She had to go to him. She pulled the cover aside and sat upright. She didn’t have her coat and didn’t even know where her bag and her gun were. Her colleagues had probably taken her weapon for safekeeping. She got up, but a light spell of dizziness forced her to lean on the bed. Her clothes were wrinkled, and she tried to smooth them as best she could with her hands. She did the same to her hair but doubted she’d managed to make herself look presentable. She looked for a napkin in her pocket and only found a paper tissue. It was as wrinkled as she was and covered in scribbles. Teresa was shocked to realize it was her own handwriting. It was something she had noted down in those last, hectic hours and hadn’t had a chance to transcribe into her diary yet.

It bore that day’s date, and though she couldn’t recall writing it, what worried her most in that moment was not the advance of her illness, but the note she had addressed to herself on that scrap of paper.

-78-

-78-

The nuns’ dormitories were located in the cellars of the convent of Rail. The cells predated the first blueprints of the building and had been carved into the limestone back in Roman times. The Celts had repurposed them as crypts, and now they housed the nuns from sunset until just before dawn.

Massimo descended the steps that led to those ancient catacombs, preparing to finally solve the mystery of child Omega.

The abbess had agreed to escort him there only after much insistence on his part. When he’d shown up at the convent again, Massimo had uttered just two words, and those two words had been enough to frighten Sister Agata, and wipe away the smile with which she’d greeted him. Like an incantation, they had granted Massimo passage.

Lucas Ebran’s mother had told him a story that, thirty years ago, had been the whispered talk of Rail: the story of a nun too pretty and too young to go unnoticed. The villagers had followed her every movement, and watched her belly grow larger and larger beneath her Benedictine habit.

Earlier, Sister Agata had denied there had ever been any kind of scandal connected to the convent. But she’d also said that she hadn’t been around for that long. Massimo had pounced on that small detail—perhaps her attempt at distancing herself from some kind of past crime—and persevered until she’d agreed to help him.

She had finally capitulated when he’d reminded her that he’d come for the soul of a nameless child, twenty-five years after his death. Perhaps they owed it to him to reveal the truth of what had happened.