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“What they’re for doesn’t concern you. But you don’t really think you stopped anything with your stunt at the chapel, do you?”

“I kind of hoped.”

“Where are they?”

“I forget.”

Wells fiddles with his tie.

“That pixie you travel with. What’s her name this week? Candy? Chihiro? Whore of Babylon? She’s still alive, back where you abandoned her. But that can change at a moment’s notice. It’s nothing at all to send some men to hunt her down like the monster she is.”

One bit of good news, then. Candy is alive. Wells wouldn’t lie about something like that. It would be a sin.

“Your artifacts were shot to pieces by your idiots at the chapel.”

“The scroll too?”

“That I burned.”

He blinks once.

“Is that true?”

“Once I figured out it was a kill list I burned it to keep anyone else from using it.”

“Oh, James,” he says. “What have you done?”

I look at the concern on his face.

“It’s not just a list, is it? There’s something else on the scroll.”

Wells shakes it off.

“A few sacred rituals. Sigils. Invocations. Don’t concern yourself. The scroll is nothing that can’t be replaced,” he says.

I can’t see his eyes, but the microtremors around his mouth tell me that he’s lying when he says not to be concerned. I fucked up something big. He’ll never outright let on what it was, though, so I’m going to have to keep my eyes open.

r /> “What you did at the chapel was a setback and so is this. But delayed is not destroyed. We will prevail. I’d say that with luck you’ll live to see it, but I don’t believe that’s in the cards for you.”

I want to say something, but he’s got me there. And I don’t have time for these games. Without knowing how much longer the energy drink will last, I need every second to find Candy and keep looking for a cure.

Wells starts away from me.

He says, “It’s been delightful catching up, Stark. Maybe we’ll have time to do it again before your demise. Take him to his special accommodations.”

The three masked gunmen perp-walk me to a room across the big facility the Vigil uses for its headquarters. I glance back at Marcella, who trails behind Wells.

My accommodations are a room with a row of three cells. A sleeping man occupies the one closest to the door. The cabbie is my guess. There’s a curtained cell at the end of the block. It’s weirdly bright down there.

I understand why the moment I see the cell. The Vigil pricks take my weapons, put them in a plastic evidence bag, and shove me in the cell.

“Can I have my tape, please? I’m bleeding other places too.”

One of the goons takes the tape from the bag and throws it into the cell.

“Bless you, my son.”

The cell is completely surrounded by lights. There isn’t a single shadow anywhere. If I was as strong as I should be, I might be able to break the cell lock and smash some lights. Create enough shadows to get out before they could stop me. But right now, I’d lose at arm wrestling to a butterfly. I’m not breaking out of anything.