The meeting took place in the main hall of Puerto Reyes. What had been a hint of a migraine at the Paraná beach was now hammering in Juan’s head, and his nausea grew with each violent, uneven pound of his heart. He sat down in the leather armchair—completely unsuitable for the heat and humidity of that room, which was too large for air conditioning and had only a ceiling fan; the chair was immediately damp with sweat. He had left Gaspar asleep in Marcelina’s arms. The pain forced his eyes closed. It was too late to take a pill, and in any case, he knew he would need something very strong, but a powerful painkiller would lower his blood pressure too much, even more than the medicines Bradford had already injected him with, the tracks running up the inside of his elbow in tiny puncture wounds. From his chair he could see the painting by Cándido López. Assault of the 3rd Argentine Column at Curupayti. A rectangle a meter and a half long, with its little men carrying ladders, the wounded soldier on a stretcher, the man riding a white horse with his sword raised, seemingly removed from it all, the ground a swamp, the explosions in the background like low clouds, the darkened sky of war. It was beautiful. It was death at a distance, observed, childish.

Stephen was preparing cold drinks as if the conversation to follow would be a friendly and extortion-free chat, a kind of social tea. He himself, however, was drinking whiskey from Adolfo’s bottomless cellar. He offered some to Juan with a lot of ice, but Juan refused it: alcohol made the pain worse. Stephen came over and ran an ice cube over the back of his neck.

“Does this help?”

Juan didn’t answer. It didn’t help, but he needed Stephen nearby. He had proved his loyalty a long time ago, and proved it so definitively it was impossible to doubt.

Only Mercedes, Florence, and Anne Clarke were in the hall. The women, the leaders. Florence was wearing a floral silk dress that seemed to float around her. She was tall, and that day she was wearing almost no makeup or jewelry: her au naturel skin was overly white and had a grayish tinge, and her teeth, somewhat yellowed, appeared only when she smiled. She had pulled her long and indomitable red hair back into a bun. She was talking about how this time the Darkness’s projection had been extraordinary. Twelve people it had touched, more than ever before. Juan wanted to know how many people had been consumed, and with unchecked pride she told him there’d been eight, and then she repeated it, eight, in English. She often did that, mixed English and Spanish, when she talked to Juan, who understood both languages.