98

"Everyone in the Spill Zone knows what we are," she says, pointing to a sign that resembles hands spilling something out of a bowl. She ushers you through another silent sliding door into a stark, minimalist chamber with hexagonal white floor tiles and cool white walls.

Artifacts of sorcery are visible behind frosted glass or in cloches atop hard plastic pedestals. You see mummy fragments and incunabula, fragmentary scrolls and broken amulets. There's a diagram of the "California Stonehenge" they found a few years back—you've heard of that, since Kindred say it was some kind of ritual site. The far side of the room contains a Louis XIV escritoire, a Shaker table with a phonograph and an apparatus for reading wax cylinders, and a microfilm reader.

Dr. Caul scans the Latin document Prince Lettow prepared for her and tosses it on an end table. Vani, her assistant, places it carefully on a coffee table so her mistress won't lose it.

Two studious-looking and handsome young men lounge on the couches nearby, reading books in a language you can't identify.

"You're hungry, Cvjo," Dr. Caul says. "And I don't like hungry Kindred wandering around my domain. Please, enjoy Rene or Sonam. Rene is a doctoral student in robotics, and Sonam is an occultist from London by way of a small village in Bhutan. In a year I will choose one of them. Until then, they provide what sustenance and diversion they can."

Three more scholars sit around a nearby table, and Vani is there as well typing something on a laptop, but apparently they're off-limits.