Katie eased herself out of bed and went through to her dressing room. She opened up her white satin-covered jewelry box and took out the folded slip of paper that Springer had given her. Before she opened it, she looked at herself in her dressing-table mirror. ‘You don’t have to do this, Katie,’ she told herself. ‘If you’d rather take a rain check, what can he do to you? He’s just a young guy who happens to look a whole lot like Mr Flight, that’s all.’ Actually, she wasn’t so sure about that. If Springer was capable of showing her what she looked like when she was all dressed up in her Night Warriors suit, maybe he was capable of making sure that she wore it, and that she went out hunting for this Gordon Veitch character, and Brother Albrecht’s carnival, whether she wanted to or not. She held up the piece of paper. To her surprise, the words on it seemed to be written in her own handwriting. Very softly, she read them out. ‘“Now, when the face of the world is hidden in darkness, let us be conveyed to the place of our meeting, armed and armored; and let us be nourished by the power that is dedicated to the cleaving of darkness, the settling of all black matters, and the dissipation of all evil.
