After walking three blocks, we stood in front of that lovely Spanish Revival building in which I had spent most of my life. With four two-story wings encircling a courtyard playground, the school and orphanage occupied a third of a long block. In daylight, the plaster walls shone as white as the habits that the sisters wore, and the many planes of the roofs rolled away in rows of barrel tiles in countless shades of red and orange.
Now, at a few minutes past ten o’clock in the evening, the pitched roofs were black in the moonlight. The walls appeared to be pale gray in some places, vaguely blue in others. Mater Misericordi? stood mostly dark at that hour. Except for a few of the older kids who might be bent to their studies and stressed about upcoming exams, everyone who lived there went to bed at 10:00 p.m. They rose promptly at six in the morning if not earlier, and made their way through each day by long-established routines, which children shorn of their parents found essential and comforting. Light glowed in the belfries of the bell towers that bracketed the front wing, frosted four curtained windows on the second floor, and spilled softly from a pair of bronze lanterns onto the stoop at the front entrance.
Winston proceeded to the steps and climbed to the broad stoop, where he turned to look back at us.
For a moment, I saw myself and my three companions through the dog’s eyes. We stood on the sidewalk in the light from a streetlamp. This was not a highly trafficked avenue, especially at this hour. Behind us were the empty lanes of blacktop and a stillness of street trees in the warm air. Three-and four-story buildings on the far side of the block. Phoenix stepping steadily higher in tiers. The sounds of a vibrant metropolis were oddly subdued, and then they quieted away entirely. I heard nothing but the knocking of my heart and my suddenly quickening respiration, so that it seemed we were standing in a ghost city, the only people alive. A terrible foreboding overcame me.
I blinked away the dog’s view of us. When I looked at Bridget and Panthea, I saw that they were assailed by a vision more intense than my presentiment of oncoming evil.
Sparky Rainking’s mysterious career, prior to the day that Bridget had come into his care, had left him with the skills of a warrior but also honed his observational ability. Although he alone among us had no supernatural gifts, he understood that the three of us were in the grip of some shared dread. When he spoke, his voice broke the uncanny silence, bringing with it the sounds of the city, which was sweet music. “Hey, what’s wrong? What is it?”
Bridget shuddered and hugged herself. “I saw . . . a dead city.”
“I saw a dead world,” Panthea said. “No human life from pole to pole. I don’t know how or why or when, but it’s coming if . . .”
“It’s coming,” Bridget agreed, “if we and others like us don’t eradicate the Nihilim, every last one.”
In an expression of canine impatience, the dog danced in place.
We went to him, gathering on the stoop, where the light of the lanterns was round about us.
The sisters employed a live-in property manager, Hilda Detrich, who shared an office with her daytime assistant, Rosa Jones, to the left of the foyer. At this hour, Hilda would be in her apartment on the ground floor and would respond to the rare visitor in the night. We had no intention of ringing the bell and involving her in this.
Panthea put one hand to the solid oak door. The lock released, we followed Winston into the foyer, and Sparky quietly closed the door behind us. On a sideboard, a small lamp with a tasseled shade served as a night-light.
I went into Hilda’s office. Guided only by the ambient light of the streetlamps that penetrated the windows, I sat at Rosa’s desk, one of two workstations in that spacious room.
The Panasonic phone featured a lighted display at the top of the slanted box, and along the left side, a lighted registry listed seven phone lines and sixteen intercom locations. Sister Agnes Mary, who served as Mother Superior, was at the top of the intercom list. Not all the sisters could be summoned in their quarters, but the third on the list was Sister Theresa, the psychologist and counselor who’d taught me about ants, birds, and fish.
For many reasons, we didn’t want to rouse the entire orphanage to the threat at hand, not least of all because, in a general chaos, our suspect might have a chance to flee or harm a few children in one last act of vicious violence. We needed to contain her for the interrogation and manage whatever reaction she might have.
The intercom operated on speakerphone mode, so I didn’t need to lift the handset from the cradle. I pressed the button next to my therapist’s name. An electronic tone would sound in her small room, perhaps loud enough to wake her if she was asleep. “Sister Theresa?”