The priest bolted and chained her front door, but used a pushover of a key lock for the back: a rake of pick over tumblers and it gave. Izza locked the door behind her, and stood in the empty kitchen, breathing.

This was the part she’d not thought through.

She’d never killed before, not while meaning to anyway. She hadn’t brought a weapon, but the house offered all the arsenal she needed. Pokers, boards, pillows for suffocation, wrenches and pliers in a toolkit under the sink. This had all seemed so much simpler on the walk over.

Of course it’s simple.

Well, yes, but. When she held the pliers and imagined grabbing fingers and applying torque, she thought of her own fingers breaking. Same with the wrench. And couldn’t people breathe through pillows?

She settled for a knife from the block on the granite counter. The big carvers felt unwieldy, so she chose a paring blade instead: sharp tip, sharp edge, balanced. She only needed a slice or two.

She realized she’d been haggling with herself over knives for ten minutes. The priest killed Margot, or handed him over to those who did. Justice wasn’t some force in the air. Justice was something you do.

She thought about Cat. The cop in her would not approve. But she wasn’t a cop anymore. And anyway: We’re the Lady’s children, and there’s nobody to help us but us.

She hadn’t meant that when she said it. Thought she was just convincing Nick to help her with a few clever words. But she heard her own voice in her ears now.

So.

She climbed the stairs. The priest’s bedroom door was open, her bedside lamp on. The woman lay sleeping, twisted in cotton sheets, breathing rapidly through nose and mouth. Izza slipped out of her shoes and approached, soundless, over white carpet. The knife weighed no more and no less than any other piece of steel about so long and about so thin.

How did you kill someone in bed? Izza hadn’t done this sort of thing before.

She’d fought. She’d lived through war. She could figure it out.

People get up, when hurt. They fight back. Even weak folk don’t die easy.

Stabbing, then, might not work. Anyway, Izza couldn’t stab her from the bedside: the woman’s bed was the size of a small stage, built for two, and she lay in its center. From the edge, Izza lacked enough leverage to drive the blade in deep. No doubt proper killers knew how to deal with this.

She climbed onto the bed.

The mattress was soft as wet sand. The woman shifted, but did not wake.

Izza climbed nearer on knees and one hand. She straddled the woman, pinned her arms to her sides, and raised the knife.

The skull was hard. Breastbone too. The throat, though, the throat was soft.