When I look up, my brain distorts the room around me. I’m breathing hard, my nails tattooing Noni’s wrist on my lap. But she’s adrift, still lost in the dark parable. Please listen to me. Won’t you just listen to me?

I take several long slugs of tea, as if I’ll find answers in the mess of leaves at the bottom of the cup.

And there, below the cup, is my chest, covered in a blue sweatshirt.

I look at Teddy, in his blue sweatshirt. He’s smiling, still, like a little boy.

It hits me, sharply and all at once. Could he be…?

“This is all you have?” I ask instead, tearing through the remaining parts in the packet, identical to ours.

“Yes,” I hear Teddy say, voice thick with concern.

“Fuck,” I mutter. Why didn’t Mama leave us this part? I don’t understand it. My breath stalls in my chest. It’s when I see starbursts that I let go of Noni and drop my heavy head between my legs.

Teddy rushes forward and takes my slack hand. “Tai?”

A second later, a server brings me a glass of water and a cool cucumber-scented towel. I would laugh if I could stand it.

“Are you the vampyrrhic boy?” Noni asks Teddy.

I bite my polish-flecked nail and watch as our uncle, crouching at my feet, rises to settle onto the sofa beside us. He motions at the silent men in the room, who slip back into the pockets of darkness. Only then does his head drop into his hands—he rubs at his cheeks and inhales. “You’re owed the truth.”

“Teddy,” Noni says, the edge of her body pressing into mine.

And that’s when Teddy meets our eyes, his face pink, tearful. His Adam’s apple bobs.

It is a guilty face.

My heart flutters to my throat.

“You have to understand. She was like a mother to me, too,” he starts, with the desperation of a kid seeking quick forgiveness. “Like a best friend. She came to me, in the months before she disappeared, and told me she suspected your father and Nítuchí were … I don’t know. Up to no good? And I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe her because of the Mitso Arakit situation.”

I hear the faint chatter of Noni’s teeth as her hand closes around my knee. We haven’t spoken his name yet, even though it’s been on my lips for hours. “What Mitso Arakit situation?”

“Mitso Arakit was … he was a local guy in Noxim who became … obsessed with your mom.”

My blood pumps hotter, faster in the rawest zone of flesh just inside the sun-charm choker around my neck.