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a couple of French junkies from the Loire… out of the six of them, Esther was the only one who spoke coherent English. The Bosnian was almost as high as the French girls, and the Macedonians only spoke to each other—they seemed to have some intense and dubious bond going, given the way they clung to each other in the back of the van—so, especially considering her poor French, communication was limited. It didn’t really matter.
    Do a favour for me , Radouane had said when she returned. Back to roost, he called it. His blackbird. Like that shit was cute. Go to Pornic and wait for me. I’ll meet you there. It won’t take long.
    She’d nodded, let him believe she still liked it when he touched her. Maybe he didn’t see through it. Maybe he thought he was still playing her—that he’d played her in Illinois, when he offered to get her into France, offered her the new life she’d never have gotten any other way.
    Esther didn’t know much about his plan. Just that there was a deal worth a lot of money going on, and that some kid who hustled dime bags thought he could cut in. Radouane wanted to play the brat off against the big boys; scare him a little, perhaps. Maybe he planned to kill him. Maybe he planned to throw the deal in the first place and screw over the Slavs, or Germans, or whoever the hell was making the score this time. She didn’t need to know, and didn’t care to.
    Dusk was drawing in when they arrived at the house, and Esther blinked as she stumbled from the van, staring up at the mingled hues of blue, purple, and red mixing like spilled paint or vivid bruises across the sky. Although it was undeniably beautiful, the echo of the daylight raised shivers on her skin. Esther belonged to the night, her darkness wrapped in its embrace, where no one could see the terrible things she did. As the shadows came for her—skimming across the flat, boundless fields, where the wind swallowed up sound—she feared them, and the things they would give her the freedom to do.
    The boys who did Radouane’s dirty work and cleaned up his messes, hung around on the house’s grey gravel driveway; the red stars of cigarettes being lit, one by one, pricked the dimness.
    She went inside with the others, and the feel of the place closed over her like a dark pond, damp-smelling and clammy. The heat outside seemed to have perfumed the air within, lending it a flavour, a texture… something that spoke of the summer’s corruption. It made the beast stir within her, the flesh-print of a memory that rippled beneath her skin, stretching out in luxurious remembrance of the way it felt to feed. Tonight would be as good a night as any, she supposed. Like gutting fish in a barrel… but it would be better to wait a short while. Better to play along for now, to choose her moment. She’d been hiding in plain sight for so long that one more night shouldn’t matter. Just one more, and then she would creep away.
    This place was isolated. Quiet. Radouane’s father owned several of them; holiday chalets, cottages, and villas rented out to rosbifs and other tourists. Esther doubted he knew what happened here in the fallow seasons… unless he was complicit in his son’s schemes. Did he know? Did he sanction these empty times, allowing Radouane to fill the slow weeks with these jokes of human beings? Radouane arrived around ten that night, and the Slavs, or Germans, or whoever the fuck they were appeared less than an hour later. The entire place changed its face in a moment. Music, champagne… all the trappings of the party he’d promised them. Two of the men—shaven-headed white guys with heavy gold rings on their hands—had the Bosnian girl on one of the pale cream couches. She didn’t seem to notice it much.
    Esther was given one of the older men for a while. Back bedroom with a window that looked out across the fields, sky falling like a curtain over the spines of hedgerows and fluffed-up summer trees. On her back, upside down