Vidor crumpled the scrap in his fist and tossed it in the shrubbery. If this was Gessen’s idea of a joke, it was anything but funny. The man was a charlatan. Feeding off the pain of the poor souls who washed up on his doorstep. Lost in the woods, my eye.

Anxious to escape his faithful attendant, who likely reported to Gessen in minute detail anything he said or did, Vidor ran up the steps of the chalet and slipped past the bearded chap at the front desk, with his nose stuck in a magazine, and into the common room. Empty, thank god. At least there was that. The last thing Vidor wanted was to be forced into small talk with the Emirati Prince while making a cup of tea. Something about the boy’s absurdly misplaced hauteur got under his skin.

On the wall near the tea and coffee station, four botanical prints provided the only bright spot in the otherwise featureless decor. He leaned in close to read the names. Hornbeam, brimstone butterfly, candle snuff fungus, witch hazel. Brimstone butterfly. Candle snuff fungus? You couldn’t make this stuff up. If the prints were meant to be cheery, they sadly missed the mark.

The third inmate in the shared chalet was a weedy sort who never seemed to leave his room. At least he was quiet in his habits. Vidor tiptoed across the parquet flooring and pressed his ear against the door. Water running in the bathroom. Poor chap. Probably washing his hands again. Vidor could picture the phrase an unhealthy obsession with germs scrawled in the man’s patient file. How many hours of the day did he spend washing his hands?

The few times Vidor had seen him, scurrying from the chalet to the main building, he wore a surgical mask, and hopped along the slate path in an awkward gait to avoid touching any patches of grass. His meals, brought to his room on a tray by an attendant, were wrapped in plastic, having been nuked into oblivion, Vidor surmised, in a microwave. Before stepping away from the door, Vidor coughed twice. Mean and petty to be sure, but his first meeting with Gessen, and the shock of learning that quitting this place had consequences, had put him in a sour mood.