Izzy threw on her clothes, shouldered her backpack, and ran out into the hallway.

She ran down the corridor, calling Ever’s name. In the large front room, the acolytes slept in piles, flowers and empty cups and bottles scattered all around them. Masks, too. The bird and the jackal and the cow and the strange unnameable creature had been masked people, of course. No sign of Jeb or Sky.

Izzy ran out the front door, through the courtyard.

Plata was parked where she had left it. Beside Plata, she saw Ever’s truck.

Izzy ran back through the house, outside to the garden. The yard was empty. Ripples petalled out beneath the waterfall.

Izzy then heard a sound, and she turned. A woman stood there in the green-lit darkness, eyes glazed. Her stomach protruded and her nipples showed through her T-shirt, as if rouged. Pregnancy did that, Izzy knew. She wanted to grab Nephy by the perfect, round skulls of her shoulders and shake her to death.

Izzy asked, “Where’s Seth?”

“What?” Nephy asked.

“Where the fuck is Seth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is he?”

Nephy bit her lip, screwed up her face, and shook her head like a toddler about to have a tantrum.

Izzy grabbed Nephy’s firm little bicep, squeezed. “What happened? Tell me right now.”

“Get off of me.” But Nephy’s voice sounded weak.

“Now!” Izzy screamed.

“Stop, Izzy.”

“If you don’t tell me, I will hurt you,” she said.

Nephy pulled away, rubbing her arm. “I don’t know, Izzy! I just found out Seth knew about me and Cyrus. I didn’t think he knew. He made me tell him what you said to me on the phone last night, and I said I thought you were looking for that woman. So he brought me here. They gave us something to drink. He saw you with that man. He kept calling him Cyrus.”

A dead calm wormed through Izzy’s body.

“Izzy?” Nephy said.

“Izzy,” Ever said weakly.

She turned and there he stood—the tall man in the mask she’d seen watching the ceremony. Seth. Holding Ever by the neck. Holding a knife to Ever’s throat.

Izzy stared at him, stunned, a bird smashed into a window, electrified on a fence.

“Put the knife down, Seth,” Izzy said. “Let him go.”

Seth’s eyes looked like scarabs, enameled in the death-mask of his face. “It has to be done.”

“Seth—”

“Motherfucker had everything. Pretty boy Cyrus. Told me he didn’t trust me. Accused me of all kinds of shit. That cat. But he’s the one. And then he even got Nephy. I couldn’t let him take anything more. He had to pay. I had to make him pay. And now he’s back.” Seth pulled Ever closer, and Ever’s body jolted and he closed his eyes. “I have to kill him,” Seth said.