“What’s with the bowl?” he asked. “It didn’t click with me until I asked about your homemade tamales just now. I could smell them in the vision, too. That’s from your head, isn’t it?”

Talina closed her eyes, reached up and massaged the back of her neck. “You got that, too, huh? How much of it? Don’t fuck with me. Tell me the truth.”

“There’s a kitchen. On Earth, I think. Old-style stove and boiling pots of something. I see fingers, like your fingers, putting a bowl of some kind together. It’s been broken. And you’re fitting piece by piece back together.”

“You see the quetzals?”

He made a face, head slightly cocked, as though in hard thought. “No, I . . . wait. Like maybe an image, a sort of cartoon on the side of the bowl. You’re afraid, making some choice. Like your life is in danger. And there’s fear. But it’s not yours. It’s . . . sort of . . . quetzal fear? No, more like frustration. Is that right?”

“Demon,” she told him. “Rocket and I worked out a kind of compromise. Rocket’s TriNA didn’t like what Whitey’s TriNA combined with Demon’s was trying to use me for. Listen, it’s complicated. Quetzal lineages don’t like each other. Rocket and the Rork quetzals showed me a way to keep my sanity, block out quetzal thought when I need to. Demon’s still in here.” She tapped her stomach. “Sort of like a delayed-action fuse. Biding his time. The piece of shit still talks to me. After all, he was the first to figure out how to interact with the speech centers in my brain. But, for the most part, he’s currently neutralized.”

“Currently?” Dek asked. “You said he had the upper hand in my head.”

“What’s he been telling you?”

Dek’s gaze faltered, shifted, and he willfully said, “Shut the fuck up!”

Talina fought a sour grin. Good work, Dek. You’re learning.

“Okay, so he’s talking to you. Tell me, what is he saying? There’re no secrets between us for the moment. I need to know what he’s doing to you.”

“Keeps telling me to have sex with you.” Dek winced. “And he’s doing it with words I stopped using long ago.”

“Figures. He was always amazed by copulation.”

“Why?”

She took a deep breath. “Demon thinks it’s a weapon. Something to use against me. He’s good that way. Picks right up on grief, rage, any feeling of injustice. I think he uses them as a pathway to the limbic system. Maybe it’s how quetzals think of the world . . . that emotion can always be used as a tool or lever.”

“So, how do you live with it?”

“Me? After I hallucinated the Sian Hmong shooting incident, I was strapped into that bed you just got out of. I sort of switched places with Raya—”