A pop. A wet spatter emerged from his abdomen. Protesilaus dropped. Next to Harrow, Ortus moaned in terror. The Sleeper turned back toward them, handgun raised, trying to draw a bead, a wisp of smoke trickling from the muzzle. When she found no head or limb sticking out to put a bullet in, she stepped back, pointed the gun at Protesilaus’s prone form, and—without looking—fired two more shots. The body jerked, then was still. Dulcie screamed.

There was silence, except for Dulcinea’s panicked, wheezing breaths, punctuated by a ripping cough. Protesilaus’s body lay heavy and unmoving on the cold metal of the facility floor, somehow still more animated in this death than he had been as the empty puppet of the seventh saint.

“Listen to your leader,” said the Sleeper. “Don’t engage. I’m not here for you, but don’t think you can’t die again. Just give me the girl, and the rest of you are free to go back to whatever hell you came from.”

Abigail said, from somewhere in cover, “You must be joking.”

The orange-suited figure raised the gun and fired it into the ceiling. Ortus cringed at the noise; Harrow dug her fingers into his arm, though what comfort that could provide she did not know.

“Harrowhark,” called out the Sleeper.

The Sleeper said it slowly, as though she had never said it before—Har-row-hark, as though the syllables were strange. That was not the most arresting thing about the monster calling her name. It was the untrammelled contempt with which it was said, as though her name itself were a curse.

The Sleeper said, “You can’t hurt me here. If you give yourself up to me, the ghosts can leave. If not, I end all of you. This is the only bargain. I’m giving you to the count of ten, then the offer expires. Ten.”

Harrowhark said, “Who are you?”

“Doesn’t matter to you. Nine.”

“I don’t negotiate with strangers.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Eight.”

Septimus broke cover. She stayed low, darting from the doorway where she had hidden herself toward the shelter of a bank of instruments, her shadow huge and jumping in the light of the flickering candles. She was only in the open for a second, but the Sleeper pointed the little black gun as casually as Harrow might point a finger, and fired. Her orange-wrapped arm flexed with the recoil. Dulcie cried out and fell, her leg knocked out from beneath her. Harrow closed her eyes briefly; then she began scrabbling through Ortus’s panniers, winnowing for the best pieces, her fingertips slick with sweat as Ortus breathed through his teeth.

“Seven,” said the Sleeper. “Six. Five—”

“My cue, I think,” said Magnus Quinn.