Above me small hateful points of magic moved back and forth. Vampires. One, two . . . Nine. I pushed back the blankets. The room was mostly empty. Christopher napped, leaning against the wall. To my left Ghastek lay on his blankets. Robert, the alpha rat, sat next to him. No Curran or Jim. I also thought I saw Andrea, but that couldn’t be right. Andrea couldn’t be here. She was pregnant. She wouldn’t risk the baby.

A brown-eyed woman knelt by me. She was my age, with dark hair, a full mouth, and brown skin. She wore a black loose abaya, an Islamic-style robe, and a matching hijab, a wide scarf, draped over her head. She looked Arabic to me. I’d seen her before among Doolittle’s staff.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Nasrin.” She gently touched my face, examining my eyes. “I’m here to heal you.”

“Where’s Curran?”

“He’s checking the barricade,” Nasrin said. “Jim and others are standing guard there. How do you feel?”

What barricade? “The room isn’t blurry anymore.”

She smiled. “That’s good. We’ve had a short magic wave, and I’ve worked on you a little.”

“I think I remember.”

I had passed out at some point, but Curran woke me up every five minutes to eat. At first it was broth, which I vomited once or twice. I vaguely remembered Andrea passing me a wet rag to clean my face and Nasrin murmuring something and holding a canteen to my lips. Whatever I’d drunk had made me feel better. Then I was given some mysterious concoction Doolittle had made up and sent with them especially in case we had been starved. I asked what was in it, and Christopher very seriously told me, “Forty-two percent dried skimmed milk, thirty-two percent edible oil, and twenty-five percent honey.” I was afraid to ask about the other one percent and I had trouble keeping it down. Then a magic wave came and someone chanted over me, and suddenly I was ravenous. I had gone through two quart containers of the stuff and my stomach wanted more, but I had passed out. It seemed like that whole sequence happened more than once, but I couldn’t be sure.

“What was in the bottle you gave me?” I asked.

She smiled. She didn’t look a thing like Doolittle, but something about her communicated that same soothing confidence. “The water of Zamzam.”

“The blessed water from Mecca?”

“Yes.” She nodded with a small smile and held a bottle to my lips. “Drink now.”

I took a sip.