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“My great-grandfather’s dream didn’t last very long,” Nick says. “His first task was to find a way to protect the residents in case the Spanish flu ever flared up again. But things went very wrong, very quickly. Some of the same people he was trying to protect got sick. Some even died.”
He doesn’t mention the dead servants. He doesn’t need to. I know what they were.
Test subjects.
The unwilling participants in a mad doctor’s experiment. Infect the poor to heal the rich. Clearly, it didn’t go as planned.
“When it looked like the police might get involved, my great-grandfather felt he had no choice but to end the investigation before it could even begin,” Nick says. “He took his life. But an ouroboros never dies. It’s simply reborn. So when my grandfather left medical school, he chose to continue his father’s work. He was more careful, of course. More discreet. He shifted the focus away from virology to prolonging life. With wealth comes power. Power earns you importance. And the truly important people in the world deserve to live longer lives than those who are beneath them. That’s especially true as we face another epidemic.”
Telling his tale has left Nick energized. Beads of moisture shine along his hairline. Behind his glasses, his eyes gleam. No longer content to sit, he gets up and starts moving about the room, passing the Monet and the open door and then coming back again.
“Right now, at this very moment, hundreds of thousands of people wait for organ transplants,” he says. “Some of them are important people. Very important. Yet they’re told to just get in line and wait their turn. But some people can’t wait. Eight thousand people a year die waiting for a life-saving organ. Think about that, Jules. Eight thousand people. And that’s just in America alone. What I do—what my family has always done—is provide options for those who are too important to wait like everyone else. For a fee, we allow them to skip that line.”
What he doesn’t say is that letting so-called important people move to the front of the line requires an equal number of unimportant people.
Like Dylan.
Like Erica and Megan.
Like me.
All it takes to get us here is one small ad. Apartment sitter needed. Pays well. Call Leslie Evelyn.
After that, we simply disappear.
Creation from our destruction.
Life from our deaths.
That’sthe meaning behind the ouroboros.
Not immortality, but a desperate attempt to spend a few more years eluding the Grim Reaper’s inevitable grasp.
“Cornelia Swanson,” I say. “What was she?”
“A patient,” Nick says. “The first transplant attempt. It went... badly.”
So Ingrid and I had it all wrong. This isn’t about Marie Damyanov or the Golden Chalice or devil worship. There is no coven. It’s just a group of dying rich people desperate to save their lives no matter the cost. And Nick is here to facilitate it.
I roll onto my side, the pain shrieking through my body. It’s worth it if it means I no longer have to look at him. Still, I can’t resist asking a few more questions. For clarity’s sake.
“What else are you going to take?”
“Your liver.”
Nick says it with shocking indifference. Like he doesn’t even consider me a human being.
I wonder what he was thinking that night in his bedroom, when I let him kiss me, undress me, fuck me. Even in that moment, was he appraising me, taking stock of what my body offered, wondering how much money I would make him?
“Who’s going to get it?”
“Marianne Duncan,” he says. “She’s in need of one. Badly.”
“What else?”
“Your heart.” Nick pauses then. The only concession to my feelings. “That’s going to Charlie’s daughter. He’s earned it.”
I figured there had to be a reason people like Charlie willingly worked at the Bartholomew. Now I know. It’s a classic quid pro quo, exploited by the upper classes for ages. For doing their dirty work, the little folks will get something in return.