Gentle is horrified and demands that Pie leave. During their tryst, Judith calls, alerting Gentle to the fact that he is in fact coupling with the shape-shifting assassin.

Gentle chases Pie away, but Pie, who has the ability to change his exterior, later disguises himself as Judith and comes to Gentle's apartment with the intent of having sex with him. Later, Gentle comes upon Judith just as Pie is making a second attempt on her life. Estabrook, having come to regret hiring the assassin to kill Judith, then contacts Judith's former lover, an artist named John Furie Zacharias also known as 'Gentle', and asks Gentle to protect her. Pie heads to New York and makes an attempt on Judith's life, but fails. The novel opens with a man, Charlie Estabrook, hiring the mysterious assassin Pie'oh'pah to murder his estranged wife, Judith. At the present time, the four reconciled dominions are ruled by the Autarch, who lives in the great city of Yzordderrex in the Second Dominion. A secret society known as the Tabula Rasa formed after this failure its directive is to prevent the use of magic on the Earth, motivated by the fear that such a disaster may occur again. All previous attempts failed the most recent resulted in the horrific death or madness of those involved. This Reconciliation can only happen once every 200 years.

Great magic users called Maestros have attempted through the ages to reconcile the Earth with the remaining Imajica, including Christ. The void that separates Earth from her sister worlds is called the 'In Ovo'. This explains both the appearance of extraordinary phenomena on Earth and the lack of understanding of magic and acceptance of the extraordinary as commonplace (as it is in the other four worlds). However, Earth became separated from the other four worlds long ago. Overseeing all of the dominions is the Unbeheld, Hapexamendios (God). The Earth is actually just one part of 5 connected worlds or Dominions, called the Imajica. Barker has stated he wrote the novel in fourteen months writing fourteen to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. The inspiration and many of the ideas for Imajica came to Clive Barker in dreams, and so inspired, he worked at an intense pace to complete the novel.

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