“No, I can’t. Because I know you. I sympathize with you and you’ll still be thinking about this tomorrow.”

“I’ll still be thinking about this tomorrow anyway!”

“When you do, you’ll know that I’m pretty steadfast.”

They’d both gotten angrier than they’d meant to. They looked over at Cami. She was still playing her game. Except now the game had changed. “A nice sleep,” she sang, and then, in a low, monster-y voice, “in the oven!”

“Oh no, I’m in an oven!” she responded to herself. “This was supposed to be a good day!”

    Chapter Ten

The next day Izabel was still thinking about the possible move. And the day after that. She wasn’t certain about whether they should do it. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t certain of anything. Sometimes the world felt false and fake in all its plastic. But many nights had gone by without killings and that felt good. Maybe he won’t kill again, she thought, even though she knew that he would.

Cami woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so they all got up early. At the table, Cami wanted to play a drawing game. She brought over her tablet and stylus from her play area. “Please,” she said.

“Which game do you want to play?” Kaito asked.

“The yōkai game,” Cami said.

“Okay,” Kaito said.

“You go first, Mommy,” Cami said.

Izabel drew an avocado, split in half, a big circle for the pit in its middle. Then she held it up. “Now this is a regular avocado,” she shouted. “Your normal, everyday, regular avocado!”

Cami giggled.

Then Izabel blocked her tablet from view with her left hand and drew a little face on the pit of her avocado and little wings coming out of the side and little feet out of the bottom. She pulled away her hand dramatically, as if she was making a big reveal.

Cami laughed more. “You have to name it now!”

Izabel wrote AVOCONDOR.

“Daddy’s turn!” Cami said.

Kaito turned a salt shaker into a yōkai salt shaker and named him Saltierre.

“Like Happierre!” Cami said—another character from Yo-kai Watch.

“Your turn,” Kaito said.

Cami drew a tree. “This is just a tree!” she said. And then she put the cutest smiling face on it. “Trenster!” she said. “Mommy, will you write it?”

Izabel wrote TRENSTER beneath Cami’s tree.

“There’s a name for a tree yōkai,” Kaito said.

Cami stood up next to him. “What!”

“Kodama.”

She danced in the spot she was standing. She held up her shirt. Then she threw her hands out like it was the end of a jazz routine. She said, “Kodama!”

Andy and Izabel met up at the mall once the girls were at school. They sat in a coffee shop with high tables and stools.