“The bulbs mimic sunlight and reduce the effect of not getting outside. It’s no replacement, but it’s better than regular bulbs.”

“Then why are we here?”

Elma shrugged. “We do not know. But it is clear our captors mean us no harm.”

“Yet…” Fiona added.

Elma grimaced and then nodded. “Yes. Yet. We are supplied with games, water, reading material, and medical supplies should the need arise.”

With her emotions reined in by the conversation and her body returning to normal, Fiona stepped away and stood on her own. “Who brings the supplies? The food?”

“We do not see who brings the food,” said a tall, skinny black man. “They come when it is dark. At night. When they shut off the lights. We cannot see them. But we hear them.”

“Buru,” Elma scolded. “Don’t frighten the girl.”

“She will be less frightened if she knows what to expect.” He turned to Fiona. “Who do you think deposited you here during the night? None of us saw you arrive. We woke, and there you were.”

Elma muttered some exasperated Italian and said, “She has only just arrived!”

When Elma threw her arms up, a black symbol could be seen on the back of her hand. It was small, about the size of a quarter, but Fiona recognized it instantly. She stepped away from Elma.

Elma’s hands stopped in midair. She’d noticed Fiona’s fear and followed the girl’s eyes to the symbol on her hand—a circle with two vertical lines through it. “What is it, child?”

Fiona just stared, her mind putting together pieces faster than she knew how to react.

“It’s a brand of a sort,” Elma said, lowering her hand and holding it out.

Buru showed her his hand. Though less visible on his dark skin, the symbol was there. “All of us have one.” He pointed to her right hand. “Even you.”

Fiona looked at her hand, the dark symbol fresh and shining like a cancer. She tried rubbing it off, but it did not smudge or dull. Tattoos, she thought, and then realized their purpose. She had helped her grandmother tag goats on the reservation once. Hated every second. But the experience was etched into her mind, impossible to forget. The tags showed ownership. And she was the only one here who knew the name of their shepherd.

Alexander Diotrephes.

And the knowledge gave her strength.

Rubbing the tattoo with her thumb, she turned to Buru. “They only enter in the dark?”

He nodded, perplexed that the little girl would return to the topic. “There is a dim light from the hallway beyond the door, but that is all.”

“Have you seen one?”

Buru looked at Elma, who threw her hands up, and walked away while shaking her head and muttering in Italian.

“Only shadows,” Buru said. “But others have seen them.”

“Dark cloaks and gray skin?”

Elma stopped and turned around slowly. Her eyes wide.

Buru was likewise stunned. “You know of these things?”

Fiona sifted through a year’s worth of Chess Team education she got on top of her regular school studies. “My father called them wraiths but that’s a misnomer because ‘wraith’ is a Scottish word for ghosts … and these are not Scottish. And they’re not ghosts.”