“Mara?” Duval looks up at the sky and blinks.

Then he looks back at us.

“My cousin’s daughter,” he says. “She disappeared one day. From this property. Vanished into the air. It was the Pathfinder, Akuji Na, who brought her back from the other world. If it was not for her…well, the Duvals are in her debt.”

“No black and white in the multiverse,” Malik says under his breath.

But something doesn’t add up. “You said she asked you to get things ready for us,” I say. “When was that?”

Duval glances at his cousin. “After I left you, I came here, to see my family. She was here when I arrived. She said she had seen us. You and me.”

I think about the road here with the highwayman, two of us on the flea-bitten grey, ghosting through the forest, avoiding anybody and everybody. One of the figures in the trees must have been her. Following. Watching. Deciding.

“She looked different,” Claude says.

“Different?” I ask.

“Older,” he says. “But also…broken.”

I don’t want to hear more. And I don’t want him to know what we saw outside the Notre-Dame. He doesn’t need to. I shrug off the coat and hand it across. “The ten francs are still in the pocket,” I tell him. “Keep the poncho.”

“Merci,” he says, taking the coat back from me. “Now, go,” he says. “Or don’t. The waste ships run on time.”

54

The ship’s interior is cold steel and void of any comfort. We find six unpadded metal bucket seats with harnesses attached to the wall and I sit down and strap myself in. The sound of the machine being operated is so loud it renders everything else mute. The ship shudders right through my bones. Then the noise cuts out.

Malik slumps down in a seat opposite me and stares at the harness. He pulls out his pistol, double-checks the chambers. Finally, he attaches himself.

“Vidhan,” he says, looking up at me. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

I nod. I can’t answer.

“And it was her,” he says. “Mara.”

I shake my head. “She knifed him after the Fall, but it was Rodolfo. He killed Vidhan. Malik, she was a spy, working for Shinigami.”

He shakes his head and I can see tears welling in his eyes. He looks away and wipes his eyes with the heel of his palm. Then he takes a deep breath.

“I just…I can’t understand. How could she?”

“Mother killed her parents. That’s what she said.”

Malik drops his head into his hands and blows out his cheeks. He drags his fingers up and down through his hair until it seems like he’s about to draw blood. Then he slams his fist into the wall of the ship.

I say nothing. I sit there, watching him. Feeling powerless.