“Keep after her, Leo,” Miriam barked.

This blow came down right on top of the cranium—not well placed, but there was plenty of travel in it and the woman went down like a bag of lard. Her forehead hit the granite tile floor with a jarring crack.

“Now,” Miriam said, “Sarah will prepare her with a little bleeding knife, won’t you, Sarah? Get your kit to show Leo.”

Sarah looked at the body, the slow rise and fall of the chest, the strange repose on the face.

“It’s in my office,” she said.

“Then get it. But be quick.”

She went up to the bedroom, through it, and up the narrow stairs to the tiny space that was her own. Its window looked out on a wall, but it had a lovely skylight. On fine days, she would sometimes lean back in her chair and let her thoughts wander in the sky that unfolded overhead.

Her desk was stacked with papers, and a frame from a statistical analysis program she’d been using glowed on her computer screen. She had been analyzing the effect of a new plasma solution made from Miriam’s blood on the decayed cells of her former lovers’ bodies. So far, the results were ambiguous at best.

She knew she shouldn’t, but she sat down. Her hunger was calling to her, screaming to her. But she still sat down; she still looked at her figures, thought a little about the deliverance she was working on.

A life was about to be wasted, and this was comfort, because somewhere in these statistics and the cellular structures they reflected, there was a way to eject Miriam’s blood from your body . . . maybe even a way to rescue those who had faltered while it still flowed in their veins. Faltered, but not died . . .

She clicked her mouse a few times, and a photo appeared on the screen of somebody who had most certainly died. This picture had been strictly forbidden by Miriam, not allowed anywhere in the house.

She gazed into it, into the smiling face of her beloved Tom. She and Tom Haver had discovered Miriam together. It had been a heady time for them at Riverside Hospital, uncovering together the fact that this was a new species of intelligent creature, sharing the earth with mankind.

In the picture, Tom was smiling. It had been their last carefree moment together. In fact, the last carefree moment of Sarah Roberts’s life.

Behind him was the South Street Seaport Maritime Museum, in the days before all the new restaurants and attractions. They’d just come down off one of the old sailing ships. It had been a sunny autumn afternoon. He was wearing a windbreaker.