“Soon,” Venkat assured her. “But you have to stay here in your room for now, okay? You can’t go anywhere until I say otherwise. It’s important.”

When Indu nodded, Venkat pointed to a vial of chrome chalcedony. “I’ll take this one.” He handed her a fraction of a boon in exchange for a dream about a girl tutoring a horde of bloodthirsty green dinosaurs. But for once, he couldn’t care less how that dream might be useful in his work.

Indu’s face grew even rounder with joy as the boon disappeared beneath her skin. She was so young, Venkat thought miserably. Just a kid.

He wanted to say something to let her know he was there for her, to comb through her tangles, but all he could offer was a pathetic, “See you soon.”

Indu had already turned away, absorbed in the soccer ball to come. Venkat quietly closed the door behind him.

The same scene played out again and again with the other runners, until the visits blurred into one. The only things that changed were their faces and the objects of their obsession.

Bharat, his video game controllers partially obscured by a blanket. “Is it time to harvest?”

Srinivas, his plush bunny abandoned in a corner. “I want a boon.”

Mona, her chapter book open to a folded page and forgotten. “How much for this dream?”

And on and on. Each conversation carved out another hole in Venkat’s heart. He wanted to drop to his knees and give them all a hug, but he couldn’t.

Jai’s room, of course, was empty.

So far, Venkat’s runners appeared healthy enough, free of Tanvi’s symptoms. That was something, he figured. They’d even accepted that, for now, they were restricted to their rooms, and Venkat would be coming to them for their appointments.

But of course they had. Pursuing boons became its own addiction. As long as they could keep doing that, who cared about the particulars?

This couldn’t go on.

Venkat had saved Tanvi for last.

She lay against her pillow, and when she gazed up at him, he knew he’d definitely been reading too many stories, because his first thought was that she looked like a character in one, the maiden whose night-sky tresses had spilled all around her in “a spray of silk and shadow.” Or maybe it was her curious expression, so present and rich with feeling.

Promises to her aside, the right thing would be to go to Nayan and fill him in. Venkat knew that, and his stomach writhed with self-reproach. But, he reasoned, not until he had a better grasp on the situation. Madhu was already scheming to get rid of Tanvi, and Asha’s little stunt had only made things worse for all the runners.

His heart pounded, sluicing him with waves of fearful heat.

Shaking it off, he pulled the chair over to Tanvi’s bed. “How’d you sleep?”