Carter, Valerie, and Mercy move to a house from their old flat and Mercy makes a new friend Jane, whose mother is abusive. When Carter confronts her, she cuts his neck with the broken off top of a whisky bottle. The mother is slowly discovered to be a member of a witchcraft coven who are planning a sacrifice.
Mercy’s parents have just returned from Jordan, where they visited the Sidi, who had been semi-paralyzed by a rock that hit his spine. At the end of their visit, the Sidi takes them to Zeitoun, the site of an apparition of the Virgin Mary, an apparition to which he has long been devoted, although with his own take on the event. While they are there, a miracle occurs and the Sidi is healed.
This news is reported in London and provokes a massive response to the idea of a present-day miracle. Jane’s mother charges him with assault; some colleagues at High Court pressure him to resign because witnessing this event would make him too biased. Valerie, who draws logos for her family’s beef business, is likewise troubled when she designs a series of stickers following St. Frances and the Wolf of Gubbio, and is challenged. Carter asks for a six months leave of absence after defending himself, and starts to write a book about his recent experiences, including having been safehoused; in the course of it, he writes a synopsis of the trial of a captured oil bunker middleman.
The plans for the coven sacrifice are discovered at Jane’s mother’s house as it is searched by child welfare agents, and Carter’s friend John, now a leader of a Met detective group, sets out to find the spot where it will take place, aided by Valerie’s brother, George, who has just arrived. The sacrifice is prevented. Valerie’s father, Roulon, dies, and her grandson, Hew is born.