She closed the lid of Rayan’s crate and sat next to it, feeling the heavy mantle of loss settle on her shoulders. Even at her age, even after burying so many friends and family members and lovers, it still felt like a fluid going down the wrong passage, a knot in her throat, an endless hollowness in her belly. Her mother had been a Buddhist, not a very good one, but the rituals had given her comfort when the typhoon hit. Misato only remembered the ravaging aftermath because of the archive footage. She remembered the too-strong floral scent of the incense. When she grieved, she always thought she smelled burnt jasmine. She had never been close to her mother, but still, she grieved her, grieved the love that never seemed to grow between them, a garden planted but never tended.

Misato was no monk and she didn’t know the correct order of things or the chants, but she lowered her head and closed her eyes and thought instead of having a conversation.

“I know you have him,” she whispered, placing her palms on her knees. “Some part of him must still be with you.”

With his mother, you mean.

“Forget it,” Misato muttered, opening her eyes. But Foxfire wasn’t done with her. When was it ever? The voice, which always seemed to come from every direction at once, filled her head loudly enough to hurt. Before it took the guise of her mother, until it realized that wouldn’t build any roads inland.

We miss these talks. We know you are afraid of what they became, of what you saw . . .

“Boo-hoo.” But she didn’t move, knowing that once the thing inside her became talkative, there was usually no shutting it up. Her coffee was all the way on the other side of the room, and besides, she was admittedly curious about where this was going. Usually their conversations were so confrontational, but this had a different tone. Rayan’s research indicated he was sure Foxfire was evolving, changing its methods constantly to outwit and seduce them. This seemed like another evolution and not even a subtle one. Perhaps it realized the aggressive method had backfired, turning Piero and Rayan into easily identified and therefore readily resisted threats.

Misato vowed not to forget that.

We are curious. When we have these conversations, what do we look like to you?

This was new. Before, Foxfire almost always asked the same repetitive questions: Why wouldn’t she give in? Why didn’t she want to join the family? Why was she so foolishly stubborn? And on and on . . .

Misato closed her eyes again, and at once the vision of the blue woman came to her.