Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers

deliberately led you into it.”
    Gabriel wavered, then stepped forward and briefly gripped Christina’s shoulder. “I would have done the same,” he said. “I did, eventually.”
    And so did my poor Lizzie, he thought.
    â€œIf we could find it,” said Christina, without looking up, “and destroy it—I promised him I would grind it to powder and sift it into the sea—”
    Gabriel stared at his sister with mingled sympathy and cynicism—after their father’s death, the three of them had searched every corner of the old house in Charlotte Street, but they had not found the tiny black statue; and Gabriel wondered if Christina would be so resolute to destroy the thing if she were actually to have it again.
    â€œPrayer,” said Maria, “is our only hope now.”
    â€œAnd the temporal measures,” said Christina with a sigh. “Garlic, mirrors, and celibacy.”
    Gabriel was still angry that his resolve—his selfless resolve!—had been called into question, and by dead men. “Well, if Uncle John thinks—”
    â€œHe isn’t really our mother’s brother,” said Maria. “Poor damned John Polidori is just the latest mask—a suffering, half-alive mask!—that this thing is currently wearing. It’s Gog and Magog, the eternal enemy of God’s kingdom, from the prophecies in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation.”
    Gabriel saw Christina’s face go blank, and he quickly said, “No doubt, no doubt! Or something of that general description, I’m sure.” Maria looked away, so he was able to send a warning frown to Christina.
    â€œIf we’d see you in church occasionally—” began Maria, but Christina interrupted her.
    â€œWe could be sure it was you,” she said, “since I don’t believe Uncle John would venture into a church. You remember the drawing you did when you and poor Lizzie were in Paris on your honeymoon? The two couples in the forest?”
    Gabriel did indeed remember it. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of a man and a woman in medieval clothing, visibly astonished at coming face-to-face with exact duplicates of themselves.
    â€œI called it How They Met Themselves ,” he said cautiously. “It was a study in—”
    â€œIt was a prophecy,” said Christina. “Forgive me, Gabriel, but I wonder if Lizzie would agree that the two of you have been celibate since May.”
    Gabriel stepped back toward the window, perhaps to keep from raising his hand to his sister.
    â€œI,” he said hoarsely, “know you’ve never approved of her—but she would not ever—”
    â€œShe would have thought it was you ,” wailed Maria, raising her hands halfway to her face as if she meant to cover her eyes. “You knew—when you drew that picture!—that creatures of our uncle’s sort can take on the appearance of their hosts.”
    Gabriel was shaking his head and had started to speak, when the window glass rattled and the timbers creaked as a reverberating boom rolled over the house.
    His sisters had both stood up and were staring past him out the window, so he spun around—a plume of black smoke was churning and swelling over the water of the Thames a hundred yards out from the shore, and pieces of debris were spinning upward across the view of the buildings on the opposite shore.
    â€œWas that a boat?” asked Maria breathlessly.
    Gabriel shrugged. “What else?” He wondered if it had been the heavy-laden sloop he had noticed a couple of minutes earlier. “Nobody on board will have survived that.”
    Down the hall they could hear Lizzie weeping now.
    Gabriel turned toward the doorway and hesitated, his teeth bared in indecision. At last, “Help me with her,” he said to his sisters.
    Maria nodded and hurried past him, her long black sleeves flapping.
    Christina took Gabriel’s arm as they