I did my best silent slink. It was more than a cave, I could now see, it was some kind of warehouse or distillery or both. On all sides of me, barely visible in the dim light, stood dozens upon dozens of thick glass vessels, each about the size of a restaurant soup kettle, stacked in rows on shelves that reached to the low ceiling. It looked like Vera was running some kind of medical supply warehouse down there.

“I do not blame you, of course,” I heard her say. “I don’t blame you at all. Every one of you has earned his place here. Every one . . .”

As I tiptoed forward, trying to find a vantage point through the crowded shelves so I could see who Vera was talking to, I caught an odd flash in one of the jars and let my gaze drift back to it.

Something looked back at me. A head. A bodiless head.

No, I realized as I bent down, it wasn’t completely bodiless, because it looked like many of the pieces that would constitute a body were bobbing in the jar with it, only none of them were connected to each other. I looked at the other jars and saw forearms with hands attached, the fingers splayed against the glass like gray-green starfish. I saw feet, and faces that had been removed from the skull and now looked more like masks, and of course penises—quite a few of those, too (although no more than one per container). And in every jar, as if it were the sun around which those nasty pale planets revolved, floated a head.

Revolted, I let my eyes slide back down the row, then up to the rows above, and then ahead to those that still lay before me, shelved on either side of the central passage. I knew I must be looking at Vera’s Immortals, all the lovers she had honored, the men who had treated her as she expected to be treated.

Fat lot of good it did them, I thought.

Then the nearest bodiless head winked at me and grinned.

Generally I try not to squawk like a frightened child when in surveillance situations, but it was too late to take it back now. Not only had I alerted Vera but I had probably been loud enough to let Smyler know where I was, too. In fact, I had probably let the people down in the Abaddon levels know where I was. Even the heads around me were beginning to wake up, rolling their eyes to see who had sent little-girl-scream waves through their formaldehyde.

No use pretending or skulking now. I stepped out into the center of the walkway and went forward. Vera stood at the center of the cavern room in the midst of rows of sturdy, ugly shelves, each nearly full of glass jars, each glass jar with its own set of hands and hearts and balls and staring eyes.