She stopped shaking, and she felt empty like a shell. She looked at Jacob and Luria. Luria was watching intently, like a man at the best scene in a play, and Jacob looked like he was dreaming. Feelings came back to her, but this time there was no excitement or elation. Nothing like she’d felt in the mikveh or any other time. She felt rage that was so cold and deadly she could barely breathe. They said she needed passion. She had it. But it had nothing to do with Michael and his roses and children. He was vague, silly, weak. The passion belonged to Lilith and Rachel could see her, wrapped in her snake and staring out of the page of that book with blank, slanted eyes. Rachel knew she could tear those two at the door apart with her bare hands and she wanted to do it.

Then Hawkins groaned and the thing came for him. Rachel ran to him and stood in front of him so it would have to kill her first.

Levy yelled something in Hebrew. Held out his hand to her to come to him where she’d be safe and she knew that if she took that hand they’d lock the monster up when it finished with Hawkins and Garfield and they’d go home together. She’d get Leah, marry Allan, and have a son and be a grandmother. Levy would be a great-­grandfather and die in his sleep in his nineties.

She was lost for a second, and then Adam’s voice came to her: Think, Rachel. You know what to do, you know everything.

What did she know?

The golem was close enough for her to see letters scratched on its forehead. She knew that the ritual was useless, and the word didn’t matter. Levy moved the monster. Rabbi Loew he didn’t know, but Rachel knew; the golem was the rabbi—the golem was Levy.

She turned her back on it and knelt in front of Hawkins. He was alive, almost unconscious; she opened his jacket and grabbed the strap of the holster. The snap was hard and she pulled at it. She looked up, the shadow of the monster was touching her shadow on the wall. She tore at the strap until her nails ripped away from their beds. It came free and she pulled the gun, and, still on her knees, she turned to Levy. His face was twisted with grief, as if he was already mourning her death. That was the last thing she knew. Levy would kill her for the tribe.