four-minute-sixteen-second video produces 0.416g. At the time of writing it has been viewed 135,632,063 times, producing 56,422,938.208g or 56,422kgs of carbon. If a single tree can sequester 21kg of carbon a year, then we need 2,687 extra trees just to deal with the carbon generated from watching this video.\nI WILL SURVIVE \u2013 BUT FOR HOW LONG?\n\nGLORIA GAYNOR\n\n**Many people who have experienced a difficult breakup have been reassured by Gloria Gaynor's classic investigation into stoicism to help get them through heartbreak.**\n\nResearch suggests most of us experience our first serious breakup at around the age of twenty \u2013 a little younger than Gaynor's age when she first posed this question. The UK's official life expectancy tables reveal that, at that stage, while a man can expect to survive for another 59.7 years, a woman can expect another 63.3 years on Earth \u2013 meaning that statistically speaking, Gaynor will not only survive, but also outlive her former partner.\n\nThere is also reassurance for people separating from even more serious or longstanding relationships: the average age of a divorcing man is forty-six, meaning he should expect another thirty-five years alive to find another love. The news is better for women, who are on average aged forty-three when they divorce, meaning they can expect to survive a full forty-one years more.\n\nHowever, returning to Gaynor's study, her assertion that she has 'all her life to live' is less accurate. If we use the example of a woman who is 20 when she experiences her first breakup and lives to be 83.3, she has in fact only 76 per cent of her life left to live at that point. However, Gaynor, G was first making this statement when she was 29 years old, meaning that she had around 65 per cent of her life left to live, with every 18 months reducing that figure by another percentage point. As Gaynor, G is now 69 years old, when she makes this statement she has only 20 per cent of her life to live. We can represent this as a curve on a graph with age at which you sing the song against the percentage of remaining life left to live.\n\nGaynor's missive will certainly survive, however: in 2015 it was added to the USA's National Recording Registry, to be preserved for future generations.\n\nIF YOU DON'T LOVE ME NOW, WILL YOU NEVER LOVE ME AGAIN?\n\nFLEETWOOD MAC\n\n**If any people could claim to know in detail the complexities of love, betrayal, separation and dealing with ex-lovers, then it would be the members of Fleetwood Mac \u2013 who have managed virtually every combination of marriage, cheating, and separation over their tumultuous history.**\n\nAs such, their assertion that once the chain is broken \u2013 when you fall out of love \u2013 that will be the end forever would seem to be one that we would all do well to believe. However, it's not strictly true.\n\nIf we look at divorce, perhaps the most obvious and complete a split that a serious relationship can have, we can see evidence that sometimes you can break the chain. A study of 1,001 divorced couples published in 2005 by Dr Nancy Kalish found that 6 per cent of divorced couples eventually remarried their former spouse, and in the instances where they do, they have a much better than average chance of staying together, with 72 per cent of the marriages lasting.\n\nThis may have been particularly on the authors of this study's minds at the time as both Buckingham, L and Nicks, S, McVie, J and C and Fleetwood, M were all in the process of ending their long-term relationships at the point at which it was published. It is perhaps a comfort that the high volume of failed relationships within the band actually increase the likelihood of one of them being rekindled.\n\nMore generally Kalish, found that the remarrying couples who fared best were those who married young and then waited several decades before reuniting \u2013 suggesting that if you do break the chain, it's best to wait a long time before trying to repair it.\nHOW MUCH SPACE DO A MILLION PHOTOGRAPHS TAKE UP?\n\nTHE VAPORS\n\n**Fenton, D famously raises this question in his problematic investigation of self-identity as it relates to race.**\n\nHis thesis is that taking a lot of photos is 'turning' him Japanese. Leaving aside this simplistic and problematic model of racial identity, the study does yield one important point.\n\nFenton refers to wanting a million pictures of his lover, which, when the study was first published in 1980, would have meant physically printed-out photos. Many people hear the lyric as Fenton wanting a million pictures on his 'self' \u2013 meaning that if the photos were standard 6-inch by 4-inch size, he would need a surface area 7,936 times larger than the typical person. However, this is a misreading: Fenton is actually stating he wants a million photos in his 'cell'. To fit that many 6-inch by 4-inch photos, his cell would need to be 200 feet long, 200 feet wide and 200 feet high \u2013 rather a lot bigger than the standard six feet by nine feet US isolation cell.\n\nIn the modern era, things are simpler. A typical iPhone image is around one megabyte, meaning a million would be one million megabytes, or one terabyte \u2013 which can now be stored on a portable drive that's smaller and not much thicker than a 6-inch by 4-inch photograph.\n\nThat convenience is essential to some of the internet's biggest businesses: one million photographs \u2013 enough to line our 200-foot cell \u2013 are uploaded to Instagram every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, making a total just short of 100 million each day, or 12 billion a year. It's likely a good thing for the world's trees that these don't get printed out any more.\n\nIS ANNIE OKAY?\n\nMICHAEL JACKSON\n\n**Simply from the description that Jackson, M gives in this case study, anyone should be able to determine that Annie is not entirely okay: we know there are bloodstains on the carpet, that she's been struck down and even that it was her doom \u2013 so the signs do not look good for Annie.**\n\nHowever, the story isn't quite what many of us might think it is. 'Annie, are you okay?' was a key line taught when training people to perform CPR, as one of the most common models of CPR dummy was known as Resusci Anne, or Annie for short \u2013 an unusually realistic model of dummy with a face based on the death mask of an unknown woman found drowned in the Seine in the late 1880s. So what Jackson, M is setting out here is just a particularly elaborate scenario in CPR training.\n\nHowever, if Annie is relying on CPR to survive, she is unlikely to be okay: the overall survival rate of people receiving CPR in hospital is just 10.6 per cent, and that falls still lower for those who need CPR outside.*\n\nTo give Annie the best chance of survival, the chest compressions should be administered to her as near to one hundred beats per minute as possible. One way to try to keep this beat is to have the song 'Stayin' Alive' in mind, as it has a tempo of 103bpm. Closer still, though, is the Queen song 'Another One Bites the Dust' \u2013 though anyone administering CPR to this tune is strongly advised not to sing it out loud, for fear of giving the wrong impression to onlookers and the casualty.\nHOW MANY HONEYS MAKE THEIR MONEY?\n\nDESTINY'S CHILD\n\n**At multiple points during this socio-economic rallying cry, Knowles, B, Rowland, K and Williams, M call on all the women who make their own money to throw up their hands \u2013 which naturally raises the question as to how many people in any given population would be eligible to wave their hands in response.**\n\nThe proportion of women who work and so earn at least some income has increased dramatically in the last few generations: in 1971 just 53 per cent of women in the UK were in any kind of employment (versus 92 per cent of men), while in the most recent UK statistics that figure had jumped to an all-time high of 71 per cent (versus 80 per cent for men).\n\nThis would suggest almost three-quarters of women in the audience could throw their hands up. However, the song has a stronger suggestion: that these women are in a relationship, but are financially independent of their partner \u2013 but data suggests that a situation in which a woman exactly equals or out-earns her husband is much rarer.\n\nResearch for the USA's National Bureau of Economic Research found that US couples were much less likely to match if the woman out-earned the man, and that marriage rates declined in areas where women out-earned men \u2013 meaning that for some reason richer women and poorer men do not generally want to marry. Worse still for high-earning women, marriages where the woman earned more were found to be less happy, and more likely to end in divorce.\n\nIn most marriages, it seems, the man still serves as the main breadwinner. One notable exception, of course, is Beyonc\u00e9 herself: despite her husband Jay-Z being richer overall, she out-earns him by more than two dollars for each dollar he brings in: she netted $105m in 2017, versus Jay-Z's measly $42m.\n\nIS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM?\n\nJOE JACKSON\n\n**Jackson, J is determined to know the relationship status of people around him in this famous 1979 study and seems unwilling to simply ask any of the people concerned whether or not they will be going home together.**\n\nEarly in the song he even notes that he has heard that one of the women whose relationship he is questioning is married or engaged 'or something' \u2013 but as the study predates online search engines and social media sites he was, of course, unable to use these resources to confirm the information. This study therefore offers us a nice opportunity to consider other ways of answering the central question.\n\nJackson could attempt to work out the relationships by looking for body language cues, such as hand-holding or kissing, or by watching for signs of what psychologists call 'emotional contagion', as people begin to mirror the speech patterns of someone they spend a lot of time with. Or he could simply look to see whether or not the people concerned are wearing wedding rings, but he seems to be eager for a higher level of certainty than that.\n\nHappily, modern science can help. A 2017 study published in the American Society for Microbiology's journal, mSystems, revealed that by analyzing the microbiome \u2013 the ecosystem of bacteria \u2013 on people's skin, cohabiting couples can be identified by a computer algorithm (which had access to no other information) with 86 per cent accuracy. The microbiome is affected by a number of factors around the home: such as whether the couple own pets, what skin products they use, alcohol consumption, and more.\n\nThe most useful skin swabs for matches are those taken from the soles of the feet. So for Jackson to get a relatively reliable answer to his question, he need only obtain feet swabs from the couples concerned \u2013 surely a simple undertaking, if he is as interested as he professes to be.\nWILL THIS BE THE DAY THAT YOU DIE?\n\nDON MCLEAN\n\n**In his tribute to Buddy Holly, McLean, D quotes men singing this will be the day they die.**\n\nCalculating the chances that they are right is a complex task: it depends on our sex, our age, our health and what country we're in.\n\nThe chance of dying in any given year changes dramatically over the course of our lifetime: at the age of 20 we have around a one in 1,000 chance of dying that year, whereas by eighty those odds have risen to a much more worrying one in ten. However, the men were being far more specific than that \u2013 they're claiming they'll die today. Working that out gets far trickier, as it hugely depends on what you're doing on that day: a day in bed will be much less risky than a day motorbiking to your job down a coal mine.\n\nStatistics experts David Spiegelhalter and Michael Blastland came up with a novel way of measuring this risk \u2013 the 'micromort', a measure for a one-in-a-million chance of death. Taking a single ecstasy pill is roughly one micromort, as there is a one in a million chance of it killing you. Heroin, by contrast, would be 377 micromorts. Travelling a mile on a motorbike is one micromort, the same as 7,500 miles by commercial flight.\n\nWe know that the three old men were drinking 'whiskey and rye', presumably near the dry levee. The fact they were singing would suggest they had been drinking for a while. The micromort calculations of drinking by a river are not available, but we do know that each double whiskey the ole boys knocked back would reduce their life expectancy by around nine minutes.\n\nBut what are the bigger risks that would significantly increase the chances of this being the day you die? One huge risk is childbirth \u2013 at 2,100 micromorts \u2013 but the highest risk Spiegelhalter and Blastland mention is flying on a bombing raid during the Second World War: 25,000 micromorts per trip, easily enough to give the song sung by 'the good ole boys' an unnerving chance of being correct.\n\nCAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?\n\nELTON JOHN AND TIM RICE\n\n**Most humans would struggle to articulate any specific way they could feel love among the population in general on any given night: unlike many species, we do not have a specific mating season, and our conscious brains can't detect love in other people \u2013 we may pick up on signs of it, but we are only really aware of it when we feel it ourselves.**\n\nHowever, it can easily be argued that in this study, John, E and Rice, T are talking about lions, and in this case there is an argument that big cats are capable of feeling love in the air. The reason comes down to pheromones.*\n\nTo mark territory, lions and other big cats spray urine that contains more and different pheromones to regular urine. That mix changes over time, and includes signals as to whether or not the animal is looking to reproduce. Thanks to some clever quirks of biology that make the scents linger for a long time, potential sexual partners can feel the love in the air not just for a night, but for much longer periods than that. This is what the study's other contributors, Messrs Timon and Pumbaa, may be referring to as the 'romantic atmosphere' and the 'disaster' in the air.\n\nThis can work against the animals concerned, though. It was observed as early as the nineteenth century that the sensitive antennae of moths are capable of detecting the chemicals emitted by a would-be mate from a great distance. That is now turned against them: when farmers want to rid themselves of moths as a pest, they release female pheromones to attract them by the thousands to traps. Animals may be able to feel love in the air \u2013 but it opens them up to industrial-scale honey traps.\nCALL ME, MAYBE?\n\nCARLY RAE JEPSEN\n\n**At first glance it is difficult to see why Jepsen, C R believes what she's asking is in any way 'crazy': she has met someone she's attracted to, passed over her number and is inviting him to call her \u2013 a routine event on nights out for decades.**\n\nIndeed, it is tempting to see this \u2013 along with Jepsen's use of the classical rhetorical technique _sprezzatura_ , in which a studied nonchalance is used to mask your true feelings, with her addition of 'maybe' \u2013 as an attempt to muddy the waters of how much this exchange means to her.\n\nIt's only when we start to think about the phone-use habits of millennials that we understand why what Jepsen is doing seems crazy to her: she is inviting a call from someone she doesn't know, whereas most millennials would expect a text message, or a WhatsApp.\n\nOfficial research by Ofcom, the UK's phone regulator, shows that only 15 per cent of 16-to 24-year-olds consider phone calls the most important form of communication, versus 36 per cent who think instant messaging takes the top spot and making phone calls is something of a niche form of communication.\n\nIndeed, there's a surge of people who barely use their phone as a phone at all. A study by Ipsos MORI found that in 2012 just 4 per cent of people who owned a mobile phone made less than one phone call a week from it. Within just three years this had climbed to 25 per cent.\n\nWERE THE BOYS OF THE NYPD CHOIR SINGING 'GALWAY BAY'?\n\nTHE POGUES\n\n**Since its creation in 1988, this exploration of the role of institutional vocal groups in New York has become a benchmark for our understanding of Christmas.**\n\nIt describes a man singing from the drunk tank \u2013 a police lock-up for people too drunk to remain un-arrested \u2013 to a lover he's dragged down to his level, about a time when things were better for the two of them.\n\nThe singer recollects the music playing as the two of them met \u2013 the song 'Galway Bay', about the scenic bay on the west coast of Ireland. There are two versions of the song, one popular in the bay itself (oddly, this version is the only one to mention an American state), and one popular in the USA.\n\nThe song was, according to the song's narrator, being sung by the men of the NYPD's choir \u2013 which would seem logical, given the historic connections between New York's Irish community and its police force. However, the NYPD did not in 1987, when the song was released, and does not in the present day have a voice choir. The nearest it comes is a collection of pipers and drummers, who play as part of its Emerald Society (and who feature in the music video).\n\nGiven the singer's inebriated status, it would be unsurprising if he had misremembered a detail of when he met the love of his life, but as the two of them are unlikely to share the same false memory of a song, it raises an unanswerable question: who was singing 'Galway Bay'?\nIS MONEY THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL TODAY?\n\nPINK FLOYD\n\n**In their assessment of the state of the capitalist global economy, Waters, R, Gilmour, D, et al., debate whether it can be accurately stated that money \u2013 presumably in the form of fiat currency \u2013 is the source of societal ills.**\n\nWaters carefully caveats his assertion in his thesis, appending the allegation against money with 'so they say', a frustratingly vague manner of attribution. It is possible Waters has been misled into inaccurately citing the bible, which notes that 'love of money', not money itself, is the root of evil.\n\nEmpirically, we can assess that if Waters et al. regard substantial wealth inequality as an 'evil' then they will find themselves with a strong evidence basis to support their claims. Research published in January 2018 by Oxfam found that the world's richest 42 people owned as much wealth as its poorest 3.7 billion, and that the global 1 per cent have 82 per cent of the world's wealth.\n\nDefenders of the capitalist system, and of money, could note that barter economies have huge inefficiencies and transaction costs \u2013 if you're trying to swap a tool for food you may need to do numerous trades to get there. They may also note that between 1987 and 2013 the number of people living in extreme poverty across the globe dropped from 35 per cent to less than 11 per cent.\n\nWaters et al. may be more concerned with the other end of the distribution, though. In their discourse, they note with regret that while they are in the 'high-fidelity first-class travelling set', they feel they need \u2013 but lack \u2013 a Learjet.\n\nWHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?\n\nTHE BEATLES\n\n**Lennon, J and McCartney, P receive near-universal acclaim as two of the greatest thinkers in human history, and so this study's simplicity \u2013 13 of its 16 lines are simply a repetition of its titular question \u2013 can only be explained by assuming that one or both men really, really wanted to have sex in the road.**\n\nThe obvious answer to this question would simply be a fear of getting hit by a vehicle, something which would surely put a dampener on even the best intercourse. Data lets us work out whether or not that fear is well-founded: a 2017 survey shows the average UK adult says a sex session lasts for nineteen minutes \u2013 ten minutes of foreplay, and nine minutes of intercourse. We will assume that in the interests of road safety that couples in this case will be willing to forego the foreplay.\n\nThe chances of surviving a nine-minute sex session in a road will naturally depend on the type of road. Statistics from the Department of Transport allow us to work this out in detail. The Beatles should definitely rule out motorways \u2013 the typical stretch of motorway will see 81,000 cars pass every twenty-four hours, meaning a car would pass every 1.1 seconds. This would suggest a couple could expect to be run over nearly 540 times in a typical session.\n\nThe safest option \u2013 and one that tallies with The Beatles' promise that no one would see the couple doing it \u2013 would be to use a minor rural road, which is the least likely to be overlooked and the quietest in traffic terms. This would still be wildly unsafe, though: the average rural road has one car pass every ninety seconds, suggesting the couple would still be risking being run over six times. There are, it seems, very good reasons not to do it in the road. Also, gravel.\nDO THE DRUGS WORK?\n\nTHE VERVE\n\n**Ashcroft, R has clearly come to his own conclusion on whether the drugs work, decisively ruling that they do not, but it's not clear from the study alone what drugs are being assessed, or by what criteria they are being judged.**\n\nMany people believe the song is not, in fact, about recreational drug use, but instead refers to a dying cancer patient (at various points rumoured to be Ashcroft's father-in-law). Though in that instance the drugs didn't work, they do work for many: a huge meta-analysis of 100,000 breast cancer patients found chemotherapy reduced ten-year mortality \u2013 the proportion of people who die within ten years of diagnosis \u2013 by a third, a huge success rate.\n\nHowever, the song has in reality been confirmed by Ashcroft to be about recreational use of illegal drugs; indeed the use of the phrase 'coming down' in reference to his own state of mind would suggest psychoactive stimulants being cleared from his system, resulting in dysphoria.\n\nIt is hard to gain data on the general efficacy of illegal drugs. And while they can usually be said to 'work' in that they have the effects people buy them for, there are numerous reasons Ashcroft can use to justify his claim. Firstly, many drugs are either cut with chalk or even harmful substances, or sometimes replaced by them entirely \u2013 rendering them ineffective. Or, as Ashcroft suggests, the drug's negative effects quickly come to outweigh the good ones \u2013 though in this case Ashcroft would have been more lyrically and scientifically accurate if he had written, 'The drugs might work \/ But their adverse \/ Effects far outweigh the benefits'.\n\nARE THERE NINE MILLION BICYCLES IN BEIJING?\n\nKATIE MELUA\n\n**When Melua, K asserted the number of bikes in her 2005 study, she surely cannot have been aware of the controversies it would cause in nerd communities \u2013 of which more later.**\n\nThe titular claim is based on a longstanding belief, something of an urban myth, that there are nine million bicycles in China's capital, Beijing. There is, in reality, no justification for the statistic, though it is plausible. Beijing is a city known for its bikes, and the city has a population of 22 million, making a total of 9 million cycles possible \u2013 but vanishingly unlikely. Chinese government statistics suggest 14 per cent of people in the city frequently commute by bicycle, suggesting a total of around 2.1 million bicycles in regular use. The government is trying to increase this to 18 per cent to tackle air pollution, which could add another 600,000 or so bikes to the city's roads \u2013 but still far short of Melua's far more ambitious calculation.\n\nIt was not the bicycles, though, which ignited controversy in the wake of the song's release.\n\nMelua also asserts during its course that Earth is around 12 billion light years from the edge of the universe \u2013 but she calls this a 'guess', which no one can confirm the truth of.\n\nThis sparked the ire of theoretical physicist and science communicator Simon Singh, who defended his field by noting that the estimate of the Earth's distance from the edge of the universe is based on substantial scientific evidence. Eventually, Melua agreed to re-record a version of the lyric with phrasing that suited Singh better: 'We are 13.7 billion light years from the edge of the observable universe,' runs Singh's suggested lyric. 'That's a good estimate with well-defined error bars.' It is perhaps unsurprising Singh is a physicist rather than a lyricist.\n\nDO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOS\u00c9?\n\nDIONNE WARWICK\n\n**Warwick, D describes an interesting situation. She urgently wants to get to San Jose, where she has lots of friends, believes she can find peace of mind, enjoys its space, and thinks she will easily find somewhere to stay. But despite knowing many people there, and even having been born and raised in the city, Warwick has found herself lost, and unable to find her way to it \u2013 despite it being California's third-largest city.**\n\nWe are forced to consider the interesting question of what it means to 'know' the way somewhere. In a pre-technological age, it would be measured by someone's ability to find their way there, or indeed, describe how someone else might get there. However, in a modern world in which every smartphone is a map with GPS, this becomes more difficult to assess. But if we define 'knowing the way' as relating only to knowledge in our brains, and not including any devices, then Warwick, D will probably be disappointed.\n\nEven if the passers-by she flags down know the way to San Jos\u00e9 she is unlikely to be able to get comprehensible directions from them. This is due to a psychological effect known as the 'curse of knowledge': we become able to get to a well-known destination on mental autopilot, and so we forget the conscious cues that remind us of how to get there \u2013 how to tell which of the four junctions is the one to make the left turn at, or even how many junctions there are before the correct turning.\n\nThe more worrying factor is that because of the plasticity of the brain \u2013 for example, we know that black cab drivers who take 'the knowledge' test about London streets show an increase in 'grey matter' in their posterior hippocampus \u2013 it is not alarmist to suggest that if we don't use this part of our brain, it may eventually atrophy.\nHOW WORRIED SHOULD YOU BE IF SOMEONE'S WATCHING YOU WITH THE EYE OF THE TIGER?\n\nSURVIVOR\n\n**During the course of this investigation into survival technique, Jamison, J is clearly describing the preparation for a major confrontation with a rival \u2013 one which he takes seriously, as he repeatedly warns those within earshot that they are being watched with the 'eye of the tiger'.**\n\nJamison may be something of an unreliable narrator: he refers in one moment to the 'last known survivor' before addressing a comment to 'us all', suggesting either he is omitting essential context, or else is hazy on the concept of a 'final survivor'. Setting this issue aside, though, it is credible that a human rival could be watching with the eye of a tiger: during daylight hours, the eyesight of a tiger is roughly equivalent to the sight of a typical human.\n\nHowever, Jamison specifically refers to the song taking place at night, when humans would have far more reasons to worry about a tiger's sight: at night tigers' vision is around five or six times better than that of a human. There could be far worse scenarios than being watched with tigers' eyes, though: if an opponent had the vision of an eagle, they would have daytime sight around eight times further than a human, with the ability to focus on a rabbit at a distance of two miles.\n\nAt night, owls' eyes would be a far greater worry: owls' eyes make up around 10,000 times more of their weight than human eyes do of theirs, have extraordinary ability to use low light, and have far greater density of light receptors.\n\nBeing watched by the eye of the tiger would be unnerving \u2013 but it could be so much worse.\n\nWOULD I LIE TO YOU?\n\nCHARLES & EDDIE\n\n**In this 1992 report on the likelihood of an individual lying, it is proposed that truth can be assessed by the openness of a subject's eyes, with wide eyes posited as evidence of the truthfulness of their interactions with their 'baby'.**\n\nThough we can find no studies for the wideness of eyes and truthfulness, there has been a lot of research into whether eye movement reveals lies, with Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire finding no relationship between lying and eye movements. In fact, verbal hesitations and excessive hand gestures may be a better guide. Charles & Eddie are perhaps referring to this theory when they state that it is 'in their arms' where we might find the 'only truth', though they do not say what their arms are doing.\n\nHowever, we can look at the likelihood of Charles & Eddie lying in another way. Research in 2010 by academics at Michigan State University found that 60 per cent of respondents said they had told no lies whatsoever in the previous 24 hours, and found that half of all the lies reported in the survey of 1,000 adults had come from just 5 per cent of respondents. There is one problem with that research, however: people might lie about lying.\n\nWe learn how to lie at a very early age. Researchers at Toronto's Institute of Child Study told children not to peek at a toy behind their backs when alone (but recorded) in a room. At the age of two, only 20 per cent of children were able to lie about whether they peeked, but by age four, 90 per cent could lie about that (and lying didn't peak until the children reached the age of twelve). For humans, lying is second nature.\n\nWe continue to lie as adults: the University of Massachusetts asked 121 undergraduates to talk to a stranger and try to appear either likeable or competent, and secretly recorded them. They then asked the students to identify if they'd lied at all during the conversation. To even their own surprise, more than 60 per cent of respondents found they'd lied at least once, often without even being aware of it.\n\nThis spells a problem for Charles & Eddie: not only might we be unable to tell if they're lying to us, they might not even know it themselves.\nHOW MUCH WOULD YOU HAVE TO EARN TO BE 'BARELY GETTIN' BY' IN LA IN 1980?\n\nDOLLY PARTON\n\n**Parton, D makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the psychology and economics of low-quality work. While endless column inches are filled with stories about how millennials want more from the workplace than previous generations, Parton was ahead of the curve. In 1980 she vividly documents nine-to-five jobs which didn't give due credit, took without giving and shattered dreams.**\n\nShe also flagged the roles paid only just enough to 'get by' \u2013 but didn't specify what level of income that was. Fortunately, we can calculate it: during this period, Parton was based in California, which at the time had a minimum wage of $3.10 an hour. Assuming she worked a typical five-day week with a daily unpaid lunch hour, that would give her a weekly income of $108.50, and annual earnings of $5,642 pre-tax.\n\nThe US has historically set much stricter definitions of poverty than other countries, and Parton's 35-hour week would see her comfortably above its 1980 threshold of $3,400 for a single person. If we wanted a more generous definition of 'barely getting by' \u2013 such as the international threshold of 60 per cent of average earnings \u2013 Parton would fall far short, as this line would be around $7,500.\n\nTo earn that \u2013 a rough approximation of getting by \u2013 she'd have to have her wages hiked to $4.10 or so, which seems unlikely under her current line-management structure. However, it would probably provoke envy in many low-earning US families today to imagine you could get by on just one job. Recent studies suggest that as many as 7.6 million workers, or 2.5 per cent of the country, are working more than one job.\n\nAs it stands, Parton is doing far better than that: her net worth is today approximately $500 million. And so too are others. In 1985, when Parton was seeking support for her theme park Dollywood from the Pigeon Forge City Commission in East Tennessee, a spokesperson guaranteed that all staff would be paid above minimum wage.\n\nWHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED?\n\nJIMMY RUFFIN\n\n**Ruffin, J changed cardiology forever in 1966 with his deep examination of what happened to those who survive coronary episodes.**\n\nRuffin also shows some enlightenment as to the difficulty of improving such survival rates, singing of searching for solutions but not succeeding, and worrying that all remains are unhappy endings.\n\nRuffin's concerns are matched by the clinical evidence into what becomes of the broken hearted, which we take to mean those who have suffered heart failure. Researchers collected evidence of the outcomes of 54,313 people in the UK who'd had heart attacks over the age of forty-five, and looked at their one-year, five-year and ten-year survival rates.\n\nThe study found that 81.3 per cent of the people studied were still alive after one year, 51.5 per cent were still going five years later and 29.5 per cent \u2013 less than one in three \u2013 were still alive a decade after their first heart failure. Worse still, those survival rates had not improved over the fourteen-year period of the analysis.\n\nIt should be noted, though, that these figures looked much better for the relatively young patients in the group, more than 80 per cent of whom survive five years, and more than two-thirds of whom were still alive after a decade. Ruffin's study courageously drew the public's attention to these serious issues, so if \u2013 as he stated \u2013 he is looking for peace of mind, perhaps he can find some there.\nWHO'S TO BLAME: THE SUNSHINE, MOONLIGHT, GOOD TIMES OR BOOGIE?\n\nTHE JACKSONS\n\n**This 1978 report explored the impact of boogie on a variety of issues, including the lack of 'lovin' and the author's reduced ability to control their feet.**\n\nIf boogie were entitled to a good defence lawyer, it would have a great chance of getting this inquisition called as a mistrial: from the very outset of the song \u2013 even from its very title \u2013 The Jacksons have decided what they are going to blame for the problems affecting them.\n\nHowever, one might find it an unusual use of everyone's time to try to assess whether dancing is to blame for people dancing.\n\nProper examination of the suspects The Jacksons list suggests they should not have jumped so rapidly to conclusions. While moonlight is largely blameless \u2013 though poor light at night-time is not without hazards \u2013 good times and sunshine both come with major risks.\n\nThe USA's CDC estimates that good times, or at least the binge drinking that comes with them, cost the United States around $191 billion each year. The World Health Organization, meanwhile, estimates that the sun kills 60,000 people per year. That's some serious prior form that The Jacksons disregard entirely \u2013 all while boogying seems largely blameless.\n\nThe modern origins of the word boogie can be found in nineteenth-century jazz culture, and before that 'boogie-woogie' was originally used to describe the symptoms of secondary syphilis in slave slang. Boogie meant a slave, and boogie man went on to become a generic title for a scary individual, possibly linked to the idea of escaped slaves hiding. That usage can be traced back to the French word _bougre_ , which, roughly translated, means a 'guy' or 'chap', from which we get the word bugger, and before that _boulgre_ , which referred to a sect of eleventh-century Bulgarian heretics.\n\nIn its modern form, boogying is good exercise: a study at Harvard University suggests a person of average weight would burn around 205 calories in 30 minutes of disco dancing, versus just 112 for a waltz or foxtrot. Perhaps this is why The Jacksons called for a last-minute reprieve of the boogie: deciding that we should only blame ourselves.\n\nWHAT ABOUT ELEPHANTS \u2013 HAVE WE LOST THEIR TRUST?\n\nMICHAEL JACKSON\n\n**In his plea for us to have greater levels of care for the world, Jackson, M poses a question that biologists have sought to work out for over two decades: have we lost elephants' trust?**\n\nElephants certainly have good reasons to mistrust humanity: a study published in the journal of the USA's National Academy found that poachers killed one in twelve of all living African elephants in 2011 alone, and have killed two-thirds of the elephants in central Africa in the course of a decade. Across the continent, researchers estimated poachers had killed no fewer than 100,000 elephants in just three years.\n\nGiven that track record, elephants would have good reason to be wary, if they're bright enough to pick up on the warning signs. Research on forty-seven elephants by two academics at the University of Sussex found that elephants can distinguish between different tribes of people and respond differently depending on whether that tribe does or does not hunt elephants.\n\nNot only did the elephants distinguish between tribes by smell and by clothing, they can distinguish language: when the animals were played calm recordings from Maasai tribesmen (who sometimes kill elephants) they panicked and huddled, and when they heard recordings from Kamba tribesmen (who very rarely kill elephants), they did not.\n\nThat suggests Jackson was right to question if we have lost elephants' trust. At least some of us have, but given what's happening to their populations, they should perhaps trust us even less than they do.\nAM I A CREEP?\n\nRADIOHEAD\n\n**The author of this 1993 case study, Yorke, T proceeds from the premise that he is a creep.**\n\nIt is our assertion, though, that he reaches this conclusion with very little empirical evidence and merely creates two false categories: 'creep' and 'f---in' special' into one of which he must fall. There is evidence that someone's skin making you cry could be construed as creepy but it's certainly not conclusive.\n\nA study published in the journal _New Ideas in Psychology_ in 2016 \u2013 twenty-four years after the song's release \u2013 declared itself the first empirical study of 'creepiness'. The study, which involved 1,341 people across the world, found that overall men were seen as more likely to be creepy than women, and that (unsurprisingly) women associated sexual threat \u2013 the risk of being unsafe \u2013 with creepiness.\n\nThe research did also come up with some specific jobs and behaviours that correlated with creepiness. The four creepiest professions were clown, taxidermist, sex shop owner and funeral director \u2013 while farmers, teachers and meteorologists were at the bottom of the scale.\n\nWhen it comes to appearances associated with creepiness, unkempt hair, pale skin, bags under the eyes and 'odd' or dirty clothing all registered, while types of behaviour deemed creepy included steering the conversation to one topic, standing too close and licking lips.\n\nThe research provides some good clues for Yorke's character in the case study: with the right occupation, dirty clothing and inappropriate social behaviour, he can be the creep he believes himself to be. Or if not, clean clothes and hair, standing further away and becoming a farmer could address the issue in no time.\n\nDID WE USED TO KNOW WHITE CHRISTMASES?\n\nBING CROSBY\n\n**Crosby, B made his seminal contribution to festive meteorology in 1942, in a song in which he implies that the frequency of white Christmases have declined since he was an adult.**\n\nCrosby, B had good reason to be nostalgic for white Christmases. Having grown up in Spokane, in Washington State, more than two-thirds of his childhood Christmases would have seen snow, giving him good reason to fondly miss such weather conditions \u2013 though given he decided to live in California as an adult, he should perhaps not have been surprised to see fewer snowstorms.\n\nWhether Crosby was justified in spreading his nostalgia to the wider world, however, is more questionable: despite our treacherous memories, many of us in the US and UK alike will have grown up with fewer white Christmases than we might think.\n\nWhile in states like Alaska and Minnesota the chance of a white Christmas on any given year is 90 per cent or more, much of the continental US experiences a very different story.\n\nDespite its famed association with the festive season, New York City has just one in five white Christmases, Philadelphia just one in ten, and Hawaii has, unsurprisingly, never experienced one.\n\nThis is similarly true in the UK: southern England has experienced just ten white Christmases in the last fifty-seven years, versus thirty out of fifty-seven in northern Scotland. The UK is also hampered by an odd official definition of 'White Christmas': the Meteorological Office defines a Christmas as white if its sensors pick up a single snowflake, even if it doesn't settle on the ground \u2013 meaning 2015 counted as a white Christmas, despite no settled snow anywhere in the country. This may satisfy a formal definition, but there is a reason why Crosby did not wish our Christmases to be merry, bright and 'white, but only on a technicality'.\nARE YOU TELLING ME THIS IS A SIGN?\n\nSNOOP DOGG\n\n**The two principal contributors to this study, Messrs Timberlake, J and Dogg, S disagree \u2013 some might say to a problematic extent \u2013 about whether or not a particular woman is flirting with one or both of them.**\n\nTheir primary method of assessment is whether or not she's looking in their eyes. That the two of them find it difficult to detect whether or not the unnamed woman is flirting, though, should not come as a surprise: humans are terrible at detecting when someone is flirting with us.\n\nOne attempt to try to establish how good we are at perceiving flirting was published in the journal _Communication Research_ in 2014. The academics matched up heterosexual strangers into fifty-two pairs, and asked them to talk for around ten to twelve minutes. Each participant was then asked afterwards whether or not they had been flirting (meaning it relied on self-reporting), and whether they thought their partner was flirting.\n\nThe results suggested that we are generally quite good at detecting when someone is not flirting with us: cases where someone thought their conversational partner was flirting when they were not were rare. However, that accuracy dropped markedly when the other person was indeed flirting: this was often missed.\n\nThe pattern held true when other people were watching the recorded interactions \u2013 people could generally tell when flirting wasn't taking place, but often missed when it was. However, there is some reassurance for Dogg, S and Timberlake, J: generally, participants found it easier to tell when a woman was flirting than when a man was.\n\nWHAT COMPARES TO YOU?\n\nSINEAD O'CONNOR\n\n**O'Connor, S builds upon original research by Rogers Nelson, P in this investigation into the comparative value of an individual over time.**\n\nThis was a tightly measured survey, taking place fifteen days and seven hours after an unnamed individual has left. O'Connor's thesis \u2013 that her former beau was incomparable \u2013 does not stand up well to scrutiny, however, even within her own internal logic, as she refers to avoiding other boys as they'd remind her of him, suggesting that they were indeed comparable. It is implied that her former lover stopped her from eating her dinner in fancy restaurants, and we're told he planted flowers in the backyard \u2013 two things that are unlikely to be impossible to find in another individual.\n\nMore broadly, in literature lovers have been compared to innumerable things, perhaps most famously to 'a summer's day' by Shakespeare (even if the bard then decided the comparison was a poor one as the lover to whom it was addressed would last far longer than a summery day).\n\nIn scientific terms, we are especially comparable: most humans are 99.9 per cent genetically similar to one another, as well as 96 per cent comparable with a chimpanzee, 90 per cent with a cat, 85 per cent with a mouse and even 61 per cent with a fly. So we are quite comparable even to things that seem very different from us.\n\nThis gets even more striking when humans are considered on a chemical level: 96 per cent of our body mass is made up of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. That's the same chemicals that make up (in different mixtures) many of the things around us \u2013 the air, the sea, and much else. Biologically and scientifically, almost everything compares to you. Perhaps the only thing that cannot be compared to a human is the vacuum of space, or 'nothing', although even then both us and nothing are bathing in the cosmic background microwave radiation from the Big Bang so are technically comparable, leaving us with the real answer that even nothing compares to you.\nDO YOU LIKE PI\u00d1A COLADAS, AND GETTING CAUGHT IN THE RAIN?\n\nRUPERT HOLMES\n\n**In this song, Holmes, R sets out the story of how he planned to cheat on his girlfriend with a woman who later turns out in fact to be his girlfriend, because he had (accidentally) seen a very specific advert she had placed in the newspaper's personal ads column, and he felt it matched him perfectly.**\n\nHolmes recounts the advert's requirements in the song's first chorus: the man being sought by the then-unknown woman must: like pi\u00f1a coladas, like being rained on, dislike yoga, be relatively intelligent ('have half a brain') and like making love on a beach.\n\nThanks to brand new research by YouGov carried out on 1,641 UK adults for this book, we can calculate how many matches she could expect from her advert: 34 per cent of men like pi\u00f1a coladas, 27 per cent like getting caught in rain, 81 per cent aren't interested in yoga, 80 per cent think of themselves as intelligent, and 34 per cent say they enjoy sex on beaches. That means overall around 2 per cent of men would match all five requirements on the advert \u2013 meaning even in a small town like Northwich, Cheshire (Holmes' hometown), she could expect 753 potential matches. As such, Holmes should count himself lucky that he saw the personal advert before any of his 752 would-be rivals did.\n\nARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?\n\nELVIS PRESLEY\n\n**Even a casual observer of Presley, E's apparently solicitous concern about the loneliness or otherwise of the object of his treatise would notice that it is laced with self-interest.**\n\nDespite initial appearances, the real aim of Presley's enquiries rapidly becomes clear: he wants to know whether he is being missed, whether the house seems empty, whether his correspondent is still in love with him.\n\nSurvey data published in _Glamour_ magazine would offer some limited comfort to Presley, and perhaps save him the effort of wondering so extensively. These figures suggested that Presley's paramour may have been thinking of him, as 54 per cent of people said they had had second thoughts about a breakup, but while people may have had regrets, not many wanted to act on them. Only 22 per cent said they had found it difficult to move on from an ex, and only 19 per cent said they found it difficult to move on once their ex had a new partner.\n\nWhile there is a statistically even chance that Presley's former partner would be feeling lonesome, there is virtually zero chance that they would be utterly alone \u2013 though the company may not be human.\n\nAlmost every adult across the world plays host to at least one or two breeds of other creatures. Most of us would hope not to provide accommodation to fleas or ticks, and thankfully most of us don't. What almost all of us host are two breeds of mites called demodex. The biggest of the two is known as demodex folliculorum, which are around half a millimetre long and live primarily in the hair follicles on your face \u2013 in your eyelashes, cheeks, chin and more, feeding off sweat and dead skin in two-weekly cycles. We have almost none of these while we're children (to the age of ten), while almost every adult will eventually get them \u2013 up to five per hair follicle in healthy people.\n\nMeanwhile, we're also outnumbered in our bodies by bacteria: we have around 30 trillion cells in our body, but play host to 39 trillion bacteria. So while we might feel lonesome, miss human company and conversation, we're never truly alone.\nWHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?\n\nYLVIS\n\n**In 2014, four relatively unknown contributors known as Ylvis attempted to answer the question of what the fox says.**\n\nThe first verse of their song displays a reasonable knowledge of the animal kingdom, accurately identifying the noises made by dogs, cats, birds, cows, frogs and more \u2013 though their assertion that fish go 'blub' is problematic. However, things appear to take a wrong turn when they attempt to answer the central question of what foxes say.\n\nThe singers offer up a range of options, from 'ring-ding-ding', to 'wa-pa-pa', 'cha cha cha' and 'fraka-kaka'. None of the options, as anyone who lives in a city with a decent population of urban foxes will tell you, is remotely accurate: foxes don't say all that much, except in January \u2013 and at that point they are loud.\n\nFoxes have their mating season around January, and during this relatively short period of the year they will wake up people during the night as their courtship rituals are distinctive. As a male is making his approach, the female will let out a number of loud, almost humanlike shrieks (which occasionally result in calls to police).\n\nOnce mating begins, the genitals of the male and female lock together, for between twenty minutes and one hour (because fox sperm swims slowly), making it physically impossible for the animals to separate from each other. During this time the female makes a lengthy, almost unworldly shriek not easily conveyed by text. Researchers believe the sex to be non-painful, but the noise appears anything but: it sounds entirely possible that the vixen at least is saying 'ouch, my cervix'.\n\n**ISN'T IT IRONIC?** | **IRONIC** | **NOT IRONIC**\n\n---|---|---\n\nBeing afraid of flying, overcoming it, and dying in a crash |\n\n|\n\n10,000 spoons when a knife is needed | |\n\nMeeting a dream man who's married | |\n\nWinning the lottery and immediately dying | |\n\nA fly in your wine | |\n\nDeath row pardons arriving late | |\n\nRain at a wedding | |\n\nBeing offered a free ride after paying | |\n\n**TOTAL** | | \nISN'T IT IRONIC, DON'T YOU THINK?\n\nALANIS MORISSETTE\n\n**In this landmark 1995 semantic survey, Morissette, A conducts a thorough analysis of the concept of irony, typically defined as circumstances working opposite to how they would be expected to, usually in such a way as to provoke amusement.**\n\nMorissette's study has proven controversial for decades as, despite offering numerous examples of irony to explain the concept to her audience, most or all of them fail, in reality, to be ironic. Rain on a wedding day is inconvenient but not ironic, unless both bride and groom are meteorologists specializing in short-term precipitation forecasting. Finding a surplus of thousands of spoons while searching for a single knife is irritating, but again not an irony, unless you are a cutlery spokesperson looking for a knife to open the envelope of your newly delivered forecast of high-knife versus low-spoon yield in the current quarter. Falling in love with a man only to discover he's married is a fairly common occurrence. A death row pardon arriving after the execution has begun is tragic, but again fails to meet the threshold for irony, unless perhaps you are on death row for murdering the founder of a faster courier service for death row pardons.\n\nThis longstanding controversy actually provoked Morissette to offer a retraction of her study two decades later, in 2015, when she stated 'there are no ironies'. However, this retraction has an issue: the initial study did, in fact, contain one irony.\n\nMorissette set out the case study of a man afraid of flight who was finally convinced to take a plane \u2013 only for it to crash. Statistically, the man was wise to take the flight: only one in 3,000,000 flights result in a crash with fatalities, while motorbiking is 3,000 times more dangerous mile-for-mile than flying, driving is 100 times deadlier, and even trains are twice as deadly. So Morissette's example showed a man rationally losing his fear of flight, only to become the rare exception \u2013 he had been correct.\n\nThe syntax of Morissette's question is also ambiguous: 'Do not you think this is ironic?' So this does risk making her retraction incorrect. Isn't that ironic? We think. It's hard to tell at this point.\nWHAT IS LOVE?\n\nHADDAWAY\n\n**In this key investigation of 1993, Haddaway seeks to address two issues, one philosophical \u2013 what is love? \u2013 and one more immediate: he would like his baby to stop hurting him. We should tackle the philosophical problem first, as trying to describe what love is has plagued poets and writers for millennia.**\n\nA good starting point for Haddaway would be to ignore said poets. As any good social scientist knows, their approach to these kinds of definitional questions are imprecise and unhelpful. We can also discern from the context of the song, and specifically from his pleas for monogamy, that Haddaway is not referring to platonic love, or parental love, but rather romantic love. Other comparable studies involve Gibb, B, Gibb, R and Gibb M, who attempted to answer the question of how deep love is by pinpointing the exact areas of the brain where love is found, and The Black Eyed Peas, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to answer the more general question, 'where is the love?'\n\nHowever, perhaps the most helpful answer for Haddaway is that 'love' is a societal shorthand for a combination of physiological responses and sociological behaviours: it is the hormonal reaction that we feel as lust or desire, coupled with a relationship of trust and affection built over time, laced with sociological expectations such as monogamy, expectations of gender roles and more.\n\nHaving addressed Haddaway's first issue with his romantic partner, we need to consider his parental non-sequitur: if his infant is hurting him \u2013 especially at such a young age \u2013 he should seek immediate advice from a qualified child psychologist.\n\nWILL IT BE LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS?\n\nMUD\n\n**In 1974, Chapman, M and Chinn, N investigated whether it would be lonely this Christmas.**\n\nThough the study was rooted in one specific instance of a partner leaving, and particularly the attendant issues surrounding temperature \u2013 it's taken as a given that the absence of the partner will negatively impact the ability of the individual to regulate their body temperature. Leaving this spurious correlation aside, the report's authors hit on a sad social reality for thousands of people. Looking at their home country of the UK, research by Age UK in 2017 found that 928,000 older people feel lonelier around the time of Christmas, with around 370,000 of those feeling lonely in part because they had been widowed.\n\nWhile making what can only have been intended as an earnest and deliberate effort to draw attention to this plight, Mud's warning that it would be cold without a partner at Christmas can be seen as a slight exaggeration.\n\nWhile some older people do struggle with this, pensioners are now the least likely group in the UK to be in poverty, and even receive extra winter payments for heating \u2013 meaning that hopefully, despite what Mud say, they should not be cold.\n\nHowever, if Mud's words have drawn your attention to the issue and you wish to make Christmas less lonely, you can take a look at ageuk.org.uk\/get-involved in the UK or friendtofriendamerica.org in the US.\nWHY'D YOU HAVE TO GO AND MAKE THINGS SO COMPLICATED?\n\nAVRIL LAVIGNE\n\n**Lavigne, A set out in 2002 a series of concerns regarding a close associate with whom she'd previously been able to communicate clearly and simply \u2013 especially when the two were driving together \u2013 whereas now things have become 'complicated' and he is behaving oddly enough that she speculates he is acting like somebody else, exhibiting paranoia and a performative selfhood, and she is finding the whole situation extremely frustrating.**\n\nLavigne had to wait a decade for psychological research to confirm the likely cause of her situation, but in 2012 answers finally came in the form of the academic paper 'Evidence for the Pinocchio Effect: Linguistic Differences Between Lies, Deception by Omission, and Truths', which used experiments to discern the differences in language used by people telling the truth, leaving something out, or downright lying.\n\nThe study examined what it called the 'Pinocchio effect' \u2013 the tendency for liars to use more words, and so tell a more elaborate story, than people telling the truth, and found this effect existed. When matched with an unwitting partner, liars used 76 words on average, versus 32.5 for truth-tellers and just 30 for those lying by omission.\n\nLiars, the research showed, also used more third-person pronouns, more numbers and more profanities than their truth-telling counterparts, while other studies have found that liars take fractionally longer to respond to a question than a truth-teller does, because lying puts more cognitive load on the brain than telling the truth \u2013 you have to think up which lie to tell, rather than telling the one extant truth. In a very real sense, lies make things more complicated in your brain.\n\nWhy did he have to make things so complicated? The likely explanation is because he was telling lies. Still, given 40 per cent of adults admit to lying once per day, Lavigne was correct to note that 'life's like this'.\n\nWHERE ARE YOUR FRIENDS TONIGHT?\n\nLCD SOUNDSYSTEM\n\n**In this qualitative study, Murphy, J and his colleagues set out to pose \u2013 rather than answer \u2013 a question regarding the location of people's associates during an evening.**\n\nSuch data would clearly be valuable for a number of uses, including perhaps a study of the night-time economy, planning public transport requirements and even the most efficient deployment of emergency service resources.\n\nMurphy is also clearly primarily interested in the nocturnal interests of people as they get older, referring at various points to 'the ways we show our age', having a 'face like a dad', and even speaking of feeling 'finally dead' when kids are just too 'impossibly tanned'.\n\nHowever, Murphy never actually makes the attempt to gather the evidence on where the aforementioned friends are that night, leaving the window open for this author \u2013 who is now in his thirties \u2013 to attempt to further this research.\n\nAn initial attempt to quantify the whereabouts of friends on 22 September 2017 was thwarted by more than a third of those considered being in the company of LCD Soundsystem, leading to the study being dismissed due to sample bias (it heavily over-indexed on North London media workers).\n\nA repeat study was carried out some months later, polling 968 Twitter users who follow the author on where they would be at 10pm that Friday night. The results were reassuring for those who worry their friends have more fun than they do: 71 per cent of respondents said they would be 'at home' at that time, while 18 per cent said they would be at a pub or bar, and just 5 per cent would be at the cinema, theatre or a gig.\n\nWhere are your friends tonight? They're most likely by some margin to be at home.\nWHAT'S COOLER THAN BEING COOL?\n\nOUTKAST\n\n**This research collaboration by 3000, A and Patton, A has perhaps become more famous for its errata than for its findings.**\n\nNotably, the collaborators suggested it was advisable to 'shake it like a Polaroid picture', which prompted Polaroid to release a statement reminding their customers that Polaroids should not be shaken while their image develops. Sadly, due to a lack of post-publication clarification, we cannot establish whether 3000 and Patton were in fact recommending that people remain entirely still, or whether they just have a poor understanding of the chemical processes of Polaroid photography.\n\nHowever, we also wish to tackle the second research question addressed by 3000 and Patton, regarding coolness. For the average person, a temperature range that would be regarded as 'cool' but not 'cold' would be around 12\u00b0C to 15\u00b0C. This leaves a wide range of temperatures available to answer the core question.\n\n3000 and Patton offer up their own answer of 'ice cold'. While correct, we feel this solution is too narrow in scope, as water freezes at around 0\u00b0C \u2013 leaving temperatures both higher and lower that could correctly be called cooler than cool.\n\nThe lowest recorded temperature on Earth, for example, is -89.2\u00b0C, which was observed at a Soviet weather station in the Antarctic, but we can get far colder than this. Liquid nitrogen is generally at a temperature between -201\u00b0C and -196\u00b0C, whereas 'absolute zero' \u2013 the lowest possible temperature \u2013 has been calculated at -273.15\u00b0C.\n\nSo while 'ice cold' is accurate, a better answer would be 'any temperature in the range of -273.15\u00b0C to 12\u00b0C'. An even shorter answer would be 'loads of stuff'.\n\nWHY DO YOU ONLY CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE HIGH?\n\nARCTIC MONKEYS\n\n**It should perhaps come as no surprise that the team behind this study \u2013 Turner, A, et al. \u2013 are from Yorkshire, where hills and valleys coupled with a large rural population mean that phone signal is often difficult to access.**\n\nIn rural Yorkshire, the question behind this study almost answers itself: people can only make calls when they're high because there's no signal in the valley. This is a popular belief that is supported by science. FM transmitters work by something quite close to line-of-sight: if there are obstacles (such as hills or buildings) between the transmitter and the radio, the signal quality descends sharply.\n\nPhone signals are slightly more robust than this, but are also significantly affected by the distance from the transmitter and the obstacles in between. This, coupled with a reluctance from UK companies to fund phone towers in lightly populated valleys, means that signals in rural lowlands are terrible \u2013 seriously limiting their potential for phone calls.\n\nThere is one significant caveat for those wanting to make use of this advice in emergency situations, though: if you are, for example, lost in the wilderness, experts caution against seeking high ground to call for help if conditions are bad. As the Grand Canyon's chief of emergency services said to _Popular Mechanics_ magazine, if you're climbing a rock formation for better signal during a storm, 'you're just exposing yourself to risk'. Do call for help when you're high \u2013 but make sure it's safe first.\nWHERE IS 24 HOURS FROM TULSA?\n\nGENE PITNEY\n\n**Those studying infidelity in the 1960s can find a compelling case study in correspondence from Pitney, G, who informed his partner by letter that he would not be seeing her anymore because he had cheated on her while only '24 hours' from their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.**\n\nClues as to Pitney's location at the point when he made this declaration \u2013 and when he cheated \u2013 can be found from his referral to the fact that he was 'driving home'. Given Tulsa's relatively central location within the USA, this means there are a range of areas that are exactly a 24-hour drive from his destination.\n\nHe could, for example, have got to the delightful city of Manchester in New Hampshire, high in the northeast of the country. But it is hard to see why, beyond the unlikelihood of seeing anyone he knows, Pitney, G would choose this location. He could have travelled to what has since become known as the Big Sky Colony in rural Montana, but which was then the Milford Hutterites, a US offshoot of the Hutterian Brethren, the Austrian branch of the Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth century who believed in communal living. However, this seems an unlikely source for a partner in adultery.\n\nThe most likely location, it appears, is the notorious pleasure city of Reno, Nevada \u2013 exactly 1,657 miles and a 24 hour drive from Tulsa (and also only an hour or two away from San Jos\u00e9, should he run into Warwick, D). Disaster could, perhaps, have been averted if Pitney had taken another form of transport: had he chosen to fly he could have been back in Tulsa in just five hours, with a change in the famously morally, upright Salt Lake City.\n\nGiven Pitney is now seeking to avoid retribution from his former partner, there are many ways in which he could get far further from Tulsa to somewhere remote \u2013 if he hopped to the airport, he could get 6,460 miles away to the very isolated Falkland Islands in 23 hours and 31 minutes, leaving himself 29 minutes to spare.\n\nOH CAN'T YOU SEE YOU BELONG TO ME?\n\nTHE POLICE\n\n**In this chilling public service announcement, Sumner, G issues a serious and pressing warning about the perils of modern-day slavery, especially against the backdrop of current surveillance technology.**\n\nThe limits of slavery are explicit and relate to every breath, move, step and even cruelly each bond broken (which clearly refers to the possibility of escape being thwarted). Also, every word said, every day and night, every game played, every move made, vow broken, smile faked and claim staked \u2013 the all-seeing eye of cheap, available spying technology has drastically changed the dynamic of the slave trade.\n\nDuring the course of the transatlantic slave trade, around 12.5 million people were shipped across the ocean into slavery \u2013 a figure now dwarfed by the levels of modern-day slavery, which is estimated to affect around 40 million people. Of those, around 25 million are in forced or indentured labour, with a further 15 million in forced marriages, according to the International Labour Organization.\n\nHowever, unlike during the historical slave trade, such arrangements are now illegal in many countries across the world, including in Sumner's native Britain, where in 2017, 2,255 slavery-related crimes were recorded. This conviction rate suggests that Sumner may come to regret his casual admission of owning another person, and could expect swift action against him from law enforcement. As such, the evidence leads us to one conclusion: Sumner is merely pretending to own another human being as part of an elaborate sting.\nWHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?\n\nREM\n\n**The effects of radio waves and electromagnetic radiation \u2013 all measured by frequency \u2013 have been the subject of debate and concern for decades: people worry their mobile phone will give them cancer, that wind turbines make them ill or that WiFi gives them migraines.**\n\nIt's perhaps unsurprising, then, that Stipe, M, dedicated time to working out a particular frequency that seemed to be causing him concern. The origins of Stipe's queries are unusual \u2013 his study grew out of an attack on the US newsreader Dan Rather in 1986. Rather was attacked on the street by a man repeatedly shouting 'Kenneth, what's the frequency?' At that point in 1994, the motives for the attack remained a complete mystery.\n\nBased on the available information it is difficult to be certain as to what frequency Stipe is trying to find on behalf of Rather's attacker, but he describes it as 'your Benzedrine'.\n\nBenzedrine is the brand name of the first pharmaceutical drug that contained amphetamines, so it's fair to assume it's a frequency that acts as a stimulant rather than a depressive.\n\nOne answer might lie in an experiment conducted in 2003 in an auditorium on London's South Bank by the National Physical Laboratory, which played an inaudible low-frequency sound alongside one of two songs across two public concerts \u2013 swapping each song between the two concerts. People at each reported feeling uneasy, uncomfortable or having chills during the track where the inaudible noise was played, all markers of side effects of a stimulant like Benzadrine. This offers up a likely answer to Stipe's query: the frequency could be 'infrasound', or 17 Hz.\n\nNot long after Stipe's inquiry, the original mystery was also solved following the arrest of Rather's attacker: a mentally ill man called William Tager. He had believed television networks were transmitting signals into his mind and wanted to know how they were doing it. Tager had fatally shot an NBC stagehand outside the Rockefeller Center in 1994. NBC broadcast on VHF channels 2\u201313 in the nineties, so, though they were not broadcasting signals into Tager's brain, they were certainly operating between 54 and 216 MHz.\n\nDO GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN?\n\nCYNDI LAUPER\n\n**Modern feminism has changed the priorities and expectations of women and girls across the planet, as noted by Lauper, C's seminal study into what girls want.**\n\nLauper notes to her mother during the course of her research that 'we're not the fortunate ones', accurately summarizing the current generation of women's reduced job security, wealth and financial stability when compared with their parents.\n\nThere is also empirical evidence supporting Lauper's assertion that girls do not simply wish to settle down. An annual survey of girls carried out by the UK organization Girlguiding in 2009 found that 56 per cent said marriage was the thing they would most like to achieve by age 30 \u2013 but just three years later the poll found girls defined success as being 'confident and independent', with only 21 per cent defining it as marriage.\n\nHowever, Lauper may have pushed her conclusions too far: girls want far more than merely to 'have fun'. The 2017 survey asked girls aged eleven to twenty-one about their priorities. The top five in the rankings were 'supporting young people in their mental health', 'stopping sexual harassment', 'more women in top jobs', 'tackling violence against women and girls', and tackling LGBT discrimination.\n\nGirls might, as Lauper cites, wanna have fun \u2013 but they also want independence, mental health services, freedom from harassment and a strong career path, too.\nWHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?\n\nWHITNEY HOUSTON\n\n**Given how much time many of us spend worrying about our romantic lives, it is of no surprise that researchers such as Houston, W have tried to establish a good evidential basis for what happens when love goes awry (those looking for cardiological explanations should see 'What becomes of the broken hearted?').**\n\nOne of Houston's primary concerns is whether broken hearts can 'find their way home', a reference either to a new relationship or towards recovery. While there is no easy average time to record meeting a new partner, a study in _The Journal of Positive Psychology_ established that the average time for recovery of normal mood following a breakup is eleven weeks \u2013 though in the instance of the end of a marriage, this increases to eighteen months.\n\nThis suggests that Houston's hope that broken hearts recover are met, though not necessarily in a short period of time. Perhaps even more usefully, though, there is also data on where not to go if you want to avoid a broken heart. A survey of 2,187 people found that 1,056 had at some point broken up within six months of their first holiday with a partner \u2013 with some destinations appearing far more high risk than others. The top three pre-breakup locations were Mexico, where 21 per cent of couples who visited broke up within six months, followed by Ibiza (17 per cent) and Portugal (12 per cent).\n\nThe best holiday destinations for those wanting to avoid heartbreak were Tenerife and Italy, the survey suggested. So perhaps inversely we can propose the answer to where broken hearts 'have gone' is Mexico, Ibiza and Portugal within the last six months.\n\nWHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE RAIN?\n\nTHE SEARCHERS\n\n**The research group colloquially known as 'The Searchers' wondered about the effects humanity was having on rain, concerned it would not be as 'gentle' as before, fearing it could burn away grass and damage the environment.**\n\nThe primary concern of The Searchers in 1964, just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War,* was that nuclear fallout would be the source of alteration to rain, leading to widespread radiation damage. Just twenty-two years later, in 1986, the disaster at Chernobyl nuclear power station in what is now northern Ukraine propelled vast amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Rainclouds carried this material as far as the Outer Hebrides, where ten years later doctors reported massive increases of up to 2,500 per cent (although this is a disputed figure) in incidences of many types of cancer. However, at the time of writing, the search for radioactive rain has proven to be in vain globally. And yet while they may have misdiagnosed the specific cause of the issue, The Searchers were correct to worry about rain generally.\n\nThey were less correct about their premise, however. Even standard, non-radioactive rain is not especially 'gentle': rain is naturally acidic thanks to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It has a pH of around 5.6 (pH runs from 0 to 14, where anything under 7 is acidic, and anything over is alkaline).\n\nHowever, coal power plants and other sources produced sulphur dioxide, which in the atmosphere turns into a potent acid \u2013 sulphuric acid \u2013 which then rained down causing major environmental damage. Sulphuric acid in the atmosphere changes the natural pH of rain from around 5.6 to 4.0, making it around ten times more acidic than before.\n\nThis answers The Searchers' 1964 query: 'they' made the rain more acidic. Thankfully, since the 1990s, the rain has seen further developments \u2013 it is once again being made less acidic thanks to a drop in the number of coal-fired power plants. The US, for example, sees 40 per cent less acidic rain than at its peak \u2013 meaning that at present we are mainly making the rain more like its natural, fairly gently acidic state.\nSON, CAN YOU PLAY ME A MEMORY?\n\nBILLY JOEL\n\n**In this anthropological report, Joel, B presents a case study of an elderly man looking for help with his memory: he can recall something was 'sad' and 'sweet' and he knew it well when he was younger, and is hoping a piano player can help him fill in the blanks.**\n\nThere is strong research evidence available on the effect of music on auditory memory \u2013 how well we remember verbal and non-verbal information that we've picked up through sounds, rather than vision or smell. This research tells us that people who play musical instruments have better auditory memory than the average person, and professional musicians have even better auditory recollection still.\n\nHowever, a study in the _Psychonomic Bulletin & Review_ suggests that Joel's elderly man may be pursuing a poor strategy, even if he was himself a former professional musician. The study found that visual memory is so good that even if people are shown up to 10,000 images over the course of a few hours, they can recall which they have or haven't seen with 83 per cent accuracy. If shown 2,500 images they can even remember details \u2013 so, not just that they saw an apple, but which apples they did and didn't see.\n\nThe study found that even for professional musicians, auditory memory falls far short of visual memory. This does suggest a new strategy for Joel's case study, though: rather than asking Joel to play him a memory, he should ask him to show him one.\n\nWe're not quite sure what memory Joel, B is trying to retrieve, but studies suggest it will probably have come from when he was between 16 and 25: we have a bump in autobiographical memories between those ages, known as the 'reminiscence' bump. Before that, we're hit by childhood amnesia, and then memories only bump again because we're remembering things that happened more recently.\n\nWHY?\n\nANNIE LENNOX\n\n**It is the deceptively simple questions that often prove the most difficult to answer, as any parent who has been ambushed with 'why is the sky blue?' by their child will well know.**\n\nAs such, the question provoked in this essay by Lennox, A is perhaps the ultimate simple-to-ask and impossible-to-answer question: why?\n\nThankfully, Lennox provides some cues within her essay that help direct us towards a useful answer. She notes that she may be 'mad', 'blind' and also 'viciously unkind', but assures her correspondent that she can 'still read' what they are thinking. This leads us inexorably towards a simple conclusion: Lennox believes she already knows the answer to the question she is asking, even if she is not revealing it to us.\n\nHowever, we may have good reasons to question her credibility when she claims to read thoughts. A much-publicized 2011 study appeared to confirm the existence of psychic ability, or ESP, based on lab research which claimed to show students could predict whether images would appear on the left or right of a screen \u2013 apparently vindicating Lennox's claims of psychic knowledge.\n\nHowever, an extensive study of 3,289 people the year after failed to replicate the results, as did another a year later. These robust studies leave us with the concern that on this issue Lennox may be an unreliable narrator.\n\nThe most frequent answers to 'Why?' may also be well-known to parents, though: they are in turn 'because' and 'because I say so'.\nDOES EVERYBODY WANT TO RULE THE WORLD?\n\nTEARS FOR FEARS\n\n**It is clear that the authors of this essay, Orzabel, R and Smith, C have significant frustrations with the world's current governance arrangements, bemoaning 'indecision' and 'lack of vision' among numerous other issues.**\n\nHowever, the sweeping conclusion that stems from their premise \u2013 that 'everybody wants to rule the world' \u2013 is one that is not remotely supported by the evidence base.\n\nPerhaps the most powerful public office on the planet \u2013 the nearest we currently have to someone who wants to 'rule the world' \u2013 is the office of US president: but most people do not aspire for their children to ever hold the role. A roundup of different polling published by Cornell University found only 32 per cent of parents would want their son to pursue a career in politics, and only 34 per cent would like that for their daughter.\n\nWhen asked which they would rather their child be: US president, a CEO, head of a university, a sports star or a movie star, only 7 per cent chose US president \u2013 only a movie star ranked lower. Not only would many people not wish for themselves or their child to be president, they would much rather their child becomes a lawyer, doctor or police officer.\n\nSurvey data published in the _Harvard Business Review_ goes further still. Not only would most people not wish to rule the world, most people wouldn't even want their current boss's job: only 34 per cent of US workers said they would like a leadership role, and only 7 per cent wanted to be executives. Predictably, men were more likely to want to be leaders than women, though perhaps more surprisingly, African-Americans and LGBT people were more likely to want such roles.\n\nSo, despite the bold assertions of Orzabel and Smith, most people \u2013 while they might not like how the world is going \u2013 have absolutely no intention of ruling it.\n\nHOW MANY INCHES ARE IN A MILE?\n\nSELENA GOMEZ & THE SCENE\n\n**On the surface of it, Gomez, S appears to be posing a very simple question here. The answer to her question can be easily obtained through Google \u2013 it is 63,360 inches. But why would this simple piece of information be enough to make someone smile?**\n\nThe answer involves a series of archaic measures. The mile is a measure dating back to Roman times, and was at the time logical: one mile was defined as 1,000 paces, with paces standardized as five Roman feet \u2013 meaning 1 mile would be 5,000 Roman feet.\n\nA modern mile isn't 5,000 feet, however: it is 5,280 (and each foot is 12 inches long). The reasons go back to the sixteenth century, when a mile was standardized as eight furlongs. The furlong was a useful measure as it was the maximum distance that oxen could pull a plough without needing to rest, and was standardized as 40 'rods' (a surveyor's tool) or 10 'chains' (another tool), which totals 660 feet. This measure became quite an essential one to maintain as it was used in land ownership: an acre was defined as 10 chains (one furlong) by one chain (660 feet by 66 feet).\n\nSo for simplicity, miles were defined in terms of furlongs (eight of them), which left a somewhat unmemorable set of distances to remember in the modern era. By contrast, in the metric system, a kilometre is 1,000 metres, which is in turn 100 centimetres \u2013 but 64 per cent of Americans still reject the idea of switching systems. Gomez, S is clearly talking to a proponent of the metric system in the US, who, when reminded of the illogical, piecemeal way that distance is measured under that system, allows themselves a wry smile.\nHAVE GUILTY FEET GOT NO RHYTHM?\n\nWHAM\n\n**In this meditation on fidelity and anatomy, Michael, G postulates that as he has been unfaithful, so he wishes 'never' to dance again, partly based on the premise that 'guilty feet' must have no rhythm.**\n\nGiven that around 10 million people in the UK \u2013 14 per cent of the population \u2013 admit to having cheated, this hypothesis would explain a significant proportion of bad dancing at weddings.\n\nHowever, the position does not seem to be wholly clear in this regard. In 2006, academics at the University of Manchester tried to examine the effectiveness of a range of arts and dramatic remedies on UK offenders \u2013 or in other words examining whether guilty feet have rhythm, and would restoring rhythm to guilty feet help offenders?\n\nWhen it came to dance, these results were decidedly mixed: an effort to set up a dance programme in a male young offenders' institute failed \u2013 researchers could find only one dance company working with male prisoners, but they were unable to start a dance programme due to the lack of space for the project. For male prisoners, there was no chance for guilty feet to dance, rhythmically or otherwise.\n\nThe group did succeed in setting up a programme in a women's prison, which signed up thirteen prisoners, one of whom was asked to drop out for fighting. The study didn't report the quality of the dancing, but noted that the feedback found the project an 'oasis', 'source of pride' and a boost of 'self-belief': dance can, perhaps, be a positive.\n\nThis appears to have been the case for Michael, too: despite his pledges never to dance again, he did so, rhythmically, for decades until his death in 2016.\n\n**CZECH** | zmizet po anglicku | **('to leave English style')**\n\n---|---|---\n\n**FRENCH** | filer \u00e0 I'anglaise | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**GERMAN** | sich (auf) franz\u00f6sisch empfehlen, literally einen franz\u00f6sischen Abschied nehmen | **('to take a French leave')**\n\n|\n\n**or**\n\neinen polnischen Abgang machen | **('to take a Polish leave')**\n\n**HUNGARIAN** | angolosan t\u00e1vozni | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**ITALIAN** | andarsene all'inglese | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**POLISH** | wyj\u015b\u0107 po angielsku | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**ROMANIAN** | a o sterge englezeste | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**UKRAINIAN** | \u043f\u0456\u0442\u0438 \u043f\u043e-\u0430\u043d\u0433\u043b\u0456\u0439\u0441\u044c\u043a\u0438 (pity po-anhliys ky) | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**PORTUGUESE** | sa\u00edda \u00e0 francesa | **('to leave French style')**\n\n**RUSSIAN** | \u0443\u0439\u0442\u0438 \u043f\u043e-\u0430\u043d\u0433\u043b\u0438\u0439\u0441\u043a\u0438 (ujti po-anglijski) | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**SPANISH** | despedida a la francesa | **('goodbye in the French way', 'French farewell')**\n\n**WALLOON** | spiter a l'inglesse | **('to leave English style')**\n\n**ENGLISH** | Irish goodbye\n\n| \nHOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO LEAVE?\n\nUSHER\n\n**Raymond, U is seeking help for an all-too-common dilemma in modern etiquette. He is at a party and being asked to stay for another dance, but wishes to leave, and is evidently uncertain as to whether or not it's acceptable to do so, and lacks strategies to execute a quiet departure.**\n\nSuch social anxieties are common, but happily there are experts in the field able to offer solutions to Raymond's issues. Much information can be found in the handbook of Britain's aristocracy, _Tatler_ magazine. The outlet assures its readers that in a dinner party situation, it is acceptable to leave after dessert has been served \u2013 even if coffee has not yet been delivered. It stresses that for weddings it is not acceptable to leave before the speeches, but is otherwise silent on the issue of parties without dinner or nuptials. This leaves Raymond with enough etiquette leeway to leave if he so wishes.\n\nIn terms of executing such an exit, the magazine has a few further tips to offer \u2013 some perhaps more sincere than others. Raymond can attempt to leave by claiming he had lost an engagement ring, hide until a major event or speech and flee, or escape via the garden, it suggests.\n\nA more common way of leaving social situations is referred to in the UK as an 'Irish goodbye': simply leaving a party without saying goodbye to anyone, so that your departure is barely noticed. In Spain and Portugal, such an exit is known as a French farewell; in Germany it's referred to as Polish leave. But in countries including France, Italy, Hungary and Russia it's got another name: leaving English-style. So, whatever the ethnic makeup of the party, it is unlikely that Raymond, U's leaving without saying goodbye will be remarkable.\nIS THERE LIFE ON MARS?\n\nDAVID BOWIE\n\n**If there is an under-appreciated pioneer in the field of astrobiology, then it must surely be Bowie, D, the author of the groundbreaking study 'Life on Mars', published in 1971.**\n\nHowever eccentric Bowie's methodology might be, including encouraging a young girl to go unaccompanied to watch a film about sailors fighting in a dancehall and a policeman assaulting an innocent man, the hypothesis offered therein \u2013 that our nearest celestial neighbour may harbour life \u2013 was decades ahead of its time, and has since received corroboration from modern science.\n\nBowie's hypothesis received support when ice was discovered on Mars, evidencing that at least one essential requirement for life as we know it \u2013 water \u2013 was present on the planet. This briefly became more exciting still as NASA appeared to find evidence of liquid water on the planet, which would be far more likely to support life. However, in 2017 different researchers theorized the 'water' was more likely to be sand, scotching those hopes.\n\nBut in 2018, the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars uncovered something even more interesting: the kind of organic matter that would be suitable for basic life to feed on \u2013 though it can't be determined whether it came from living matter, a chemical reaction, or even something crashing into the surface of the planet.\n\nGiven that Mars used to be warmer and thus more conducive to life, one theory is that there was life on Mars, but is no longer. However, what we do know now is that if there is life on Mars, there's something there for it to eat. Bowie was on to something.\n\nIn 2011, a team of researchers led by Dirk Schulze-Makuch, of Washington State University, published an article in the journal _Astrobiology_ in which they came up with an index for how friendly to life the planets were.\n\nWHAT'S GOING ON?\n\n4 NON BLONDES\n\n**One cannot accuse Perry, L and her collaborators of lacking in ambition when setting out their research question. Perry leads her cohorts in asking firmly and repeatedly 'what's going on?', but declines to offer any specificity to her enquiries: she is, it seems, interested in everything going on around her on the climb up the 'great big hill of hope' thatshe deems life to be.***\n\nOn any given day, then, there are millions of answers to Perry's query, some of which are provided here. Across the planet there will be around 360,000 births 'going on', while around 150,000 people will die. In the USA around 17,250 cars will crash, resulting in around 110 fatalities. More happily, around 102,465 planes will take flight across the planet, and statistically we would expect all of them to land safely.\n\nWhen it comes to creative happenings, there is no shortage there, either: around 21 feature films will be released across the planet, and 6,054 books published. Apple will sell around 594,000 iPhones. Around 60 million photos will be published on Instagram, and 500 million posts will go online on Twitter.\n\nWe suspect this will be of little interest to the enlightened readership of this tome, but estimates suggest around 20,000 pop songs would be released on that given day, too. So to answer Penny's question as much as we can: there's always lots going on.\n\nFor example, on the day of the study's release, 23 June 1993, Nigeria's military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the results of the elections and in so doing halted the country's return to democracy, the United Nations authorized a global oil embargo on Haiti and Lorena Gallo Bobbitt cut off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt's penis. That's enough to make anyone say 'hey'.\nWHO LET THE DOGS OUT?\n\nBAHA MEN\n\n**This anthropological exploration, published in 2000 by a sizeable research collaboration in the Bahamas, informally referred to as the Baha Men, poses the question as to who released the hounds exactly twenty times.**\n\nThe reason for this persistent curiosity becomes clear when we consider the history of domestication of dogs. Perhaps the closest genetic relative to modern dogs is the grey wolf; we are confident that dogs are domesticated descendants of those wolves. Because we believe they were domesticated initially to help with hunting \u2013 especially in woodland terrain \u2013 we can establish that whoever first let the dogs out was whoever first let the dogs in.\n\nThe answer to this question remains a mysterious one: the oldest generally agreed fossilized dog was discovered in 1914 in Germany (it was not examined until 1919, as people were dealing with other priorities at the time). However, new research suggests dogs were also independently domesticated in or around what is in modern times China \u2013 and eventually the two groups met and cross-mated. So while we don't know for sure which of those two groups initially let the dogs out, we have good reason to believe both groups did so.\n\nHowever, the Baha Men were not specific as to in which time period they were seeking to place their question, so we should also look at who is most likely to release dogs in the modern day. The answer in this instance lies with those protesting animal testing, for which thousands of dogs are used: in the US, the Rescue + Freedom Project has released about 1,000 dogs over eight years.\n\nA much larger single release, though, occurred in India in 2016, when a lab was refused permission to use dogs for cosmetics testing, leading to 156 two- to five-year-old beagles to be released \u2013 seeing the sun for the first time \u2013 before they were rehomed. In that instance, it was the Indian government and a rescue charity who let the dogs out.\n\nIS THIS SONG ABOUT YOU?\n\n(BECAUSE YOU'RE SO VAIN YOU THINK THIS SONG IS ABOUT YOU)\n\nCARLY SIMON\n\n**Ever since it was first posited by Simon, C in 1972, the question of whether someone was 'so vain' that they believed the discussion to be about them has been mooted as a classical paradox.**\n\nThe reasoning goes that if the target of Simon's verbal sally believes the song to be about them then they are not vain to think so, they are merely accurate. But if they are not so vain as to think they are the target, then the song may just be wrong.\n\nSuch a situation need not, however, present a paradox as it leaves open multiple possibilities. The first is that Simon's conjecture leaves her some wriggle room, by referring to 'probably' as a hedge, while the second is that Simon may simply be wrong about her target's vanity. A third possibility is that Simon has correctly identified her target as vain, but is being unfair to suggest that he is vain because of his views on the song, as his views on the song are in reality accurate.\n\nWe would like to offer a new solution to the situation. In a famous physics thought experiment, Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger posited the idea of a cat shut in a box with a radioactive isotope that released poison into the box, killing the cat.\n\nUntil the box was opened, he suggested, we have no way of establishing whether the cat is alive or dead, meaning the cat is both alive and dead until the act of opening the box fixes it in one or the other state.\n\nSimon, we venture, achieved the same with vanity. Through her act of making the target's vanity dependent on a self-defeating statement in her song, she had, in effect, discovered quantum vanity: her target is both vain and not-vain, and thus a clear contribution to modern science and philosophy. It would be impossible to imagine the work of West, K and the Kardashian lab without Simon's pioneering work on vanity.\nWHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF IT WERE CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY?\n\nWIZZARD\n\n**In this chilling and nihilistic 1973 study into the impact of redrawing the calendar so that it is Christmas every day, Wizzard were guilty of a very partial investigation into an event that would surely cause economic recession and possibly the collapse of much of the global economy. They begin from the faulty premise that, it being Christmas, every day would somehow mean a state of perpetual winter in which their favoured snow-related recreation would continue. But even putting aside this inaccuracy, they leave out many of the massive downsides.**\n\nAs Wizzard were surely fully aware, in most of the Western world almost all shops and workplaces are required by law to close for the day, an act which if repeated daily would quickly cause shortfalls of food and other essential supplies \u2013 though in the short-run greatly increase the profits and returns of the few shops allowed and able to open. The result of this would be to very quickly force a battle of civilizations between those who celebrate Christmas and those who do not, as one fed economically on the other.\n\nThe disastrous economic backlash as people eventually stopped receiving salaries, unless they were members of the non-celebrating Christmas service provision, would be heightened by the social requirements of the day: Christmas is seen by many to require lavish feasting and the exchange of gifts. Without such elements, they would feel it was no longer 'Christmas every day'. We could thus expect to see turkeys and other feasting birds slaughtered to extinction, before people moved on to wild animals, household pets and potentially each other, while civil law would break down as people constantly hunted for new, daily, gifts for their loved ones. Eventually 'gifts' would become what could be stolen or taken by force from others.\n\nFinally, the mental health implications of every day spent with extended family is impossible to compute and would surely lead to total societal breakdown within a matter of months. The only bells ringing out in this terrifying alternate future would be those of the corpse bearers as they made their way through desolate burning streets.\n\nWHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY APPEAR?\n\nTHE CARPENTERS\n\n**The brother-and-sister team behind this flawed project deserve a measure of praise for accurately identifying a phenomenon long before mainstream science, but this must be tempered by their poor attribution of its cause.**\n\nCarpenter, K and Carpenter, R accurately identified that the movement of birds has become less predictable, causing them at times to 'suddenly appear'. Unfortunately \u2013 and with little evidence given in their discourse \u2013 they attribute this to the birds wishing to be 'close to' the Carpenters' subject. As they state that, in this desire, the birds are 'just like me', it suggests both Carpenters are experiencing a severe case of projection \u2013 wrongly ascribing their own motivations to others \u2013 for which they may need to seek appropriate help.\n\nThankfully, recent science offers a more solid explanation for the unpredictable arrival of birds \u2013 especially as it related to their migratory patterns. A 2017 paper in the _Scientific Reports_ journal notes that migrating birds aim to arrive in a new region just as 'green-up' occurs, i.e., when the first shoots from buds appear \u2013 but due to climate change multiple species are now missing that time, often by several days.\n\nA further paper in the same journal notes that artificial light at night is further disrupting migration patterns. The papers note that the consequences of this random timing can be severe, leading to die-outs in the bird population and thus spiralling populations of some insect pests, disrupting crop production. If more attention had been paid to the Carpenters' initial, if flawed, observation, perhaps these consequences could have been avoided.\n\nThe study's further claims that such logic can also be applied to stars in the sky and girls around town and that this is down to angels applying liberal amounts of moondust and starlight are less easy to validate, though do perhaps point to an apprehension that light is to blame where the birds are concerned.\nWHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US?\n\nJOAN OSBORNE\n\n**In her classic 1995 thought experiment, theologian Osborne, J pondered what would happen if God manifested on Earth as one of us. Her investigation includes what his name would be, whether you would say it to his face and what single question you would ask him.**\n\nGiven that the idea of God varies between cultures and religions, we would expect His manifestation to be vastly different depending on which culture's idea of God (if any) were correct. And even if we limit ourselves to the Judeo-Christian conception of God, there are more than twenty different ways that God is addressed at different points in the bible, including El, Eloah Adonai and Yahweh. As to whether you could say it to his face \u2013 in Genesis 32:30 Jacob claims he has 'seen God face to face', but in John 1:18 it says, 'No Man hath seen God at any time'. Moses is made to stand on a big rock, so he can't see God.\n\nHowever, it is most likely that Osborne is referring to the concept of God appearing in the form of a man, as Christian believers maintain he did through the body of Jesus. This is backed up by Osborne's encouragement to imagine him as a 'slob on a bus' trying to get home. Many conceptions of Jesus would fit this description.\n\nLeaving aside the obvious issue that if you are on a bus going to heaven, you should probably remain quiet and hope you arrive, it's worth thinking about the questions that Osborne cleverly does not pose. Given most religions pose God as omniscient, He would already know what question you were going to ask whether or not you asked it, so in effect you do not need to ask the question.\n\nIndeed, all questions asked by everyone are eternally present in His head, so, as Osborne is clearly suggesting, God being one of us would in no way change anything. An infinite variety of every question possible to ask would exist in the permanent now of His consciousness, whatever you do.\n\nOsborne does, however, risk a serious schism in the Catholic church by suggesting that the Pope calls God on a phone. If so, the question we should probably ask God is 'what's your number?'\n\nWHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME?\n\nTRAVIS\n\n**Healy, F and his collaborators on this work demonstrate remarkably unusual priorities here, focusing almost entirely on why they are so frequently subject to rain, ignoring their own stated insomnia and their difficulties caused by lightning.**\n\nGiven their focus on the question of why they are so regularly exposed to rain, it is fitting that we tackle this question first. Perhaps, ironically, it is by looking at which professions are most likely to be exposed to the sun that we could see who would be outside \u2013 and therefore subject to being rained upon.\n\nThe _British Journal of Cancer_ did exactly this in a study of melanomas, finding the professions most at risk thanks to their outdoor work were construction workers, followed by agriculture workers, followed by police and armed services. We can therefore assume Healy et al. were looking at such a worker.\n\nIf that worker was in their hometown of Glasgow, this would further explain the rain: because of their proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, the west of Scotland and Ireland are subject to particularly high rainfall \u2013 an effect that has less impact on much of England as it is partially shielded by Ireland.\n\nHowever, we feel the more pressing issue for Healy is that he 'can't avoid the lightning'. In normal circumstances there would be much Healy could do to increase his chances of avoiding lightning, including not sheltering under trees, taking cover indoors if possible, or even better in a car, where the metal shell and rubber tyres would leave him very safe. However, if Healy is plagued by regular lightning even when the sun shines, he may wish to present himself to authorities, who could take advantage of his misfortune to generate cheap power.\n\nThere are no known correlations between lying \u2013 at seventeen or any other age \u2013 and average rainfall, or its consequences. Unless the lie he told when he was seventeen was, 'Yes, I do have an umbrella and full set of waterproofs, thank you.'\nWHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?\n\nSPICE GIRLS\n\n**This seminal neurological exploration from a group of five \u2013 Adams, V, Brown, M, Bunting, E, Chisholm, M and Halliwell, G \u2013 examines our sense of self-identity, including where it comes from and what preserves it.**\n\nOther work alongside has helped to answer the question posed, at least in part, by establishing that our sense of self-identity comes from the brain: it is believed to be related to the activity of the right frontal lobe, according to research on seventy-two patients presented to the American Academy of Neurology.\n\nA study of patients suffering a rare form of dementia affecting that region found that people's identity occasionally changed as a result of the condition. While some primarily had issues with forgetting the identities of loved ones, others' sense of who they were changed more dramatically. A sexually conservative and risk-averse man became a liberated job-hopper, while another woman ditched designer dressing and fine dining for casuals and fast-food. Elsewhere, people have spontaneously developed foreign accents \u2013 even never having visited the country in question.\n\nWhile the collaboration \u2013 known as SPICE, though we were unable to source the origin of this acronym \u2013 raised questions as to how our brains maintain our sense of activity, their medical advice was accurate. They advised to 'swing', 'shake', 'move' and 'make' \u2013 all examples of regular physical exercise, which is believed to significantly lower the risk of dementia.\n\nDO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME?\n\nPULP\n\n**Cocker, J and his collaborators introduce thought-provoking musings on the nature of memory in their 1994 project. When it comes to whether we remember the first time we did some things \u2013 walked, perhaps, or ate solid food, the answer is 'no'.**\n\nFor many of us, our first memory is a hazy thing, usually from around the age of three or four. This is because of a phenomenon known as 'childhood amnesia', which leaves most of us with virtually no memories before the age of three, and relatively few from before the age of ten, when compared to the rest of our lives.\n\nStudies have found this effect is gradual: during childhood, we can apparently recall some events back to around the age of one \u2013 though some psychologists speculate this could be children recalling events as described more recently by others \u2013 only then to lose memory of them later.\n\nHowever, if Cocker et al. are looking into sibling birth or hospitalization, evidence has shown memory of these events can persist despite childhood amnesia, to an extent. Research suggests that a recollection of these significant events can sustain from the age of two.\n\nOne alternative hypothesis moots that Cocker et al. are in fact researching recollection of the first time someone slept with them. Most of us can recall this, though many of us would rather not: 58 per cent of US adults said their first time sleeping with their current partner was 'awkward' or 'terrible'.\n\nWHO STARTED THE FIRE?\n\nBILLY JOEL\n\n**In this discourse, Joel, B is especially keen that we absolve him and anyone associated with him of having been the originator of fire \u2013 claiming instead that it has always been burning, 'since the world's been turning'. Joel's claim is not without merit, but requires some scrutiny.**\n\nJoel is correct to dismiss cosmological events such as the Big Bang and even the activity of the sun from his analysis, as neither are strictly fire: one was the expansion of matter, and the other is a nuclear fusion reaction. Fire, instead, is the reaction of flammable materials with oxygen in the atmosphere.\n\nHowever, Joel is wrong to say things have been burning since the world was turning. When the Earth formed, around 4.6 billion years ago, it was already turning, but lacked enough oxygen in its atmosphere to start a fire.\n\nA combustible material such as wood will only ignite if the atmosphere has 15\u201317 per cent oxygen in it, which has been the case for less than 850 million years. In this sense, Joel is correct that humans did not start the first fires on Earth, but his timeline is out by nearly four billion years.\n\nAs to Joel's second claim \u2013 that even if we collectively did not start the fire, we have 'tried to fight it' \u2013 he may be on fairly solid ground here. Across most developed countries, around one in 1,000 of the population is employed as a firefighter, while the remainder of the population contributes to this effort through taxation.\n\nDespite Joel's advocacy, 'It was always burning' is not recommended as a defence in an arson trial.\nSONG CREDITS\n\n**SONG TITLE** | **WRITING CREDITS** | **PUBLISHING RIGHTS**\n\n---|---|---\n\n**SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?** | **Samuel Reinhard, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones** | **Universal-Polygram Intl Pub Obo Nineden, Ltd.**\n\n**BLOWIN' IN THE WIND** | **Bob Dylan** | **Bob Dylan Music Obo Special Rider MusicDo**\n\n**DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS? (FEED THE WORLD)** | **Midge Ure, Bob Geldof** | **Wb Music Corp. Obo Chappell Music Ltd.**\n\n**A DAY IN THE LIFE** | **John Lennon, Paul McCartney** | **Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc Dba Atv Obo Atv (Northern Songs Catalog)**\n\n**(HOW MUCH IS) THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?** | **Bob Merrill** | **Music & Media Int'l Obo Golden Bell Songs**\n\n**KILLING ME SOFTLY** | **Norman Gimbel, Charles Fox** | **Warner-Tamerlane Pub Co Obo Rodali Music \/ Words West Llc**\n\n**HOW SOON IS NOW?** | **Johnny Marr, Steven Morrissey** | **Universal - Polygram Int'l Obo Marr Songs Ltd. \/ Warner Tamerlane Pub Corpo\/B\/O Muziekuitgeverij Artemis Bv**\n\n**CAN I KICK IT?** | **Lou Reed** | **Emi Blackwood Music Inc Obo Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd**\n\n**MS. JACKSON** | **Andre Benjamin, Antwan Patton, David Sheats** | **Bmg Monarch \/ Emi April Music Inc**\n\n**LADY MARMALADE** | **Robert Crewe, Kenny Nolan** | **Stone Diamond Music Corp Obo Tannyboy Music Co \/ Jobete Music Co Obo Kenny Nolan Publishing**\n\n**RUN THE WORLD (GIRLS)** | **Thomas Wesley Pentz, Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Dave Taylor, Terius Nash, Adidja Azim Palmer, Nick Van De Wall** | **Emi April Music Inc Obo B-Day Publishing \/ Wb Music Corp Obo 2082 Music Publishing \/ Nw Collections Obo Jack Russell Music Ltd \/ Kobalt Music Pub America Inc \/ Stemra \/ Copyright Control N Emi April Music Inc \/ Emi April Music Inc Obo Switch Werd Music**\n\n**ETERNAL FLAME** | **Susanna Lee Hoffs, Thomas F. Kelly, William E. Steinberg** | **Songs Of Universal Obo Bangophile Music \/ Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc**\n\n**WAR** | **Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield** | **Emi Blackwood Music Inc Obo Stone Agate Music**\n\n**UMBRELLA** | **Thaddis Laphonia Harrell, Shawn Carter, Christopher A. Stewart, Terius Youngdell Nash** | **Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc Obo Samp-Uk Ltd. \/ Wb Music Corp \/ Wb Music Corp Obo Carter Boys Music \/ Wb Music Corp Obo 2082 Music Publishing \/ Songs Of Peer, Ltd. \/ Songs Of Peer, Ltd. Obo March Ninth Music**\n\n**BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY** | **Queen** | **Emi Glenwood Music Corp Obo Queen Music Ltd.**\n\n**THAT'S NOT MY NAME** | **Jules De Martino, Katie White** | **Wb Music Corp. Obo Playwrite Music Limited \/ Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc Obo Samp-Uk Ltd.**\n\n**CRY ME A RIVER** | **Arthur Hamilton** | **Chappell & Co.**\n\n**WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?** | **Peter Seeger** | **Figs. D Music Inc Obo Sanga Music \/ Figs. D Music In**\n\n**DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW?** | **Aleksej Anatolevich Kortnev, Bjoern K. Ulvaeus, Benny Goran Bror Andersson** | **Emi Grove Park Music Obo Union Songs A.b. \/ Universal - Polygram Int'l Obo Union Songs Musikforlag Ab**\n\n**FEVER** | **John Davenport, Eddie Cooley** | **Trio Music Company, Inc. \/ Fort Knox Music, Inc.**\n\n**I'D DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE (BUT I WON'T DO THAT)** | **James Richard Steinman** | **Edward B Marks Music Company**\n\n**ARE 'FRIENDS' ELECTRIC?** | **Gary Webb (Pak: Gary Numan)** | **Universal - Polygram International Pub Inc**\n\n**MARIA** | **Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein Ii** | **The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organisation**\n\n**YEAR 3000** | **Steve Robson, James Bourne, Mattiesargeant, Math Jay, Charlie Simpson, Matthew Fletcher** | **Almo Music Corp. Obo Rondor Music (London) Ltd \/ Copyright Control**\n\n**WHEN WILL I BE FAMOUS?** | **The Brothers** | **Copyright Control \/ Chappell & Co., Inc. Obo Graham Music Pub.**\n\n**HUMAN** | **Mark August Stoermer, Dave Brent Keuning, Brandon Flowers, Ronnie Jr. Vannucci** | **Universal-Polygrm Intl Pub Obo Universal Music Pub. Ltd.**\n\n**I'M GONNA BE (500 MILES)** | **Charles S. Reid, Craig M. Reid** | **Wb Music Corp Obo Warner Bros. Music Ltd**\n\n**ONCE IN A LIFETIME** | **Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth** | **Rhino \/ Warner Bros**\n\n**JERUSALEM** | **William Blake, Hubert Parry** | **Public Domain**\n\n**OUT OF THE WOODS** | **Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff** | **Sony\/Atv Tree Publishing Obo Taylor Swift Music**\n\n**I WILL SURVIVE** | **Dino Fekaris, Frederick J. Perren** | **Universal - Polygram International Pub Inc \/ Universal-Polygrm Intl Pub Obo Perren-Vibes Music Inc**\n\n**THE CHAIN** | **Lindsey Buckingham, Christine Mcvie, Stephanie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John Mcvie** | **Universal Music-Careers \/ Reach Music Publishing**\n\n**TURNING JAPANESE** | **D Fenton** | **Emi Glenwood Music Corporation**\n\n**SMOOTH CRIMINAL** | **Michael Joe Jackson** | **Sony\/Atv Songs Llc (Non-Rep) Mijac Music**\n\n**INDEPENDENT WOMEN (PT 1)** | **Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles, Cory Rooney, Samuel Barnes, Jean-Claude Olivier** | **Columbia Records**\n\n**IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM?** | **Joe Jackson** | **Kobalt Music Pub America Obo Pokazuka Llc**\n\n**AMERICAN PIE** | **Don McLean** | **Songs Of Universal, Inc. Obo Benny Bird Co., Inc.**\n\n**CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?** | **Tim Rice, Elton John** | **Wonderland Music Company Inc**\n\n**CALL ME, MAYBE?** | **Carly Rae Jepsen, Joshua Keeler Ramsay, Tavish Joseph Crowe** | **Universal Music Corp. Obo Jepsen Music Pub \/ Bmg Gold Songs Obo Crowe Music Inc.**\n\n**FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK** | **Jeremy Max Finer, Shane Patrick Lysaght Macgowan** | **Universal Music Mgb Songs Obo Universal Music Publ. Mgb Ltd. \/ Universal - Polygram Obo Universal Music Publ. Ltd.**\n\n**MONEY** | **Roger Waters** | **Hampshire House Publishing**\n\n**WHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?** | **Lennon, McCartney** | **Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc Dba Atv Obo Atv (Northern Songs Catalog)**\n\n**THE DRUGS DON'T WORK** | **R. Ashcroft** | **Emi Music Publishing**\n\n**NINE MILLION BICYCLES** | **Mike Batt** | **Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc Obo Dramatico Music Publishing Ltd**\n\n**DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOS\u00c9?** | **Hal David, Burt F Bacharach** | **Bmg Gold Songs Obo Casa David Lp \/ Bmg Gold Songs Obo New Hidden Valley Music Co.**\n\n**EYE OF THE TIGER** | **Jim Peterik, Frank Sullivan** | **Sony\/Atv Melody Obo Rude Music \/ Wb Music Cor. Obo Easy Action Music**\n\n**WOULD I LIE TO YOU?** | **M. Leeson, P. Vale** | **Bmg Platinum Songs Obo Bmg Vm Music Ltd**\n\n**9 TO 5** | **Dolly Parton** | **Velvet Apple Music**\n\n**WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED?** | **William Weatherspoon, James Dean, Paul Riser** | **Stone Agate Music Corp \/ Jobete Music Co Inc**\n\n**BLAME IT ON THE BOOGIE** | **Thomas Meyer, Hans Kampschroer, Elmar Krohn, Michael George Jackson, Rich David John Jackson** | **Chrysalis Music Obo Edition Delay \/ Gema**\n\n**EARTH SONG** | **Michael Jackson** | **Sony\/Atv Songs Llc (Non-Rep) Mijac Music**\n\n**CREEP** | **Mike Hazelwood, Albert Hammond, Jonathan Richard Guy Greenwood, Thomas Edward Yorke, Colin Charles Greenwood, Philip James Selway, Edward John O'brien** | **Emi April Music Inc \/ Wb Music Corp. Obo Warner\/Chappell Music Ltd.**\n\n**WHITE CHRISTMAS** | **Irving Berlin** | **Irving Berlin Music Company**\n\n**SIGNS** | **Calvin Broadus, Lonnie Simmons, Pharrell Williams, Charles K Wilson, Rudy Taylor, Chad Hugo** | **Emi Blackwood Music Inc Obo My Own Chit Music \/ Universal Music-Careers \/ Emi Blackwood Music Inc \/ Warner Geo Met Tric Music \/ Bmg Platinum Songs Obo Minder Music**\n\n**NOTHING COMPARES 2 U** | **Prince** | **Universal Music Corp. Obo Controversy Music**\n\n**ESCAPE** | **Rupert Holmes** | **Wb Music Corp**\n\n**ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?** | **Roy Turk, Lou Handman** | **Bourne Co \/ Cromwell Music**\n\n**THE FOX** | **Tor Hermansen, Nicholas Boundy, Vegard Ylvisaaker, Mikkel Eriksen, Christian Lochstoer, Baard Ylvisaaker** | **Emi Blackwood Music Inc Obo Stellar Songs Ltd \/ Emi April Music Inc Obo Emi Music Publishing, Ltd**\n\n**IRONIC** | **Glen Ballard, Alanis Nadine Morissette** | **Songs Of Universal, Inc. \/ Songs Of Universal, Inc. Obo Vanhurst Place Music \/ Penny Farthing Music Obo Arlovol Music**\n\n**WHAT IS LOVE?** | **Junior Torello, Dee Dee Halligan** | **Wb Music Corp Obo Hanseatic Musikverlag Gmbh \/ Gema**\n\n**LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS** | **M. Chapman, N. Chinn** | **Universal Music Mgb Songs**\n\n**COMPLICATED** | **Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Shaye Smith** | **Emi Blackwood Music Inc \/ Emi Full Keel Music Co.**\n\n**ALL MY FRIENDS** | **James Murphy** | **Kobalt Music Pub America Obo Guy With Head And Arms Music**\n\n**HEY YA** | **Andre Benjamin** | **Bmg Monarch Obo Gnat Booty Music \/ Bmg Monarch**\n\n**WHY'D YOU ONLY CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE HIGH?** | **Jamie Cook, Matt Helders, Nick O'Malley, Alex Turner** | **Domino Recording Co**\n\n**24 HOURS FROM TULSA** | **Burt Bacharach, Hal David** | **Gusto Records**\n\n**EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE** | **Sting** | **Emi Blackwood Music Inc Obo Magnetic Publishing Ltd.**\n\n**WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?** | **John Michael Stipe, Peter Lawrence Buck, William Thomas Berry, Michael E. Mills** | **Universal Tunes Obo Night Garden Music**\n\n**GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN** | **Robert Hazard** | **Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc**\n\n**WHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?** | **Wildhorn, Jackson** | **Sony\/Atv Tunes Llc \/ Chrysalis Music Group Inc Digital Only**\n\n**WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE RAIN?** | **Malvina Reynolds** | **Nancy Schimmel Dba Schroder Music Co.**\n\n**PIANO MAN** | **Billy Joel** | **Almo Music Corp. Obo Joelsongs**\n\n**WHY?** | **Annie Lennox** | **Universal Music Mgb Songs**\n\n**EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD** | **Chris Hughes, Ian Stanley, Roland Orzabal** | **Bmg Platinum Songs Obo Bmg 10 Music Limited \/ Bmg Platinum Songs Obo Bmg Vm Music Ltd**\n\n**TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW** | **Antonina Armato, Michael David Nielsen, Ralph Nero Iv Churchwell** | **Universal Music Corp. Obo Warner Olive Music Llc \/ Downtown Dlj Songs Llc Obo Antonina Songs**\n\n**CARELESS WHISPER** | **George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley** | **Wb Music Corp Obo Wham Music Limited (Gb 2) \/ Wb Music Corp Obo Warner\/Chappell Mlm Limited**\n\n**YEAH!** | **La Marquis Jefferson, Sean Garrett, James Phillips, Jonathan Smith, Christopher Bridges, Patrick Smith** | **Reservoir 416 \/ Emi April Music Inc Obo Air Control Music \/ Bmg Bumblebee Obo Me And Marq Music \/ Emi April Music Inc Obo Basajamba Music \/ Songs Of Windswept Pacific Y Emi April Music Inc \/ Emi April Music Inc Obo Ludacris Music Pub \/ Music Of Windswept**\n\n**LIFE ON MARS** | **David Bowie** | **Chrysalis Music Group Inc Digital Only \/ Tintoretto Music \/ Emi Music Publishing Ltd.**\n\n**WHAT'S UP?** | **Linda Perry** | **Sony\/Atv Harmony \/ Sony\/Atv Harmony Obo Stuck In The Throat Music**\n\n**WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?** | **Anslem D Douglas, Osbert Leopold Gurley** | **Bmg Platinum Songs \/ Bmg Platinum Songs Obo Hyckryck Music Pub, Inc. \/ Wyz Girl Ent. Consulting Llc**\n\n**YOU'RE SO VAIN** | **Carly Simon** | **Universal Music Corp. Obo C'est Music**\n\n**I WISH IT COULD BE CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY** | **Roy Wood** | **Parlophone Uk**\n\n**(THEY LONG TO BE) CLOSE TO YOU** | **Hal David, Burt F. Bacharach** | **Bmg Gold Songs Obo Casa David Lp \/ Bmg Gold Songs Obo New Hidden Valley Music Co.**\n\n**ONE OF US** | **Eric Bazilian** | **Universal \/ Island Def Jam**\n\n**WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME?** | **Francis Healy** | **Sony\/Atv Songs Llc Obo Samp-Uk Ltd.**\n\n**WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?** | **Wilson, Watkins, Halliwell** | **Universal Music Mgb Songs Obo 19 Music Ltd. \/ Emi Full Keel Music Co.**\n\n**DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME?** | **Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey, Russell Senior** | **Universal-Island Music, Inc.**\n\n**WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE** | **Billy Joel** | **Almo Music Corp. Obo Joelsongs**\n\nCredits Sourced From: Hfa Songfile\nFOOTNOTES\n\n*** Later studies into a fever specifically transmitted by dancing on a Saturday night by a 'sweet city woman', or Patient X as she became known, were found to be largely inconclusive.**\n\n*** Other scholars have ventured it is instead 'all about chemistry', a conjecture supported by the basis that merely to stay alive, each of the human body's 37 trillion cells need to carry out at least 10 million chemical reactions each, per second. This is, in formal terms, a lot each day.**\n\n*** The text is unclear as to whether the four members of Busted have collectively produced great-grandchildren through inter-marriage in intervening generations, or whether 'Peter' \u2013 their interlocutor \u2013 jumped to genealogical conclusions.**\n\n*** By contrast, survival rates can be as high as 90 per cent for those who receive electric defibrillation within a minute of cardiac arrest, vindicating studies that talk about 'electricity in your veins'.**\n\n*** Whether or not an equivalent of signalling pheromones for humans even exists is a topic of much debate. Recent studies suggest that two of the most likely 'putative human pheromones' \u2013 androstadienone and estratetraenol \u2013 should be dropped.**\n\n*** The same year as the release of _Dr Strangelove._**\n\n*** Earlier investigations of the question by Gaye, M limited themselves to what was going on in the specific instance of the study in late sixties America.**\nACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n\nThis book owes its existence to Nicky Woolf, whose late-night drunken attempt to fact check 'Ms Jackson' on Twitter sparked a correction from me. In turn, that prompted then-editor at BuzzFeed Janine Gibson to make me turn it into an article, which prompted Boxtree editor Jamie Coleman to suggest this book.\n\nThanks are due to everyone at Pan Macmillan, and especially to James Edgar, whose brilliant illustrations are throughout the book. Thanks are also due to Luke, Caroline, Holly, Tom, David and others who have inputted suggestions throughout. All errors remain entirely my fault.\n\nSerious credit and apologies are due to every artist whose work I've butchered in this work \u2013 thank you all for posing so many great questions.\n\nFinally, I would like to single out Mel's friend Alice, who was absolutely no help at all.\n\nFirst published 2018 by Boxtree\n\nThis electronic edition published 2018 by Boxtree\n\nan imprint of Pan Macmillan\n\n20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR\n\nAssociated companies throughout the world\n\nwww.panmacmillan.com\n\nISBN 978-0-752-26653-4\n\nCopyright \u00a9 James Ball 2018\n\nThe right of James Ball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.\n\nPan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.\n\nYou may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.\n\nA CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.\n\nVisit **www.panmacmillan.com** to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you're always first to hear about our new releases.\n 1. Cover\n 2. Title page\n 3. Dedication page\n 4. CONTENTS\n 5. A NOTE ON CITATIONS\n 6. HOW MANY ROADS MUST A MAN WALK DOWN?\n 7. DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME?\n 8. ARE THERE 4,000 HOLES IN BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE?\n 9. HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?\n 10. CAN YOU KILL SOMEONE WITH A SONG?\n 11. HOW SOON IS NOW?\n 12. CAN I KICK IT?\n 13. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO APOLOGIZE A TRILLION TIMES?\n 14. VOULEZ-VOUS COUCHER AVEC MOI CE SOIR?\n 15. WHO RUN THE WORLD?\n 16. IS THIS BURNING AN ETERNAL FLAME?\n 17. WAR - HUH - WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?\n 18. HOW LIKELY IS RIHANNA TO NEED HER UMBRELLA?\n 19. IS THIS THE REAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?\n 20. ARE YOU CALLING ME 'DARLING'?\n 21. HOW MUCH WOULD IT TAKE TO CRY A RIVER?\n 22. WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?\n 23. SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?\n 24. DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW THAT YOU'RE OUT?\n 25. DO YOU GIVE ME FEVER?\n 26. WHAT WOULDN'T MEAT LOAF DO?\n 27. ARE FRIENDS ELECTRIC?\n 28. HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA?\n 29. HOW MANY GENERATIONS WILL HAVE PASSED BY THE YEAR 3000?\n 30. WHEN WILL I BE FAMOUS?\n 31. ARE WE HUMAN, OR DANCER?\n 32. YOU WALK 500 MILES. YOU WALK 500 MORE. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?\n 33. WHERE IS MY LARGE AUTOMOBILE?\n 34. DID THOSE FEET IN ANCIENT TIMES WALK UPON ENGLAND'S MOUNTAINS GREEN?\n 35. ARE WE OUT OF THE WOODS YET?\n 36. I WILL SURVIVE - BUT FOR HOW LONG?\n 37. IF YOU DON'T LOVE ME NOW, WILL YOU NEVER LOVE ME AGAIN?\n 38. HOW MUCH SPACE DO A MILLION PHOTOGRAPHS TAKE UP?\n 39. IS ANNIE OKAY?\n 40. HOW MANY HONEYS MAKE THEIR MONEY?\n 41. IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM?\n 42. WILL THIS BE THE DAY THAT YOU DIE?\n 43. CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT?\n 44. CALL ME, MAYBE?\n 45. WERE THE BOYS OF THE NYPD CHOIR SINGING 'GALWAY BAY'?\n 46. IS MONEY THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL TODAY?\n 47. WHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?\n 48. DO THE DRUGS WORK?\n 49. ARE THERE NINE MILLION BICYCLES IN BEIJING?\n 50. DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOS\u00c9?\n 51. HOW WORRIED SHOULD YOU BE IF SOMEONE'S WATCHING YOU WITH THE EYE OF THE TIGER?\n 52. WOULD I LIE TO YOU?\n 53. HOW MUCH WOULD YOU HAVE TO EARN TO BE 'BARELY GETTIN' BY' IN LA IN 1980?\n 54. WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKEN HEARTED?\n 55. WHO'S TO BLAME: THE SUNSHINE, MOONLIGHT, GOOD TIMES OR BOOGIE?\n 56. WHAT ABOUT ELEPHANTS - HAVE WE LOST THEIR TRUST?\n 57. AM I A CREEP?\n 58. DID WE USED TO KNOW WHITE CHRISTMASES?\n 59. ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS IS A SIGN?\n 60. WHAT COMPARES TO YOU?\n 61. DO YOU LIKE PI\u00d1A COLADAS, AND GETTING CAUGHT IN THE RAIN?\n 62. ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?\n 63. WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?\n 64. ISN'T IT IRONIC, DON'T YOU THINK?\n 65. WHAT IS LOVE?\n 66. WILL IT BE LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS?\n 67. WHY'D YOU HAVE TO GO AND MAKE THINGS SO COMPLICATED?\n 68. WHERE ARE YOUR FRIENDS TONIGHT?\n 69. WHAT'S COOLER THAN BEING COOL?\n 70. WHY DO YOU ONLY CALL ME WHEN YOU'RE HIGH?\n 71. WHERE IS 24 HOURS FROM TULSA?\n 72. OH CAN'T YOU SEE YOU BELONG TO ME?\n 73. WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?\n 74. DO GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN?\n 75. WHERE DO BROKEN HEARTS GO?\n 76. WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE RAIN?\n 77. SON, CAN YOU PLAY ME A MEMORY?\n 78. WHY?\n 79. DOES EVERYBODY WANT TO RULE THE WORLD?\n 80. HOW MANY INCHES ARE IN A MILE?\n 81. HAVE GUILTY FEET GOT NO RHYTHM?\n 82. HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO LEAVE?\n 83. IS THERE LIFE ON MARS?\n 84. WHAT'S GOING ON?\n 85. WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?\n 86. IS THIS SONG ABOUT YOU?\n 87. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF IT WERE CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY?\n 88. WHY DO BIRDS SUDDENLY APPEAR?\n 89. WHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US?\n 90. WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME?\n 91. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?\n 92. DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME?\n 93. WHO STARTED THE FIRE?\n 94. SONG CREDITS\n 95. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS\n 96. Copyright page\n\n# Guide\n\n 1. Cover\n 2. Title page\n 3. CONTENTS\n 4. HOW MANY ROADS MUST A MAN WALK DOWN?\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}