The words the child had spoken, the child from Bombay Beach. They snapped Izzy back. “Why did you visit Cyrus when he was a kid? His mom said a woman with long black hair used to come around their house. Why did those kids play that video?” And: “What did you do to Cyrus?”

“Do you believe in resurrection?” Sky repeated. “Do you believe in rebirth and renewal? Perhaps your love lives on in some other way.”

“He was killed,” Izzy said “Cyrus. Chopped up into pieces.” She had said it aloud at last. Was she screaming?

“I’m so sorry,” Sky said. “We will try to help any way we can. I know how horrible this must be for you.”

“You don’t know me,” Izzy said.

Sky’s eyes shone in the candlelight. They looked, Izzy thought, familiar somehow. The white roses in the vase nearest her were rimmed in a thin line of red, as if they had been carefully dipped in blood. “I do, though,” Sky said.

“No.” Izzy’s mouth had gone dry again, her head hurt, she couldn’t think.

“I know you and I know him,” Sky said. “You loved each other and—” Then she paused, and her eyes glazed over, looked somehow blind. “You are both my children. All four of you are my children.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted children; that was all I wanted,” Sky said. “But not just any children. Children who could change the planet, make everything right again. I knew I could make this happen if I birthed four children, two boys and two girls. And I did! Twice.”

Izzy restrained herself, twisting her hands. They felt as if they belonged to someone else.

“You remind me of myself at your age,” Sky said. “So fierce. So angry but also so full of love. I was poor, too, like you; I didn’t have anything but my body. But I thought, this body is connected to some higher power, something sacred, and it can bring needed souls into the world. Children who can change the world! I will birth them and scatter some of them around the desert and then they will find each other and play out the myth as it is meant to be.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The last four children, Osiris, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys, have the same father. With the four of you, each father was different, I promise, your real fathers—Del and Larry and Richard and Otis. They didn’t know about each other. Cyrus’s mother never knew about me, either, and Richard’s wife left, but your mothers—yours and Nephy’s—went along with it. Maybe they believed in me, or maybe they just didn’t believe in themselves, didn’t want to lose their men after the miscarriages. A woman in today’s world has to find ways to feed herself.”