For just a moment that black iron stare bent on me with the full force of Bancroft’s three and a half centuries, and it was like locking gazes with a demon. For that second, the Meth soul was looking out and I saw reflected in those eyes all the myriad ordinary single lives that they had watched die, like the pale flickerings of moths at a flame. It was an experience I’d had only once before, and that was when I’d taken issue with Reileen Kawahara. I could feel the heat on my wings.