Shaw's orphanage sits on a quiet street in Bethnal Green, a tall brick building with barred windows and a painted sign that reads St. Catherine's Home for Foundling Children.

  I've watched it for three days now. Watched the children file out for their morning exercises, their faces pale and pinched, their movements carrying the mechanical obedience of those who've learned that resistance brings punishment. Watched the staff come and go—nurses in starched white, administrators in somber suits, the occasional wealthy visitor who arrives smiling and leaves satisfied.

  The congregation's fingerprints are everywhere if you know how to look. The symbol carved discreetly into the cornerstone. The way certain visitors are greeted differently than others. The children who disappear from the windows without explanation.

  Shaw built this place. Twenty years of selecting children for the ritual, disguised as charity. From the outside, it looks respectable. Clean. The kind of place wealthy donors would feel good about supporting, the kind of institution that appears in society pages next to photographs of smiling benefactors and grateful urchins.

  I've been watching it for three hours, cataloging the comings and goings from a doorway across the street. Staff arrive at seven, leave at six. Children appear in the courtyard twice a day—morning and afternoon, precisely timed, supervised by women in gray uniforms who count heads with the efficiency of prison wardens. Delivery carts come to the back entrance: bread, vegetables, coal. The mundane necessities of keeping children alive long enough to be useful.

  Everything about it screams institution. Order. Control. The kind of order that makes people stop asking questions, that transforms children from individuals into numbers on a ledger.

  The ritual marks throb uneasily beneath my ribs. They know what this place really is. They recognize the congregation's fingerprints even when those fingerprints are hidden beneath fresh paint and charitable smiles.

  "You're doing that thing again," Corrine says from beside me. "The thing where you stare at a building for hours without blinking."

  I don't turn. "I'm cataloging patterns."

  "You're obsessing." She shifts closer, her shoulder brushing mine. The marks quiet at her presence, that strange stillness that only happens when she's near. "You've been at this since dawn. Have you eaten? Slept?"

  "Recently enough."

  "Liar." But there's no heat in it. She turns to study the orphanage, her expression sharpening into something more focused. Professional. The look of someone who's done this work before, who knows exactly what to look for. "What have you learned?"

  I show her my notes. The schedules, the patterns, the guard rotations I've mapped from the street. The delivery times, the shift changes, the moments when attention lapses. She listens without interrupting, occasionally nodding, once asking a clarifying question about the delivery schedule that reveals she's thinking three steps ahead.

  "It's a waystation," she says when I'm finished. "Not a ritual site—those require water, isolation, specific conditions that a building in the middle of London can't provide. This is where they identify candidates. Process them. Prepare them for transport to sites where the rituals can be performed properly."

  "Shaw's personal hunting ground."

  "One of them. He has others—a school in Surrey, a workhouse in Manchester. The congregation likes variety in their offerings. Different regions, different populations, different methods of selection." Her voice is flat, clinical, but I see the tension in her jaw. She's remembering something. Someone. "The children here don't know what's coming. They're being evaluated, tested, sorted into categories. The healthy ones go to factories and domestic service—legitimate placements that make the institution look proper. But the sensitive ones—the ones who have nightmares, who see things others don't, who wake screaming about water and darkness—those are the ones who disappear."

  "How do you know so much about it?"

  "Because I helped design systems like this." The admission comes out quiet, hard. "Before I ran. Before I understood what I was really doing. I thought I was saving children from the streets. Giving them food, shelter, purpose." She laughs, and there's no humor in it. "I was sorting them for slaughter. Identifying the sensitive ones, the ones the Deep One might find... interesting. Making lists. Writing reports. Being so damn efficient at it that Celeste promoted me twice."

  I don't know what to say to that. The emptiness inside me aches with recognition—another person shaped by the congregation, carrying guilt like a stone.

  "Then you know how to get inside."

  "Yes." She pulls a card from her coat—cream-colored, expensive, printed with a name I don't recognize. "Mrs. Helena Ashworth. Widow. Philanthropist. Interested in supporting charitable works for London's unfortunate children."

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Ashworth?"

  "Common enough name. And the congregation's Ashworth is dead, thanks to you." A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "I thought it had a certain poetry."

  "And Helena?" The first name of the woman I killed in Bristol. The charity patron who recruited families for sacrifice.

  "Shaw never met Cross. Different cells, different regions." Corrine tucks the card back into her coat. "The congregation is large enough that most members only know their own circle. It's a common name. He won't think twice."

  The front door opens to Mrs. Helena Ashworth and her companion Miss Grey—a young woman of good family, recently orphaned, seeking to honor her late parents' charitable legacy. The story flows from Corrine's lips like water, smooth and practiced, and I follow her lead with the vacant smile of a grieving heiress.

  The matron who greets us is a thin woman with suspicious eyes and a mouth like a knife wound. She examines our card, examines us with the careful attention of someone who's learned to spot trouble, and something in her posture relaxes when she sees the quality of Corrine's coat, the subtle signs of wealth that open doors money alone can't.

  "Mrs. Ashworth. We're honored by your interest. May I offer you a tour of our facilities?"

  The tour is a performance. Clean dormitories with made beds and scrubbed floors—I count the beds, note the lack of personal possessions, the uniformity that erases individuality. Thirty-two beds in one room alone, each identical to the next, each stripped of anything that might make a child feel like a person rather than an inventory item. A dining hall where children sit in silent rows, eating porridge with mechanical precision. No talking. No laughter. Just the scrape of spoons against bowls and the watchful eyes of matrons who seem to view silence as a virtue.

  A schoolroom where a teacher leads recitation—letters and numbers, the basics of reading, skills that might save a child from the factories or might simply make them more useful to whoever purchases their labor. The children's voices rise in unison, flat and rehearsed, stripped of joy.

  I watch a girl in the back row—seven, maybe eight, with dark hair and careful eyes. She reminds me of myself, before. Before the cellar, before the water, before the hollow opened in my chest. She's still whole. Still unbroken.

  I want to save her. Not for revenge. Not for the hunt. Just because she deserves to be saved.

  The wanting surprises me. I thought I'd lost the capacity for it.

  It all looks proper. Respectable. The kind of institution that inspires donations and warm feelings.

  But I see what they're not showing us. The doors that stay closed. The children who are led away when we approach—smaller ones, thinner ones, children with haunted eyes who flinch at sudden movements. The subtle tension in the staff, the way they watch the matron for cues, the fear that lives beneath their professionalism.

  And carved into the doorframe of the matron's office, painted over but still visible if you know to look—a symbol. Waves breaking over a circle. The congregation's mark.

  Corrine sees it too. Her hand brushes mine as we reach for the same document on the matron's desk—a list of children, their ages, their "special characteristics." The touch is brief. Electric. The marks go still for a heartbeat, that strange stillness that only happens in her presence.

  I scan the list quickly. Names. Ages. Notes: sensitive, dreams of water, suitable for special placement. A catalogue of victims, dressed up in administrative language.

  "This isn't just his hunting ground," Corrine whispers as we leave, walking through fog that seems thicker than before. "It's a waystation. Part of a network."

  "How many children?"

  "Dozens. Maybe hundreds, across all his institutions." Her hand finds mine again, deliberate this time. Brief and warm. "We're going to stop him."

  It isn't comfort. It's promise.

  That night, in the cramped room above Morrison's shop, we spread our intelligence across the floor. Maps of London marked with congregation sites. Lists of Shaw's associates—donors, staff, society connections who might be cultists or might simply be useful idiots. Financial records that trace the flow of money from wealthy donors to... nothing. The money disappears into accounts that don't exist, institutions that have no addresses, charitable works that produce no results.

  "He's funding rituals," I say. "Using the orphanage as cover to move money and children."

  "And no one questions it because he's Edmund Shaw. Philanthropist. Patron of the arts. Friend to orphans." Corrine's voice drips with disgust. "The congregation has always been good at hiding behind respectability. They've been doing it for centuries—the better the mask, the less anyone looks beneath it."

  "There's an event. Three days from now." I tap the invitation I lifted from the matron's office while she was distracted by Corrine's questions about curriculum. "A fundraising ball at Shaw's home. Major donors, society figures, potential new supporters."

  "You want to infiltrate."

  "I want to get close to him. Understand his patterns, his vulnerabilities, his blind spots. Find the moment when his guard drops."

  Corrine studies the invitation, then studies me. Her gray-green eyes are unreadable in the firelight. "It's dangerous. Shaw is careful. Suspicious. He's survived this long because he trusts no one and questions everything. If he realizes what you are—"

  "He won't."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know I've fooled monsters before." I meet her eyes. "Mercer didn't recognize me until I wanted him to. I sat in his parlor and drank his tea and he never once suspected. Shaw won't either."

  She's quiet for a long moment. The fire crackles in the small hearth, casting dancing shadows across the walls. Outside, London settles into its nighttime rhythms—the distant clatter of carriages, the cry of a street vendor, the fog muffling everything into a gray hush.

  When she speaks, her voice is softer than before.

  "I'll go with you. As your chaperone, your companion, whatever story we need to tell." She reaches out, touches my hand where it rests on the map. "You're not doing this alone anymore, Eleanor. That was the deal."

  The marks go quiet. That strange peace that only comes when she's close.

  "Together," I answer.

  "Together."

  She doesn't let go of my hand. And the void doesn't feel quite so vast.

  Then I pull away, turn back to the maps, and start planning how to kill a philanthropist.

  Twelve names remain. Shaw is next.

  And somewhere in this fog-choked city, the congregation is already watching. Already learning our patterns. Already preparing for the Tide they know is coming.

  Let them prepare.

  It won't be enough.

  The Tide is rising. And nothing can stop what's coming.