They detained him in the projection room. Through the window onto the sanctuary, the images of Die Große Liebe flickered across the screen draped in front of the altar. The Nazi and his singer embracing. The Nazi heading off to drop bombs on London. The singer tearfully but patriotically being one with the Völkisch, surrounded by other sturdy Aryan women who kept the Nazi war machinery churning. The Nazi and the singer reuniting once more as the Third Reich celebrated victory.

“We just want a brief look around,” the officer assured him. “We won’t interfere with your work.”

His work. They thought he was the projectionist, just a village boy earning a wage until he was old enough to join their ranks. Liam kept to one-word answers as the officer questioned him about comings and goings, about Helene’s patriotism, about whether he’d ever been to Siegen. He did his best to look distracted, occasionally ignoring them completely to rack and queue up the next film reel the way Helene had showed him, then drop the completed reel onto the heap of tangled-up footage at his feet.

“It is good work you are doing here,” the officer said. “Keeping morale high.”

Liam had plenty of things to say to that, but only nodded in response. Better they thought him simple, unable to offer more than a few words in reply.

“It is easy to become complacent out here,” the officer said, “away from Berlin. To allow unsavory elements to fester. To forget why we fight.” He gestured toward the sanctuary and his soldiers below. “But it is this. The heartland, the good hardworking Germans like you and my men, that we are fighting for. Don’t you agree?”

Liam hummed. He kept himself at the right frequency to hover on the edge of the shadow world, enough that he could draw on the energy in a trickle, but not a flood. He didn’t dare press any deeper. The longer he held on to it, the deeper he drew from it, then the more likely he’d attract the monsters again.

They had known him, in Siegen. They’d been waiting for him to dip too deeply into their world, to become greedy and overeager. He’d opened a rift too wide, and they’d seen their chance.

They’d known him. Everything he’d done. And they would punish him for taking from their world.

Perhaps he deserved to be punished.

Another soldier entered the room, clicked his heels in salute, and reported in hushed tones. The officer bobbed his head, a smile crossing his slimy lips. “Excellent. Bring him to me.”

Liam’s pulse ratcheted up. He adjusted the film ratio with ice flooding his veins.

“Now, you were telling me, friend . . . that you had never been to Siegen?” He spoke the words in English, clipped as neatly as his nails. “I’m afraid we both know that’s not true.”