“They are elemental beings,” said Blackwood, as though that should have been obvious. “They cannot be destroyed. Only caged. The closer they are to each other, the calmer they stay. They sense each other…they sense you…”

She saw one of the Hollow Ones squeal with its face-wide mouth and felt sick to her stomach. “This is one hundred percent, completely insane.”

Blackwood said, “We have to focus on why here, and why now? Who might have unleashed the fourth, or harnessed its energy in some way? What is their goal?”

She was still catching up mentally. “I saw nothing like these things leaving Walt Leppo’s body. It was waves of heat, almost. I smelled—”

“Burnt solder. I know. I’ve smelled it. As I said, these are their visible forms. Similar to water expressed in solid, liquid, or gaseous state. There is only one way to tell if a person is inhabited by a Hollow One. Their telltale mark is a sigil on the base of the neck, just inside the hairline. It is a raised-vein mark in the shape of a compass. It goes without saying that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to examine the hairline of someone possessed by a rampaging larva.”

“That goes without saying,” she muttered. She touched her temples, her go-to move now. Why did she get into that Rolls-Royce?

“My guess,” said Blackwood, in a manner that made clear it was not a guess at all, “is that a misguided ceremony attracted the fourth one. Palo most likely—in the last few years there has been a streak of grave robberies in New Jersey, widely documented in the news.”

“Is there any way we can go back to before I walked in here and just…forget the whole thing?”

Blackwood looked at her as though uncertain if she was serious or not. “You wanted answers. You wanted to know what happened to the agent you shot dead. Why he would attack that girl suddenly.” Blackwood stepped in front of her, making sure he had her full attention.

“It wanted you to shoot. It wanted to be killed—to be blasted out of that body. And it wanted you to do it…”

“Why me?” said Odessa.

“Through no fault of your own. It probably sensed your affection for that man,” said Blackwood. “His—and your—suffering would have added an extra flavor to the thrill.”

She realized that, in his own strange way, he was trying to absolve her of shooting Walt Leppo. But every answer begat another question. “Then why didn’t one of these mouthy monster things…I don’t know, jump into me?”

“I think it would’ve. Perhaps a moment of hesitation was sufficient for others to enter the room. Also, as pleasurable as the sensation of being thrown is, I think it loses its jolt if it is performed too many times in succession.”