Photocopied on the cheap flyer is a blurred old photo of Mama in sunglasses, butterfly wings drawn on her back. The room glitches. “Wait. So you dress up as her and perform?”

I squint at her. She doesn’t look like Mama, doesn’t move like her. But I could see it.

“Miraki, like butterfly,” she replies, razor-sharp. “Not Mireille. Not that it’s trademarked.” She clears her throat. “Now. Is that all?”

“No. One last, little question,” I say, edging over to Baba Yuki with a lathery sweetness. “We were told in town that you know all there is to know about Noxim and its history—and I do value an expert opinion.”

Baba Yuki smirks at Noni. “Does your friend think I was born yesterday? Or is she just the type who actually thinks her shit doesn’t stink?”

Noni bites her lip, concealing a grin, and I cross my arms. “It smells just like your flowers.”

Yuki snorts. “Okay, sweetheart. Fair enough. I’ll bite. But you could’ve bought some of those flowers.”

“It’s not too late,” I reply, all sugar.

“Do you know any lumberjacks?” asks Nons, blending Vilosh and English.

“Lumberjacks?” Baba Yuki repeats. “What on earth is a lumberjack?” She throws out an impassioned ick for effect. “No.”

“Any strange people in town, obsessed with little demons and axes?” I ask, wondering how to convey the message, catching sight of a machíkíl cleaver hanging on the far wall.

“This is Viloxin, honey,” she says in a bored tone, raising a brow. “We’re all strange.” She looks at Nons, who has removed her sunglasses to rub at her pink eyes. An allergic reaction to the incense, I bet.

“What lovely eyes you have, my pretties,” Yuki says, popping on a pair of rhinestone-encrusted cat-eye glasses over the mask and bending in for a closer look, very much wolf in The Little Red Riding Hood–esque.

She seizes Noni’s chin in her hand, and Noni shudders away, speechless.

“First of all, thank you, but second of all, can you just … not?” I snap.

But Yuki’s gasping, her matte-black talons closing around her own throat. “Oh, I’m a fool,” she whispers. “I thought there was something off about you two when you came in. But I just assumed wearing sunglasses inside was a pedestrian affectation. I never imagined—well, I never imagined I’d meet you in the flesh.” Tears well in Yuki’s kohl-darkened eyes. “You’re them. You’re her girls.”

Nons jams her sunglasses back on her nose. “You’re mistaken,” she says, and quite honestly, I roll my eyes.