“D’you need a doc to look at you?” Jesse examined my neck but decided I would live. I saw the front door open and a middle-aged Pakistani man hurried into the lobby, raising his hand in a wave at the doorman. He brushed by us, bumping Jesse with an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag and apologizing. He vanished into the elevator and I wondered if he could have been the Dr. Khan that Tati mentioned, summoned to minister to her wounds. Briefly I wondered if I really had damaged her nose. I hoped I had and immediately felt rotten to the core. That was the kind of thing Claudia would say, not me.

“Can we just go home?” I asked Jesse, and he put his arm around me as we left the building.

I told him everything on the drive back, from Tati’s copycat tattoo to Claudia knocking out two of her teeth. My sister was a magnet for trouble, always had been. What surprised me was Jesse’s response. “It’s some kind of dirty trick your sister’s playin’.”

“What, with Tati?” I asked, confused.

“No, with you. She gets herself into some kind of jam, then counts on you to bail her out. Again and again and again.”

“That’s not fair. Claudia hasn’t asked me for anything this time. She probably doesn’t even know I’m in New York.” It was one thing for me to criticize Claudia, but I hated to hear anyone else do it, even Jesse. It was a holdover from childhood, when my sister wouldn’t go to sleep at night unless I got rid of the monsters under her bed. She was convinced that I was the only person who could do it. I’d always been flattered by her belief in me and willing to banish monsters wherever she saw them. But now, the job had gotten too big for me.