I nod. I know how hard it was for him to say those words. If Emmett founded a clan, its motto would be Emotions Are Evil. I pat him on the back. “Me too, Em. Me too.” And it’s the most honest thing I’ve said to him in a long time.

He drops his hands and sighs. “But I’m not a quitter. And I’m not about to leave my best friend to walk into a clan of murderers by herself.”

My eyes well up with tears. “But you can’t possibly go there,” I mutter. “Not after what they did—”

He unfolds Boris with a decisive snap. “My mind’s made up. Like you said, Hattie is counting on us, and I’m not gonna let her down, either.” He steps onto the scooter and holds his breath as the blue scales creep up his feet. “Besides, my mom deserves justice. And I’m gonna get it for her.”

He waves me over. “What are you waiting for? Jump on.”

Stunned by this new gutsy Emmett, I climb on behind him without another word.

“Although, uh,” he says, testing Boris’s handlebars, “where exactly do we go to find these mother killers?”

I recall the third scene that played in the Haetae’s vision. The one in which Emmett and I were at the zoo, drinking boba tea. “This is going to sound weird, but you’ll have to trust me,” I say. “We’ve got to go have some tea with the tigers.”

Boris dutifully delivers us to the Los Angeles Zoo. We’re becoming a lot more confident on him now, and by the time we get off, not only are our stomachs intact, but Emmett’s feelings toward the dragon-on-wheels have done a complete 180.

“Aren’t you just the cutest,” he coos, rubbing Boris behind the ears. “And the way you do that invisibility thing—full of surprises, aren’t you!”

On the way over, we’d gotten some gobsmacked looks from saram pedestrians who couldn’t figure out how we were moving so fast. Boris kept pointing an ear toward a toggle on his handlebars until Emmett gave in to curiosity and pressed it. Turns out it put us into stealth mode, which kept us conveniently hidden from suspicious saram eyes. Genius.

After folding up Boris once more, we rush over to the posted directory to find the tiger enclosure.

“There,” Emmett says, pointing at the signboard. “Right next to the bears and the Desert Garden. It’s really close.”

It only takes us a few minutes to walk there. And just as the scene in the Haetae’s bell showed, there’s a food truck parked nearby.

“I don’t know why,” I explain to Emmett, “but the Haetae told me we need to get boba tea.”

Emmett’s eyes sparkle. “Hey, I’ll make the sacrifice if we must!”