“What happened?” she said, her tongue stiff, her mouth tasting of ashes.

“You…you fainted,” said Blackwood.

She saw the mustached Mexican tattoo artist, Joachim, his shirt torn, holding a wrinkled old Hollow One, its mouth-face open and groaning.

Then she remembered: Earl Solomon. She reached out to Blackwood’s shoulder, gripping the fabric of his jacket.

“Solomon,” she said.

Blackwood helped her back through the catacomb to the smaller chamber. There lay Solomon, the bulbous wooden handle of the awl sticking out of the back of his head.

Odessa covered her mouth, stricken by horror at what she’d done. Blackwood dropped to one knee near Solomon, looking over his body, curled on its side.

Blackwood said, “Look away a moment. Please.”

She did, and he removed the awl blade, tossing it aside. He straightened Solomon’s body, fixing the hospital gown neatly, setting his arms straight down at his sides—just as he had once done with Vernon Jamus in another slave graveyard.

Odessa had turned back, tears running down her face now.

Blackwood opened his kit. “I am going to commend his soul to peace,” he said.

He performed a sort of funeral rite, cleansing and releasing Solomon to the ages. Odessa paid little attention to his ministrations, weeping through it. At the end, Blackwood staggered to his feet, exhausted.

Odessa caught him, helped steady him. Blackwood nodded, returning his implements to his kit, and the kit to his jacket pocket.

Odessa could not believe it had come to this. But as she stood there mourning the death of the man whose body she had killed, she remembered watching the Hollow-as-Solomon twitch and die.

The emanation. Something had floated out of him, just like the thing she’d seen rise out of Walt Leppo when he died.

“Wait,” she said, looking around. “How did I get from here into the crypt?”

Blackwood did not answer her. Something wasn’t right.

Joachim entered the chamber, the Hollow One firmly in his grip. He paused near them, looking down at the body of Earl Solomon.

“I need to get this one up to Providence before something else goes wrong,” he said. “He can join the other three. You did it, Hugo.”

Blackwood nodded without joy. “Your timing was impeccable.”

“Well, it was a long ride down from Providence. Nice work to you, too, Agent Hardwicke.”

“Oh, I didn’t…” Odessa started to say, but never finished the thought. As Joachim walked away with the Hollow, she thought she saw, before he disappeared into the shadows, folded against his broad back, a pair of beautifully inked angel wings.

Odessa returned to the crypt, trying to remember how she’d gotten there. She looked down at the centuries-old grave site. Blackwood entered behind her.

“This port island was one of the colonies’ largest slaveholding communities in the early eighteenth century,” said Blackwood. “African and Caribbean slaves constituted one-quarter of the workforce in New York.”

“Unbelievable,” said Odessa.