She smiled at St. Vincent—the precise kind of smile she intuited he wanted from her. It was a form of restrained seduction—a come closer, but not too close, smile. He wouldn’t want that; not yet, anyway. He was a man of great rectitude, a man who believed absolutely in what he did. He believed himself invulnerable to corruption, but it was clear to her that he had a great capacity for self-deception. His foundation, which he thought rock solid, was full of cracks; he was already thoroughly corrupted—his almost religious fervor had blinded him to the fact.

“It seems ages since I was taken seriously, Mr. St. Vincent,” she said in her little girl voice.

“I take you seriously,” St. Vincent said. “And it’s fine if you call me Luther.”

“You won’t take offense.”

He laughed. Lucy felt warm inside, like melting taffy. She had a strong suspicion that when you made a man like Luther St. Vincent laugh, you were inside his defenses.

*   *   *

Monroe should have been home with his wife and five children. Instead, he was seated in a central pew of his church, listening to the footsteps of God. The soft echoes of God’s presence fell all around him like a velvet rain. It was Monroe’s habit to come to church when he was distressed or overwhelmed by the minutia of life, not so much to pray, but to listen. It seemed to him that church was the only place where he was capable of listening these days.

The decision to reopen the Well weighed heavily on his mind. It was the right decision—he knew that as fact. Nevertheless, the Well was not a place one went to without trepidation. Even he, its creator, its guiding light, could not escape its dreadful spell. Now, here, in the presence of God, he needed to summon the strength required to once again crack open the doors to the underworld. Here, in church, he allowed his mind to drift.

Monroe came from a background that was as unusual as it was humble. His great-grandfather murdered first the black overseer on the plantation where he was a slave, then the white master himself. The slave was hanged from a tree, without a trial or the benefit of legal defense, but at least he got to spit in the overseer’s face, for the betrayal, a much worse crime than the master’s ignorance. Those were the days.