The way he’d drunk her in earlier, like he wanted to consume her, sent a rush of heat through Tanvi’s belly. “I guess,” she said, plopping down next to Nitya. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

Nitya shrugged. “Okay.” She gestured with her chin toward her group of friends. “So what do you think?”

“They seem nice. Is Hitesh your boyfriend now?”

“Yeah, right.” Mirth danced over Nitya’s face like the flames from the diyas, then dimmed. “I’m just . . . not interested in that, you know? With anybody, and I don’t think I’ll ever be. Only Mom knows.”

“Oh.” Tanvi toyed with her serpentine pendant, which lay flat against her collarbone beneath the silk of her choli. Why would Nitya confide in her about that and not Sameer or Hitesh?

She sensed Nitya’s disappointment, her annoyance, even though her stoic expression didn’t waver. Looking closer, Tanvi saw the strain underneath.

Why did this have to be so hard?

She couldn’t stand how stilted being here felt, like she and Nitya were strangers, even as the memories she’d regained whirled around and around on a carousel in her head: day camp together. Watching anime together at Sameer’s house. Picking blackberries in the woods near school together.

Nobody had known them better than they’d known each other.

“I hate that you left,” Nitya said in a rush. “I hate that I don’t understand any of this. I’ve been trying.” She scooched closer to Tanvi. “Tell me about Nagalok. What’s it like?”

“Um,” said Tanvi. “Okay.” She tried to think where to start. Then she dipped into her pouch, which had been tied at her waist and hidden beneath her filmy cloth-of-sky dupatta. “Do you still like pink?”

Nitya looked confused. “Not really. I’m more into green these days. Why?”

Tanvi paused with her hand on a reddish-pink rhodonite dreamstone. It was supposed to be a surprise. So much for that. Why had she bothered having her memories restored if even Nitya’s favorite color had changed?

“I’m going to guess you still like purple, though,” Nitya said, patting the fabric of her red-and-purple chaniyo. “I do, too.”

Warmth seeped through Tanvi, banishing the letdown, and she switched out the rhodonite for a blue kyanite vial. The dream within glowed like foxfire in the gloom. “Here,” she offered, ducking her head. “It’s not green, but it’s got Sameer’s dream. Maybe you can give it back to him.”

Nitya took it without a word.

Tanvi’s heart went cold again. Nothing she did here would ever be right. If actual magic couldn’t get through . . .

Nitya swiveled the vial between her thumb and index finger, admiring the powder-blue glimmer that tinged the air and highlighted her clothes. “No battery pack. No wires. No on/off button. Wow. So Nagalok is real real. Not just a story.”

“Real real,” Tanvi agreed. Nitya believed her!