In the aftermath of Lance Gressang’s attack, Alex stops Detective Abel Turner from calling an ambulance, insisting on no hospital and asking to be taken somewhere warded. She persuades Turner to administer basso belladonna from her pocket to get her moving, then directs him to meet her on Tilton and drive her to Il Bastone. In the car, she argues that Gressang did not kill Tara, noting he interrogated her about who hurt Tara, and shares suspicions about Scroll and Key portal magic and connections to Colin Khatri and Kate Masters. Turner reveals he followed up on alibis: Tripp Helmuth remains unverified, Kate claims she was at Manuscript late, and Colin was reportedly at Professor Belbalm’s salon.

At Il Bastone, the house admits them and Dawes is found upstairs. Dawes quickly pivots from panic to action, sending Turner for goat’s milk and preparing Hiram’s Crucible. As Alex and Dawes struggle upstairs, they discuss Scroll and Key’s waning power and the nature of healing magic; Dawes proposes “reversion,” an undoing that rolls Alex’s body back a short time, which requires goat’s milk and portal-adjacent workings.

Turner returns with milk, helps lower Alex—wrapped in a sheet—into the crucible, and witnesses the magic work as the bloodied milk clarifies and Alex’s pain recedes. Overwhelmed, Turner leaves abruptly for the station. Dawes steps out to get Alex food, warning her not to drown, while Alex soaks and feels the reversion complete.

In the water’s reflection, the Bridegroom (Bertram North) appears, explaining that “wherever water pools or gathers” they can now speak and that Alex’s earlier possession deepened their bond, drawing other Grays to him who could “smell” her power. He doubts Turner as a partner and confirms his bones lie in Evergreen Cemetery and Daisy is interred in her family mausoleum on Grove Street. Alex presses North to find Tara’s spirit; he says Tara’s death was brutal and she may be recovering on the other side but hopes the retainer will draw her.

After Dawes brings food and leaves them, Alex invites North to enter her again. When she submerges her hand and clasps his, she experiences a full-bodied vision from North’s perspective: he is in his new office with Daisy, newly engaged and discussing honeymoon plans, when a sinister intrusion hits his mind—a voice saying, “They cut me open. They wanted to see my soul.” The vision fractures into the perspective of a victim from an operating theater who had been cut open by boys and believes they are coming to take his soul again.

Back in the office, disoriented through this invading perspective, the intruder perceives Daisy as a monster and North in the mirror as a threat. He finds a gun and, amid terror and confusion, Daisy screams and crawls; the intruder turns the gun on himself to “ruin their fun,” shooting his own chest. When the scene settles, both North (Bertie) and Daisy lie dead on the floor, revealing that the double death was not a simple murder-suicide but the result of a possession or mental incursion tied to illicit surgical “boys” and an entity claiming to have been cut open.