Seven days. Seven days of watching the watchers, learning their patterns, memorizing their blind spots.

  The week passes like water draining from a wound—slow, painful, necessary. Around two in the morning, the overnight shift gets sloppy. During shift changes at ten and six, there's a five-minute window when coverage overlaps imperfectly. And on Thursdays—mass night, when Mercer walks to Saint-Sulpice and back—the route through Montmartre has a stretch of narrow streets where the watchers lose sight lines.

  Thursday becomes the answer.

  "The alley off Rue Lepic," Mei says, spreading her map across my desk. "He passes it every week on his way down from Saint-Pierre de Montmartre. Gas lamps don't reach there. The buildings block the view from both directions. If we time it right, he'll be alone for almost two minutes."

  "Two minutes isn't much."

  "Two minutes is forever in a kill. You've done faster."

  I think about Garrett on the cliff path. About Webb in his office. About Cross in her parlor, surrounded by the fine things that children's blood had bought her. Mei's right—two minutes is more than I need.

  "The watchers?"

  "I'll handle them." Her voice goes flat in that way it does when she's planning violence. "Not permanently—that would draw attention. But a distraction. Something to pull them away from the route at the right moment."

  "What kind of distraction?"

  "The kind you don't need to know about." She meets my eyes. "Trust me, Eleanor. I've been doing this for twenty-two years. I know how to make people look the wrong way."

  I do trust her. That's what frightens me. Seven months ago, I didn't trust anyone. Now there's Mei, and somewhere in southern France, a woman named Corrine Vane who might be asking the same questions I am. Trust feels dangerous. Like something that could be used against me.

  But I can't do this alone. That's the truth I've been avoiding since Dover—the ritual didn't just mark me, it connected me. To the Deep One, yes, but also to the web of human connections I'll need to tear down. No one hunts alone, not really. The question is whether your allies help you or destroy you.

  "Thursday," I say. "We end this Thursday."

  Thursday night is cold, the kind of cold that seeps through clothing and settles into bone.

  I've been waiting in the alley for two hours, pressed into a doorway where the shadows pool deepest. Cobblestones beneath my feet are slick with evening rain. Gas lamps on the main street don't reach this far—just shadow and the distant sounds of the city settling into sleep. Somewhere above me, the ancient spire of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre rises against the night sky, dark stone against darker clouds.

  A beacon for what, I wonder. The congregation believes the Deep One is a god. Maybe all gods are the same in the end—vast, cold, utterly indifferent to the small bright things that worship them.

  My breath fogs in the air. I focus on controlling it—slow, shallow, invisible. The marks burn below my heart, responding to the cold, to the moisture in the air, to the anticipation building in my chest. They know what's coming. They're eager for it.

  I try not to think about what that means. About how much of my hunger is my own and how much belongs to the thing that lives beneath the waves.

  At eleven-forty-three, I hear footsteps.

  Slow, measured, the unhurried rhythm of a man lost in thought. Mercer walks this same route every Thursday—up the hill to Saint-Pierre de Montmartre for evening prayers, around the old church, back down through the narrow streets that wind through Montmartre like veins through flesh. A man of habits. A man of routines. A man who believes his patterns make him safe.

  He's wrong.

  He passes the mouth of the alley without noticing me. Why would he? He's looking for surveillance, for watchers, for the professional threats the congregation taught him to fear. Not for a shadow pressed against cold stone. Not for a blade waiting in the dark. Not for the girl he pushed toward drowning seven months ago.

  I step out behind him.

  "Professor Mercer."

  He spins. Recognition floods his face—then confusion, then the beginning of fear. His eyes dart to the shadows, searching for Henri, for backup, for anyone who might save him from the sudden impossible presence of a student he thought he'd dismissed days ago.

  There's no one. Mei's distraction worked.

  "Miss Wells?" His voice wavers. "What are you—how did you—"

  "My name isn't Wells." I let him see the blade. Let the moonlight catch on the edge, sharp and certain. "And you know why I'm here."

  "I don't understand. The salon—you seemed interested in the work—"

  "I was interested in getting you alone."

  I advance slowly, herding him deeper into the alley. His back presses against the damp stone wall, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The kind eyes that comforted so many children before their deaths are wide with terror now. The gentle hands that pressed cups of drugged water into trembling fingers are raised in desperate supplication.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  "We've met before, Professor. Seven months ago, in a cellar in Dover. You gave me a cup of water. You told me it would help me sleep."

  His face goes white.

  The kindly scholar mask doesn't just slip—it shatters. What's beneath is worse than I expected. Not cruelty, not malice, but something emptier. The cold pragmatism of a man who's spent thirty years justifying the unjustifiable. Who's built an elaborate structure of self-deception so complete that he genuinely doesn't understand why this is happening.

  "You." The word comes out as a whisper. "You're the one who—but that's impossible. The ritual was complete. The offering was accepted. Father Marsh himself confirmed—"

  "Father Marsh was wrong about a lot of things." I close the distance between us. "I looked into your god, Mercer. I saw what it was. And it gave me a gift—the faces of everyone who helped kill me. Eighteen names. You're number five."

  "Please." He's pressed flat against the wall, hands raised, tears streaming. The posture of a man who's never had to beg. "I never hurt anyone. I only prepared them—made the transition easier—I was doing science. Pure research. The theological aspects were..." He swallows. "I didn't believe any of it. I just wanted to understand the mechanism. The biology of the connection."

  Not faith, not duty—curiosity. He tortured children because he wanted to know how. Somehow, that's worse. My blade finds his throat before he can finish the lie.

  "You made them trust you."

  The words come out flat, cold, stripped of all the rage I thought I'd feel. Standing here in the dark with my blade inches from his heart, I expected fury. Expected the hot satisfaction of confronting a monster. Instead there's just this—emptiness. The absence where my mercy used to live, cold and quiet and waiting.

  "Right before the worst moment of their lives, you were the last kind face they saw. You gave them water and told them lies and held their hands while they walked to their deaths. You made them feel safe."

  "The ritual requires—"

  "I don't care what the ritual requires." I find the space beneath his ribs, the gap between the bones. The angle Mei drilled into me until it became reflex. "I care about the children who died believing your lies. I care about the trust you used as a weapon."

  "You don't understand." He's sobbing now, all dignity stripped away. "The congregation—they would have—"

  "Killed you. Yes." I don't let him finish. "The same thing they did to children."

  "That's not comfort. That's cruelty with a gentle face."

  "The Deep One requires sacrifice! Someone has to prepare them! If not me, then someone worse—someone who wouldn't care about their fear, their suffering—"

  "So you convinced yourself you were helping." I understand now. I understand exactly how he's lived with himself for thirty years. "You told yourself the children were going to die anyway, so at least you could make it gentle. At least you could be kind."

  "Yes." Hope flickers in his eyes—hope that I understand, that I'll show him the same mercy he believed he showed others. "Yes, exactly. I was trying to help. I never wanted anyone to suffer."

  "You held my shoulders as they pushed me under. You smiled. You said 'drink this, child, it will help you sleep.'" I hold his gaze. "And then you watched them carve marks into my flesh and shove me into black water to drown."

  The hope dies.

  "The congregation will find you," he whispers. "They'll hunt you to the ends of the earth. You can't kill all of us—there are too many—the work will continue—"

  "Let them try."

  I push the blade in.

  It goes in easier than I expected.

  The first kill was hard—my hands shook, my aim wavered, the man had time to scream before I found my resolve. The second was easier. The third, easier still. Now the blade slides in smooth as breathing, like it was always meant to be there, like my body was built for this single purpose.

  Hot blood wells around my fingers, soaking through my gloves, dripping onto the cobblestones below. Mercer makes a sound—not a scream, something softer. Surprised. Like he can't quite believe this is happening to him, that consequences have finally found him after all these years of gentle murder.

  I hold his gaze as the light fades from his eyes.

  "I was kind once," I tell him. "You helped take that from me."

  His mouth opens. Closes. He's trying to say something—a plea, maybe, or a curse, or a final desperate bargain with a god that never cared whether he lived or died. But there's no air in his lungs anymore, no strength in his muscles, no time left.

  "My name is Eleanor Winchester." I twist the blade. Feel the resistance give way. "Take that with you."

  The light goes out of his eyes.

  I stand over the body for a long time.

  This alley is quiet. City sounds seem distant, muffled, as if Paris itself is holding its breath. The marks thrum their oceanic rhythm inside my torso, and I can feel the Deep One's attention like a weight at the edge of my awareness—not quite watching, but listening. Waiting to see what I'll do next.

  I wait for something to fill the cold inside me, but nothing comes.

  Mercer lies cooling on the cobblestones, his kind eyes staring at nothing, his gentle hands slack at his sides. In death, he looks smaller than he did in life. Just an old man in rumpled clothes with blood pooling beneath him in a dark mirror of the sky. The monster who smiled while children drowned, reduced to cooling meat.

  I thought this would feel like justice. Like balance. Like striking back at the thing that destroyed me.

  Instead it feels like arithmetic. One subtracted from fourteen. A number on a list, crossed off in blood.

  Mei appears at the mouth of the alley, silent as smoke.

  "It's done?"

  "It's done."

  She doesn't ask if I'm alright. She knows better. Instead she moves past me, checking the body, making sure there's nothing that could identify us. Professional and efficient—the routine of someone who's done this a hundred times.

  "We need to move. The watchers won't be distracted forever."

  I clean the blade on Mercer's coat. The blood steams in the cold air, then stops.

  "Mei."

  She pauses.

  "He really believed he was helping them. The children. He thought he was showing mercy."

  "They always do." Her voice is flat. "That's what makes them dangerous. A monster who knows he's a monster can be reasoned with, bargained with. But a monster who thinks he's a saint? He'll keep killing until someone stops him."

  "I stopped him."

  "You did." She meets my eyes. "How does it feel?"

  Her question hangs in the cold air. My mind goes to Thomas Garrett, confused and begging. To Webb and Cross and the others. To the chasm that doesn't fill, no matter how much blood I pour into it.

  "Empty," I say. "It feels empty."

  Mei nods slowly. Something that might be sympathy crosses her face—or maybe just recognition. The expression of someone who's been where I am and found no answers.

  "That doesn't change. The kills don't fill it." She turns toward the alley mouth, toward the dark streets that will carry us to safety. "But every dead cultist is one less monster hurting children. That has to be enough."

  Does it? Is that enough? I don't know—I'm not sure I'll ever know.

  But thirteen names remain, and the hunt continues, and somewhere in the deep, the Deep One watches with its infinite patience.

  Let's see what you do, it seems to say.

  I follow Mei into the Paris night.

  Behind us, in a shadow we didn't check, a figure watches us go. He doesn't follow—not yet. He simply notes our direction, our pace, the way we move through the night like people who have something to hide.

  Then he slips away to send a message. The congregation knows we're here, and now they know which way we're running.