Mia shakes her head. “I don’t know if I can believe that. They all say they’re real when they’re not. Either way, you shouldn’t have come. You’re too innocent for the Zealscape. Especially mine.” Her face creases in a grin, and I take another step away. She is utterly transformed from the woman who took us in just after the surgery, when we were weak as kittens and just as innocent in the ways of the world. I remember the way she pushed my hair back from my face, kissed my forehead goodnight. She took us to museums on weekends, patiently explaining so many things to us that we didn’t understand. Mia, my second mother in many ways, is looking at me like she wants nothing more than to stick that scalpel in my eye.

She shakes her head again, mystified. “Can’t believe a girl who escaped the Hearth would ever step foot somewhere where they mess with your brain. Didn’t you have enough?”

“Didn’t you?” I counter.

That same sly grin. A gesture at where Mana-ma’s corpse had been. “Do you really think I actually escaped the Hearth? It’s always here.” She taps her temple, and then considers me. “Maybe it’s still in you, too.”

My breath hitches. I don’t want to talk about the Hearth. “Tila’s in prison. She’s been accused of murder.”

That penetrates through her Zeal-fog. “Out there?”

“Yes. Real murder. I’m trying to prove she didn’t do it.”

I have to cling to the hope that she didn’t do it, even if the crime scene re-creation left so little room for doubt.

“So why come here?” Mia asks.

“She … wrote your name at the crime scene. She led me straight to you. You tell me why, because I have no idea.”

She shrugs, the scalpel flashing in the light. “Don’t know.”

Even in this twisted dream world, I know she’s lying. I can’t read her as well as Tila, but we still lived with her for years. I heard her, thrashing in the dark, on the other side of our bedroom wall, unable to forget the Hearth when she closed her eyes. She never told us about her dreams, tried to hide them as long as she could as we adjusted to our new, separate lives. It was because of Mia that Tila and I became halfway productive members of society just before she ceased to be one herself.

“Bullshit,” I say.

She cocks her head, but she’s unnerved. Her eyes dart to the side, the tip of her tongue snaking over her dry lips.

“Why did she really send me to you?” I ask. Outside the strange rain grows heavier, thrumming against the window. A flash of green lightning casts Mia in a sickly glow, making her look for a moment like the drug addict she is in the real world.