That threw her into disarray: who could know such things? Lucy looked over at an almost attractive man, perhaps forty years of age and a little overweight, with graying curly hair, who appeared to be of about medium stature. He was seated at a plain farmhouse table with a partly played chess game in front of him. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—speak, and forced herself into a mood of apparent calm, electing to leave questions about her arrival at this forlorn location unasked. Her eyes darted around the room, and returned to his face. He was amused, perhaps—or even quietly impressed—by her controlled silence. He soon broke the stalemate.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Mephistopheles, if you could step outside and make a call to our senior colleague, I think he’d like to hear from us. And now”—he half spoke to Lucy—“we wait.” He sounded completely uninterested and picked up his book again, while the physical bulk of the unattractively named man who’d stolen her in Chartres disappeared through the front door. She thought grimly, and without humor, that she was indeed in some kind of hellish place.

After an hour Lucy still hadn’t opened her mouth, but she began to feel she might not be in immediate danger. She moved her head about to search for a meaning in the murkiness. She was feeling more chilled, the fire inadequate in the drafty area; but she let them know nothing about her. The driver—a tall man with gray eyes—was now addressed by the seated man in fluent French; he moved into a very unrenovated kitchen area, out of Lucy’s clear line of sight, and then came over to her with some water. She resisted a fatuous show of scorn and took it, still without a word, but wouldn’t drink.

A cell phone rang. The man at the table picked up without haste.

“Um-hm?” He listened for a very long time before he spoke again. “Put him on the phone.”

Lucy noticed now for the first time that he was an American with a mild Southern accent—but not at all warm, like Dr. Angelica’s.

“We have the girl.” His tone was light and playful, and he reminded Lucy of a cat toying with an injured bird it has a distaste of actually eating. “I believe we have the means to the lock.” He gestured at the man who had taken Lucy from the porch of the cathedral, who moved silently from a chair in the darkest part of the room. He came toward her and pulled at a chain around her neck—the slim gold chain Alex had given her for her birthday a few weeks earlier. The little key came free with it, and her skin felt pinched and bruised. She felt defiled, and stared at the yellow eyes of the well-named devil before her.