Slick avoidance of answering. "No. It's not." Lily was. Maybe I'd arrange for Poppy to meet the good physicist and let her see what she was really up against. I bricked up my sorrow, adding it to the pile of emotions I had no desire to examine or experience.

"There was one last thing I found," I said. "The symbol of the Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash had four straight and four wavy rays. Louis' has both, too. Could Samson be Mesopotamian?"

"Shamash was a god, not a demon. ...