“I have a big surprise for you two,” he says, lowering his voice, with a glance at the men beside us. “Massive. I’ll tell you once we’re alone. Don’t let me forget.” He taps his temple and gives us one of those über-jolly grins of his, just as the first course arrives: a whole-grilled lake fish. It smells of charcoal and brine, and is served in a paper cone.

“It’s also called sugar fish, because some people think it tastes like mulberry. Sometimes the fishermen train birds to catch these,” he says, as he shows us how to pinch the tail together to reach the succulent flesh around the spine. “The ban on catching them was lifted early this season, and Chef got first pick.”

I taste it, and he’s right: The fish is sweet-tasting, almost, and incredibly delicate. We’re meant to eat the bitter innards, too.

“Hard pass,” Tai says, poking at the liver with a wrinkled nose. “Sorry, Ted.”

Our uncle just laughs. “You sound exactly like the girls in this game I acquired.” He wipes his mouth, red-cheeked. “You’ll have to come play it someday. It’s fascinating—unlike anything I’ve seen.”

I smile at him awkwardly: I never even really played Pocket Girlfriend.

“I love you to pieces, but my phone addiction is bad enough. I don’t need to add more screens to the mix.” Tai finally lifts a piece of fish to her mouth, chews it, swallows it—and her pupils dilate into inky coins with surprise pleasure.

“Maybe Noni, then?” he asks, turning to me. “You probably like Shirley Jackson, right?”

I brought her novel The Haunting of Hill House to Viloxin with me, which was probably ill-advised in light of how haunted Stökéwood seems. I went on a bender reading all of her spooky, interior work this past year and even forced Tai to read her famously chilling short story The Lottery (“Wait, they kill her?”). I read her biography, too, which is where I learned that as a young person she named the facets of herself, like I do, to better manage them. But hers weren’t called the banshee, the fizzy pennies, and the radio DJ, like mine; hers were called—

“This game is special,” Teddy continues. “The developer thinks she’s the Shirley Jackson of the VR world. It’s set in Patagonia, at a rural boarding school for the elite—”

Tai interrupts Teddy, but pauses in between now-greedy mouthfuls. “So, I sound like a rich bitch. Thanks, T. You’re not exactly a peasant yourself.”

Teddy laughs. “No! It’s a haunted boarding school. So the players get to haunt the characters while working out the mystery of the house. It’s cool.”

Tai scavenges for the little scrap of fish liver left on my plate. “Haunt the characters? So, like, terrify the students? That sounds kind of messed up.”