The more he got to know Usheen Keady, the more Gene Christopher started to believe that Keady was an evil spirit roaming the world for the ruination of souls. In the course of their six-month association, the evidence mounted rapidly before Gene's eyes. This was no mere troublesome, restless spook, making intermittent appearances from the afterlife, but an actual incubus, preying on the living—in the land of the quick—and hoping to suck every good person it met down into the mephitic pit whence it came. Gene had grappled with similar spirits in the past. Memorably, one clever and satanic succubus had run him ragged for several centuries; only van...