I’d been squatting in those bushes for at least an hour—maybe—when a light came on in the room at the very corner of the house. It appeared to be a home theater, with enormous leather recliners lined up in rows on three descending levels.

A couple of little girls skipped into the room, I’d have guessed they were maybe seven or eight, followed by a teenaged boy. Constance was next, carrying another child in her arms—a small child, but not a young one. I squinted, focusing on the kid. It couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but I could tell that the kid had some sort of a condition, something that made him or her appear extremely frail.

Constance said something—I’d never been a good lipreader—and smiled down at the child in her arms, her face filled with warmth and love. Not a second later, both disappeared behind oversized chair backs. It was as though my breath vanished with them.

Constance was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of a child-abducting, soul-stealing, Nejeret-torturing corporation. There was no way she didn’t know about everything Ouroboros had been doing in that secret lab, let alone whatever was going on with Sammy and the other sick kids back in the Tent District. There wasn’t a jury in this country that wouldn’t convict her to a lifetime in prison for her crimes.

Yet she was also a mother. And from the looks of it a pretty damn good one. It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday night—a work night, no less—and she wasn’t working late in her study or getting ready for bed, letting a nanny take care of her brood of kids. She was hanging out with them herself, and apparently having a good time doing so.

I pushed back my hood and raked my fingers through greasy hair, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Panic was peeking into the windows of my mind, lurking in the bushes surrounding my soul, trying to find a way in. Night started to close in around me, and I sucked in air uselessly.

I knew what it was like to lose a beloved mother. I wasn’t sure I could do that to someone else.

But the kids on the cots back in the hangar-turned-hospital—they had a whole lot less than Constance’s children. Didn’t they deserve the answers Constance could provide? Didn’t they deserve a chance at life? Didn’t they deserve justice?

There are twelve other board members. The realization brought a much-needed rush of oxygen to my lungs, to my blood, and I could think clearly once again.

I didn’t have to go after Constance, not yet. I could find someone else to target . . . to torture and interrogate. To kill. There was another way. Twelve others. I just had to track them down.

Chapter Five

There’s a big difference between a human soul and a Nejeret ba. A Nejeret’s ba can exist outside of his or her physical body ad infinitum, like Dom’s. In other words, just because a Nejeret’s physical body dies, it doesn’t mean the end of that Nejeret. We don’t know where a ba goes once its body dies, just that it goes somewhere else—to some other plane or dimension or universe—and it will continue to be, to exist, until the end of everything.