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Messenger and I appeared at a small house on a tidy lot with an impressive elm tree in the front yard and a fenced backyard.

Maybe the day will come when I feel not so queasy simply letting myself into people’s homes and indeed, minds, but it has not come yet. Messenger and I walked up the steps and through the front door. As always, solid reality seemed to bend out of our way as if it was avoiding our touch. As though walls and doors and window glass found us objectionable.

And were we not objectionable? That se

ems the kindest way to describe our wholesale violation of privacy. We entered where we wished, like police with a warrant to serve. I have no idea where Messenger is from, but as an American it did not sit well with me.

And yet it was a duty I had taken on. I was doing penance for my own sins by making others pay for theirs.

We had, in fact, come to inflict pain and fear. Not just cops: we were judge, jury, and, with the help of the Master of the Game, executioner, all rolled into one. We had powers no one should possess.

I fervently hoped that the book of Isthil I’d begun to read was something more than mere myth, because if we did not have some great purpose, if we were not saving the world by maintaining the balance, then we were just home invaders.

A woman was in the living room, sitting on the couch, watching TV with her feet up. She wore a blue Walmart uniform and had obviously come home from work too tired to change immediately. She was clicking through the channels with her remote control.

Did she look a little like Trent? Maybe a little.

I took stock of her, trying to find answers in her face. She was in her early thirties, not attractive, but not marked with any obvious sign of malice. She had a face that smiled frequently. Her eyes were disappointed but not angry.

Of course in the aftermath of my encounter with an incubus, I wasn’t prepared to take anything or anyone at face value.

There was a nonworking fireplace, bricked up against cold winds. On the mantel were framed photos. The woman and a man, laughing. The woman and a man and a much younger Trent. They must have been at a fair—there was a Ferris wheel in the background and they were sharing funnel cake.

And laughing.

I don’t know why but I have a hard time believing that full-throated laughter can coexist with evil. Maybe that’s naive. But the picture of the three of them seemed utterly incompatible with the memory of Trent slamming his baseball bat again and again and again . . .

It was not a wealthy family. There was a worn, tattered feel to everything. But poverty does not create evil, poverty could not explain Trent. It would not justify the hazing of Samira, far less the desecration of graves, racist graffiti, and a brutal physical assault.

“Why?” I asked, not even really intending to say it out loud because of course I assumed Messenger would not deign to answer. “Why do people do evil things?”

Messenger’s answer stunned me. “Why did you?”

Now it was my turn to avoid answering. I didn’t know the answer. Why had I done the evil thing that resulted in my being condemned to this life?

Why Trent?

Why me?

Silent and abashed, I followed Messenger down to the basement room where Trent was on his back on a padded bench, lifting weights, aided by his friend, Pete.

I steeled myself for my duty. I would bring fear to this place.

9

WE BECAME VISIBLE. IT WOULD HAVE SEEMED TO the two boys as if we had popped in out of thin air.

Trent lost control of one of the heavy dumbbells he was lifting. It crashed to the concrete floor. He kept his grip on the other, lowered it to the floor as well, sat up, and said, “What the hell?”

Pete took two careless steps back and nearly tripped over the bench.

“Trent Gambrel and Peter Markson,” Messenger said. “You are called to account for your actions.”

“Who are you? Get out of here! Get out of here right now!”

Trent had retrieved a lighter dumbbell and now stood brandishing it as a weapon.

“I offer you a game,” Messenger said.