“Hey, don’t shine me on, sweetie,” Alexi growled. “This is me you’re talking to, not one of your adoring worshippers.”

Mother Rose reached up and stroked his cheek. “I’m serious. I know that it’s real, and I know that it’s close. Why do you think I’ve been steering our campaign this way? Why do you think I established the shrine here? Sanctuary is close.”

“How do you know? Or is this another of your celestial visions?”

“Don’t make fun of me, Alexi,” said Mother Rose with just the tiniest bit of coquettishness in her voice. “And no, this is not a vision or anything like that. This is fact. I’ve known about Sanctuary for three years.”

“Okay, but—how?”

Mother Rose paused. “My daughter told me.”

“What?”

“Three years ago.”

“That’s impossible. Margaret took off four years ago and—”

“And she came back,” said Mother Rose firmly. “Just the once. She snuck into our camp when we were in Nebraska, the night before we torched Auburn. She said that after she left the Night Church she got really sick. Cholera. She almost died, but then she met some of the Children of God monks, and they took her to a place in Nevada where they cured her.”

“Cured her of cholera? What’d they do? Use a time machine and go back to when the pharmacies were still open? C’mon, Rosie, ever since the Fall, if you get something like cholera you die. End of story.”

Mother Rose smiled at him. “And yet when she came into my tent she was completely healed. Margaret thought that it was a miracle. She said that there were what she called ‘special monks’ who had machines and all sorts of chemicals.”

“‘Special monks’? You mean scientists? Doctors?”

Mother Rose nodded. “She thought that it would change my view of the world, that I’d no longer think there was no hope. She thought that if I knew such things were possible, then I would stop trying to kill everyone.”

“Jeez.”

“Funny thing is,” said Mother Rose, “she was right. Just . . . not in the way she hoped.”

“If Margaret snuck into your tent, why’d you let her leave? You could have called a hundred reapers to—”

Mother Rose shook her head. “She’s still my daughter.”

“So—you let her go?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what—?”

“When I threatened to call Saint John, my darling daughter clubbed me unconscious with my own bottle of wine. When I woke up, she was long gone.”

“And you never told anyone?”

“I’m telling you now.”

The giant grunted. “Special monks. Jeez. You believe any of that crap?”