Lucy went back to eating. She seemed oblivious to the fact that the tacos had grown cold, the lard in the refried beans was congealing. To White, the food was slops, fit only for dogs. But then he hadn’t been where she had been, hadn’t suffered as she had suffered. Watching her now shovel the food into her mouth with a single-minded concentration, he caught an inkling of just what a privileged life he had led. Despite his innate hatred of Caucasians, despite being hyper-aware of his origins, the indignities that had been visited on his great-grandfather, he was an inauthentic African American. He’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had never suffered even a fraction of what his forebears had. He was far too wealthy and powerful for any white man to insult him, even in jest.

In contrast, what did Lucy Orteño have? Nothing. He wondered now whether she was telling the truth. If it had been him he would have moved heaven and earth to find those men and punish them. She looked to be the kind of person who would do that—who had, in fact, done it, but short of coaxing a confession from her he would never know the truth.

He wondered whether, in the end, it mattered. She was ripe for dealing death. He recognized the flinty spark in her eyes, in the fierceness of her demeanor. She had descended into the depths of hell and had emerged still alive, if not unscathed.

At that moment, she picked her head up, wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I want to ask you a question.”

“Anything,” White said, once again surprising himself because he meant it.

“Was that carving there when you built the Well?”

“No, it was carved by one of our members.” He paused, his expression turning thoughtful. “One of our ex-members, I should say.”

“Can you tell me which one?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“You said I could ask you anything.”

She was right, he had, and he was nothing if not a man of his word. “Well, okay. You might even know him since he’s a friend of your uncle Felix. Gregory Whitman finished carving that alchemical symbol a day before the waterfall began to churn the surface of the cenote.”

*   *   *

“He’s dying,” Charlie said.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Whitman could tell Flix was on the verge of death, and in a minute or so, even if he managed to revive his friend, he’d be worse than dead, his brain deprived of oxygen for too long.