“I take notes on everybody who gets poisoned or bit. It doesn’t happen too often down here, ’cause most everybody knows the rules about surviving. But once in a while a gas mask slips, or somebody gets surprised and loses a finger, and then a hand. And then, yes, I watch ’em.”

She took the lantern off its hook but left it bright, and set it down on a cabinet across the room. The swish of her dress was loud in his ears, and the sway of her apron clinked as the tools in her pockets chimed together.

“Did you think I was gonna die?”

“I thought you might,” she confessed. “Aside from you taking that tumble, you spent a few days waking up from the sap, and that’s no easy thing. Either one could’ve killed you, if you’d been weaker or smaller, or maybe less lucky.”

“I’ve always been lucky.”

“Same as you’ve always been careful, I’m sure. But I do want to be clear…” she told him as she began riffling through one of the drawers.

“About what?” he asked, no longer caring much. She’d already told him he’d live. From pure muscle memory, he reached his feet over the edge of the bed before remembering that his boots weren’t right there. He’d kicked them off before turning in the night before. One had slid underneath the mattress, and one was immediately to his right.

“You pick up the sap again, and it won’t be too much longer. There’s a point with every user, with every victim … and beyond that point, there’s no saving them. Nothing at all to be done except put a bullet in their head so they can’t hurt anyone else.”

She said it so casually that it made him shiver, but he hid it. He pretended to adjust his jacket, and fished around with his feet to retrieve his shoes. “I don’t plan to use it anymore.”

“Oh?” She looked over her shoulder, and fixed him to the wall with one pointed eyebrow. “You don’t plan to? I’m sure you haven’t even been thinking about it, all this time, this whole week you’ve been here. I’m sure you haven’t been imagining how good it feels, and now nice it tastes—or how bad it tastes, I don’t know—and I’m sure there’s no reason at all you’d go looking for it the moment your friends turn their backs.”

“No, no, and no. To all of that.”

“Stay away from it, Rector Sherman. Don’t make me put you down like a dog.” She approached his bed again, but did not sit. She merely loomed. “Because I’ll do it.”