“Can I go now?” Paz asked. “Come back to the hospital when you’re done here. They can reach me. The press conference is at seven o’clock. Sun’s setting around eight. Andy, you’re with me.”

Paz and Andy got up. Andy kissed her own hand and waved it at them.

Izabel kept going. “The tests at the hospital say that Cami is still sleeping normally, even with all of your conversations. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you having conversations during the day?”

“I talk but she does not respond.”

“Do you . . .” Izabel didn’t know how to phrase it. “Do you really like talking with her so much? She’s a four-year-old girl.”

“I do.”

“How old are you?”

“I am two hundred years old.”

“Whoa,” Jana said.

“My species has been on the planet for twenty million years.”

“Are you a boy or a girl?” Jana asked.

“I am both.”

“Can you be in my head?”

“Jana!” Izabel said.

“I don’t know how,” Elm said.

Then Izabel remembered. “Cami said the trees did it on purpose, ten years ago. Is that true?”

“The Earth was dying.”

“Is it true?”

“It was the step we could take.”

“You killed millions of people.”

“Yes.”

“Why do you care, then? About this man?”

“Further deaths are unnecessary.”

“That’s it?”

“I feel guilt.”

“Do trees feel things like guilt?”

“Yes.”

“Do all the trees feel guilty?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The Earth thrives again.”

After a long pause Izabel said, “Then I’m glad that you are the tree Cami knows.”

Outside the conference room, Opa pulled Izabel aside and apologized to her. She said, “I thought she was having trouble sleeping.”

“How could you have known what was happening?” Izabel said. “I still can’t believe it.”

Opa lowered her voice. “I would try . . . I would try not to let too many people know about it. The science community—they don’t talk about it, publicly—but they’re starved for information, and a way to move forward, instead of in response. The link Cami has might look like that way forward.”

Izabel felt the new threat to her daughter as sharply as she’d feel a knife. And then Izabel caught sight of another poster just behind Opa’s head. The poster was of a yōkai she recognized—rokurokubi—a woman whose head traveled as she slept, her neck stretching, her head causing mischief, attacking animals, drinking lamp oil. In the poster, she was smiling, and Izabel had to turn away.

Back at the hospital, Paz arranged to have Kaito and the girls sleep over again, this time together in a room. Officer Evans would stay with them, with a radio, a direct line to Paz. Izabel signed the waiver and then excused herself to the bathroom. There was still time before the press conference.