As I recall the crime scene, it starts to blossom around the figure of my sister. Blood seeps up from the floorboards, the coffee table grows like a mushroom, the broken glass scatters. The colors are so bright and saturated, the real world seems a pale echo. Tila reaches her hands up to cover her ears, rocking back and forth, her mouth open in a silent scream.

“This is you, too,” Mia whispers, watching it with awe.

“Go away!” I shout at the blood and glass. It stays, feeding on my anger.

Nothing happens. The anger and fear threaten to choke me.

I have to push them away.

I let out a breath and close my eyes. I try to let go of the urge for violence. I manage to find that small center for self Mana-ma always pushed us toward. I thrust all emotion away. Slowly, so slowly, the crime scene fades and disappears. I feel the briefest flash of triumph before I turn my attention to Mia. I no longer have the same desire to hurt her. Thank God.

“Tila’s words make no sense,” I tell her. False Tila quoted from the Bible, not Mana-ma’s Good Book. Once, that would have offended me. Now I grind my teeth in frustration, gripping Mia’s shoulder harder, until if this were reality she’d bruise.

“Who’s that man you were talking about?”

Mia starts to shudder. She’s taken control of her Vervescape again, but she’s unstable and it reflects in the world around us. The ground cracks and shudders. Lightning blasts outside the glass window. Thorned trees grow from the cracks in the concrete, slinking along the ground and up toward the ceiling. The trees bear fruit, but in horror, I realize they’re small humans, like thorny mandrakes. They reach their barbed hands toward us, dark mouths open in silent screams. Little red lights pulse from the bottoms of their throats, as red as Mia’s anger. I try to push them back, but they’re too strong.

The scalpel disappears from my hand, and Mia wriggles away from my grasp. False Tila is trapped by looping roots. She twists and turns, trying to free herself.

“Taema!” Her eyes bore right into me, and I can’t help but think that she is my actual sister, here somehow in this nightmare.

The demons grasp Tila, their wooden roots digging into her flesh. Black blood seeps from her wounds. Next to me, Mia cackles. She’s euphoric, fully caught in the throes of the drug.

I struggle on the floor to free my sister—even though rationally I know she’s not real, I can’t leave her. My hands are soon slick with dark blood. Mia attacks the mandrake-demons, plunging knives deep into their bellies until the lights in their throats go out.