Nina stared at me wordlessly for a long time, and I used the opportunity to call on spirit and sneak a glimpse of her aura. Like Lissa’s yesterday, Nina’s aura was filled with the pale gold of a spirit user. Unlike Lissa’s, however, Nina’s gold had a weak, almost watery quality to it. It didn’t burn like a flame. The other colors were equally frail, flickering in and out.

“Okay,” she said at last.

She stepped aside and let us pass. What I found inside was nearly as disconcerting as her appearance. I’d been to her place before, back when she and I had done a lot of party-hopping together. The tiny apartment was actually more of a studio, with bedroom and living room merged into one. Despite the small size, Nina had always gone to great pains to keep her home tidy and well decorated. Much like the care given to her physical exterior, though, that upkeep seemed to be a thing of the past.

Crusty, smelly dishes were piled high in the kitchen sink, where a couple of flies buzzed lazily. Laundry, books, and cans of energy drink were piled everywhere—tables, floor, even the bed. Weirdest of all was a stack of magazines on the floor with a pile of shredded paper next to them.

“How do you sleep?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“I don’t,” she said, clasping her hands behind her back. “I don’t. There’s no time. I can’t risk it.”

“You have to sleep sometime,” said Neil pragmatically.

She shook her head frantically. “I can’t! I have to keep trying to find Olive. I mean, I’ve found her. Kind of. Depends on how you look at it. But I can’t get to her, you see? That’s the problem. That’s why I have to keep trying. Why I can’t sleep. Understand?”

I didn’t understand at all, but Neil’s breath had caught at the mention of Olive’s name. “You’ve found her? You know where she is?”

“No,” said Nina, sounding slightly irritated. “I just told you that.”

Without warning, she flounced down on the floor beside the magazine pile. She picked a magazine up at random and began tearing it, page by page, into tiny little pieces, building up the pile of shreddings.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Thinking,” she replied.

“No, I mean with the magazines.”

“This helps me think,” she explained.

Neil and I exchanged glances. “Nina,” I said carefully, “I think maybe you should go visit a doctor. Neil and I can go with you, if you’d like.”

“I can’t,” she protested, still methodically shredding the magazine. “Not until I reach Olive.”

I crouched down beside her, wishing I had a better idea of how to talk to someone so clearly unstable. You’d think I’d be an expert. “How are you trying to reach her? By phone?”