And, sitting with Rosa with our own coffees, I was stuck right in the middle of it, in a bubble of unending conversation, constantly touched—an apologetic hand would rest briefly on my shoulder, a smiling gray-eyed face float before me—and my head was full of the powerful animal musk of the Crypt. It was like being immersed in a great warm bath. It wasn’t intimidating. But it was damn hard to think straight.

As Rosa surely knew, which was why she had brought me here.

And on top of that I had to deal with my own complicated emotional situation. I still found Rosa’s face extraordinarily disturbing. She was, after all, my sister. She was so familiar, and something warm in me responded every second I spent with her. But at the same time it was a face I hadn’t grown up with, and there would always be a glass wall between us. It was quietly heart wrenching.

I tried to focus. “Rosa, if there’s nothing wrong, why not show Lucia to me?”

“There’s nothing that the doctors can’t handle. You’d only disturb her.”

“She came to me for help.”

She leaned forward and put her hand on my wrist—more of her endless touching. “No,” she said. “She didn’t come to you. That hacker boyfriend found you.”

“Daniel isn’t her boyfriend.”

She sat back. “Well, there you go. Anyhow, I don’t think all this really has anything to do with Lucia.”

“All what?”

“Your insistence on coming back to the Crypt. This isn’t about Lucia. It’s not really about me. It’s about you.” Her eyes were fixed on me. “Let’s cut through all this. The truth is, you’re jealous. Jealous of me.”

“Rubbish,” I said weakly.

“You know I got the better deal, don’t you? Our family failed, as so many little families do.” She said that, little families, with utter contempt. “It wasn’t just the money problems . . . Mother and Father saw a way to give one of us a better chance. They knew that this opportunity was sitting here. It had to be me—this is mostly a community of women. If anybody should be envious, maybe it should be Gina, my sister, not you.”

And perhaps Gina was envious, I reflected. Perhaps that was what underlay her sourness, and her decision to get about as far away from Manchester and her past as she could.

But I protested, “I don’t envy you. That’s ridiculous. I just think the Order keeps getting in the way.”