His voice is as deep as his eyes were last night: something you can melt into and forget yourself in. “I … had to figure out whose it was.”

I say nothing, cheeks reddening. Tai sullenly raises her eyebrows at me.

“I’m going to dinner at a frittimitti place tonight,” he continues, “if you and your sister want to stop by. I figured we might as well meet on our terms, before my uncle orchestrates some kind of terrible Hero Pharm offspring get-together with you, anyway.”

I bite my lip. I don’t want to go. I would sacrifice almost anything to Tai’s drunk-night gods. But I want my notebook. I need it, and not just because it contains clues to finding Mama. So I accept his invitation, hang up, and sit on Tai’s side of the picnic bench. “We set a date at a frittimitti place in Limatra tonight.”

“A date? Tonight?” Tai repeats, watching Yuki’s arrangement on the table next to us like it’s monstrous scum beneath a lily pad in a dirty pond. She doesn’t squawk about the date. She doesn’t clap, and say she’s obviously coming, if only to watch Nítuchí’s nephew flirt with me. She doesn’t insult the choice of frittimitti—the strange Viloki version of the Italian delicacy of fritto misto or “mixed fried foods” (on Viloxin, mixed is taken to its unnatural extreme, and half the “fun” is not knowing what you’re biting into). She doesn’t even ask if she can dress me.

“A friend date. Can you come?” I have to ask.

“Mmm, I have plans. Saxim was already going to sleep over. And I kind of already told Linos he could come by Stökéwood,” she says, picking at her chipping fingernails.

I bristle at the mention of him. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Don’t patronize me, Manon.” She tears off a final fleck of polish. “I just need some time to try to be normal, okay? Go on your date with Satan’s nephew. Saxim and I will be just fine.”

But even her attempt at a joke is so atypically muted that I feel that gut pull to restore balance. When doubt has Tai in its clutches—and it hardly ever does—I can almost forget about myself, about my weakness in any of its shapeshifting forms, to protect her. That’s how big sisters work. But she speaks before I can do anything.

“Something was seriously wrong with her,” she says quietly, running a bare finger over the rim of her water glass.

“What?”