“Well, that was no accident,” Finn said. “At some point in the past, she spotted one of your ancestors and decided those were genes she could work with. Breeders tend to stick with a particular bloodline until it hits a dead end.”

I was that dead end. And for the first time in nearly two years, I was able to view my sterilization with something other than total despair and blistering fury. My inability to breed now felt like a huge middle finger flipped at my mother and her demonic machinations.

“They don’t seem to care about gender either,” Finn continued, stirring the second can of stew as I slowly finished my first helping. “In fact, I don’t think demons themselves actually have genders, so if you’d been born a boy, your mom would have been looking for the perfect face/uterus combo to implant with the next generation of her—his—demon seed.”

Suddenly my stew lost all flavor.

“They usually space the kids pretty close together so that the older rarely figures out what’s going on before the younger is ready to harvest.” Finn shrugged and dumped the second can of stew into the pot. “It’s always safest to harvest one at the same time you sell the other.”

“Harvest?” I set my bowl down and wrapped the blanket tighter around my shoulders, but the chill seemed to be coming from inside me, at the thought that there were more kids out there like me and Mellie—born and bred to host the Unclean. “How common is it?”

Finn shrugged. “More common today than it was yesterday, and it’ll be more common tomorrow than it is today.”

We are everywhere. Seen but unseen. Known but unknown. My mother’s words rang in my head, and suddenly they made sense.

The Unclean were hiding in plain sight, among us. Breeding their own hosts. Existing right under the Church’s nose.

“How many breeders are there?” My voice sounded hollow. Empty. “Are we talking dozens?” Or hundreds? Thousands?

“Who knows?” he said.

We outnumber the grains of sand on the beach, the drops of water in the ocean, my mother had said. But had she meant demons in general, or breeders specifically?

“How do you and your friends fit in?”

“Carey and Grayson were bred for hosting. That’s how I know about breeders.”

I pushed my empty bowl toward him with the toe of my sneaker. “So, what, you and your friends go around rescuing ill-fated children from their demon breeder parents?”

“Um, no.” He stirred the stew one more time, then turned off the gas and lifted the pot from the burner. “As noble an enterprise as that would be, it’s impractical.”

“Because otherwise, running from the police and hiding out in abandoned warehouses is the height of practicality?”

“Of course not. Which is why we can’t keep adding to our ranks. Beyond the obvious numbers issue, most of us are exorcists and all of us are wanted by the police. We wouldn’t be doing your average orphaned breeder kid any favors by letting him tag along.”