I’d finished my dissertation at Puerto Reyes and gone by myself to defend it at Cambridge. I was only in England for a week, and I went to visit Laura’s grave every day. Later, I published the dissertation in anthropology journals in several countries. Soon, I would start teaching classes at the University of Buenos Aires, and I needed a home in the capital that was not in my family’s building, which I didn’t want to go back to. Juan, meanwhile, took care of Gaspar, studied and read, and, with Stephen, looked for a door, a passage to the Other Place. They hadn’t found anything yet: Juan thought that Puerto Reyes could hold a portal, but it wasn’t in his reach, he only sensed it. But if not there, where else to look? Stephen had an idea: near the hospital where Jorge had operated on him and where the Darkness had first come to Juan. They traveled often to Buenos Aires with any excuse, though they were no longer asked for so many explanations. In the new phase of the Order, after Eddie’s disappearance and the massacre, many things had changed.

Others hadn’t changed at all. After some explosive arguments, Florence agreed to monitor Gaspar in an accepted ritual, simple and effective, that I proposed. Twice a year he had to be brought to Juan’s Place of Power, and the women would draw a blood circle around him. Arterial blood, which is the kind that seeks and finds, as Laura taught me—blood offered by the Initiates themselves. They also used Olanna’s ruby-encrusted skull. At two years old, Gaspar had already been in the circle several times, and each time he had crawled around and looked at the expectant members of the Order with a mixture of curiosity and worry, never with fear. He didn’t give a single sign of understanding what was happening or of being in contact with any energy that arose from the Place of Power. Juan and I were always present. Gaspar was a normal baby, perhaps more clingy with his father than was usual for his age. He slept a lot, cried little, and sometimes sat looking at some insect, or the TV, with too much concentration.

We fought a lot about Gaspar, Juan and I. A lot, and every day.

“If he manifests, I know how to avert it,” he’d tell me. “There are a lot of ways to nullify his power, and you know them.”

I didn’t like that.

“Gaspar has the right to be part of the Order, if he wants. I have power, too. They’re not going to do just anything with him.”

“I trust you, but I don’t trust them. I can keep him from being part of the Order, if I want.”