“. . . AND THEN EINEEN SAID, it’s been thousands of years. Do you know how widespread our bloodline is? And I said, that’s why we keep it in the family.” Charlie let her sleeve fall to cover the bruise. “Which is when she smacked me. She’s stronger than she looks.”

“Eineen the Selkie?”

Nudging a pile of magazines into a configuration less likely to collapse under its own weight, Charlie set her empty mug down on top of the stack. Paper, from books to journals to equations scribbled on the backs of junk mail envelopes, covered every available bit of horizontal space in Dr. Mehta’s condo. Even the studio portrait of an older couple—Parents? Grandparents?—that hung over her fireplace had a Post-it note stuck to it. “You were nearly kabobbed by a unicorn; why are Selkies so hard to believe?”

“They’re just . . .” Kiren waved her hands and splashed herself with tea, having forgotten she still held her mug. After a moment spent frowning down at the glistening wet mark on the top of one bare foot, she shrugged, yawned, and said, “It’s the crossbreeding. It’s biologically impossible.”

“But metaphysically likely.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that.” As Charlie sagged back into the sofa cushions, Kiren finished her tea and stared into the bottom of the mug.

“What do you see?” There were no tea leaves to read, but that didn’t matter much.

“Death. Destruction. Although, technically, I suppose destruction comes before death.” She sighed and set the mug beside Charlie’s. “Should you even be telling me all this? Selkies and aunties and the soundtrack of your life?”

Charlie considered shrugging. Decided she didn’t have the energy. “Sometimes you need to talk about shit.”

“I hear you.”

“And I know you can keep a secret.”

“And you’re going to wipe my memory when you go.”

Okay, that was unexpected. Although Kiren didn’t look terribly upset about the prospect. “How do you figure?”

“Acknowledge the facts, consider the implications, create a hypothesis. Your family, and all the . . .” Her hands sketched unicorns and Selkies in the space between them. “. . . extras, run completely under the radar. A few random data points aren’t a problem, they’ll be turned into stories and we all think we know the difference between fact and fairy tale, but if someone with the ability to connect the points into an actual theorem finds out, then you’re threatened with exposure. As you’ve never been exposed, and—excluding your monologue on the moral implications of not removing the ass head from that Spurs player on the drive from JPL—we’ve been talking for . . .” She blinked at her watch.

“About an hour and a half,” Charlie offered.

“Magic?”

“I can see the clock in your kitchen.”