“And we have both lost children, it feels exactly like that. Though when it came to your mother, she was better lost than found. Well then! You struggled so much to get your father out of you that we all had to pitch in to stop you. You bit poor Esteban here in the neck. Florence’s son, the younger one, used to bite too. At one point when we were trying to stop you, to get you to quit hurting yourself—because that’s one of the unfortunate collateral effects of the Rite, the Recipients get desperate and will damage themselves in order to get the Occupant out—we threw you to the floor and you hit your head.”

“Oh, that was dreadful,” said Florence, again in English.

“We thought we had ruined your body. But no. They say you’re epileptic? What nonsense.”

Gaspar closed his eyes, trying to process the information. So the accident hadn’t happened. His injuries were the result of this madness, this forced transmigration that he found absolutely incredible and stupid, but that they believed in, no doubt about it. Maybe not Esteban, who was silent.

“You want me to give you my body? Take it, I don’t care.”

“No,” interrupted Florence, and she went on, alternating between English and Spanish. “We need a medium, and you are one. You will tell us how to continue. We cannot complete the Rite and we are old. We cannot die, we must not die. The messages stopped because of your father, who unilaterally decided to cut off contact. We will continue with you.”

“I don’t know how to do it.”

“You’ll learn. You’re young.”