Miranda began to pace. “You’re asking me to live this ordeal again. I don’t know if I can. I can say yes, say it as many times as I like and even mean it, but when I’m in it, right in the middle of it, it might be too much. I might give up.”

“I understand,” said Patience. “I am not merely asking you to say yes at this moment. I am asking you to say it every day for the rest of your life.”

“That other undying one—I know he has to be stopped. He’s used up Julian. He’s too strong for Chance and Ajit. He’ll keep on until he gets what he wants. He’ll find some other human who wants to live forever and feed them warped promises.”

“That is what I fear,” Patience acknowledged.

“Then yes. Yes. Do it now, before I get accustomed to this body again, before I forget how to bear pain,” Miranda said.

Patience came to her quickly and embraced her, once more the comforting mother. “I will help you bear the pain. I can do that much.”

It was a hosting, not a possession, and Patience did what was necessary with the ease and courtesy of a familiar and welcome guest. The gift was accepted. Events began to unfold as anticipated.

Patience stepped out into sunlight. She breathed warm air tinged with the scent of the sea and tainted with the reek of too many automobile engines. A busy City intersection was the best place to watch humanity ignoring each other, closed in on themselves, trying not to be overwhelmed by too much proximity. She had only a little time. There was Miranda, shoulders braced high with tension, briefcase in hand, waiting to cross . . . and there was Chance, clearly visible to the unclouded mind, stretching out his hand to seize hold of her.

Patience began to run.

She passed close to them, brushed by Miranda’s shock, Chance’s confusion. There was only time for a quick, reassuring smile before they disappeared behind her and she continued on.

Already she could see Malveaux behind the windscreen of the looming omnibus, his eyes wide, looking not at her, not yet, but at something else in the road before him. Malveaux, alas, had long suffered the blessing and curse of an unclouded mind.

She moved, placing Miranda’s fragile body squarely in the path of the omnibus.

“It begins here,” she declared as she accepted the impact.

And Miranda will end it, she thought as silence fell.

BOOK III

METANOIA

CHAPTER TWENTY