Sarah watched the monitor. Faintly, she heard the buzzing as Ward struggled to get some attention. He was more awake now than he’d been since the surgery five days ago. She thought, He’s healing. She could not help but feel a little professional pride. She’d brought a man back who should be dead.

The music stopped. Miriam got up. She turned and came toward them, the butterfly robe billowing behind her, a cigarette fuming between her narrow lips, her eyes flashing. “Where the hell were you?” she snarled.

“Me?”

Miriam’s eyes met Sarah’s. “The remnant’s exposed,” Sarah said. “My fleam was left in the neck.”

Miriam went up to Leo. Long fingers grabbed her throat. “This is how you repay me?”

Leo pulled away from her. “I threw the guy in the fucking East River. He’s gone.”

“A body is never gone unless it’s burned,” Miriam shouted.

Once or twice, she’d alluded to the fact that she had done away with human companions who hadn’t worked out. Sarah thought for a moment that she was going to finish Leo right now, right here on the marble floor of the foyer.

But then Miriam threw back her head and laughed. It was strange laughter, almost silent. “Come with me,” she told Leo.

“Come where?”

Miriam grabbed her wrist and dragged her off up the stairs. Sarah got up to follow. Miriam stopped her. “My husband is calling,” she said. “Can’t you hear him?”

Paul heard a sound beyond the room’s closed door. He’d punched the call button about fifty times. He shifted in the bed. “Nurse,” he said. The single word ran him out of breath, and he sank back against his pillow sucking oxygen.

When Sarah Roberts’s face came into his view, he was so surprised that he delivered a croaking “Oh, shit!”

She was a vision of absolute beauty, her eyes glittering like coals. He tried to lift his arms, to strike out at her, but something stopped him.

He was cuffed to the bed. “Christ!”

“You’re healing,” Sarah said.

He inventoried his situation. Both wrists were cuffed to a length of chain fastened to the bed, along with both ankles. He had about two feet of travel, which was why he hadn’t noticed until he began trying to move.

“Where the hell am I?”

“In my infirmary.” She came over to him. He got ready to grab for her. “I’m a doctor, you know.”

“Yeah, that’s believable.”

“You’ve survived a lung wound from a three-fifty-seven with an exploding tip. I think it oughta be damn believable.”

“You kill people for food. How can you be a doctor?”

Sarah came closer to him. “I need to examine the wound,” she said. Her tone, which had been carefully neutral, now seemed sullen—or no, sad. It seemed sad.