Methodical Dominic finished his prayer, the rote-swift syllables punctuated by the music of his victim’s nausea, before he turned to gaze upon his prey. “Tell me, Cousin Foster,” he began softly, “what’s it like getting up in the morning every day knowing thou hast a coward’s religion?”

Carlyle barely had the strength to raise her eyes as she retched over the can.

“The unexamined can get away with it,” Dominic continued, not rising from his knees but gazing over his shoulder at his shaking visitor. “But as a sensayer thou knowest perfectly well that, of the hundreds of faiths thou’st studied, thou’st fixed on the most toothless. Deism, the comfortable fancy that all religions are coequal puzzle-piece interpretations of the same Clockmaker God, Who made this universe but does not interfere with blights or miracles, trusting Nature and mankind to run ourselves with the hands-off guidance of His beneficent, rational laws. Thy studies have taught thee well how cowardly that is.”

“Ho-o-w?” Carlyle gasped, choking on her own hair which stuck to the spit and stomach juices mingling on her chin. “How did you know I was a Deist? Did Jehovah Mason tell you? Is that their power? Some kind of telepathy?”

Dominic shifted, kneeling more erectly now, the waves of his habit straightening like a stormy ocean gathering into tsunami. “Thou darest not face a universe without a God, but thou refusest to diminish human freedom, so thou honorest this Clockmaker, Who does not interfere with Fate or freewill, just steps in at the beginning with a happy plan, and the end with a happy afterlife.”

“The invitation didn’t come from Heloïse, did it?” Carlyle accused. “It came from you. You lured me here.”

Dominic would not let his victim break the rhythm of his words. “No commandments to follow, no angels to fear, and all religions are equally valid in the eyes of thy vague God, so thou dost not even have to say that anybody else is wrong. They’re all right, thy parishioners, thy fellow sensayers, the priests and martyrs of every faith in history, everybody’s right except the atheists, and thou canst tell thyself the atheists too would be happy with a God who does not judge or interfere. Has there ever been a faith that required less of its adherents?”

“Stop this right now!” Carlyle tried to rise, but slumped back into the corner, barely strong enough to raise her head. “This isn’t the Eighteenth Century, it’s the Twenty-Fifth, and there are rules! You can’t lure people into your house on false pretenses, you can’t wear a costume that declares your religion publicly, and only my sensayer gets to talk to me about my religion!”

No predator has ever worn so cruel a victory smile. “I am thy sensayer.”

“What?”

Dominic’s gesture brought the document before Carlyle’s lenses, a sensayer transfer, signed and validated, effective that day by order of Conclave Head Julia Doria-Pamphili. “Thou knowest well it is unhealthy to spend thy whole life seeing the same sensayer, and it is unfair to the world, too, one parishioner hogging so many of the great Julia’s sessions. She’s the most popular sensayer on Earth. There are leaders and philosophers on a two-year waiting list for one of her transformative sessions, while she wastes two hours a week on one spineless, unchanging little Deist.”