I didn’t care at that moment, though. If it would save Beep, then we needed to risk it. I tried to tell Reyes that, but no one was listening to me.

“Charley!” Cookie called out to me. She was hysterical, racked with sobs. I felt bad that I was causing such uproar.

“I’m okay,” I said, and looked over at Mo.

“What can I do?” she asked. Either that or she said I needed to dye my hair. Maybe it was time. I was getting older now. Had a family and a kid. Almost. I needed to be more adultlike. Dye my hair. Get my nails done. Go to water aerobics.

“What the fuck?” Osh asked me.

He grinned down at me from up high. It actually wasn’t so deep as the fall that lasted forever would have me believe, but it was deep enough to make getting me out of there a problem.

There it was again. A pain across my stomach and abdomen that crept around to my back. Crap on a cracker. I was in labor.

“So, guys,” I said, looking up at heads in a circle. It would have been comical if— Who was I kidding? It was comical. “My water broke. I’m in labor, so if we could just hurry this along. Also, I think I broke a rib. Or two. And possibly my hips. And my ankle hurts.”

“The way I see it,” Osh said, “you got yourself into this mess. You can get yourself out of it.”

Cookie whacked the back of his head.

“Just kidding.”

“Who’s the girl?” Quentin asked, his signs difficult to read from my vantage.

I tried to sign back, to no avail. “Amber, can you tell Quentin this is Mo? She’s mute but uses mostly home signs. I need a Deaf interpreter.”

She relayed my message and I could hear Artemis whimpering in the background. I was surprised she wasn’t down here with me. After a moment, Quentin nodded.

“Okay,” I said, looking at Mo, “are there any neighbors close by with a rope of some kind?”

“Yes,” she said, pointing repeatedly. I’d been at the convent all this time but had no way of visiting our neighbors. Even if I could have ventured out, we were trying to keep to ourselves, to allay any questions our new neighbors might have about why we were living there, so I had no idea what lay beyond our holy border. “Quentin, can you let her lead you to them? We need rope and boiling water.”

“Why boiling water?” he asked.

“I don’t know. They just always boil water when someone’s having a baby.”

“Not the boiling water,” Reyes said to Quentin. “But we do need rope or ties or, better yet, mountain climbing gear, but that’s aiming high.”

He nodded and Mo disappeared to lead them to the closest neighbors. Hopefully they’d have at least one item on our list.

“Can you lift me out of here?” I asked Reyes, only half teasing.

He didn’t smile. “How are you?”

“I’m okay. I need some ibuprofen. Or some morphine.”

He nodded. “I’ve called Katherine.”

“Katherine the Midwife. You have to say her full name.”

“She’s on the way,” he continued without even cracking a smile. I was losing my touch. “But it’ll take her almost an hour to get here.”

“Okay. I’ll wait,” I said, just as another spasm ripped through me. It made breathing impossible with the rib situation. I grabbed hold of a tree root—hopefully—nearby and squeezed.

“Lower me down,” I heard someone say. “I was a pediatrics nurse, and I even helped deliver a few babies in my day. I need to check her.”

No way. They were going to put me in an enclosed area with Denise?

“This won’t hold,” Reyes said.

“It won’t hold you, but it’ll hold me. We’re risking the baby’s life.”

“If it doesn’t and you fall onto her—”

“I won’t. I’m the smallest one here besides Amber, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t know what to look for.”

I drifted away again, wondering how far under the dirt the bones were. Someone needed to know that they were here.

I looked up to tell them, but found myself staring at a butt. A butt I’d recognize anywhere. It was Denise’s, and she was being lowered with sheets that had been tied together. She was so going to fall on me. I closed my eyes as dirt tumbled down on me, and it felt good and I fell into oblivion again until an excruciating pain jerked me out of it.

“I hate labor!” I yelled, but it came out as a whisper.

“Here,” I heard Denise say before feeling the rim of a water bottle at my mouth. She’d brought Katherine the Midwife’s case with her. “I called Gemma. She’s on the way, sweetheart. You just hang in there.”

I pushed it away. “Were you possessed? Is that why you’re being nice to me?”

She laughed softly. Like laughed. At something I said. Oh yeah. She was possessed. Bedeviled. Entangled in Satan’s snare.

She lifted a bottle to my mouth again. “Just a tiny sip,” she said. “Once you go into hard labor, you can’t eat or drink anything. I need to see how far along you are, but it’s too cramped.”

“I was fine until you showed up.”

“Can you get onto your knees?”

Now she was just expecting miracles. “My femurs have been shoved into my hip sockets.”

“If that were true, you would be screaming in agony. You may have pulled some tendons, though, so be very, very careful.”