Anger flashed through me. Whatever she’d wanted for herself in the future, whatever plans and dreams she might have had were all gone now, ripped from her. And she didn’t seem to care.

“How can you be so…so…so accepting?”

She stared at me with those non-Ellie eyes. “What makes you think I have a choice, Mother? What’s done is done. I can’t change it and neither can you. I have a task to complete and then I am free.”

My heart leaped. “Free? You’ll be back to normal?”

“I will be free to do whatever I wish, but…normal? This is my new normal, Mother.” She held out a hand to help me to my feet. “Come. We are due back in Manhattan.”

“Due?”

“No one there knows I’m coming, but I’m needed.”

We retraced our steps to the elevated D train and rode it to the Grand Street stop where we walked a block or two to Allen Street. From there we passed through an area full of Asians that I assumed was part of the city’s Chinatown.

Eventually we turned down a side street lined with red-brick-fronted former tenements. Ellie stopped before a massive, ancient-looking three-story building of stone block that could have been a bank or a fortress. Its windows were deeply recessed within solid granite walls. Atop a set of wide granite steps, an intricate seal was suspended above a heavy inlaid door.

“What is this place?” I said.

“A lodge of the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. I’m needed inside. There’s something I must do.”

“Please don’t tell me all these horrors have happened to you just so you could show up here and do something!”

She shrugged. “It’s possible. Maybe I was pushed toward the Sheep Meadow so the signal would prepare me for this. Or…maybe I brought this on all by myself and am being sent here simply because I happen to be handy.”

I wanted to scream. I couldn’t bear the thought of my Ellie being used…a tool.

She started up the steps and I went to follow but she turned and stopped me. “I must do this alone. You don’t need to see this. You’ve had to see too much already. Wait at that coffee shop we passed on the corner. Have a nice cappuccino and I’ll join you when I’m finished.”

“But—”

“They don’t allow women, Mother.”

“But you’re—”

“They’ll make an exception for me.”

So saying, she turned and ascended the steps. I watched the heavy door close behind her, but I stood fast.

Have a nice cappuccino? I don’t think so. That was my daughter in there. Alone.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

ERNST

“Excuse me, Mister Drexler,” said the acolyte from the reception desk. “There’s a young woman here to see you. A teenager, actually.”

Ernst broke from his reverie. He’d been working on a plan for Slootjes’s elimination—the manner of his death, the disposal of his remains—but getting nowhere. And time was running out.