Elliott is peering at me from across the room. He’s said something, but I was too absorbed in my brief battle with the compulsion to hear it. I try to play it off with a grin and a shrug, as if pretending not to hear him is another power play of mine. “Sorry, got distracted. Say that again?”

It works. He bites back a frown but repeats himself. “I said, I did my homework. After I tracked down enough rumors and confirmed you were a dealer, I talked to some people who knew your aunt. One of them mentioned that two boys came here last year to live with her and that the other one left again after just a few weeks.”

Ah. That makes sense. Ty did stay for a while after he moved me here, in preparation for what was supposed to be his year of studying botany abroad.

Elliott is watching me carefully. His old veneer of cool satisfaction has replaced his annoyance. Whatever he says next, it’ll be another attempt to throw me off-balance.

He proves me right. “They also told me that you haven’t been back to your aunt’s place, or to her grave, since she died,” he says. “Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You don’t strike me as the sentimental sort.”

I don’t bother responding to that. He’s chosen the wrong tack; I barely knew Aunt Irene. She died of a wound that went septic hardly a month after the Fracture.

But he’s not done. “Which was why I was so surprised when my guess about you wanting to get to your brother now turned out to be right. It seems pretty sentimental to me, trying to get across the world through the fog to someone who might not still be around.”

“Don’t talk about him like he’s dead,” I snap, suddenly sick of the back-and-forth. Knowing only one way to shut him up, I take off my hat, tear the brim’s seam, and pull out the thing that’s been hidden there all day.

It’s a mirror. Tiny, backed with thin brown plastic, the hinges at the bottom broken from where it used to sit atop a makeup compact. Its reflective surface is covered with beige masking tape.

Elliott’s eyes land on the mirror. He pales. I smile, feeling more than a little vicious. I don’t think he’s weak for being afraid of what I’m holding—everyone’s scared of it, including me—but I’m happy to finally come out on top of this conversation.