“What do we want?” Salvatore said, smiling—not evilly or madly, but with what looked like tired, earned delight. “We want you to work for us. We want you to become the most famous monster in history. Not for your sake, but for the glory of God.”

“Okay,” I said. My head was a grapefruit balancing on a pipe-cleaner. “When do I start?”

“Immediately,” the Cardinal said. “If you’re ready. But you’re not ready, because you don’t know what the job involves.”

The twins, the twins, the twins. Please let them be safe. Please. Please. You’re done with God, but the reflex to plead to something endures. To nothingness, if that’s all there is. But the big face of justice stared. You’ve lost your right to plead. Even to nothingness.

“It’s an extraordinary opportunity,” Bryce said. “You really will be making history. We all will.”

Where are my children? Where am I? Are the others dead? No point in asking. They control the information. They give you what suits them. You’re living in a manufactured reality. The weight of everything wrong was a crushing atmosphere. I couldn’t even panic. I knew if I looked back I’d see all the choices I’d made since the Curse laid out behind me like a battlefield of butchered dead. And only death to show for it.

“Could I have some water?” I said.

The Cardinal, still smiling the well-behaved schoolboy smile, nodded and turned. “Lorenzo? Some water, please.”

Lorenzo was the androgyne, who hadn’t merited an introduction. He obeyed reflexively. When he opened the door I glimpsed a striplighted corridor, polished vinyl floor, another door opposite, closed. Then for a moment I had to shut my eyes and concentrate on not throwing up.

“The nausea will pass soon,” Salvatore said. “We pumped your stomach in any case, so you won’t have anything to throw up.”

How long have I been here? Why? WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?

Lorenzo returned with a bottle of Evian and a straw. Salvatore brought it within reach of my mouth. He smelled of the fatigues’ clean canvas and a boozy cologne. Wulf remnants caught chilli olive oil on his fingers, garlic and parsley on his breath. We pumped your stomach. An interesting haul that must have been. I had an image of the Cardinal, latex-gloved, poking through partially digested human remains, dispassionately.

“Here,” he said. “Allow me.”

It was wearying on top of the weariness to have to recognise that water, when you’re thirsty, remains good. The hopeless little universe of your body forced to report: That’s good. That’s so good. Meanwhile resisting the urge to simply ask if my children were dead was like staying underwater even though you were out of breath.

“The symptoms you’re feeling are just the after-effects of the tranquilizer,” the Cardinal said, when I’d drunk the entire bottle. “I’m afraid we gave you a heavier dose than was perhaps necessary.”

Bryce stepped nearer. His feelings were wildly mixed: fascination, desire, curiosity, ambition. No contempt. As with all straight men the first question he asked himself about a woman was whether or not, given the chance, he’d fuck her. Yes, he would, his eyes said—until the memory of what I was got in the way. They’d filmed me changing back, I could tell. The footage was still running in his brain.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s hear it.” The restraints were an irksome friction at my ankles and wrists. The skin is the largest bodily organ, Mr. Cooper had delighted in telling us in high school, as if he’d invented skin himself. I was very aware of my skin right now. My largest bodily organ, wealthy with sickness, loaded with pain.

“What we’re offering you,” the Cardinal said, “is the chance to live out the rest of your days naturally, with your children, in peace—or as much peace as your kind can expect.”

“Do you have my children?”

I hadn’t made the decision to say this. I just found I’d said it. And now it was too late to care whether it was smart or not.

The Cardinal hesitated for a moment—then decided I’d know if he was lying. He gave a little nod and tightened the smile: no secrets between us.

“We have Zoë, not Lorcan. I’m going to give you the facts because they don’t, in my opinion, hurt our case.”

Bryce, I intuited, didn’t agree. An almost disguised flicker in the green roundel eyes.

“The facts are these: Patricia Malloy and Fergus Gough are dead. We have their bodies at a separate facility if you’d like to see them. Robert Walker, Madeline Cole and Lucy Freyer escaped, Mr. Walker with your son. It really doesn’t make any difference. It wasn’t them we were interested in. None of them has your status. I wonder if you’re aware of the extent to which your myth has grown?”

“I want to see my daughter.”

“Yes, I know. That’s not a problem. But be patient, please. I assure you she’s not in any discomfort. The sisters are taking good care of her. If you need a rationale, let me say that her well-being only helps our interest.”

It was hard, in my state, to reach out for a sense of my daughter. My body was full of physical events like planets bumping into each other. So little clear space …

ZOË? ANGEL? IT’S MOMMY.

Nothing. If she was here she was too many rooms away. I had an image of her in a small cage, dirty, bloodied, straw on the floor, a coven of nuns surrounding her, gawping.

Shut it out.

Mr. Walker with your son. Relief surged, filled me like the goodness of the water when I drank it. Unless it was a lie. Another image of Walker and Madeline together on a couch, his arm around her, his nose in her hair. Lorcan on his belly on the floor, looking through the Illustrated Book of Aesop’s Fables. The big face of justice again, the delighted sneer: Serves you right. This is what you get when you congratulate yourself on being bigger than love.

Bryce stepped closer, alongside the Cardinal. “What we’re talking about is a piece of television like no one’s ever seen,” he said. “Scientifically endorsed, up-close and personal. An inspirational documentary, a fucking landmark.”

“A devotional landmark,” the Cardinal said, quietly. “The power of Christ at work in the most extreme and undeniable way. The conversion of a monster. And her child. We’re talking about creating something that will change the religious landscape forever.”