I took a deep breath. “What do you want?”

No response.

“Are you looking for money? My purse is upstairs.”

Silence.

“What are you going to do with me?”

He didn’t bother looking up.

I thought about how close my neighbors’ houses were. My basement was mostly underground. The few windows were up near the ceiling and only a foot high. Would anyone hear me if I screamed?

As if he’d heard what I was thinking, the man said, “No screaming.” He had a slight accent, and his tone was flat, affectless. It sounded unnatural.

He continued going through the images, ignoring me. It took quite a while — I had many more images on the computer than I had prints. I sat there watching, too terrified to think of what to do.

When the task was done, he crouched down in front of me. His face was as blank and emotionless as his voice.

“Where are the pictures you had at the restaurant?”

I hadn’t really believed, not completely, that this was the same guy. Taken by surprise, I blurted out the truth. “Upstairs. On the kitchen counter.”

Then again, I couldn’t think of an advantage to lying. He’d already seen them.

“Have you taken pictures of any other Seconds?”

“What?”

“Seconds,” he said flatly, as though I were being evasive. “Beings of the Second Emanation.”

Oh my god, Callie had convinced him “hellspawn” were real and I was passing around pictures of them. Or maybe he was the one who’d convinced her. That thought brought a wave of nausea. Callie’s moral crusades were annoying, sure, but they were basically harmless. If this guy was the one launching the crusade, there’d be harm. Lots of harm.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing special about my pictures. Someone was just playing a joke on me, sticking that foot in there.”

His face was motionless, like a mask. “Why did you photograph the green man?”

“Green?”

He looked at me, silent, waiting.

“Come on, this is crazy. That picture shows a black guy walking in front of a bar.”

He reached back and grabbed a big handful of my hair, close to my scalp. Then he twisted it.

It might seem like a pretty small thing, almost schoolyardish — someone pulling your hair. But no one had ever intentionally hurt me before. It hurt so much more than I would’ve thought. It was like, in that instant, I knew I was at the mercy of someone who cared nothing about me, maybe someone who enjoyed hurting me. I had no control over what was going to happen to me. Panic surged through me, and I thrashed and flailed, screaming. I would’ve told anyone anything. Resistance was unthinkable.