Her head threatened to go foggy again, but she shook it hard. Nothing could have changed in that time. The box would still be there, awaiting the moment she could lay her perfect charm bracelet in its velvet-lined nest.

That moment would be today.

Venkat turned the knob.

“N-no,” Tanvi stammered. “Don’t go. Just—just don’t watch, okay?”

Keeping his back to her, Venkat closed the door again. “Okay.”

Now she had no excuse not to take those last steps into the closet. Her foot twitched a half pace forward.

Two. The number hounded her. Two days ago? Like two soccer balls?

What had Nitya said?

I don’t care, Tanvi insisted.

Hadn’t Indu—

I. Don’t. CARE!

She glanced around the room, at all its familiar blankness and the absurd, out-of-place decorations that Asha must have given her. Asha, who had known about Nitya and maybe thought this was a way to make up for it. For having separated the sisters in the first place.

Tanvi didn’t want to understand Asha’s motivations. She didn’t want to see anything except her dreams and her vials.

Please don’t leave. Nitya’s frightened voice, her stricken face.

Tanvi’s hands trembled, each finger its own earthquake. She didn’t feel them, though. She couldn’t feel anything except the straitjacket of nerves contracting around her heart.

She’d only felt that way once before, when she’d downed three cups of burnt coffee from a convenience store in Bangkok to wait out her night owl of a dreamer and reap her harvest. When she’d smugly presented her wares to Venkat the next morning, her body had felt brittle, like blown glass. It had absolutely been worth the trouble—she’d netted a full three-quarters of a boon, her biggest triumph to date.

The nausea burned. If what Venkat was saying was true, had it been a triumph at all?

You don’t have to do this, she told herself. Just go back to sleep. The dreams have to go away sometime.

But she did. She had to prove Venkat wrong. So what if Indu had two soccer balls? So what if Nitya had said . . .

Before Tanvi could change her mind, she marched into the closet.

Her immaculate wooden shelves greeted her, with the velvet-lined enamel box as their crown jewel. The empty one primed for its bracelet.

Empty.

Tanvi breathed in the familiar air of the space, then exhaled hard, letting the panic drain out. She was safe and at peace here in its four walls. Venkat had really scared her for a second, true. But he didn’t know what he was talking about. He wasn’t a dream runner.

She crouched in front of the shelves and regarded them the same way she always had. Soon there would be a bracelet to fill the space.

But there wasn’t one now.

“See?” she called, whirling around. “I was right!”