Nora said, “I think Eph could lure him in. He’s right—there is something about him, something the Master wants or fears. I keep going back to that light in the sky. Something’s going on there.”

Eph felt a burning sensation ride up from his back to his neck.

“It could work,” said Nora. “Eph double-crossing us makes sense. Draw the Master out with Eph and the fake Lumen. Leave it vulnerable to ambush.” She looked at Eph. “If you’re sure you’re up for such a thing.”

“If we have no other choice,” he said.

Nora went on. “It’s crazy dangerous. Because if we blow it, and the Master gets you… then it’s over. It would know everything you know—where we are, how to find us. We would be finished.”

Eph remained still while the others mulled it over. The baritone voice spoke inside his head: The Master is immeasurably more cunning than you are giving it credit for.

“I don’t doubt that the Master is devious,” said Nora, turning to Mr. Quinlan. “But isn’t this kind of an offer it cannot refuse?”

The Born’s quietness signaled his acceptance, if not his full agreement.

Eph felt Mr. Quinlan’s eyes on him. Eph was torn. He felt now that this gave him flexibility: he could potentially carry out this double-cross or stick to the plan if indeed it appeared it would succeed. But there was another question troubling him now.

He searched the face of his former lover, illuminated by night vision. He was looking for some sign of treachery. Was she the traitor? Had they gotten to her during her brief stay inside the blood camp?

Nonsense. They had killed her mother. Her duplicity would make no sense.

In the end, he prayed that they both possessed the integrity he hoped they’d always had.

“I want to do this,” said Eph. “We proceed on both fronts simultaneously.”

They all were aware that a dangerous first step had just been taken. Gus looked doubtful, but even he seemed willing to go along with it. The plan represented direct action, and, at the same time, he was eager to give Eph just enough rope to hang himself with.

The Born began encasing each wooden receptacle inside a protective plastic sleeve and setting them inside a leather sack.

“Wait,” said Fet. “We’re forgetting one very important thing.”

Gus said, “What’s that?”

“How the hell do we make this offer to the Master? How do we get in touch with it at all?”

Nora touched Fet on his unbandaged shoulder and said, “I know of just the way.”

Spanish Harlem

SUPPLY TRUCKS ENTERING Manhattan from Queens traveled the cleared middle inbound lane on the Queensboro Bridge across the East River, turning either south on Second Avenue or north on Third.

Mr. Quinlan stood on the sidewalk outside the George Washington Houses between Ninety-seventh and Ninety-eighth, forty blocks north of the bridge. The Born vampire waited in the spitting rain with his hood covering his head, watching the occasional vehicle pass. Convoys were ignored. Also Stoneheart trucks or vehicles. Mr. Quinlan’s first concern was alerting the Master in any way.

Fet and Eph stood in the shadows of a doorway in the first block of the houses. In the past forty-five minutes, they had seen one vehicle every ten minutes or so. Headlights raised their hopes; Mr. Quinlan’s disinterest dashed them. And so they remained in the darkened doorway, safe from the rain but not from the new awkwardness that was their relationship.

Fet was running their audacious new plan through his head, trying to convince himself that it might work. Success seemed like an incredible long shot—but then again, it wasn’t as though they had dozens of other prospects lined up and ready to go.

Kill the Master. They had tried once, by exposing the creature to the sun, and failed. When the dying Setrakian apparently poisoned its blood, using Fet’s anticoagulant rodent poison, the Master had merely sloughed off its human host, assuming the form of another healthy being. The creature seemed invincible.

And yet, they had hurt it. Both times. No matter what the creature’s original form was, it apparently needed to exist in possession of a human. And humans could be destroyed.

Fet said, “We can’t miss this time. We’ll never get a better chance.”

Eph nodded, looking out into the street. Waiting for Mr. Quinlan’s signal.

He seemed guarded. Maybe he was having second thoughts about the plan, or maybe it was something else. Eph’s unreliability had caused a rift in their relationship—but the Nora situation had driven home a permanent wedge.

Fet’s main concern now was that Eph’s irritation with Fet not negatively impact their efforts.

“Nothing has happened,” Fet said, “between Nora and me.”