Above the shoreline, Abraxis sat on his haunches, with Sarah Schuster beside him, feeding her bits of matzos.

“Can’t you help them?”

“Even that one?” He gestured toward Marina, now waist-deep in the rolling blue waves. “For her sake, you were sacrificed.”

Sarah munched thoughtfully on the dry cracker, twirling her wiry dark hair around an index finger, remembering. They’d stood over her open grave, reaching furtively for one another’s pleasure. “Not for her,” she whispered.

Abraxis gave her a questioning look.

“For Jenny. I was sacrificed to her want, her desire for life without conscience or consequence.”

She looked up and down the shoreline at the three small figures. One sitting on the seawall, kicking ancient stones with her boots, fidgeting with something that rattled in her hands. One kneeling on the beach, head bowed to the sand, praying not to Allah but to her own emptiness. And Marina, oblivious to the cold water that drew her deeper with every step. Sarah could see what fed on them, skeletal yet boneless.

“It is not my beast to call,” Abraxis answered her silent question with something that almost sounded like regret. “Grief knows no other master. She will make of them what she will, what they will allow.”