'No,' she said. 'Where?'

'The subway,' the man replied with a pained smile. 'The fucking subway is where I feel the most at home. The most… normal. At first it was just a… a comfort, you know? But it's become far more. Far, far more. Now it feels like Christmas with dead relatives or something. Just sitting there, swaying with strangers.'

He turned to refill his tumbler. 'Pathetic, huh?' he called over his shoulder.

'Would it be better,' Thomas ventured, 'if we did this by phone?'

'Oh, now he humors me,' Gyges said to the vaulted ceiling. He turned, hesitated, then looked at them as though on a dare. He smiled warmly and said, 'Get the fuck out.'

Thomas and Sam could only stare.

'Which word seems to be the problem?' Gyges asked. 'Get? Fuck? Out?'

The two of them hurried to their feet. 'Can we call you, Mr Gyges?' Sam asked. 'We really—'

'Jeeesuss!' the burly man cried. 'Get! The fuck! Out!' With each word he stomped forward, like a silverback broadcasting an imminent charge.

Thomas stumbled on the curled edge of a Persian. Sam steadied him. His arms wide, Gyges herded them toward the foyer. They paused before the door.

Thomas looked up, saw the three of them reflected in a heavy, rococo-framed mirror.

'Three strangers,' Gyges said with a calm that seemed frightening given the savagery of moments before. 'Do you know what it's like, Dr Bible, to live nowhere? To look and look and find yourself nowhere?'

In a curious sense, Thomas did, but he wasn't about to say so. 'You're standing right here, Mr Gyges.'

'Am I? I'm not so sure.' A contemplative scowl. 'But you don't realize what it's like, do you? You think I see you, that I know you, that the problem is that every time I look away I forget who you are. But it's not like that. Not at all. When I stare at you—like this, like I'm staring at you right now—I don't recognize you from one second to the next. And it's not like your face becomes something new every moment, something that I've never seen before. It's just unknown. Unknowable…'

Gyges turned from the mirror to Thomas.

'When I look into the mirror, Dr Bible, I'm not there. But the kicker is that you aren't either. For me, there is no you. Just a voice. A voice from the dark.'

For a moment Thomas could only stare at him. 'You're suffering a brain injury,' he said lamely. 'You need to underst—'

'Brain injury?' the bearded man replied. 'Brain injury? Is that what you think this is?' Shaking his head, he strode past them and yanked open one of the oak-stained doors.

Thomas turned as he crossed the threshold. 'Then what is it?'

'You're not a priest,' Gyges snapped.