“It’s you,” I said to Yegina. “You’re the music.”

She smiled, took the drink, and swayed beside me as Dee sang three songs. I wished fleetingly that Yegina and I were having a night like old times, would go home late to her house with some spicy takeout, gossiping about everyone and everything we’d seen.

Instead, Yegina nodded at someone across the room. It was Bas Terrant, our director, and a fling of Yegina’s that had quickly ended in professional friendship. He’d become a big supporter of hers. He would be devastated if she left the Rocque.

“I may have to go outside for just a teeny-tiny bit,” she said to me.

“You mean outside with Bas?”

“It’s to talk about the new museum,” she said. “He knows. He e-mailed me this afternoon to tell me he has some ideas about how I could negotiate for myself and for the Rocque.”

At this point, I wondered who in L.A. wasn’t aware of Hal’s “secret” plans.

“You should go,” I said, resigned.

“Come with us,” said Yegina.

“I need to be here when the detective shows up.”

“I’ll wait, then.” Yegina squeezed my arm and gave me her whole attention. In her look, I saw the specter we were fighting together that night—not Hal’s future or Brenae’s story, or Hiro hurt and Ray missing—but a simpler, plainer ghost. We were both older now. The last eight months had altered us, and the once-sought consolations of a perfect cocktail and an attractive, mingling crowd no longer suited us. We didn’t want a carefree, forgettable evening. We wanted responsibility and change. Yegina was seeing her chance, and she deserved to seize it.

I shoved her. “Go.”

She fluttered away, her wings glittering. The room was filling with more people: Dee’s crew from the Rocque shuffled in all at once, casting their skeptical, amused looks at the decor. But their faces shone when they looked at Dee. She pranced and crooned, her long legs slamming in sharp boots. She was not an impeccable singer—her voice went flat on every fifth note—but she threw herself into it, her usual stylish charm deepened by grief.

I swayed a little, trying to let the music pull me out of my mounting anxiety. Janis defeated. Ray missing. Yegina leaving the Rocque. Too much for one night.

Several songs later, Dee took an intermission, and I decided to go outside to wait for the detective. As I maneuvered past some woman’s squishy front, apologizing, I heard a squeak. “Mary.” My head was spinning from the martini and the noise in the bar, and it took me a moment to piece together the red hair, the freckles, the big hips. A curtain-like, pink paisley dress.

“You’re here,” I shouted to Layla and her astonished gaze. “Why are you here?”

“Why are you?” she shouted back.