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TRAVELING WITH THE DEADTRAVELING WITH THE DEAD
James Asher - Book Two
BARBARA HAMBLY



A Del Reyо Book Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright й 1995 by Barbara Hambly
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House,
Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto.



For George
With a prayer in the shadow of the Aya Sofia



Prologue
The house was an old one, inconspicuous for its size. Curiously so, thought
Lydia Asher, when she stood at last on the front steps, craning her neck to look
up at five stories of shut-faced dark facade. More curious still, given the
obvious age of the place, was the plain half timbering discernible under
centuries of discoloration and soot, the bullТs eye glass of the unshuttered
windows, the depth to which the centers of the stone steps had been worn.
Lydia shivered and pulled closer about her the coat sheТd borrowed from her
cookЧeven the plainest from her own collection would have been hopelessly
fashionable for these narrow, nameless courts and alleys that clustered behind
the waterfront between Blackfriars Bridge and Southwark. He canТt hurt me, she
thought, and brought up her hand to her throat. Under the high neck of her plain
wool waist she could feel the thick links of half a dozen silver chains against
her skin.
Can he?
It had taken her nearly an hour to find the court, which by some trick of chance
had been left off all four modern maps of this part of London. The whole yard
was adrift in fog the color of ashes, and at this hourЧLydia heard three oТclock
strike in the black steeple of the crumbling pre-Wren church that backed the old
houseЧeven the little remaining light was bleeding away. She had passed the
house three times before truly seeing it, and sensed that had the air been
clear, it would somehow still have been difficult to look at the place. She had
the absurd impression that by night, lanterns or no lanterns, streetlamps or no
street lamps, it would not be visible at all.
There was a smell about it, too, distinct and terrifying, but impossible to
place.
She stood for a long time at the foot of its steps.
He canТt hurt me, she told herself again, and wondered if that were true.
Her heart was beating hard, and she noted clinically the cold in her
extremities, in spite of fur lined leather gloves and two pairs of silk