The last thing Mike needed right now was to stare at a damned church, so he left the hotel on the side facing away from the big cathedral. Sparse lights illuminated flat-faced buildings with dark, blank windows staring down at the empty street.

Rutledge had warned them not to wander alone after dark, but Mike had spent a lifetime fighting demons and the evil men who served them—he wasn’t about to cower inside for fear of simple, mundane street crime. As he walked, Mike lit a cigarette and hunched into his coat, annoyed with the wind and the chill. It wasn’t enough the Archdiocese had yanked him out of retirement; they’d found him a city even more arctic than Chicago. Someone back home was getting a good laugh out of this.

Mike had earned his retirement, dammit. He should have been done with cold nights and dangerous missions. He should be back in Chicago, watching the Illini get their asses kicked by Ohio State, not exploring dark streets halfway around the globe, wondering who he’d pissed off to get sent here.

Mike couldn’t read the street signs—couldn’t even puzzle out the sound of the words through the Cyrillic letters—but he felt confident in his ability to find his way back by the big golden dome of St. Isaac’s that towered above the downtown rooftops.

The sharp, bitter wind off the river cut through Mike’s coat. The city felt vacant. Haunted. Mike wondered what all the little sensitive girl got from it.

Rutledge had made it sound like this was a nice neighborhood—or at least a touristy one. On the surface, it certainly looked pretty enough. Nothing plain or modern. Nothing like downtown Chicago—no glass and steel skyscrapers in this city. As far as Mike could see, the dome of St. Isaac’s was the tallest thing around. A feel of old-world elegance that seemed odd in a city younger than New York or Boston. Every building that lined the street had columns or gargoyles or some other flourish to make it stand out from its neighbors. And their ornate stone faces were painted in pale yellows and oranges and greens. Historical buildings, gated courtyards, plenty of atmosphere. Just the spot for a nice evening stroll. Except…

Except.

The streets were empty. Mike had only seen two other pedestrians so far, and both had looked eager to be somewhere else, hurrying along with their shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. No cars at all, although he could hear the sounds of traffic not too many blocks away. The locals knew something or felt something. One of the first lessons of the invisible war: keep a close eye on the natives. They knew where the bad stuff lived, even when they didn’t know they knew.

All around, shadowy doorways, empty courtyards, and stairwells into darkness—what might be lurking just out of sight? Rutledge had said there were vampires living in St. Petersburg. Could the city be home to worse things? Mike had been fighting this war long enough to know that there were worse things.

Ahead lay a bridge across one of the many canals that cut through the city. The Venice of the North, a brochure in the hotel lobby had pronounced. A lone figure stood on the bridge, leaning out over the railing, staring down into the water. Mike recognized him at once. One of the kids—Ian. Christ, they were all kids here. All but Mike. Even the vampire looked young, though with their kind, it wasn’t like you could tell just by looking. Why was it always the children who got shoved to the front lines?

Mike took out another cigarette and joined Ian on the bridge. Ian’s hands were buried deep in the pockets of his duster, but that was the only concession he made to the chilly November night. No hat, no scarf—his coat wasn’t even buttoned. Ah, youth. Mike remembered being twenty-something and invincible.

Ian gave an absent wave as Mike stepped up next to him. His hair shone like molten fire under the streetlight as Ian angled his head to look back out over the canal. No natural color, that. Of course, Ian wasn’t exactly human.

“Looking for something, Irish?” Mike had to cup his hand around the cigarette to shield it from the wind that whipped over the water.

“Just looking.” Ian’s voice had that same unearthly quality. Nothing strange enough Ian couldn’t pass as normal—although he’d never be someone who could lose himself in a crowd—but to a man as keyed to the supernatural as Mike, the signs were obvious.

Soldiers of the invisible war were used to keeping secrets, but Ian had nothing to hide from Mike. “So they hired a hunter,” Mike said, leaning down to rest his elbows on the rail that held them safe from the freezing water below. At Ian’s sharp look, Mike added, “I teamed up with one of your kind about fifteen years ago. We killed monsters together for a while.”

Ian turned to Mike, his expression unreadable in the streetlamp-created twilight. “And you’re part of the Church’s supernatural hit squad. A Templar.”

Mike nodded, blew a cloud of smoke into the frigid air.

Ian seemed comfortable enough with that fact. He went back to staring thoughtfully at the canal. There was silence between them until, in a soft, musing voice, Ian said, “So I get why you’re here. Of course, the Church is going to want one of their magic-cops in on this. And Rose, because you’re going to want a sensitive. I can even see why they’d put Nazeem on the team if our goal is to make friends with the locals—all the locals. What I don’t understand is why I’m here.”

Ian’s people had a very specific skill set. They weren’t recruited and invested, like Templars. They were born to their path, their blood as their passport into the invisible war. The creatures they hunted weren’t technically demons, but could be every bit as dangerous. “Any sign St. Petersburg’s got an infestation?”

Ian shook his head. “And it isn’t like the folk are good at laying low.”

The folk. Short for the fair folk. The fae. Fairies. Wild, bloodthirsty, inhumanly vicious—no, they weren’t good at keeping a low profile. It wasn’t in their nature. Mike had gotten his own crash course in the folk back when he was running around with the other hunter like Ian.

“It’s not that I mind an all-expenses-paid trip,” Ian continued. “St. Petersburg is gorgeous and I’ve always wanted to visit Russia. But it makes me nervous when I can’t figure out why it’s worth a million dollars to someone that I be here.”

“Kid, everything about this makes me nervous.” Hidden motives and a haunted city. What could go wrong? “Come on, we should get back to the hotel.”

Ian shook his head. “You go on. I’m going out. See what they’ve got for a club scene in this country. Try to make the most of my time here.”

“Dangerous to wander alone.”

Ian flashed Mike a cocky smile, reminding Mike once again of that time long ago when Mike himself had felt young and immortal. Before Mike had watched too many other young, immortal men die. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He walked away, whistling. Mike squared his shoulders against the wind and began the long, cold walk back to the Astoria.