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’s the 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.

“And Leslie? Dr. Wagner?”

“Our Mrs. Evelyn is a believer in the Bartholomew’s mission,” Nick says. “Her late husband benefitted from a heart transplant during my father’s tenure. When he died—years later than was expected, I might add—she offered to keep things running smoothly. And, of course, she’ll be first in line if she should ever need my services. As for Dr. Wagner, he’s simply a surgeon. A damn good one who lost his license more than twenty years ago after showing up for surgery drunk. My father, in need of assistance due to growing demand, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“I pity you,” I tell Nick. “I pity you, and I hate you, although not as much as you hate yourself. Because you do. I’m sure of it. You’d have to in order to do what you’re doing.”

Nick pats my leg. “Nice try. But guilt trips don’t work on me. Now take your pills.”

He grabs the paper cup and holds it out to me. I have just enough strength to knock it out of his hand. The cup drops to the floor, the pills bouncing into the corners.

“Please, Jules,” Nick says with a sigh. “Don’t become a problem patient. We can make the rest of your time here comfortable or extremely unpleasant. It’s up to you.”

He leaves quickly after that, letting the pills remain on the floor. The cleanup job falls to Jeannette, who enters the room a minute later dressed in the same purple scrubs and gray cardigan she wore when we first spoke in the basement.

She places new pills on the tray. When she bends down to pick up the ones on the floor, her cigarette lighter slips from her pocket and joins them. Jeannette curses under her breath before scooping it all up.

“Take the pills or get the needle again,” she says while shoving the lighter back into her pocket. “Your choice.”

It’s not much of a choice, considering they share the same purpose, which is more than to simply ease my pain.

It’s sedation.

Sustained weakness.

So when it comes time for the next donation, I’ll go quietly, without fuss.

Staring at the pills, those two tiny eggs in a white-paper nest, I can’t help but think of my parents. They, too, had a choice—to continue fighting a battle they had no chance of winning or to willingly wrap themselves in the sweet embrace of nothingness.

Now I face a similar decision. I can fight back and inevitably lose, making what little time I have left, to use Nick’s words, extremely unpleasant. Or I can make the same choice my parents did.